Amanda Gorman. Your poems are shit. No number of high-profile readings will ever change that. Seriously fucking awful.

biscuitdough wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 6:52 pm

Kniferide wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 6:32 pm.
Goodfellas is a pretty bad movie, and Ray Liotta is a terrible actor.

Scorsese is a hack.

I like After Hours - wish he did more anxiety comedy. If nothing else, I’ll always enjoy footage of 70s- early 80s NYC seen in Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, etc. you can’t really replicate the setting, despite HBOs best CGI attempts.

Jazz music is just silly annoying made-up noodling that goes on and on pointlessly with no rhyme or reason.

Rocky Rockbottom wrote: Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:10 pm Jazz music is just silly annoying made-up noodling that goes on and on pointlessly with no rhyme or reason.

Knowing how to play it would disabuse you of that notion.

This could rightfully be countered by pointing out the elitism of music that can only be appreciated by musicians, but then again there are probably a few beloved noise rock bands on here that are enjoyed almost exclusively by rock musicians.

I love the Germs, but Darby's lyrics were infantile crap to the same extent as Jim Morrison's were. I don't know why this rumour of him being a lyrical genius exists. I mean have you ever really read the lyrics to Manimal? Like sat down and read them?

Rocky Rockbottom wrote: Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:10 pm Jazz music is just silly annoying made-up noodling that goes on and on pointlessly with no rhyme or reason.

If this were true it would be easy to fake, but if you try to bullshit jazz it quickly becomes super apparent that you suck.

That whole ironically stilted, slacker kiwi comedy style as popularised by Rhys Darby, Flight of the Concords and Taika Waititi has been getting on my nerves for a while now. And just try taking this accent overseas and see how seriously people take you. People think we're a nation of buffoons.

Anthony Flack wrote: Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:31 am That whole ironically stilted, slacker kiwi comedy style as popularised by Rhys Darby, Flight of the Concords and Taika Waititi has been getting on my nerves for a while now. And just try taking this accent overseas and see how seriously people take you. People think we're a nation of buffoons.

As a yankee consumer of some of that comedy, I confess an affectionate stereotype of kiwi culture has been constructed in my brain. Any stereotype, no matter how affectionate is going to be unfair to the range of personalities and values from a given place. I never thought of people from NZ as buffoons. I do picture two islands full of unpretentious, self-effacing, drywitted people who are compulsively friendly. Almost like a Bavarian, or Canadian twist on Aussies (which I'd imagine any kiwi would rightfully bristle at). I'm sure authentic experience with ambitious business women (or really any women, it seems it's always kiwi men in pop culture?), barroom brawlers, or manic-depressive intellectuals would shatter this cheerfully inaccurate cartoon of the national identity.

I guess Peter Jackson seems serious and industrious, but a narrow playing field of cultural representation is always going to pick a few random team captains.

We are unpretentious, self-effacing and drywitted, but there's something lazy about the routine those guys slip into, you know how they start delivering their lines flat like they're ten year olds in a school play.

Taika Waititi is one of those "super humble" guys like Dave Grohl. "You're so humble considering you're the greatest" everybody says, and they are pleased and say yeah, yeah I try to be.

I was thinking about the New Zealand film industry overall, and who our actual best directors have been. It's fairly slim pickings and if Sir Peter Jackson and the no-doubt soon-to-be Sir Taika Waititi are really our best then we really haven't been punching our weight. Hunt For The Wilderpeople is apparently one of our most beloved films now? Well, after the first act with the fabulous Rima Te Wiata, I say it's a bag of shit.

Jane Campion, by a street.

I suspected as much. But the bros get all the attention.

Taika Waititi is like a horrible New Zealand amalgamation of Wes Anderson and Ricky Gervais. I'm tipping that cow today.