Yankees Update - 30/08/09

Getting There

Since the big series in Boston where the Yankees stamped their authority on the AL East, the last fortnight has been a process of working through the numbers. Their long road trip out west finished with a 7-3 record, and while they lot the series to Texas at home 2-1, they've won 2 so far of their 3 game series with the White Sox. While the tension has somewhat gone out of the AL East race, the Yankees still have to get through September.

Even losing 2 of 3 to the Texas Rangers was interesting in that, it makes it just that harder for the Red Sox to get their Wild Card berth; an while you wouldn't exactly accuse the Yankees of tanking it, it's actually a nice result given the context of the race for the post-season. The only time losing a series this season felt okay.

New Joba Rules

Joba came out of his 8 day break and sucked. So now they have new Joba rules. It's a case where the desire to limit the innings and the need to get him to stay effective as a starter are beginning to work against each other. Clearly he needs the routine, so they're going to give him the starts, just limit the innings. Fortunately the Sergio Mitre-Chad Gaudin combo of a 5th starter has begun to work. Today's combined shut out by those guys is actually very useful. So it might be the case where Joba will pitch regularly, just not that long into the game any more. Certainly not until the post-season.

Andy Pettitte Wants To Keep Pitching

Most people were assuming he was going to retire but he's now making noises about going a bit longer. Well, with the sort of money on the table, why wouldn't you? Well, I'd be okay with that if he takes a similar incentive deal.

Derek Jeter's Magic Run

Captain Intangibles is about to reach a Yankee milestone later this season. he is likely going to pass Lou Gehrig as the career hits leader for the Yankees. I'm sort of amazed he's passed Bernie Williams let alone Babe Ruth, but there you go. Today, I consider him to be the luckiest man on the face of this earth. :)

District 9 Review

What's Good About It

For some reason there's been a dearth of good science fiction lately. I lay the blame squarely on the un-intelligence of Hollywood executives because basically, they're the only ones capable of funding a good sci-fi and they seem to have lost the ability to pick them any more.

It's against this context we get 'District 9' thrown at us like so much meat to hungry animals in a safari enclosure. The animals I might add probably always feel there's got to be better than the meat that's being thrown at them.

I guess I have to say that at least it's a full-blooded sci-fi flick, an that counts as good.

The South African Accents are great. It puts you deep into the rhythms of Jo'burg and there's something very curious about that. Maybe I'm missing the South African emigres with whom I used to play baseball. It's actually quite a bit of fun, and it has the added advantage of the bad guys seeming like much worse guys than if they were white guys from America, being mercenary.

I guess I'm a product of my times.

What's Bad About It

The film doesn't really give you an indication what the central problem is until a good 20minutes in to the film. This isn't because there's not much going, but because there's just too much going on. We're busy trying to decipher the vast mass of signals springing off the screen that we miss that it's about some of the aliens wanting to go home. In other words, it's 'ET: The Extra-Terrestrial' but with better effects and uglier aliens.

The other problem is that the it doesn't make any sense. If the aliens have been on Earth for 20-odd years because they were stranded without fuel, they shouldn't be able to extract fuel from stuff in the junkyard. An the same substance shouldn't be turning the main character Vikus into an alien just because it splashed all over his face. There's just no rationale for this except for the expediency.

The other thing I didn't like was the pseudo-documentary style it took with the extensive hand-held camera that made me car sick. I think I spent the middle 40minutes or so feeling woozy and wanting to throw up. That's not a selling point or this movie.

What's Interesting About It

There a re echoes of apartheid that play out in this film. of course the question one could ask is, is it just repeating the structure of racism or is it inverting it in some new way? I'm not really sure if the film makers ever successfully address the nature of xenophobia, but they do show how apartheid would have been exercised under the guise of bureaucratic policy.  That part of the film is at least fascinating.

The ugly, bullying bureaucracy is carried out with a very forced, fake smile and a condescending attitude that embarrasses us as we watch.

The other idea that is interesting in the film is the idea of Bogan Aliens. These aliens that come to earth are workers and have no idea about anything. You can just imagine it. If you randomly sampled the human population, its probably not going to be a good representation of the human genome. They're certainly not a goo political representative.

Which all works in favor of the complexity of the film's theme. All this breaks down as the story progresses towards a simple action gun fight climax, and you realise you're watching a re-telling of ET. I guess you could do worse on a Thursday night.

Rachel Ward Wants Some Slack Cut Her Way

I Dunno Lady, But You DO Get Slack Cut By Being Rachel Ward

This article came in courtesy of Walk-Off HBP.

I have a film now braving the marketplace. It does not comply with the dictates of mass marketing. It is not trying to be "entertaining enough for mainstream audiences". It does not try to compete with the million-plus audiences turning on television for Packed to the Rafters and Underbelly. It cannot compete with the marketing budgets of US studio fare. But, I believe - and my distributors and funding bodies believe - that given a fair chance, there is a healthy audience for Australian films. Uneasy, complex, unsettling ones at that. Always has been.

If anything, Australian film made its name with them: Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and The Devil's Playground, Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant, Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout. New Zealand did it this way, too, with the likes of Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors and Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures.

I don't know whether filmmakers from other years have suddenly felt this insidious wet blanket of negativity for making films that demand and confront and haunt an audience (which is certainly my idea of entertainment) rather than providing simple escapism and the ubiquitous ''feel good'' factor.

Feel-good films have their value and their place. Like a big, buttery box of popcorn, they have no trouble selling themselves.

But as the Herald's film writer, Garry Maddox, went some way to point out, niche movies are dependent on how well they are made. They are also hugely dependent on an accumulation of great reviews, multiple stars, inordinate publicity by deeply committed actors and filmmakers, inventive and passionate distributors, inclement weather and robust word-of-mouth recommendations.

Removing any of those things can spell disaster. In other words, such films are extremely fragile beings.

I am not bleating for insincere reviews or coverage. I don't need them. As with Samson and Delilah, The Black Balloon and Somersault, my film, my fragile, beautiful egg, is being propelled towards the try line (decent box office returns) by positive reviews and good word of mouth. Reviews are not the problem.

What I did not count on was a succession of last-minute spoilsports, dumping doom and gloom and threatening to squash my precious egg before those in the audience could make up their own minds.

Well, let's see now...

Nobody is saying Rachel Ward shouldn't be allowed to make her movie. It's just that every time a niche movie is made with government money, it's an opportunity lost to have made a movie that might have a wider audience appeal.

And every time a niche movie goes into the market place and doesn't make it's money back, it puts another nail in the coffin of the Australian Film Industry being viable as an industry. And frankly, we've had 30-odd years of that going on thanks to really strange choices made by the AFC, FFC the various State-based agencies, and most likely Screen Australia. These strange choices informed by non-market biases and a very strong sense of wanting to be seen funding the 'correct' projects, combined with the ATO's very strange rulings on what constitutes Australian films, have all but destroyed the creatives in this country. We're dead, we're fucked - so much so in fact that we're dead-er and fucked-er than ever before.

So I kind of think Ms Ward is pretty lucky to have been able to make her film, good or bad, hit or not. It most likely won't be a hit. It most likely won't make its money back, but she got her work out, and likely got paid to do it. I think she's been given way more of a fair crack of the whip.

Here's some sobering news for you all. 'Indie' is dead. That's straight out of LA. Don't even bother writing your small-time scripts with little actions tailored for small budgets. They're not getting made. The marketplace is rationalising itself around big pictures that are based on proven commercial properties - read comic books and toys - and the biggest demand outside of that scope is in the $20million budget picture.

The kind of films we make in Australia simply don't fit that category. It's time to accept that even the international market that used to exist for our films is rapidly disappearing with the GFC.

So do I think Rachel Ward is off-base? Yeah, I do.

Some Honest Words

Cinematically Speaking, We're Pacific Islanders

Today brings yet another critique of the sad world of the Australian Film Industry. A lot could be said about this article but frankly I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted with talking about the damn thing when nothing seems to change. Anyway, here's what George MiIller has to say:

Except for Luhrmann, George Miller and a handful of others, Australian filmmakers are not even playing the same game as Hollywood. It's no wonder they're not competing.

They're like painters and musicians politely showing their work rather than scrapping for ticket sales.

“It's a tough business out there,” says Miller, who is – with the Mad Max movies and Happy Feet – the country's most consistently successful filmmaker. “The big-event movies seem to soak up all the attention and all the box office. Unfortunately, that's what the cinema business is devolving to.

“The smaller, more intimate, more modest stories are probably finding their way better onto cable, onto television, onto DVD and onto the web ultimately.”

Miller believes the comparison he made a few years ago – that the film industry is like the Fijian and Samoan rugby teams, with brilliant one-off talents but not enough support to match the world's best – still applies.

A cinema-chain executive, who asks not to be identified, says recent Australian films have just not been entertaining enough for mainstream audiences.

"The box office [see "Dollar for dollar", right] indicates what the general public's reaction is to these films and, despite certain people saying that the industry isn't supporting these pictures, that's a fallacy," he says. "Except for Samson and Delilah, that bunch of films have failed to strike a chord with audiences on a large scale."

The film industry – fragmented, democratic and often justifiably unhappy about the way success is tied to box office rather than overseas sales or audience response – has many talented creative figures but not enough producers who say ugly truths such as "No one cares about this story the way you've approached it" or "Even if you execute this perfectly, it'll still open in a handful of cinemas and last four weeks".

There aren't enough hardheads who'll say, "If this doesn't make money, it'll be five years before you make another film" or "How can we broaden it?"

Yup. Plus Phil Noyce's input:

And we need to listen to director Phillip Noyce, who recently finished filming the Hollywood thriller Salt with Angelina Jolie. "All Australian filmmakers have to be aware (as Baz Luhrmann so obviously is) that making the film is just half the job," he says. "A much higher percentage of budgets need to be quarantined for publicity and marketing. We need less workshops devoted to refining our craft and a huge redirection of energy by funding and teaching bodies towards basic entrepreneurship.

“The classic economic rules of supply and demand do not apply to movies; demand to see a film has to be created."

It's a number's game. The most ardent cinema-goer who pays to see films will see 50-100 films. That's based on a weekend movie with friends plus a shot at Tight-Arse-Tuseday. Plus they might watch a DVD of a film they missed, but you're not talking thousands of films.

So if you're choosing to see a film, you're going to choose from the top 50-100 most visible and interesting films on offer. This would mean the most marketed films will find a way into view of the ardent cineaste much more readily than those without the marketing budgets. And really, Australian films simply do not have the kind of marketing budgets to crack the top 200 most marketed films in any given year. So why are we surprised by this outcome?

Why are we even bothering funding more films when we know we're sending those films to box office oblivion? Isn't there something more useful to spend this money on? Like better education and health? I keep saying this but Australians pretend to want an Australian film industry much more than they really do. It's no surprise the industry is to all intents and purposes, dead on the vine.

Today, I feel too embittered to continue with this shit. I really am. I've had enough.

JCVD

What's Good About It

You have to like a movie that decides to work in a self-referential frame, where the main guy playing Jean-Claude Van Damme is Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film proceeds under the fiction that the JCVD we see on the screen really is the Belgian film star, who happens to get involved with a bank robbery.

The non-linear narrative where we see JCVD's entrance into the Post Office twice is effective and the flashbacks to different points in time are more poignant as the story rolls on.

The pacing is good and at no time do you really feel "man, this is dragging on", but there really isn't much to the story anyway.

What's Bad About It

The guys who rob the bank are a trio of losers. They behave like something straight out of 'Dog Day Afternoon' with perhaps a lot less wit and as a consequence their demises are on the whole dissatisfying. Perhaps that's part of the script's theme as well where JCVD confesses his great disillusionment with stardom and life.

The trio are so bad that you just cannot see how they might get out of the situation, even with JCVD as hostage. Inexplicably, they make him take the fall for the job by making him talk to the police negotiator, but that is about it. One of them even has a hairstyle reminiscent of John Cazales' look from 'Dog Day Afternoon'.

The film might have been even better had the bank robbery villains had half the gusto of Johnny Depp's John Dillinger.

What's Interesting About It

Apart from the premise itself? It's surprisingly barren.

It's full of pithy observations like how most American movies bash up on Arabs and muslims except JCVD.

There's an observation made by one of the bank robbers that John Woo owes JCVD big time, but somehow let him down by forging ahead with his career. Without JCVD, he would "still be filming pigeons in Hong Kong". That was a funny line.

The jokes about Steven Seagal and his ponytail are mildly amusing.

The Reader

What's Good About It

This is a pretty weird picture. It has a NAZI SS camp guard as a leading character, and it's a woman - and she's pretty predatory about sex as as well when she seduces a young German boy after the war, which is essentially where it starts. The horrible past only comes to light later in the story. It's a good ploy because it forces the audience to reckon with the humanity of the woman played by Kate Winslet, before we have to reckon with the horrible past with the main character.

Turns out it is an almighty emotional that requires two actors to anguish their way through the film, one of the Ralph Fiennes who was of course once upon a time that other horrible NAZI on screen, Amon Goeth.

It's quite clever in that it captures a side of the historical taboo through the libido and carnal pleasure sort of angle. The Germans in this story have to struggle with the NAZI past to they break, but it's not clear what happens beyond such flagellation.

What's also good is that the post-war trials of former NAZIs are depicted in the film and you get the feeling that yes, if you know how such trials are going to go, then they likely are show trials no different to the kind of trials they have in say, Communist China or Burma under military rule.

What's Bad About It

This is a really, really good film except I'm not sure you can de-politicise the Germany-Nazi-Holocaust parts of history to the extent and pretend that only personal moral concerns remain. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that naive. Nazism is/was politics. They didn't do all the stuff they did for nothing - they were hyper-political about the how and why of the Holocaust and everything else they went and did that we disapprove of today. In the same vein, anybody who was a Nazi is/was political.

You don't just sidestep that. And politics does go to where morality cannot stomach, quite often. But then, so does the law.

That may just be my reading of it, but the film goes towards having Bruno Ganz's character mounting the argument that the law has limitations and we still thirst for justice. And yet we're left with the impression that there were good Germans and bad Germans and we'd all be all right if we can just lock up the bad Germans.

What's Interesting About It

There's something almost stupid about a film that has NAZIs and the Holocaust as a back-story and then the leading actress who goes extensively nude in the film ends up with an Oscar. The same actress who joked about such phenomena in 'Extras' to Ricky Gervais, that is.

I mean, are we that dumb? Are they that dumb? It's a good film and all, but come on people! Winslet's done better work than this. Isn't this like Holocaust-Porn, the worst of its kind since 'Life Is Beautiful'?

It's like they show the ciphers of NAZIs and Holocaust and everybody has to go running to praise the thing. It's silly.

BrisConnections Disconnenct Part X

A Mess Is A Mess Is A Mess

After ASIC went and got the verdict it wanted against the Hardie board of directors, I'm sort of wondering when they will go after the financial engineers who engineered BrisConnections. Here's the latest.

BrisConnections, meanwhile, disclosed Macquarie Group reaped $133.8 million in underwriting, listing, management and other fees. Deutsche made $44.7 million in fees.

The company reported a $24.4 million net profit, largely thanks to the interest it earned from cash held in the bank. BrisConnections stated it had spent $880 million on construction expenses and had $187 million on hand on June 30.

Reflecting the turmoil within the group, BrisConnections also disclosed it held 27 board meetings during the year.

Despite BrisConnections launching legal action against unitholders who defaulted on the second instalment, the group is not legally obliged to repay the underwriters.

Under a clause in the underwriting agreement, BrisConnections is obliged to transfer only units forfeited by 135 unitholders who did not pay the second instalment to the underwriters.

Does this strike you as odd? It seems that they foresaw there would be defaulters, and the defaulters would be pursued for their money, BUT the underwriters won't be held to the same price tag. Somewhere along the path, they didn't expect Nick Bolton but they did expect people would scream. Go figure that one out.

Scum Dog Paupers

Yes Mr. Sheridan, 'Australia' Sucks

...but Australian Cinema does not!

This article came to me from Pleiades.

After a brilliant rebirth in the 1970s, it has become steadily worse. Our individual performers conquer all in Hollywood and London, and even Bollywood, but Australian films are consistently and predictably bad.

Compare and contrast, as the essay topic-setter would put it, two recent films: the big-budget fiasco Australia, and the exquisite Slumdog Millionaire.

Australia cost at least $130 million, perhaps all up quite a lot more than that. It is one of the worst films I have seen for years. And it has been a commercial mediocrity and critical flop. It is not so much a failed epic as a ludicrous, camp pantomime. It features superb actors: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and the gifted and charming young Aboriginal star, Brandon Walters. But they cannot save it from its ridiculous plot confusion, its constant air of contrived unreality, its pretentious and worthless nods to other films and the fact that at no point does the viewer believe in or care about the characters or the situations.

It grossly defames our nation. The treatment of Aborigines is the most morally troubling aspect of our history and we are rightly exercised about it. But no Australian government ever sent Aboriginal children to a mission island near Darwin so that the Japanese would bomb them. Nor did the Japanese land on and take control of such an island in the 1942 bombing of Darwin.

Some critics have excused this by saying that Australia partakes of no reality and therefore this anachronism, along with all the others, doesn't matter. Australia claims to be dealing with a huge historical issue, the forced removal of mixed race Aboriginal children. It can't expect people to take it seriously if it then depicts eventsthat not only didn't occur, but could not possibly have occurred in the universe we happen to inhabit.

The script is a dog's breakfast. At one point the rough Aussie drover (Jackman) is driving the refined English aristocrat (Kidman) to her new home. Jackman says he's always wanted to crossbreed a wild brumby with an English thoroughbred. Kidman thinks he's propositioning her and reacts with shock.

This banal, pathetic attempt at a joke is important because it illustrates the script's disdain for the audience. Kidman's character is meant to be obsessed with horses in England, and with breeding her champions. It is inconceivable that she could have misunderstood Jackman's remark, so the misunderstanding, which is meant to be comic, has no plausibility. In other words, the actors are not delivering the dialogue of a joke, they are delivering the dialogue of a parody of a joke. The audience is being asked to laugh not at a comic situation but at a director's sly and knowing wink about the banality of comic situations in films. In which case, why make films at all?

Australia exhibits two of the worst characteristics of Australian filmmaking: excessive artiness, which prevents effective story telling and a didactic, dogmatic, unsubtle, hectoring tone of political preaching. It is a tragic waste of a unique opportunity in Australian filmmaking.

Aaaargh. Where do you start?

I think it's pretty damned unfair. The point is, you would be consigning to the dustbin all kinds of films on the basis that:

• 'Australia' is an Australian Film


• 'Australia' sucks as a film


• Therefore all Australian films suck.

That can't be right any more than 'Slumdog Millionaire' would somehow prove the superiority of British Cinema or Bollywood or whoever was invovled with that production by 3 degrees of association.

If all Australian Cinema got judged and hung on the basis of 'Australia' by Baz Luhrman,we should start judging everything by the worst example. What if Wayne Carey and Ben Cousins defined all Australian sportsmanship? What if Vince Sorenti proved why comedy in Australia was crap? What if Tracy Grimshaw (just to pull a name out of a hat, nothing personal here!) proved once and for all why Australian Television journalism was completely and utterly fucked?

Besides which, 'Australia' was more exceptional than a typical example of an Australian film production, what with its enormous backing from 20th Century Fox with a $200million or so budget. I mean, were every Australian film blessed with such Rupert-Murdochian Largesse!

It strikes me that everybody is kicking the dog now that it s down, and maybe in some ways it does deserve the kicks. However a long term outlook of cinema would tell you that there might not be an Australian Cinema in the decades to come if current trends continue.

It's really not a matter of talent or ideas or script or skill any more. It's the reality of the scale of economies involved in film production, distribution and just how many paying eyeballs are out there to be targeted.

In the global market, it may not matter what we produce or how we go about doing it, given what the global audience is looking for, which goes to our general inability to supply that demand.

By the way, this bit brought me a smile:

Some folks believe Australian poets achieve much more than our novelists because the poet mediates nature directly to the reader, whereas the novelist needs a complex society to work with.

But that doesn't explain why our films are so poor today. It may be that the culture of government grants that dominates our arts has deprived them of the drive to connect with an audience. On the other hand, maybe we're just better at cricket. Come to think of it, the Indians are beating us there, too.

Again, the production cost and risks of poetry are much smaller than for film. The relative successes of our poets essentially comes from the freedom they have in their mode of production.

But it's nice to see our poets are doing well in our own cultural estimation.

Quadraphenia

Can You See The Real Marketing Ploy?

I keep buying this damn product in its many incarnations.

• There's the double LP -Check.


• The double CD - Check.


• The Soundtrack version on double LP - Check


• The Soundtrack version on double CD - Check


• The Original Movie DVD - Check


• The new version of the movie DVD 2 disc set - Check.


• The concert DVD of the 1990s Who stage show of this album - Check.

And so it goes. Can't even remember the number of times I went to see it at the Valhalla cinema in the 1980s.

The entry on the original album is here. Nothing much I didn't know but this was funny:

During the 'Behind The Laughter' episode of The Simpsons, the cover of the Krustophenia record is a parody of Quadrophenia.

Anyway... Naturally, the Film has its own page.

At the time of its original release, the film was received mostly negatively by critics and was panned for its large amounts of sex, violence, profanity and drug use, which were then still fairly uncommon in film. It did acquire a large word-of-mouth reputation amongst teenagers too young to go and see it. Today it is considered a cult classic and is recognised as a realistic reflection of youth culture in the 1960s. Many have praised Phil Daniels' intense performance. The film currently holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sounds about right. What prompted this search of course is because I bought the 2 disc set and watched the second extras disc to find the thing was shot in 1:1.85 and not anamorphic. The production stills show Arriflex SR cameras, which doesn't negate the possibility it was shot on anamorphic, but it seems far more likely it was 1:1.85. Indeed, the director tells us so in one of the interviews. The transfer does seem to be anamorphic 16:9.

It's a bloody brilliant film, which together with 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'Tommy' prove that the creative vision of The Who extended favorably well beyond their own domain of Rock. I remember mounting a lone defense of this film at AFTRS back in the day.

A quick look at Franc Roddam's page reveals that he hasn't been spectacularly successful as a director since.

In 1977 he made his name by producing and directing a controversial, searing docu-drama called Dummy, which was watched by 14 million viewers. It told the sad, sordid story of Sandra, a deaf and mute girl who descended into prostitution and degradation on the streets of Bradford. She was portrayed by Geraldine James in a performance that won her the Prix Italia and established her reputation as a talented actress.

Roddam directed Quadrophenia in 1979, loosely based on The Who's 1973 album of the same name. It told the story of Jimmy, a teenager who was involved in the early 1960s mod phenomenon. There was a burgeoning mod revival at the time, partially inspired by the film. The film has developed a cult status, but unlike his near contemporaries Ridley Scott and Alan Parker, Roddam did not establish himself in the United States. His first Hollywood film The Bride was a commercial flop, and his work since has been sporadic. Roddam is credited with creating the series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet reflecting his roots in North East England, and devising the format for the television game show Masterchef.

As one of my colleagues told me once-upon-a-long-time-ago, it's better to be a has-been than a never-been. At least he will always have 'Quadrophenia' to his name.

Yankees Update - 16/08/09

Thank Goodness For Bad Teams

After the Sweep over Boston, the Yankees took 2 of 3 from Toronto and now 3 of 4 from Seattle. Seattle have been particularly futile with the bat and have scored the least runs in the AL, 7 runs shy of Kansas City's mark.That being said, the run differential for Seattle is a mere -57 compared to a whopping -127 for Kansas City. They are a good defensive club.

To be fair to Toronto, their run differential suggests they should be over .500, but alas they are 5 games under. While Yankees' only loss came in the game after the Boston series where they sent Sergio "Meat-Tray" Mitre to the mound to face the Blue Jays - a kind of come-down loss after an important series, Mitre managed to pitch well enough for today's 5-2 win.

That's Not To Say They're Not Playing Well

The Yankees' run differential as of today is +111, which just happens to to LA Dodgers' run differential as we speak. In the Al, Boston is in fact the closest with a +81, closely followed by LA Angels' +72 Tampa's +71. When you consider how lackluster the Yankees' April was, we're talking about a team that has carved up the competition since Mid-May.

And yes, their lead is now 7.5 games. If the Yankees simply played .500 ball the rest of the way they'll finish at 97 wins. In all honesty, you have to say the Red Sox are still pretty good, but the Yankees are just that much better.

I don't think there's been a Yankee squad this good since 2002 or 2003, and even those squads had suspect defense. This team might be better than those teams. Don't be surprised if this squad blows by 105 wins.

The Bullpen is Mightier Than Most

Peter Abraham notes that the Yankee bullpen has allowed only 1 run in 20.2 innings. 8 out of 11 outs were strikeouts on today's game.

With Brian Bruney coming back to form and Phil Hughes handling the 8th, and Mo being Mo, the Yankees are shortening the game to 6innings. This is without talking about David Robertson and Phil Coke who have been very serviceable this year. The current bullpen does not feature a single pitcher below replacement level. That's pretty remarkable.

I've stopped complaining some weeks ago. I'm just taking in all the glory of this team this year. My fearless prodiction is the they will be hosting the Dodgers for the World Series, facing Mr. Torre. Echoes of 1977-1978.

300 Spartans And Loose Change

I watched '300 Spartans', which is the film that inspired Frank Miller to do '300', which inspired Hollywood to re-do a film on the topic as a movie '300'.

As such, the content overlaps greatly. Here's the Wikipedia entry on 300 Spartans.

The 300 Spartans is a 1962 Cinemascope film depicting the Battle of Thermopylae. Made with the cooperation of the Greek government, it was shot in the village of Perachora in the Peloponnese. It starred Richard Egan as the Spartan king Leonidas, Ralph Richardson as Themistocles of Athens and David Farrar as Persian king Xerxes, with Diane Baker as Ellas and Barry Coe as Phylon providing the requisite romantic element in the film. In the film, a force of Greek warriors led by 300 Spartans fights against a Persian army of almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans will not flee or surrender, even if it means their deaths.
The picture was noted for its Cold War overtones,[1] referring to the independent Greek states as "the only stronghold of freedom remaining in the then known world", holding out against the Persian "slave empire".
Frank Miller saw this movie as a boy and said "it changed the course of my creative life".[2] His graphic novel 300 is about the Battle of Thermopylae, and was the basis for the 2007 film 300.

It's a pretty ghastly film by our contemporary standards. The writing and directing is totally out of date and I sort of wonder if it was considered any good even by its own times' standards. it's not clear from the Wikipedia page.

Here's the entry on the graphic novel. by Frank Miller. It has this interesting tidbit:

Renowned comics writer Alan Moore has criticized 300 as historically inaccurate, with particular reference to the characters' attitudes towards homosexuality:
There was just one particular line in it where one of the Spartan soldiers—I'll remind you, this is Spartans that we're talking about—one of them was talking disparagingly about the Athenians, and said, ‘Those boy-lovers.' You know, I mean, read a book, Frank. The Spartans were famous for something other than holding the bridge at Thermopylae, they were quite famous for actually enforcing man-boy love amongst the ranks as a way of military bonding. That specific example probably says more about Frank's grasp of history than it does about his grasp of homosexuality, so I'm not impugning his moral situation there. I'm not saying it was homophobic; just wasn't very well researched.[3]
Miller, in the letters page of the series, replied to accusations of homophobia from a reader regarding the phrase "Those boy-lovers":
If I allowed my characters to express only my own attitudes and beliefs, my work would be pretty darn boring. If I wrote to please grievance groups, my work would be propaganda. For the record: being a warrior class, the Spartans almost certainly did practice homosexuality. There's also evidence they tended to lie about it. It's not a big leap to postulate that they ridiculed their hedonistic Athenian rivals for something they themselves did. "Hypocrisy" is, after all, a word we got from the Greeks. What's next? A letter claiming that, since the Spartans owned slaves and beat their young, I do the same? The times we live in.[4]
Reviewer Aaron Albert notes that although "Miller does take liberties with the history", he considers it more of a "theatrical portrayal" rather than a "historical battle". He notes the passion evident in Miller's writing. He praised the visuals; especially the use of over-sized panels. Lynn Varley's painting was also commended. [5]

So there's that to ponder. The '300' film entry is here. This bit was interesting:

Reviews
Since its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2007, in front of 1,700 audience members, 300 has received generally mixed reviews. While it received a standing ovation at the public premiere,[58] it was reportedly panned at a press screening hours earlier, where many attendees left during the showing and those who remained booed at the end.[59] Critical reviews of 300 are divided.[60] Rotten Tomatoes reports that 60 percent of North American and selected international critics gave the film a positive review, based upon a sample of 214, with an average score of 6.1 out of 10.[61] Reviews from selected notable critics were 47 percent positive, giving the film an average score of 5.7 out of 10 based on a sample of 38.[62] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 51 based on 35 reviews.[60]
Variety's Todd McCarthy describes the film as "visually arresting" although "bombastic"[63] while Kirk Honeycutt, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, praises the "beauty of its topography, colors and forms."[64] Writing in the Chicago Sun Times, Richard Roeper acclaims 300 as "the Citizen Kane of cinematic graphic novels."[65] 300 was also warmly received by websites focusing on comics and video games. Comic Book Resources' Mark Cronan found the film compelling, leaving him "with a feeling of power, from having been witness to something grand."[66] IGN's Todd Gilchrist acclaimed Zack Snyder as a cinematic visionary and "a possible redeemer of modern moviemaking."[67]
A number of critical reviews appeared in major American newspapers. A.O. Scott of the New York Times describes 300 as "about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid," while criticizing its color scheme and suggesting that its plot includes racist undertones.[68] Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles Times that "unless you love violence as much as a Spartan, Quentin Tarantino or a video-game-playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated."[69] Roger Ebert, in his review, gave the film a two-star rating, writing, "300 has one-dimensional caricatures who talk like professional wrestlers plugging their next feud."[70]
Some Greek newspapers have been particularly critical, such as film critic Robby Eksiel, who said that moviegoers would be dazzled by the "digital action" but irritated by the "pompous interpretations and one-dimensional characters."[55][71]

It's been a while since I've checked the page and hadn't seen the reviews section had grown. The Controversy section also makes for interesting reading. I liked this bit:

The film's portrayal of ancient Persians caused a particularly strong reaction in Iran.[102] Azadeh Moaveni of Time reported that Tehran was "outraged" following the film's release. Moaveni identified two factors which may have contributed to the intense reaction: its release on the eve of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and the common Iranian view of the Achaemenid Empire as "a particularly noble page in their history."[103][104][105] Various Iranian officials condemned the film.[106][107][108][109] The Iranian Academy of the Arts submitted a formal complaint against the movie to UNESCO, labelling it an attack on the historical identity of Iran.[110][111] The Iranian mission to the U.N. protested the film in a press release,[112] and Iranian embassies protested its screening in France,[113] Thailand,[114] Turkey[115] and Uzbekistan.[116]
Slovenian philosopher and author Slavoj Žižek defended the movie, from those who attacked it as an example of "the worst kind of patriotic militarism with clear allusions to recent tensions with Iran and Iraq." He wrote that the story represents "a poor, small country (Greece) invaded by the army of a much large[r] state (Persia)," suggesting that the identification of the Spartans with a modern superpower is flawed. Instead of seeing a "fundamentalist" aspect in the Spartan identity, he stated that "all modern egalitarian radicals, from Rousseau to the Jacobins...imagined the republican France as a new Sparta."[117]

And Warner Bros' defense is, it's" a work of fiction" and "loosely based on a historic event". I think Leonidas and his 300 Spartans might want to say something about that.

The parody 'Meet The Spartans' has this page.

The film received almost universally negative reviews from critics. As of May 19, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 2% of all critics gave the film positive reviews and 0% positive reviews from top critics based on 41 reviews with an average rating of 1.8/10; citing consensus opinion on the title as "A tired, unfunny, offensive waste of time ... [which] scrapes the bottom of the cinematic barrel."[2] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 9 out of 100, based on 11 reviews — indicating "extreme dislike or disgust" and being the worst received film by the director on the site.[3]
One reviewer in Scotland's The Sunday Herald gave the film a score of zero, as did Ireland's Day and Night while an Australian newspaper review described it as being "as funny as a burning orphanage". In London, The Times reviewer Wendy Ide suggested that the producers of the film were not aiming for 'laughs' but "a simian grunt of recognition from an audience that must have been practically brain-dead to fork out £10 to see a film that can’t even master the concept of out-takes?". This film was the lowest-rated of the 2008 film season.

Ha.

Reviewing Reviewers

Or... Why I Hate Paul Byrnes

Here's an example from this week. The first paragraph of a review of 'Tyson' which reads:

FOR those of us who grew up watching Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson was always a disappointment. No matter how many boxing titles he won – and few have won more – he always seemed like a brutal thug, a street fighter rather than a graceful athlete. One of the surprises of James Toback's film about Tyson is that he comes across as much smarter than he looks. Then again, a man who has lost every dollar he ever won – somewhere north of $US300 million ($370 million) – and done three years for rape is possibly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the most likeable.

Just how wrong is that paragraph?

No.1 The comparison of Ali and Tyson is a hackneyed starting point, but to measure Tyson by the Ali yardstick and calling Tyson's career a 'disappointment' is sheer nonsense and arrogance. There are but a select few who can be the kinds of World Heavy Weight Champions both these men became. As boxers, their accomplishments are astounding no matter what they were like as people.

But No.2, the implied message is that Ali was a better man than Tyson - which may be true, but that is a moral point. It's not a point about their respective boxing styles or their significance as boxers in history, who made their mark.

No.3 We'll never know what a fight between Ali at his peak and Tyson at his peak might have been like. But Tyson was no thug. If Ali was flamboyant and artful, then Tyson was machine like, relentlessly precise and sharp. He was most certainly not a thug of a fighter.

No.4 Even if Tyson were a thug of a fighter, he won a lot. So clearly how he won in his peak years it's not an aesthetic issue; trying to make it one is just sloppy reasoning. Such aestheticisation of the problem also leads to the kind of fascism that Paul Byrnes himself would complain about bitterly in other contexts.

But one would know all these things had one been paying attention in the 1980s. Mike Tyson the man was an enormous enigma behind the sensation of Mike Tyson the boxer. We all knew this. And even in the denouement of his career when he was reduced to a ear-biting circus freak show who just had naked aggression left, Tyson the man remained oblique and mysterious to his spectacular public persona.

We know he has a sense of humour. Only last night I watched him in the 'The Hangover' where he pokes fun at his own expense, doing the Phil Collins air drum roll like the Cadbury chocolate ad with the Gorilla. He's always had a very funny side, even at his menacing peak. So, even with the rape conviction the enigma of Tyson was that he was likeable in spite of all those moral transgressions. And if Byrnes didn't understand this about Mike Tyson, I really wonder if he watched a round of Mohammed Ali or Mike Tyson box at their peak. Really.

Is Tyson really the idiot bastard son of Muhammed Ali's legacy? This has been asked a lot by pundits and commentators alike, but if you are dealing strictly with Tyson the man, you have say he came at a particular time of history when all the promises about race relations seemed to have somehow gone awry. That the black man might not be allowed into the main stream of American cultural discourse.

When you watch Muhammed Ali in 'When We Were Kings', he seems to radiate with hope for the future of what will happen for the black population in America. It is as if he can see far enough ahead that a Barack Obama would come along and be POTUS.

Mike Tyson emerged in an era when all that promise was slowly being eroded in the Reagan-Bush years, the bitterness of which exploded with the Rodney King trial and riots as well as the racial politic of the OJ Simpson trial. In a sense, Tyson was the man who actually had to fight the damn battle for acceptance in its darkest hours, unlike Ali who bore the standard as the battle was announced. Yes, Ali is heroic, but Tyson is not the antithesis to Ali, any more than say, Reggie Jackson or Michael Jordan or Carl Lewis or Albert Belle or Michael Vick or Tiger Woods or Derek Jeter might be. Each and all of these athletes turned up at different points along the long road from 1960, and dare say laid the ground of acceptance.

Yet Paul Byrnes chooses to cast a blind eye to all of that, and wants to reduce it to a moral comparison, just to start talking about a film about Mike Tyson, the man. I for one don't need this kind of moralism masquerading as cultural critique. It's shallow, venal and crappy.

Paul Byrnes, you suck. And that is not a moral statement.

Perplexed With The Google-Plex

The Shoe On The Other Foot

It hurts when you can't manipulate the market like you used to. At least, that's the message I'm getting from this article in the SMH.

With nearly 10 million visitors a month Google is the most visited website in Australia. Nine out of every 10 searches made on the internet is through Google. Those eyeballs translate into an estimated 90 per cent share of search advertising - the fastest growing area in online advertising as the number of advertisers using the service soars close to 50,000 in Australia. Google's revenue is estimated to be $700 million and fast heading towards $1 billion as more advertisers divert their budgets into a medium that delivers them measurability and sales leads. Soon Google will have the ability to sell and serve richer display brand ads on 62 per cent of Australian websites. A suite of products from maps and mobile phone applications to computer operating systems, video traffic on YouTube and cheap telephone calls only helps rust consumers onto the Google brand.

The more time we spend on the internet, and hence on Google, the more money it makes. All of which is making the Australian media, already grappling with the structural changes the internet has wrought on it, deeply uncomfortable. Now it is plotting its revenge; how it goes about exacting it is another thing altogether. But while Google's monopoly of information is not in doubt, to date there is scant evidence of Google using its muscle to distort the market, only a fear that it might do so in the near future. That has not stopped a growing chorus of voices expressing concern at Google's dominance, but such is the might of Google, few are prepared to go on the record. Telstra's Sensis, News Limited, Ninemsn and Microsoft all declined to publicly air their grievances because some of them still do business with Google.

One that did, though, is the man who arguably has the most to lose from Google's continued dominance and the most to gain from its downfall: Rohan Lund, the chief executive of Yahoo7!, Google's main competitor in search.

He says all he can see is a future where the Google Death Star, as he dubs it, will reign supreme. "There needs to be a conversation in industry and government about Google's role in the market and what this means for business and consumers both now and in the future,'' Lund says, adding that Google may now be Australia's largest media company by reach and profit.

''Commentators in the US are concerned that Google has a 60 per cent share. Let's not forget that in Australia that climbs to nearly 90 per cent share, even after the Yahoo! and Microsoft search businesses join forces."

I'm going to digress a bit and talk about the example set by the music industry.

Once upon a long time ago, Robert Fripp the guitarist from King Crimson folded up his band in 1975. There were many reasons to his decision, but one of the ones he discussed was the nature of technology pointing in a different direction to the way the music industry was structured. Through 1975-1980, Robert Fripp expressed the view that the music business with big Rock bands going on tour was a dinosaur and only small intelligent units were going to survive the technological changes.

As such, he saw his own band as an unwieldy contraption that was not going to survive and proceeded to build a catalogue of albums as a solo musician working small partnership. When King Crimson returned, it was as a stripped-down 4 piece with a more technology-driven approach.

Since then, Robert Fripp has been shown to be right. As technology changed, the music industry was found to be a dinosaur as small intelligent units - mp3 players and pirated music files destroyed the business model of the record labels. The key of course was distribution. Which is why this bit caught my eye:

''Distribution is key. Once you start locking up distribution your reach gets bigger, then the revenue per search gets bigger and then as that gets bigger the more you are able to pay others to lock up distribution,'' says Lund, who has spoken out despite pleas from Google for him to remain silent on the matter.

It doesn't matter what you sell, whether it is advertising space or little discs that make music when placed in a player, distribution of your product and service is the most important aspect of any business.

If anything, the advertising industry should be in more shock than the media that provides competing ad space. If you had a small business providing a very specific service, then it is far more effective to place an ad through Google than it is to place it in any media outlet. If you had a meager advertising budget, the place you should put that money is Google. Everything else is relatively speculative compared to the certainty of Google Ads.

The fact of the matter is, there are numerous companies on the planet that do offer very specific goods and services that can now reach a wider target through the internet and especially through Google.

Another way of putting it is that the advent of technology has made sure that the media advertising space has been found out to be overpriced for the effectiveness they possess. The only good that advertising space in Newspapers and Free-to-Air TV can achieve would be branding and specific announcements, while carefully targeted adverting all takes place through the internet - and in particular through Google.

But even with branding ads, Google has something coming:

Google has yet more weapons in its armoury. Later this year when it turns on its DoubleClick ad serving platform - which it bought for $US3.1 billion in 2007 - it will be able to serve up display ads, such as banners, pop-ups and videos, to advertisers who are looking to do brand ads online. To date, Google's focus has been on selling search keywords to advertisers and text ads to small businesses. DoubleClick, which serves and measures the effectiveness of display ads to half the websites in the world with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors, delivers Google advertisers from the big end of town. It also pits it once more against its key customers; the publishers and the media-buying agencies who each year earn their bread and butter from a market worth $500 million a year. Google insists it is not about to cut their grass and that its priority in Australia is on building search advertising revenues. It adds that, even it it wanted to, it doesn't have the skill sets of either a publisher or a media agency to undertake such a task.

But, as one internet advertising veteran, who asked for anonymity, says: ''What worries them [the media] is the sheer volume and quality of data about customers that Google will own and how that can be used in other advertising models. There's a real danger that Google does everything that they do only they'd do it much better and more efficiently.''

I would hate to be in the print ad or TV ad business going forwards. It's like working for Kodak Film in an age of digital photography by the masses. And I keep thinking Robert Fripp had it absolutely right - technology has slain the dinosaurs.

Film News That's Fit To Punt - 14/08/09

Conflict Of Interest At The BBC

It seems that there's a certain lady at the BBC handing out development money to her spouse.

A staggering £1.2million has been paid by the BBC in the past year to companies owned by relatives of corporation executives.

Details of the huge pay-outs emerged as another BBC boss came under fire yesterday over her husband's lucrative links with the broadcaster.

Days after the revelation that BBC1 controller Jay Hunt helps run her husband's media training company which coaches BBC staff, the second row involved Jana Bennett, the third highest paid executive at the corporation on a basic salary of £406,000 a year.

The BBC vision director's husband Richard Clemmow is a director and 10 per cent stakeholder in Juniper Communications, which received £715,000 of the £1.2million in the last year.

Altogether the company has raked in more than £2million of licence-payers' cash for making programmes for the BBC.

The chief executive and majority shareholder in Juniper is Samir Shah, a non-executive member on the BBC board, and his wife Belkis is the third shareholder.

The fresh revelations raised new doubts about the BBC's conflict of interest regulations and prompted renewed calls from MPs for a formal investigation by the corporation's governing body.

Sound familiar? Yeah...

I just can't figure out where I've seen this story line elsewhere... Ummm... Argh, I can't... errr... recall... Hmph.

Kit Denton Fellowship shortlist Announced

For some reason the shortlist for the Kit Denton Fellowship was published in the Sydney Morning Herald before I actually got my newsletter from the AWG. It's a bit like the terror raids the other day where The Australian went to the press with the raids before it actually happened. A bit rude, isn't it?

Anyway, this year's shortlist looks like political correctness gone berserk.

The 2009 Kit Denton Fellowship Shortlist:

Robert Reid - The New Black
The New Black was developed in response to the controversy of the 2008 Bill Henson exhibition and the reaction of local communities to the relocation of Dennis Ferguson. The play uses satire to investigate the superficiality of the contemporary Australian cultural response to these events.

Karl Madderom – Face Value
Karl received burns to 50% of his body when at the age of two he was left with two other children in a car which caught fire. He was the only survivor and spent the next five years in hospital. His dream is to have the protagonist of his film played by a real life victim instead of an actor in prosthetics and do away with the notion that people that look like him can only be characters in sci-fi or appear on daytime television.

Lisa Hoppe, Margot O’Neill and Bobbie Waterman – Blind Conscience
Based on Margot O’Neill’s acclaimed book, Blind Conscience is the story of an unlikely coalition of Australians who shake off the easy comfort of political disengagement to defend those who can’t defend themselves and the life-changing, often traumatic and sometimes frightening journey of these advocates.

Back to Back Theatre – Ganesh vs. The 3rd Reich
Ganesh vs. The 3rd Reich is co-authored by members of the Back to Back Theatre, who have developed an original distinctive artistic voice and a working process that supports its Ensemble of actors with intellectual disabilities.

So, there's a guy who's taking on the censorious idiots from the Bill Henson thing, which is hardly a tilt at the windmills; there's a burn victim who wants real burn victims to play him in a movie because that would be politically correct (uh..., Box Office death that one's going to be); A film about the refugee activists (and not the refugees themselves. O, the courage!); and a workshop script wherein retards take on Nazis.

Fuck me dead.

Obituary - Les Paul

People Keep Dying Unexpectedly

If only because you get to hear about it, thanks to the internet.

Yesterday I was over at Walk-Off HBP's place and he told me Ian Wallace, drummer to King Crimson and David Lindley passed away. Today it's Les Paul, the man whose name is on that electric guitar made by Gibson and Epiphone. Indeed Les Paul to me is not a guitar player, he's a shape of an electric guitar with a cutaway and 2 humbuckers.

Paul died in White Plains, New York, from complications of severe pneumonia, according to the statement.

Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations -- such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul -- helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock 'n' roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.

"If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord?" he told CNN.com in a 2002 phone interview. "So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord."

This is the man who pushed the electric guitar on to the Gibson company. It wasn't just the electric guitar, it was multitrack recording and overdubbing and tape echo that he brought to music production.  All of us home-recording artist owe him a debt. He was a seminal figure in pop music without whom you do not have Led Zeppelin or Run DMC or Mariah Carey or Queen or whoever else is on your CD shelf or playing on your radio today.

China, With Gloves Off

Watch The Ball, Watch The Spin, Now Hit It

Bagging out China for its total uncouthness in the diplomacy stakes is not exactly new. After all, the west is pretty phobic when it comes to upstart 'chinks' and 'gooks', nips and whatever else slurs they have for the rest.

In turn, China is pretty unapologetic about its burgeoning power. Leading up to the 2008 Olympics, China made a pretty big point that it was central to the fate of the world, and the subsequent events of the GFC have shown that it likes having sway over the way the world goes.

So, the classic dramatic schema of irresistable force meeting immovable object takes shape. In this instance, China might see itself as the irresistable force of history as a nation with a quarter of the world's population seeks to live the high life of the advanced nations, after a couple of centuries in which it lagged behind. But it sort of has to join the club of advanced nation that have already arrived at post-modernity and a post-industrial economies, and they are disdainful of what China sees as its own strengths.

In this light, we've been reading a few articles in the SMH about China nd what exactly is going on, Michael Pascoe had this derisive piece.

The danger in dealing with a pig-ignorant bureaucrat in an authoritarian regime is that the moment their stupidity and ineptitude is exposed, they will use all their power to blame someone else. So it seems with the China Iron and Steel Association's secretary general, Shan Shanghua, and Rio Tinto.

If it wasn't for the fact that four men are facing years in a Chinese jail because of it, the latest development in the Rio Tinto/Stern Hu case would be simply laughable - either that or Rio has been capable of greater magic than anything Harry Potter has imagined.

Maybe the China Iron and Steel Association doesn't realise Ms Rowling's books are fiction - how else could China allege Rio has  overcharged by $123 billion for iron ore shipments over the past six years when that is more than the total value of its shipments?

Such a ridiculous allegation, the stuff of a loony propaganda machine, is a sign of desperation. And Shan Shanghua is understandably desperate.

Shan first came to popular attention as the goose who triumphantly hissed back in February that the proposed Chinalco bailout of Rio would ''help China break the duopoly in Australian iron ore supply over the long term''.

Dumb, Shan, plain dumb - unless you're secretly a double-agent, working for the anti-Chinalco forces. No matter how much you might have hoped it, or even if you planned it, to speak such a thought was sheer stupidity. Take a bow, Shan Shanghua, for doing as much as anyone could in sinking the Chinalco deal.

I often think Westerners underestimate just how bloody-minded the Chinese administration can be. If you put me on the spot I'd tell you that they don't fear the shedding of blood as we in the post-modern world do. In a part of the world where human rights don't count for shit, shedding blood is not that big a deal. In that sense the incarceration of Stern Hu may go against all our sensibilities, but it just doesn't matter over there in the twilight of Middle-Flower-Kingdom-thinking.

It might be dumb of this bureaucrat to be doing ths stuff, and it may hurt China's cause somewhat but it's also going to hurt some people and they don't care as long as it hurts.

Peter Hartcher has this piece today in the SMH.

We already know what it's like to live in the new China growth zone. That was all the exuberant news about resource prices. Now Beijing is instructing us in what it might feel like to live in the China political zone as well.

Together with the other evidence - Beijing's hamfisted efforts to ban a film about its Uighur minority at the Melbourne Film Festival, its angry campaign to block a visit to Australia by the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, its chilliness in rebuffing the Rudd Government over the Stern Hu case - this is a clear sign that the Chinese regime has consciously decided to take a tougher line with Australia.

Why? First, Australia displeased Beijing. The principal reason for Chinese interest in Australia is its resources. When the big state-owned firm Chinalco wanted to increase its share in the world-class minerals assets of Rio in a $25 billion deal, Beijing was unhappy at the political wariness with which it was greeted in Canberra.

It would have been the biggest overseas acquisition that communist China had ever made.

The Australian Government did not block the deal. Indeed, it said repeatedly Chinese investment was welcome. But Canberra did put conditions on smaller takeovers of other resource assets by Chinese state-owned companies. This entrenched a principle, and it boded ill for the Chinalco deal.

The Opposition's Peter Costello was outspoken in expressing reservations about the Chinalco bid. Rio, reading the political climate, abandoned the deal.

China's leaders seem to have decided to make this rebuff an opportunity to teach a lesson to Rio, to Australia, and anyone else watching. This is the second dimension to China's angry new attitude.

It's an old Chinese folk saying - "kill the chicken to scare the monkey." In other words, you punish the weaker enemy to frighten the stronger. With a new president in the White House and a heightened mood of protectionism in the US Congress, is Beijing using Australia as the chicken to scare the American monkey?

He concludes by saying that we should stop deluding ourselves that China is harmless or completely benevolent. Well, yeah Mr. Hartcher, the place is full of Mainland-Chinese, and I'm telling you those guys are nuts. not to mention the  blokes outnumber the sheilas 9 to 1 and there's a lot of frustration going on there.

Anyway, jokes aside, if China's carrying on with this kind of policy application, then it seems to me China's up for a bit of Economic warfare while it holds the upper hand. Think about all the US Treasury bonds it is holding to Shore up the USA. So it wants to throw its weight around to its full extent to extract maximal effect.

Which is fine, you'd expect that. yet, this being what it is, it sort of reminds me how Japan got boxed into a corner with Nazi germany and went lockstep into World War II. I don't really see a good outcome down the road if China is going to do their ascension to world's preeminent economy in this manner. There's going to be a ar and were going to hate it much more than we hate our war in Afghanistan.

I guess the true test is going to come when the challenge is on and we'll find out if the world has learnt anything from the mistakes of the Twentieth century.

Public Enemies

It was time to watch a movie - any movie - and this as what was readily available. I'm not a big fan of Michael Mann's films, but Johnny Depp as John Dillinger is enough of a draw card for me.

That, and the curio factor where the films was shot with a digital format camera.

What's Good About It

The film is very graphic and dynamic in showing us the bank robberies. The robberies have a certain rhythm to the action and the choreography is very smooth, you think it's a work of art. Which in a sense it is, in the context of this film.

As a kid, I never really understood the bank robber thing. I like heist movies and I like action movies, but I never got the 1930s mode of robbing banks where a car pulls up guys with trench coats walk into a bag and hand over  a note across the counter. The cliche of the act that spawned a whole genre of single frame cartoons.

But for the act of robbery to become so generic, there had to be an archetypal modus operandi, and I guess I never got the point of approaching the problem this way. Well, this film tells you a lot about how robbing isolated banks, armed with Thompson machines guns would make a kind of perverse sense.

The script is reasonably tight, although it has some tedious sections. You never quite get where the story is going except you're aware that Dillinger is going to die, so you have to focus on the process. And the process seems just plain dull at times. You find yourself longing for the adrenalin-charged robbery moments in the film - which I guess is the point of the characters and their lives.

The film also looks good. Because it originates with a digital video kind of technology, the picture has a weirdly outlined quality to many of the objects on the screen, but it helps to bring more detail to the screen than film. It is harsh where film would not be hard. It is detailed and fine where film would blur.

The low light stuff at nights is magnificent in this picture. More on this later.

What's Bad About It

A star vehicle film is always captive to the stars it deploys. Casting a star at some times works as narrative shorthand to explain who that character is, by having an actor bring in their baggage from previous roles. In that sense, John Dillinger played by Johnny Depp is an extension of his Captain Jack Sparrow persona, just more subdued and romanticised. While, that abbreviates the need to explain too much about the John Dillinger coming in to the film's story, it also casts Dillinger as doubly romantic not only for his actions, but because of Depp's Jack Sparrow baggage.

If that was straddling the border of where a film dissipates into a terrain where the willing suspension of disbelief ebbs away, then Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis and Billy Cruddup as J. Edgar Hoover sort of turns this into Batman and Dr. Manhattan versus Jack Sparrow, with 1930s gangster garb.

While in its best moments the film shows us something about these historic figures we were blind to, but in the not so good moments, these guys are not *anonymous* enough to bury their identities for their characters. Yes, they're good actors, but not ever good enough for us to forget just who you are watching on the screen.

Maybe this is the limitation of the star system itself, or perhaps it is the fault of the director? Maybe it is symptomatic o the entire system on which this film is produced? It's hard to pin down, but one thing for certain is that this film's casting is a little too self-aware.

I have seen this before in Michael Mann's films, namely in 'Heat' where Robert DeNiro was pitted against Al Pacino (with Val Kilmer on the side) and you never really got to forget that fact as you were watching.

Still, if that's your worst problem, then you're way ahead of the baying pack.

What's Interesting About It

Digital Cinema has just turned the corner. In future we may have to embrace this technology more and more. This film represents the vanguard of what is coming, even though many a film maker is in denial about it. Some time in the near future, this technology will be so good and so cheap that it will send film cameras packing.

You could almost say this film was there already. The advantage of the lightness of the camera were abundantly clear in some of the adventurous angles. Its strengths in low-light environments was incredible. No, it didn't look like film as we've long known it, but that's not the point. This film was pushing for a new vision of cinema.

The digital camera does wonders for night scenes show with the low light setting. Suddenly the other-worldlyambience and exaggerated contrast gives the film a strange glow. If nothing else, the way night scenes will look has changed as a result of this technology.

What's interesting about the camera also is what happens to the objects outside the depth of field. Normally in film, they blur into circular blurs. In this film you can see it blur into square-ish tiles. It's very subtle and you can onyl barely make it out, but it is also what gives it a different look.

Yankees Update - 08/08/09

Putting The Foot Down

After going 9-1 on the homestand, the Yankees hit the road. They took 2 of 3 in Tampa Bay, but dropped 3 in a row against the White Sox before winning the last game in a 4-game set. Then, they won 2 in Toronto, thus going 5-4 on the road before coming back to face the Red Sox for a 4 game set.The Red Sox lost 2 of 3 in Tampa Bay coming into New York, which was very nice of them because it resulted in keeping the game difference at 2.5, just as it was when the Yankees hit the road. .

The Yankees then won 3 straight; one in a display of offense, one in a 0-0 15 inning game where A-Rod hit a walk-off in the bottom  of the 15th (he's a true Yankee now LOL); and a 5-0 shutout behind CC Sabathia. Andy Pettitte faces Jon Lester tomorrow, but by wining 3 out of 4 in this series, the Yankees have taken their ply-off probability to 94.2% according to the RLYW.

...here’s a look at how things stand. Yankees: 65-42, 58.7% Div, 29.4% WC, 88.1% PL (chances at winning division, wild card, and making playoffs respectively)
Red Sox: 62-44, 36.7% Div, 41.4% WC, 78.1% PL

So let’s run through the possible outcomes:

Red Sox sweep
Yankees: 65-46, 31.4% Div, 45.4% WC, 76.8% PL
Red Sox: 66-44, 62.1% Div, 28.0% WC, 90.0% PL
Me breaking lots of stuff.

Red Sox take three of four
Yankees: 66-45, 43.4% Div, 42.5% WC, 85.9% PL
Red Sox: 65-45, 50.2% Div, 38.1% WC, 88.4% PL
Me breaking a fair amount of stuff.

Red Sox and Yankees split four
Yankees: 67-44, 60.7% Div, 30.3% WC, 91.0% PL
Red Sox: 64-46, 33.6% Div, 48.1% WC, 81.6% PL
Me breaking a thing or two.

Yankees take three of four
Yankees: 68-43, 69.4% Div, 24.8% WC, 94.2% PL
Red Sox: 63-47, 25.5% Div, 51.4% WC, 76.9% PL
Me slightly happy.

Yankees sweep
Yankees: 69-42, 80.2% Div, 15.9% WC, 96.1% PL
Red Sox: 62-48, 15.6% Div, 53.4% WC, 69.0% PL

That's very nice.  So, the Yankees are now 5.5 games ahead of the Red Sox, with a 69.4% chance of winning the Division.That's a very big swing considering if the Red Sox swept this series, the Yankees' odds would have been whittled down to 31.4%. If the Yankees win tomorrow, they will be at 80.2% likely to win the Division. All this goes to show this series is perhaps the decider of the Division.

The Trades And Pickups

The Yankees made some very subtle moves this year. There was no big Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle trade; no David Justice kind of deal; most certainly not Roy Halladay on a silver platter. Instead they got Jerry Hairston Jr. who is a very talented utility player and they picked up Chad Gaudin off the waiver wire.

Back in the day before Robbie Cano hit the scene, the Orioles had Jerry Hairston Jr and Brian Roberts to choose as their future 2B and they chose the latter. You could see why, and it has subsequently been shown to have been the right choice.



That's not to say Hairston Jr. is too far behind Roberts in value. He plays 6 positions, with 3B being the weakest. He's a nice complement to Eric Hinske and makes the bench that much deeper - and lends the outmatched Cody Ransom to be DFA'd. Thank goodness for that.

Gaudin is a different story. Gaudin has been kicking around the MLB for 7 seasons, starting out with the Rays. In 3 out of 7 of those seasons, he's been on the unlucky side of BABIP, including this year. The curve pretty much shadows his career ERA. He was an extreme Groundballer in '07 and this year, but he's also been above average with the HR/9 stat as well.

His problem is that he walks too many guys but his K/BB ratio sits at about league average this year. He's most certainly an interesting choice coming out of the pen for a couple innings, but you wouldn't want to give him starts.

David Ortiz' Excuse

Ortiz said his vitamins were contaminated and he never knowingly took steroids.

Weak.

UPDATE (on an Update):
And a sweep of the Red Sox essentially puts the Yankees in the drver's seat for the Division. This is good. The RLYW reports that the play off odds update is now:

Instant Playoff Odds Update
Yankees: 90.1% Div, 8.4% WC, 98.5% PL
Red Sox: 7.8% Div, 57.2% WC, 65.0% PL

I think this is the best Yankee squad since 2003. While it's not a clinch, they've sewn up the division 9/10ths of the way and including the unlikely slide back to 2nd, they are going to the play-offs with a 98.5% probability at this point.

That's huge. Of all the outcomes going into this series, a massacre-sweep of this magnitude against a team that has worn the best team in baseball moniker for the first 3 months of the season, is just fantastic.

Hey, this sweep was so good my mother called me up to tell me. :)

Obituaries - John Hughes

Teen Movie King

We talk dismissively of teen flicks like it's some particularly unintelligent genre of exploitation flicks. It most probably was seen that way even in the 1980s when John Hughes was making some of his most celebrated films.You certainly don't march into the doors of a celebrated Film School and declare your career ambitions are to write and direct hit teen romances and comedies. It's just not done - certainly not in my day, which just followed on from the teenage-hood of sharing time with John Hughes movies.

There was something incredibly haunting and compelling about movies such as 'Pretty in Pink' and 'The Breakfast Club' that as Gen-Xers, you can't quite shake the cultural experience. Whether it be the clumsiliy didactic 'Breakfast Club' or the wantonly irresponsible 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', these films took up residence in your head and always provided context. And context is  very important in the arts, thus it comes as no surprise that there has been an outpouring of commentary about John Hughes' films at his passing.

Here's the AFP.

John Hughes, best known for directing a string of 1980s hit movies including The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has died. He was 59.

Hughes suffered a heart attack while visiting his family in Manhattan, his Los Angeles-based representatives said on Thursday.

A prolific screenwriter and director, Hughes was the creative inspiration behind a series of teen-oriented films throughout the 1980s before penning the screenplay for the smash 1990 Macaulay Culkin film Home Alone.

Here's a primer 'on Ferris Bueller'.

I wasn't totally sold on Hughes' teen films, but there was something extraordinary about the bluntness of the teens in his films. They were just like us. If Lawrence Kasdan's awful 'The Big Chill' was a Baby Boomer's confession, then 'The Breakfast Club' seemd to be a challenge voiced by Gen-X and it might have been the first instance we heard that on screen - which is amazing because Hughes himself clearly was not Gen-X. With the passage of time, we realise that what he was saying through his films was ar more universal than generational. There are probably Emo kids who resonate with 'Breakfast Club'.

Here's Time Magazine's entry.

Does any current teen out there know who John Hughes was? Anyone? Anyone? Adolescent fancies wax and wane at warp speed, but just for historical purposes, kids, you should know that in the 1980s Hughes was the intimate chronicler, confidant and cheerleader of a generation of young people. Writing scripts that could have come from inside their muddled hearts, monitoring their rampaging hormones, he built a smart shelf of adolescent zeitgeist films: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the movie etched in immortality by teacher Ben Stein's plaintive, froggy "Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?"

Everybody's talking about the teen movies, but I also like his John Candy films, especially 'Plane Trains and Automobiles'. I've been told it's a pean to sentimentalism, but I don't see the problem with proper sentiment, and John Hughes' films are incredibly proper and decent - He's the dead opposite of the Marquis deSade. All obstacles can be overcome, all impediments can be removed, there's genuine joy in life without having to look for perverse solutions for pleasure.

'PT&A' traverses the pathos and bathos of class and geography in America, as it maps an emotionally desolate landscape. It's a beautifully crafted film that any film maker worth their salt should aspire to with its insight and understanding. John Hughes understood humanity in its most pathetic as well as most generous. it was an amazing talent. It's not the kind of film that would ever get funding in Australia - which probably proves it is artistically superior to anything that could come out of Australia.

Even though he inflicted the world with Macaulay Culkin, his oeuvre encompasses some amazing cinematic moments that have passed into cultural lore. His films were bildungsroman in an age that no longer finished people into adulthood but initiated them into a world of ambiguous morality.

59 is way too young.

News That's Fit To Punt - 04/08/09

Is This Going To Be Futile Or What?

Former US President Bill Clinton is on a surprise trip to North Korea. Team America would probably warn him not to listen to Kim Jong-Il when he says, "Step a Rittre to your reft Prease!"

His mission, which he chose to accept, was trying to free a couple journalists who have been detained by the said regime, one of the axis of evil.

Former president Bill Clinton made a surprise trip to North Korea on Tuesday to try to bring home two jailed US reporters, in what was the highest-profile visit by an American to Pyongyang for nearly a decade.
The hardline communist state sent two senior officials and a schoolgirl with a floral bouquet to greet him at the capital's Sunan airport.
Analysts said the reception may indicate Pyongyang is seeking better relations with its arch enemy Washington, after months of high tensions sparked by the North's nuclear and missile tests and subsequent UN sanctions.
A US official travelling separately with the former president's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, confirmed he would seek the release of the female reporters detained during an assignment along the China border in March.
"Our interest is the successful completion of this issue and to confirm the safe return of the two journalists," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting sources, said Clinton was expected to meet leader Kim Jong-Il later Tuesday and fly back on Wednesday with the journalists.

If this plan works, then they should send him to Tehran on the next leg to free those idiot American backpackers who wandered into Iran from Iraq and got captured.

UPDATE: And amazingly, Bill Clinton gets it done.

[caption id="attachment_2558" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Herro-o-o!"][/caption]

Bill Clinton brought some unusual strengths to a round of diplomacy that won the release of two US journalists on Tuesday: the cachet of a two-term presidency, a keen understanding of Asia, a history of North Korean outreach and smackdowns, and a gift for gab. Not to mention a wife who is secretary of state.

His drawbacks - that short fuse and oversized ego - were unlikely to be risks in this episode. In high-stakes diplomacy, some things are decided before anything is negotiated, and it was all but certain going in that Clinton would not be empty-handed coming out.

Old entanglements were in play. Clinton negotiated on behalf of journalists employed by Al Gore, his former vice president, in a media enterprise Gore started after losing a presidential election he might have won absent Clinton's impeachment scandal.

He negotiated for the benefit of President Barack Obama, the man who dashed his wife's White House hopes.

Clinton succeeded in the mission at hand: pardons for journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea. Clinton's spokesman said on Wednesday the former president left North Korea with two American journalists who had been held hostage.

I don't know what to make of 'The Kim' in his sudden benevolence. What is that? You can never tell in this world. Optimism springs eternal.

I think they should send him to Tehran too.

"Who Let Them Into The Country?" They'll Ask

A terrorist plot has allegedly been foiled by the erstwhile AFP and state cops in NSW and Victoria.

El Sayed is charged with conspiring to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act, namely an armed attack on the Australian Army Base at Holsworthy, south-west of Sydney.

Earlier, the court heard that the suspected terrorists arrested today allegedly intended to become martyrs in an attack on the base.

The court heard police believed there was a conspiracy to use weapons to fire upon Australian military personnel.

Prosecutor Nick Robinson, SC, alleged the men intended to keep shooting until they were killed or arrested.

Mr Robinson agreed with the magistrate that their intention was to become martyrs.

The court heard only one man had been charged with terrorism-related offences while three other men remained in custody without charge.

Investigators are seeking a court order to extend their questioning of the men for eight hours.

One of the men, Saney Aweys, appeared in court handcuffed and flanked by two federal agents. He denied any connection with the men mentioned in court by Mr Robinson.

Aweys, who has not been charged and who was unrepresented, said he was a boilermaker and needed sleep after being awake for the past 30 hours.

He said the police had put him in a "small room [and] when I told them of my fatigue and tiredness they told me to have a nap with the lights on".

"I want it to stop now,’’ he said. "I want to have a rest.’’

Ah, the good ol terror laws. Glad to see them in action, doing some evil. I ask, "but is the torture really necessary?" I guess they'll get Dick Cheney on the line and ask his opinion.

Turnbull's Regrets Over Utegate


KRuddie and Wayne Swann have been cleared.

"The variability in Treasury's response did not reflect any instruction on the part of the Prime Minister or his office, the Treasurer or his office, or senior Treasury management that some representations were to receive more favourable treatment than others," the report, from the Australian National Audit Office, said.

Godwin Grech has 'fessed up to the fact that he made up the fake e-mail. Malcolm Turnbull is running in the other direction from Grech's psych ward as fast as he can, but he did express his deep regret today.

"It is very regrettable that in doing so Mr Grech misled the Opposition, the Parliament and the Australian people," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.

"At all times the Opposition acted in good faith."

Mr Turnbull countered suggestions in The Australian that Mr Grech was pressured by the Opposition to provide details, saying the public servant approached Senate deputy leader Eric Abetz.

"Mr Grech proposed a detailed list of questions be put to him relating to OzCar, including questions concerning Mr Grant and representations made on his behalf."

Mr Turnbull has been under Government pressure to explain his role in the OzCar affair and his relationship with Mr Grech.

He faces accusations he met Mr Grech prior to the official giving evidence to a Senate inquiry linking Mr Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan to a request for special treatment be given to the car dealer seeking help under the $2 billion taxpayer-funded OzCar scheme.

The Auditor-General, in a report tabled today, has cleared both Mr Rudd and Mr Swan of making any inappropriate representations on behalf of the dealer.

Mr Turnbull rejected Mr Grech's suggestions he wanted to co-operate with the Coalition to stop it from blocking the Government's financing scheme for car dealerships.

"The suggestion that the Opposition was considering blocking the OzCar legislation is false," he said.

"The legislation had the full support of the Opposition and this was publicly known long before Mr Grech drew Mr Grant to the attention of the Opposition.''

So that would make Godwin Grech the patsy. He'll never eat lunch in Canberra again, so to speak.

I don't think all this reflects well on the Leader of the Opposition. I'm still inclined to think this thing with Godwin Grech and the fake e-mail is going to keep yapping at his heel, making him far less effective.  in the long run, I suspect it's going to kill Turnbull's career in politics.

'Stolen' Imbroglio Continues

The Q&A On Audio

Here's the link as provided by artrlight. Thank you.

I'm shocked at the degree of rhetoric coming from both sides. This is not a Q&A that was ever going to yield any answers.

Just as I had anticipated, Tom's interpreter was brought in to rubberstamp the films claims, in absentia of context. They showed him/her the fiLm over a few nights with some extra shots before and after. After which the said interpreter gave his/her seal of approval and then said, they anted to remain anonymous. That's hardly an objective assessment that would stand. Talk about garbage-in-garbage-out.

I'm appalled at how inarticulate Ms Ayala is in this interview. I understand English is not her first language, but she comes over as a petulant child insisting on having things her way. Maybe it works for her to force things through with the force of her pushy persona, but her answers weren't really enlightening of what they were thinking. It struck me that whatever it was they were thinking, it didn't have much to do with responsible reportage.

The questioners also line up their rhetorical ducks in line and Dan refuses to answer the questions. Violeta kind of raves with inarticulate "you knows" punctuating what is essentially a stream of self-justification. The AWSA reps are asking pretty forensic questions about tapes and who asked what questions when which don't really go to the heart of the matter.

I'm aghast at the sense of what Dan thinks is polite, where he's willing to break trust to get the shot, but that's all okay in film making; and what Violeta thinks is human rights being more important than politics. It's as if they've decided they just won't see the problem as a probelm, and therefore it's not a problem. They're like non-contenders in the basic ethics stakes.

Which naturally begs the question, how come these other people are so upset? Dan replies he dosn't want to comment to a pointed question. I'm sure Dan wouldn't because there's not an answer he could give that would make him look good. It's a really ghastly Q&A. Nobody sounds good or decent. None of it is in the least bit edifying. It just makes us confront the obtuseness of Tom, Dan and Violeta and Kemal and Fetim and the privileged-to-be-black dude and the Australian dude.

A Lot Of Fuss For A 1/4Million Bucks

The other thread where we discussed the issue of releases and translations got a little long so I started to add an entry here for the continued joy of gratuitous argument.

To put things into a little perspective, 'Stolen' got less than $250k from Screen Australia which, on one hand is a lot of money but on movie-making stakes, is peanuts. All this arguing over a measly $250k film. I don't think James Cameron would get out of bed in the mornings for a $250k film. Nonetheless we have this incredibly stupid controversy which cannot be resolved because nobody seem to have enough clout or financial wherewithal to sort it all out.

ScreenHub Goes To Bat For Tom

Anyway, here's David Tiley from ScreenHub's account of the Melbourne Film Festival screening, abridged:

The screening itself passed off quietly, to a fascinated audience. The q&a was moderated by Andrew Dodd, and recorded for Radio National, who asked questioners to identify themselves, and their affiliations with Polisario or the filmmakers.

That didn't work for long. A variety of people attempted to cast doubt on the plausibility of the story, with a series of mannered micro-speeches; the film's attackers in Melbourne were clearly disciplined, well-rehearsed and courteous. At least one person supporting the film seemed to share the same passion for planning.

Producer Zubrycki, never relaxed in public, was clearly tense. Fallshaw and Ayala were defensive and hectoring, reflecting their behavior in the second half of the film.

Afterwards, the cinema was abuzz with excited discussion. As I said to one viewer, "I haven't seen something like this for a long time. It feels like the Seventies."

"No", she replied. "The Seventies were much worse."

The extraordinary thing about this film remains its honesty, which has clearly evolved to anticipate and respond to criticism - an evolution which is only possible with easy digital recuts.

Audience members I talked to generally disliked Fallshaw and Ayala, who admit they dealt with the Moroccans, who seem self important and grandiose, who bully interviewees late in the film.

But it remains convincing - there is slavery in the camps, it takes a certain cultural form, it is named as such, and the film provides a fascinating picture of the experience of enslavement in action.

It is also obsessed with its own story, which shifts from slavery to Polisario's attempts to deal with a public relations problem. It doesn't enter the politics of the struggle - we don't even get a map for around an hour, even though the film is crossing borders. While it defines slavery as present across the region, it never provides a wider context.

And so it went. The most telling 2 paragraphs of David Tiley's article is here:

Polisario is clearly attacking details of a film which most of our readers have not seen, in order to question the whole, attacking the motivations of filmmakers, and painting itself as staggeringly benign.

It is possible to smell a number of rats in this situation, but the biggest rodent is being dragged around by Polisario. And the inadequacies of the filmmakers are clearly visible in the film.

So here we are with all this controversy about the film and whether it's accurate or ethically compromised or even down right dodgy. Tiley's being disingenuous himself when he argues that:

• if Polisario is attacking the details in order to question the whole,


• Then this imperfect procedure brings doubt on the Polisario's main point


• and therefore the Polisario cannot be itself staggeringly beign.

EXCEPT the third line also runs the same trope of questioning the detail in order to cast aspersion on the whole. You can't condemn a method and then use it yourself to condemn a party.

It is logically self-defeating. But I guess it looks good on the page - until you put it to proper scrutiny. Not that I give a shit about the Polsiario and their politics. I'm sorry to disappoint some people, but this blog just isn't about that part of the issue.

David Tiley also writes at the end:

Given the pressure that Polisario and its friends in Australia, particularly inside the ALP, have brought to bear on this matter, the statement is unsurprising.

But it does not represent either a shift in policy or a rejection - Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflected any official point of view.

That's a little slippery there. A non-endorsement does not mean a policy shift, true enough. However, a non-endorsement might easily mean it's a rejection under the guise of plausible deniability, which is something you wouldn't put past politicians and bureaucrats. i.e, we ARE rejecting it, but not in a way that says so.

Which happens to be exactly what they're doing, as I've been told by people inside Screen Australia. So David Tiley's assertion is flat out wrong.

The fact that Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflect any official point of view, is not what is being questioned. What is being asked is why would Screen Australia make a point of its non-endorsement if not but to avoid legal ramifications? - Like, the absence of signed releases and that sort of thing, perhaps?

One thing I have noticed with the side of the film makers to date is that logic doesn't seem to be their strong suit and truth claims seem to be too difficult for them to address. Instead, it's the insidious machinations of the Polisario and its long reach across the globe that gets trotted out. Which it might well be, but even then the defenders of the film don't seem to be on top of their philosophical position.

Maybe it's a Post-Modern problem after all, where there is no fixed 'Meaning', only the small-m meaning we draw from the text and the very modality of the various modes of truth claims coalesce into a socially formed *meaning* kind of hyper-real relativist mind space. (Oh, get me my vomit bag!)

I have to confess I'm getting really tired of wrestling with this topic. It's not much fun. And to that extent, I don't take too kindly to the film makers.

For a start, the Gen Y film makers of 'Stolen' probably are generationally (and I do grossly generalise here but...) the sort of people who think nothing of illegally downloading pirate songs onto their iPods and iPhones and not bat an eye-lid at the copyright infraction. Run cracked versions of software on the computers, run pirated videos on their DVDs. Why on earth would they care about truth claims and verification and release forms and legalities? Why bother? Nobody ever knew nothing, right? Make up the meaning as you go along. Shout out long enough that there are slaves in the camps, maybe then the meaning of slavery will warp enough into the image they want? Nothing unethical in that is there? How could there be, when ethics itself can't get established in the motile sea of flexible, ambiguous meaning?

Cue my Vomit bag, please.