Another batch of film reviews. After watching these rot for some time, let’s try limiting ourselves to five at a time, shall we?
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KiwiPyCon 2022 Day 1
Firstly, well-done to KiwiPyCon for keeping a hybrid conference running, in this case with the same Venueless setup that worked well for linux.conf.au this year; I hope this beomce the new norm for conferences, but I guess we shall see. The team with 30 million players Laura Bell Laura is very pleased by the architecture, but refuses to be diverted into discussing the building; she wants to convince us to become the world’s biggest security team: “The best security isn’t noticeable, it just makes everything better” and her goal is to make it the ubiquitous ingediant.
Smart Plugs
Why add smart plugs to a home? Why complicate the act of switching things on and off at the wall? Glad you asked: I want to schedule devices that don’t have timers, or have timers that are so absurd to work with they might as well not have timers. a. I want to have the timers link up to all the other timed activities in my house, like the lighting.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 9
Moving into the second week of the festival; I had been more anxious about cramming my program in, because it hadn’t been clear to many that many films would be rolling over into another week. Imagine my relief when I found I could space things out more than I’d originally planned.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 8
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band A compelling, but extraordinarily disingenuous documentary covering The Band, from Robbie Robertson’s roots in Canada (Levon Helm’s life in Arkansas doesn’t rate a mention, and the other Canadian members are merely glanced at until they enter the Robbie Show). While many aspects of the documentary are compelling and fascinating - and very interesting if you have even the slightest interest in the history of North American folk, rock, or related music - it’s incredibly biased, and you’d not know from any of the material; there’s a lot of sinning of omission going on here, all in favour of making sure you walk away with the impression that Saint Robbie and his wife (actually ex-wife, but that’s not mentioned in the doco, presumbaly in the interests of keeping the narrative around Robertson’s life as a perfect family man intact).
NZ IFF 2020 Day 6
A light day; I spent most of it hanging out with a friend who is having to leave the country in a few months, which seemed more urgent. Nevertheless I managed to slip a cheeky movie in for the evening, and it was a good ‘un.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 5
Sometimes in spite of the best efforts, terrible films slip onto your roster, and today was that day. Ah, well.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 4
Something I’m enjoying about the at-home experience is the somewhat relaxed cadence of viewing, compared to my more normal festival experience of rushing from one side of Wellington (and the Hutt) to another, trying to catch them all.
Day 4 whipsawed between a pleasant but realistic fiction (and highlight of the festival) and a real but difficult film I couldn’t make it all the way through.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 3
A shorter slate today. While watching the festival at home has drawbacks, notably the plethora of distractions, it does save a fortune on snack food.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 2
Happily the streaming for the festival continues to be solid, even as the booking remains opaque. Today was the chance to watch some kid-focused films, the existence of which is one of the things I greatly appreciate about the festival. Sadly, and surprsingly, this year the usually reliable short films let me down badly.
NZ IFF 2020 Day 1
Film festivals have been hard-hit by COVID-19. My favourite NZ French Film Festival had only just gotten underway when the country went into level 4; there wasn’t much the NZ FFF could do about that (although I will note that while one of the theatres that I had booked tickets at refunded them unprompted, Penthouse didn’t), but the NZ IFF folks spend L4 working out what to do. Their response was to focus on pulling together their “at-home” response; that is to say, a streaming setup.
The Silver Lining of an Insider Threat
So after slightly more thought about the medical privacy breach committed by Boag and Walker, and while their actions are vile, this news about the breach is probably the best we could hope for in another sense.
It’s appalling that Boag - a long shit-stain on the underwear of New Zealand politics since her days in Jim Bolger’s office - decided to make the personal information of sick Kiwis a weapon in the National Party’s increasingly desperate bids to unseat the government at any cost.
However, there is a silver lining.
Woody Allen and the Cringe
So: Woody Allen. The addiction of the US critical world to him. It’s a weird mix of cultural cringe and cultural chauvinism.