I went to the New Zealand music awards a couple of weeks ago. There were some surprising performances from Shapeshifter and Tami Neilson who were both stunning but not exactly popular music I would have thought. Most of the music was from mainstream popular “not that there is anything wrong… read more →
This week is election week in that big noisy neighbours place. You know the one. I’m seeing a lot of uncertainty around my media streams and in New Zealand we get a somewhat filtered view but it is noisy out there. This ‘post’ is not directly about that event – but… read more →
Last week I came across two people who seemed to genuinely believe that Hillary Clinton was a terrible choice for U.S President and despite them not liking Trump they seemed to be supporting him. And this makes me think that the U.S election result will be much closer than anyone… read more →
Just last week Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel prize for literature. That was the prompt for dinner conversations about the extent that music and literature can cross over. And then if Bob can win why wasn’t Leonard Cohen also in the frame? Bob has made 37 studio albums and the first… read more →
There was a fascinating story about rats the other day. Rats are linked to many problems caused in the human population. We generally think we know what those are. Man v rat: could the long war soon be over? Rats spread disease, decimate crops and very occasionally eat people alive. For… read more →
Or are they Utopian revolutionaries? Ouch… @bentarnoff has written about why some people hate the tech industry in an article called Gaffes, ignorance and PR nightmares: why it’s so easy to hate the tech industry for the Guardian. “The reality is that Silicon Valley isn’t a force for good or… read more →
Public Address held a special Journalism / Media event back on August 23rd. I couldn’t be there at the time but I was very pleased to see that a full clip has been loaded up on the 95BFM YouTube channel. Russell Brown already wrote about the event Orcon IRL on Journalism:… read more →
Film festival time here and I have managed to catch a few films including “A Flickering Truth‘ and “Shadow World‘ which are both documentaries. ‘A Flickering Truth’ is a story about rescuing the film archive in Afghanistan made by NZ film maker Pietra Brettkelly. A nation’s film history is a… read more →
The Republican convention has just finished and the Donald gave his speech. We will hear more responses and reactions over the past few days but I watched a fair amount of it on the live stream and I couldn’t believe anyone in a position of leadership could so clearly be… read more →
Shadow World Trailer from Louverture Films on Vimeo. The New Zealand Film Festival is coming up this week in my home city. I have picked around 10 films to go see and half of my top picks are documentaries. The Shadow World is one of them. If you are in… read more →