Film in Elsewhere
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SONGS OF LAHORE, a doco by SHARMEEN OBAID-CHONOY and ANDY SCHOCKEN
20 May 2016 | 1 min read
Every now and again a New Zealand musician will complain how hard it is to make music here. Well, sometimes it is. Although the problem today is it's never been easier to make it but getting it to people or selling it has rarely been harder. However these things are relative, as this doco about a group of musicians in Pakistan illustrates. When their version of Dave Brubeck's... > Read more
BASEBALL, a film by F. THEODORE ELLIOTT
16 May 2016 | 1 min read
From the flickering typed-out titles, this strangely compelling 80 minute debut feature by Auckland filmmaker Elliott warns you of its lo-fi and homemade quality, and that it is a labour of love which is populated by friends. Because it is episodic -- some characters speak direct to camera with stories or abut ideas which seem disjointed and there is voice-overs which sound like short... > Read more
LEE SCRATCH PERRY'S VISION OF PARADISE, a doco by VOLKER SCHANER (DVD)
15 May 2016 | 2 min read
Salvador Dali once said, “The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad”. The revolutionary reggae producer and musical constructionist Lee Scratch Perry might well say the same. But Perry – whose brain is wired very differently from most people and who speaks in terms of visions, dreams, magic and Biblical revelations – would doubtless... > Read more
SOUNDBREAKING, a television doco series by JEFF DUPRE and MARO CHERMAYAFF
29 Apr 2016 | 2 min read
If you listen to the debut solo album Mind of Mine by former One Direction star Zayn Malik – and you should, it's mostly very good – what strikes you immediately is how well produced it is. But isn't that true of all hip-hop albums these days, other than those which are willfully lo-fi? You don't have to be sound boffin to identify the difference between the aural... > Read more
THE CONNECTION, a film by CEDRIC JIMINEZ (Madman DVD)
25 Mar 2016 | 1 min read
The French title of this drugs'n'crime thriller largely set in Marseilles in the Seventies is the clue: It is La French. Add that to the English mistranslation and you get the link, this is a stylish-looking flipside and companion to the classic French Connection of '71 in which the story goes back to the source of the drugs pouring into the US which Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) and pals... > Read more
AWAKE; THE LIFE OF YOGANANDA, a doco by PAOLA DI FLORIO and LISA LEEMAN (Madman DVD)
7 Dec 2015 | 3 min read | 1
In the early Seventies those who didn't have their noses buried in the escapist fantasies of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were reading more interesting and philosophically challenging books like Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Dice Man and Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. First published in 1950 – two years before Yogananda's death -- and... > Read more
AMERICAN WAR GENERALS (Madman DVD)
4 Dec 2015 | 2 min read
Two true stories from days gone by. In 1969 as an 18-year old I flew into and out of Saigon and looked down on that blasted landscape of craters around the city. And then the thick jungle which seemed to be impenetrable and covered most of the country outside of the city and a few hamlets. I remember quite clearly thinking, you can't win a war down there. In 2005 flying over vast... > Read more
THE BEATLES AS SEEN ON SCREENS (2015): How the music looked
2 Nov 2015 | 3 min read
When the Beatles' remastered albums were released back in 2009 (09/09/09 to be exact, think about it), Elsewhere speculated on what else might be to come. It would seem that with the Anthology (the albums and DVD set and book) and the remastered albums -- which later appeared on vinyl in mono as God intended -- that the well might have been drained dry. Far from it, there would... > Read more
LIVING IS EASY WITH EYES CLOSED, a film by DAVID TRUEBA (Madman DVD)
12 Oct 2015 | 3 min read | 4
When, at the end of 1966, John Lennon was going spare after a US tour where he was lambasted for his “Beatles more popular than Jesus” remarks, he took up the offer from Dick Lester – who had directed A Hard Day's Night and Help – to join the cast of a film he was shooting in southern Spain. Lennon, as we now know, was increasingly unhappy in his marriage . . .... > Read more
Strawberry Fields Forever (1966 demos)
THE INCIDENT, a film by LARRY PEERCE (Madman DVD)
12 Oct 2015 | 1 min read
This exceptionally taut black'n'white drama from 1967 is one the great cult films, not just for its undeniable filmic qualities but the fact it was for so long unavailable on DVD or, to the best of this writer's information, never screened on television. Certainly not in New Zealand. The screen debut of Martin Sheen and Tony Musante (as two hoodlums who take over a New York subway carriage... > Read more
LEVIATHAN, a film by ANDREY ZVYAGINTSEV (Madman DVD)
28 Sep 2015 | <1 min read
The titular beast from the depths in this bleak and sometimes depressing masterpiece only fully reveals itself in the final half hour, and it's not that on the cover of this DVD. In a remote fishing town on the Berents Sea in the far north of Russia, Kolia (Oleg Negin) is trying to save his auto-repair business and rather lovely old house from a compulsory acquisition which the mayor in... > Read more
DIOR AND I, a doco by FREDERIC TCHENG (Madman DVD)
21 Sep 2015 | 1 min read
Even if by the end of this 90 minute documentary you are no wiser about his personality or even exactly what it is he does, you will perhaps still be persuaded that Raf Simons is a rare visionary and quite possibly a genius in his chosen field. That field is in fashion design and in 2012 this Belgian -- who had been known largely for his minimalist menswear -- was appointed creative... > Read more
EVER THE LAND, a doco by SARAH GROHNERT
7 Sep 2015 | 2 min read
At the start of this deliberately slow but ultimately engaging documentary about this country's first “sustainable building”, a kaumatua addresses his Ngai Tuhoe people. The Tuhoe – who never signed the Treaty of Waitangi and have had a fractious relationship with the Crown and more recently the police in the infamous “Uruwera Four” sedition trial —... > Read more
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY, a tele-series by ANDREW V McLAGLEN (Madman DVD)
2 Sep 2015 | 1 min read
As much reminder of how a television mini-series and historical drama used to look in the Eighties, this six hour epic across three discs is certainly ambitious in attempting to present the American Civil War from a few different perspectives. Filmed in Arkansas and notable for its historical accuracy and the then-spectacular and graphic battle scenes, it is based on the books by Pulitizer... > Read more
THE ADMIRAL: ROARING CURRENTS, a film by KIM HAN-MIN (Madman Blu-ray/DVD)
20 Aug 2015 | 2 min read
At the end of the 16th century — around the time Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice and Sir Walter Raleigh was a hero of his people -- events of a very different kind were unfolding and being soaked in blood on the far side of the world. The Japanese had invaded the Korean peninsula and the Joseon Dynasty – which had been in place for a couple of centuries... > Read more
IT FOLLOWS, a film by DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL (Rialto DVD)
14 Aug 2015 | 1 min read
In his latest novel You Don't Have to Live Like This, the American writer Benjamin Markovits has his central character Marny move to Detroit, the city notorious for being abandoned by its industries and citizens. From its heyday with automobile factories and Motown providing work and cultural focus, Detroit has become a city of gap-tooth streets where people have walked away from... > Read more
THE HOMESMAN, a film by TOMMY LEE JONES (Madman DVD/Blu-Ray)
20 Jul 2015 | 2 min read
Women are rarely central figures in Westerns and are most often either inconsequential or barely visible. In many they actually don't appear at all. Which makes this grim, frequently troubling and sometimes narratively unexpected film directed by Tommy Lee Jones (who also plays the grizzled, pragmatic and mostly self-serving George Briggs) such a surprise. At its core it is... > Read more
PHILIP DADSON: SONICS FROM SCRATCH, a doco by SIMON OGSTON and ORLANDO STEWART
17 Jul 2015 | 3 min read
Even if Philip Dadson's name is not as well known as it should be outside of academic and sonic art music areas, many New Zealanders would respond to just two words: From Scratch. The innovative percussion trio – Dadson, Don McGlashan and Wayne Laird in its most famous iteration – took their mathematically complex, minimalist music into the mainstream of public... > Read more
5 FLIGHTS UP, a film by RICHARD LONCRAINE
14 Jun 2015 | 2 min read
When, about 12 years ago, I bought the modest townhouse I'm in, I went through what is called a “blind auction”. For those who don't know what this professional deceit is, I'll explain. You, the buyer, are given by the agent a very loose range of telephone number/dollars in which the seller is prepared to let the property go at. You don't... > Read more
THE SALVATION, a film by KRISTIAN LEVRING (Madman DVD/Blu-Ray)
11 Jun 2015 | 3 min read
Only those with limited imagination would see the Western genre as just being something about horses and gunplay. Certainly those elements may well be there – I prefer my Westerns with both, more of the latter – but the genre is as wide as the skies of Montana. Within "the Western" there has been scope for the clash of cultures (Native American v settlers,... > Read more