Getting Welly (and Auckland) moving

I enjoyed listening to a talk by Vancouver's city transport manager Dale Bracewell at the Sustainability Trust here in Wellington last week, and this 9-minute interview by RNZ's Jesse Mulligan is a good summary of the optimistic appraisal Bracewell has of the prospects for expanded transportation options for cycling, walking and public transport in Auckland and Wellington. (And elsewhere, but those were the two New Zealand cities he visited on his Australia-New Zealand tour). I can vouch for the Vancouver Skytrain, having used it last month, but I promise I'm not (yet) advocating building a monorail here, if only because of the Lyle Langley jokes it would spawn.

Interview: 'Transport solutions: Advice from Vancouver's Dale Bracewell', Jesse Mulligan 1-4pm, Radio New Zealand, 9 July 2018

Film Festival 2018 lineup

Another year, another 20 films to savour in this highly promising 2018 Film Festival programme, which begins screening in Wellington on 27 July. Of this brief selection I'm most excited about the two Kore-eda dramas from Japan and the three films set in Iceland. It will also be a real treat to see 4K restorations of Monterey Pop and Wings of Desire on the big screen. Now the only thing to do is avoid all spoilers and trailers until the end of July, and gird myself for the inevitable wrangles with the opening-day ticket booking system!

In the Aisles (dir. Thomas Stuber, Germany, 2018)
In den Gängen
Night-stackers in a German supermarket find their own place and even a little love in an uncaring world.

Monterey Pop (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, USA, 1968)

4K restored pop gorgeousness, including astonishing performances from The Who, Jimi Hendrix and the soul colossus Otis Redding.

Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable (dir. Sasha Waters Freyer, USA, 2018)

Biography of the self-destructive genius photographer who died in 1984 and helped to define the photographic style of a generation.

Leave No Trace (dir. Debra Granik, USA, 2018)

Compelling drama depicting a father and daughter whose off-grid life is disrupted by authorities, and how they face the challenges of conventional society; featuring a breakthrough performance by young NZ actor Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (dir. Alexandra Dean, USA, 2017)

The multiple lives of cinema sex symbol and brilliant mechanical inventor Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000).

And Breathe Normally (dir. Isold Uggadottir, Iceland, 2018)
Andið eðlilega
A single mum retrains as a border guard and crosses paths with a refugee from Guinea-Bissau.

Three Identical Strangers (dir. Tim Wardle, USA, 2018)

Identical triplets separated and raised by different families discover more than they bargained about their heritage. (This is one I'm definitely not watching the trailer for or reading anything about in advance!)

Beirut (dir. Brad Anderson, USA, 2018)

Jon Hamm stars as a jaded ex-diplomat who returns to Beirut in 1982 to negotiate the release of a friend taken hostage.

The King (dir. Eugene Jarecki, USA, 2017)

Driving the backroads of America in Elvis' old '63 Rolls-Royce Phantom V, listening to musicians describe in words and song what Elvis and America means to them.

Shoplifters (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2018)

Manbiki kazoku
Always a thrill to see another of Kore-eda's lovingly crafted, profoundly humanist family Japanese dramas. This one's about the struggling Shibata family, who adopt and care for an abused child. Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Stray (dir. Dustin Feneley, NZ, 2018)

A loner in self-imposed exile in Central Otago encounters a mysterious woman in a dramatic, sumptuously-shot landscape.

Arctic (dir. Joe Penna, Iceland, 2018)

Mads Mikkelsen's plane crashes in Iceland. 'Nuff said.

First Reformed (dir. Paul Schrader, USA, 2017)

Ethan Hawke as a small-town minister whose ebbing faith is tested by his circumstances and the spiralling decline of America (I think).

Woman at War (dir. Benedikt Erlingsson, Iceland, 2018)
Kona fer í stríð
Middle-aged environmental activist Halla makes her own rules in this Icelandic drama.

The Third Murder (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2017)
Sandome no satsujin
Another Kore-eda film! This one's a steely courtroom drama uses a murder trial as a vehicle for examining Japanese society.

Filmworker (dir. Tony Zierra, USA, 2017)

Biopic of English actor and Stanley Kubrick's personal assistant, Leon Vitali (b.1948).

Wings of Desire (dir. Wim Wenders, West Germany, 1987)
Der Himmel über Berlin
For many years my favourite film ever made. Here's what I wrote about it back in 2012.

Juliet, Naked (dir. Jesse Peretz, USA, 2018)

A woman's frustration with her partner's musical obsession, the lost rocker Tucker Crowe, comes to a head in this adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel.

Burning (dir. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 2018)
Beoning
A mysterious love triangle based on a Haruki Murakami short story, which wowed the critics at Cannes. 

Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland, 2018)
Zimna wojna
A doomed Eastern Bloc Cold War romance tells the musical and political story of the times.

A Latin lesson with Plum

'Nothing is more curious than the myriad ways in which reaction from an unfortunate love-affair manifests itself in various men. No two males behave in the same way under the spur of female fickleness. Archilochum, for instance, according to the Roman writer, proprio rabies armavit iambo. It is no good pretending out of politeness that you know what that means, so I will translate. Rabies -- his grouch -- armavit -- armed -- Archilochum -- Archilochus -- iambo -- with the iambic -- proprio -- his own invention. In other words, when the poet Archilochus was handed his hat by the lady of his affections, he consoled himself by going off and writing satirical verse about her in a new metre which he had thought up immediately after leaving the house. That was the way the thing affected him'.

- P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl on the Boat, 1922

[The phrase more precisely means something like 'Rage armed Archilochus with his own iambic' [i.e. the poetic device, iambic pentameter]

Brugha's bulwark

On the Irish side Cathal Brugha passed into folklore as the contemporary embodiment of the legendary hero Cuchulain who tied himself to a tree stump during battle so that he would not fall from his wounds. Cuchulain's enemies only approached him when a raven perched on his shoulder, indicating that he was dead. Brugha, a Vice-Commandant whom a former colleague later described as being as brave and as stupid as a bull, received twenty-five wounds. He was defending a barricade erected to guard the Nurses' Home where the Volunteers' leader Eamonn Kent along with William Cosgrave, who later became an Irish Prime Minister, and a small group of rebels were located. He gave his watch to a subordinate to be given to his wife - if the Volunteer ever got out alive.

Then, his own life apparently forfeit, he turned to defend the barricade alone for as long as he could. Inside the Nurses' Home the Volunteers were dispirited and weary. It appeared that the end had come and while waiting for a final attack that they did not expect to survive, they joined Kent in saying a decade of the Rosary. Then from outside the Home they heard Brugha singing God Save Ireland. He had dragged himself into a position with his back to a wall where he could command the barricade and was challenging the British to come over it. Reinvigorated, the rebels shook off their depression, remanned the barricade and kept the British at bay. Incredibly, Brugha survived the Rising - to die six years later in a civil war at the hands of forces commanded by a government which included William Cosgrave.

- Tim Pat Coogan, 1916: The Easter Rising, London, 2001, p.117-8.

See also:
Comedy: The Irish police force, 30 November 2014
Comedy: Every Irish wedding ever, 26 March 2014
Blog: Ireland, 5 June 2010

Stay shiny, Naenae

Naenae, Lower Hutt, viewed from the Te Whiti Riser track, 6 May.

How to cope with bullies

In David Mitchell's charming 2006 coming-of-age novel, Black Swan Green, 13-year-old protagonist Jason Taylor is growing up in rural Worcestershire in Falklands-mad 1982. Flirting with clandestine poetry-writing, dogged by a ruthless stutter and beset by school bullies, his lot is not always a happy one. 

In one class, music teacher Mr Kempsey sends Jason on an errand to fetch a school whistle for the teachers' post-class bus duty. (Jason seeks directions to Kempsey's office from another teacher who is reading a notoriously perverse French intellectual novella, L'histoire de l'oeil (The Story of the Eye), but he tells none-the-wiser Jason it's a history of optometrists). 

On Mr Kempsey's desk, underneath the whistle and obviously meant to be discovered, Jason finds a stack of Xeroxed pages, each with the same short note - an epistle to the bullied:

Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards. 

Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence. 

Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice. 

Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable. 

Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims? 

The brutal may have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed. 

Let guile be your ally. 

Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent. 

Don't laugh at what you don't find funny. 

Don't support an opinion you don't hold. 

The independent befriend the independent. 

Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.