Film in Elsewhere
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ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE a film by JIM JARMUSCH (Madman DVD)
15 Sep 2014 | 4 min read
The appeal of vampire movies is well established. It's about sex . . . and if you doubt that you haven't seen enough of the breast-heaving Hammer horror films of the Sixties. Oh, and of course they are about death. Or eternal life, if you will. And every generation of teenagers gets its own hip style of vampire movie. The appeal for teens is enhanced if you are an... > Read more
ALFRED HITCHCOCK DIRECTS: THE TV COLLECTION (Madman DVD)
5 Sep 2014 | 3 min read | 1
Alfred Hitchcock may have been a genius, but he was certainly a nasty piece of work when it came to women actors, especially those who spurned his sometimes clumsy advances or let him down in some way. Some have noted that his films became increasingly violent towards woman after Psycho (1960), around the time he built up a stew of resentment towards actresses such as Kim Novak, Audrey... > Read more
SURVIVORS, REVISITED (2014): A television series from past about the now-future
18 Aug 2014 | 3 min read | 2
One of the more smug, not to say stupid, comments on television recently came from an expert speaking about the likelihood of the Ebola virus in West Africa making it to New Zealand. The essence of what he said was that the country’s geographical isolation would protect us. This opinion followed the statistic which said that this easily communicable and often... > Read more
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, REMASTERED AND REISSUED (2014): All they had to do was act naturally
16 Jul 2014 | 4 min read | 1
At the same time as the Beatles were filming their first feature A Hard Day's Night, the once-great Elvis Presley was cranking out mindless Hollywood movies such as Fun in Acapulco and Kissin' Cousins. The King of Rock'n'Roll had gone soft and although his films were still successful at the box office, few would acclaim them as high art. His British counterpart Cliff Richard... > Read more
I Should Have Known Better
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NEBRASKA, a film by ALEXANDER PAYNE (Roadshow DVD)
9 Jul 2014 | 3 min read
The story of America is entwined with the myth of the road. From Daniel Boone and “Go West, Young Man” wagon trains through Jack Kerouac, Easy Rider, Springsteen's lyrics and onto Little Miss Sunshine and Road Trip, the songlines, trails and highways of America have been where people have found redemption and truth. Stories told about the road are of discovery and, just as... > Read more
GREG CAMALIER INTERVIEWED (2014): The sound of soul and the Swampers
7 Jul 2014 | 7 min read
For a small, out of the way town which only had a population of about 8000 back in the Sixties and Seventies, Muscle Shoals in Alabama sure made its mark on the world. Situated by the Tennessee River and in the crosshairs of the racial divide, Muscle Shoals was home to the famous FAME recording studio founded by Rick Hall where Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and dozens... > Read more
SONNY ROLLINS; BEYOND THE NOTES a doco by DICK FONTAINE
30 Jun 2014 | 3 min read
When the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins came to New Zealand in 2011, it was my pleasure to do a phone interview with him beforehand . . . and then see him in concert. I'd only seen Rollins twice previously and each time they were polar opposite performances, so it was impossible to know what to expect. And similarly interviewing him. Some musicians can be tetchy subjects,... > Read more
TAR, a film by 12 DIRECTORS
26 Jun 2014 | 1 min read
A visual ode to memory, love, loss of innocence and the spectre of impending death because of the events at Three Mile Island, this film is an elusive construction drawing on the poems of the award-winning American writer CK Williams. Written and directed by 12 New York University film students, it singles out a few key poems and periods in the poet's life -- non-chronological and with... > Read more
CUTIE AND THE BOXER a doco by ZACHARY HEINZERLING (Madman DVD)
22 Jun 2014 | 2 min read
Cantankerous, alcoholic, irresponsible and so convinced of his own genius that he saw his wife Noriko as a lesser person there to serve his artistic and emotional needs, there's not a lot to like about painter and sculptor Ushio Shinohara. When he arrived in New York from Japan in the Sixties he was a child of the Tokyo avant-garde and his style of painting which we might call Abstract... > Read more
GOOD VIBRATIONS a film by LISA BARROS D'SA and GLENN LEYBURN
8 Jun 2014 | 2 min read
Those of us lucky enough not to have lived in Northern Ireland during the period the Irish euphemistically refer to as “The Troubles” could never know what that must have been like. Sectarian division and violence, roadblocks and checkpoints, assassinations and bombings, intimidation and factionalism . . . As John Lennon put it, “if you had the luck of the Irish,... > Read more
Just Another Teenage Rebel
B.B.KING; THE LIFE OF RILEY a doco by JON BREWER
4 May 2014 | 2 min read
A few weeks ago a review of a lousy BB King concert in St. Loius went viral. But the comments about his rambling show, him forgetting lyrics or simply lost as to know what to do would come as no surprise to anyone who saw an equally bad concert in Auckland in 2011. My review here begins, "Few things are more sad, uncomfortable and disappointing than witnessing a once-towering talent in... > Read more
Sweet Little Angel (1964)
The Rolling Stones; Crossfire Hurricane DVD (2014)
31 Mar 2014 | 1 min read
About now many people might have been speculating on how brilliant -- or otherwise -- the Stones will be on their current tour . . . but as we know events conspired against it and the shows have been postponed. Too late however for advertisers to change their tie-in marketing, and so that's the good news for Stones consumers. JB HiFi has a swag of Stones cheapies of CDs of the original... > Read more
Not Fade Away
SONG OF THE SOUTH, a doco by Tom O'Dell (Sexy Intellectual/Triton DVD)
20 Nov 2013 | 3 min read
As with Jimi Hendrix, the great Duane Allman -- dead at 24 after a motorcycle accident in 1971 -- wasn't with us for a long time. But what a mark he made in just those four years from when he first became known. He had only played guitar for 10 years and only in the last three of his short life had started playing slide guitar to create the sound he is synonymous with. It was a short... > Read more
Little Martha
UTU REDUX, a film by GEOFF MURPHY
19 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
New Zealand landscapes lend themselves to the visual and emotional language of film: the black sand shore of The Piano; the towering Southern Alps inhabited by horsemen and warrior orks in Lord of the Rings; the menacing glower of sky and mountains in Vigil; the glimmering beauty of the East Coast in films like Boy and Whale Rider . . . And landscape was a visceral character in Geoff... > Read more
THE ROLLING STONES: SWEET SUMMER SUN; HYDE PARK LIVE (Shock CD/DVD)
18 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
Recently a music blogger asserted boldly the Stones had never done a decent version of Satisfaction live which – unless he'd seen the thousands of Stones shows since mid 65 – illustrates the folly of mistaking a live recording with a live performance. Which is why the two hour film on this double CD/DVD set is so important. It's not a live concert just a film of one, but... > Read more
Paint It Black
REEL KIWI UNDERGROUND: Local films that make a noise
27 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
The phone call from Simon Ogston is gratefully received because he was the guy who made that fascinating doco about New Zealand's Skeptics, Sheen of Gold. And when he says he is putting on a short film festival of similarly noisy features and footage in Auckland, we cannot help but take notice. Then he mentions the Chants R&B film Rumble and Bang by Jeff Smith, and footage by Jed... > Read more
WAR OF THE WORLDS, a doco by CATHLEEN O'CONNELL (2013): A million to one, they said
27 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 1
At midday on March 12, 1913 in Columbus, Ohio someone broke into a run down the main street. By coincidence a few other people happened to be running in the same direction. Within 10 minutes everybody was running. Someone heard the word "dam" and panic spread: the dam had burst. Run! According to James Thurber's book My Life and Hard Times, thousands joined in the stampede... > Read more
THE POINT by HARRY NILSSON (MVDvisual DVD through Southbound)
25 Oct 2013 | 2 min read
Despite the very best efforts and intentions of critics and writers -- Elsewhere among them -- the wayward genius of Harry Nilsson still goes past most people. His work has been occasionally reissued (most recently a whopping 17 disc set of his complete RCA recordings) and certain albums are available cheaply, but still most people only know him as the Grammy-winning guy who had that hit... > Read more
Think About Your Troubles
THE WICKER MAN, a film by ROBIN HARDY: The pagans in our presence
23 Sep 2013 | 3 min read | 2
Paganism survived in Britain long after the arrival of Christianity. In the middle of last century when cleaners got to top of Exeter Cathedral -- which was completed in the 15th century -- they found some unusal carvings in the roof bosses which hols beams together. They were of a man with leaves for a beard and hair. This was the pagan figure of Jack O'Green, sometimes known as the... > Read more
Willow's Song
EVA CASSIDY; TIMELESS VOICE: The songbird gone
19 Sep 2013 | 1 min read
She may have sold more than 10 million albums, but when she died of cancer in '96 at just 33, Eva Cassidy was virtually unknown outside of small circle who had seen her playing in clubs around Washington DC. The live album she recorded barely created a ripple and it wasn't until many years later – when a tiny record company pulled together a collection and managed to get a song... > Read more