Category Archives: Entertainment

Mourning the self-inflicted death of NZ unions

Posted on by Brad Heap

The core purpose of workers unions is to band together as a group of individuals to create a collective entity to negotiate with employers in industrial relations. However, in the recent decades union membership has fallen as people become more individually competitive and the unions become more about political bias and ideology than actually representing workers.

Sure this may be a very broad generalisation but the actions of the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) in the dispute regarding The Hobbit has done more damage to the reputation of unions in NZ than any government policy could dream of.

If NZ loses The Hobbit much more than $500 million in production costs and 2,500 immediate jobs will be lost. The flow on effects of tourism and related jobs and money will also be lost and the value of this cannot be measured. All of this because an Australian union with 80 members in NZ tries to hold an entire nation to ransom.

The reality is NZ is small economically and this dispute is already having an impact on the currency markets. NZ’s reputation in Australia is being trashed with the story front page on Friday’s newspapers. And even the actual actors are fed up with the stupidity of the unions. The NZ Herald reports:

… at the Armageddon Expo, Stargate Atlantis actor Torri Higginson told the crowd it would be “insane” if The Hobbit was not filmed in New Zealand. “If anyone knows him [Peter Jackson] tell him I’ll work for free,” said Higginson. “F*** the unions.”

Personally, I am ideologically pro-union. However, the actions of the CTU have put me off ever joining a CTU affiliated union, and I think many people in NZ would feel the same way. I except in the coming year union membership in NZ to drop even more.

Kiwiblog sums up the feeling of the nation well:

I suspect many actors would work for free on the film. But Jackson will not only be paying good weekly rates, he is the first Producer to offer residuals to NZ actors. How the fuck the CTU ever decided to make him public enemy number one I don’t know.

The Chaser’s The Blow Parade

Posted on by Brad Heap

I have just finished listening to the five episodes of The Chaser’s new radio show The Blow Parade. While the short series is now finished you can buy the episodes and additional disk of full length songs from the ABC Shop.

I sure hope The Chaser boys do another series, these days radio is a rather dead medium with the exception of being stuck in traffic. However, this series shows that you can still have a lot of fun with comedy without needing visuals. The whole premise of the series is based on a mockumentary of various bands and ages of music.  Each episode focuses on the life of a different fake band which is styled on an actual real band.

The Five Episodes/Bands were:

  • Luke Deuteronomy – Pink Floyd
  • Egg Zagar – Led Zeppelin
  • The Fatcocks – The Clash
  • Me Me Me – U2
  • Funkalicious – The Jackson Five

I have no real clear winner for favourite episode, the first episode Luke  Deuteronomy was great, however Egg Zagar being killed by a beached whale was rather fantastic as well, not to mention Me Me Me’s Tuesday Slightly Inconvenient Tuesday.

The video clip from Good News Week below shows just how brilliant The Chaser are at good comedy.

Movie Geeks

Posted on by Brad Heap

Tonight both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were on TV. It was good fun watching the movies back to back, particularly as I have not seen Toy Story in a number of years, and I have never seen the sequel.

The best thing about Pixar films is the number of references to other movies and items from the real world they hide in their movies. IMDB has a massive list of trivia on their site for both of the movies, one of my favourites is the use of the use of the utah teapot in the original movie during the tea party. One of the more interesting references that I only picked up on tonight is a reference back to Logan’s Run. In that movie they must escape carousel, in toy story they must escape the claw.

Magnify at Parachute 2009

Posted on by Brad Heap

I just stumbled across this video of Magnify performing at Parachute Festival earlier this year.

Parachute will be one of the things I miss about NZ the most when I move. The festival is awesome – I have been 6 out of the last 7 years.

Crowd as seen from the Mainstage

Crowd as seen from the Mainstage

The reason why I stumbled upon the video was because I was looking for a clip of an older song, In Wonder:

Which of course the Newsboys remade, and around a month ago was played as the wake up music for one of the astronauts on the space station:

Under The Mountain – A Must See

Posted on by Brad Heap

I just got home from seeing the movie adaptation of Under The Mountain. It is a must see. It remains very true to the book with only a few minor changes (such as the age of the twins). The entire production is top notch, the acting and cast is perfect, the special effects state of the art (thanks Weta Workshops) and it is great to see such a good kiwi film. I will note that the film, while based on a kids book, is rated M, it is not over the top scary. But it is scary enough that it would easily upset some kids (even some adults jumped in parts of it). It would be the best kiwi film since Out of the Blue.

The World is NOT going to end in 2012

Posted on by Brad Heap

I have had a number of emails and conversations about the December 12 2012 over the past few weeks. Mainly sparked as a result of the new disaster movie 2012.

I saw the movie on Friday night and it is terrible. The theme is a good one and there was potential to create a really good and really scary film, however, it fails miserably. Under doing the 2012 theme and over doing trying to almost kill every single cast member 6 times over. It really should have been called 2012 where humans become cats and have 9 lives.

Anyway I am side tracked. Below is a copy of an email I just sent to a friend on the ideas around 2012.

—

I do not believe the world is going to end in 2012.

Yes the magnetic poles of the earth could swap. This has happened a number of times in the past, although not for a few thousand years. If this happens it is most likely it will happen very quickly (as in overnight) and it is unlikely we will see any major changes (however all the compasses will point in the wrong direction). There is a possibility that the change could also cause an electric field that could wipe every electronic device in existence. Essentially sending us back to the stone age. This is only speculation. But if it happened we run the risk of nuclear reactors exploding etc as they suddenly have all their cooling and other support structures stopped. It would also kill hundreds of people on life support etc in hospitals. But again this is unlikely to occur and there is certainly no truth to it happening in 2012.

The Mayan calendar ends of December 12 2012 as in the movie. However this does not really mean anything at all. There have been plenty of other calendars over time that have ended at different times. And even our current calendar is not that old (we started using it around 1552 if I can remember correctly). Before that we had a calendar that started in April. And before that we had a calendar that was based on 10 months (hence why sept = 7 does not make sense with september being the 9th month or oct = 8 being the 10th month. Furthermore currently those of Jewish faith and muslims use different calendars as well. One ancient calendar ending does not equal the end of the world.

It is a simple as that, there is no big conspiracy or whatever. Just someone starting a rumour and those who do not know better blindly believing it.

—