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).

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Back to three in a day, and all good ones, too.

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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.

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Sometimes in spite of the best efforts, terrible films slip onto your roster, and today was that day. Ah, well.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So: Woody Allen. The addiction of the US critical world to him. It’s a weird mix of cultural cringe and cultural chauvinism.

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