Moving

We've moved house, finally, and I've also moved technologically... we have a new Airport Express wireless network and I just bought a Macbook so as to take full advantage of it.  So I'm typing from the sofa, wire-free, hooked up to the internet... I know, this was only really "cool" about 10 years ago. But I got there eventually.

Anyway, beware! My every passing thought is now perilously close to being shared at any time, from any place! That can't be good.

As for the "real" move - well, the new house is gradually becoming liveable as things emerge from boxes and routines become established.  There have been a few bumps in the process - an unexpected lack of TV for the first week, a leaky roof - but  after the first week I'm starting to feel a bit more normal.

Despite our technical relocation to "suburbia", we have a pretty hassle free "commute" of a 5 minute walk, 23 minute bus ride, and 5 minute walk.   Because we're at the beginning of the bus route, there are plenty of seats (there are usually about 2 people on the bus when we get on, occasionally including the driver).  But this does all mean getting up a bit earlier, which is not so much fun with the Winter still hanging around. We're up before the sun and today in particular it's been decidedly cold.

Speaking of moving... we just watched the Season Finale of the recent V series, which was quite exciting, if all a bit wooden.  I seem to have ended up gripped despite myself.  But I remain puzzled by the fact that it is completely unclear what the Vs plan is.  I feel even devious aliens should have a more discernable agenda.  They just seem to have relocated their entire civilisation here to ... confuse us?

New house....

Here's some pictures of the house we're moving to in August (obviously this is not our stuff as we haven't moved in yet). The exterior brown is cedar cladding. The views are of Karori, NZ's biggest suburb, and stretch all the way to Wellington harbour, about 5km.  I think the elevation is probably somewhere between 250-300 metres.

Its orientated North-East and so gets great sunshine all year round... plus it's not a 100-year old house made of wood with no heating, like the majority of houses in Wellington seem to be! Not in the pictures are the entrance hall, stairs, a third bedroom, a garage, a small laundry room, a second toilet, and lots of storage spaces including two unusual sort of open loft spaces... it's about 150 sqm in total apparently.

All the living spaces and bedrooms are facing the sun and the views on the opposite side of the house to the front door/garage/street.

Synecdoche, New York

Last night we watch Synecdoche, New York, a 2008 film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.

While there were interesting moments, well-observed and finely-crafted dialogue, and existential insight scattered liberally throughout  Synecdoche, New York, as well as some great acting from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Dianne Wiest, and many others, I think it was a disastrous failure as a film.

I really enjoyed Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which Kaufman wrote but did not direct (I'm not quite so keen on Being John Malkovich,  which he also wrote).   They are ambitious films and achieve what they aim for - complex, thoughtful, funny mediations on life, representation, and the blurring of each of these into the other.  And I think there was a similarly good film - perhaps even a great film - trying to get out of Synecdoche, New York, but for whatever reason Kaufman did not manage it.

Perhaps his success means he no longer has people around him who will challenge his creative calls, perhaps he really needs someone else (like Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze) to bring his ideas to complete fruition, perhaps he's just a better screenwriter than director (this is was debut film) - who knows? Ultimately, its unimportant.  This film does not work.  Many seem to have read its shortcomings as postmodern ingenuity, but I have to disagree.  Synecdoche, New York was over-long, boring, rudderless, and confused.  Less than the sum of its parts.  That this description chimes well with the view the film gives us of the main character's life - and so, life in general - does not begin redeem it.

About time!

Not sure when it was updated, but I've just switched to the new style blog editor, which allows you to insert pictures properly - the crappy functionality for adding pictures has been driving me mental!  I'll celebrate by inserting the following picture exactly where I want it:

Ooh, you have no idea how fancy and easy that was. Good work, Blogger.com!


That little cartoon is the somewhat mysterious announcement of Joanna Newsom's new album, in case you're wondering. You can click on it for a closer look.

31 January 2010 - Joanna Newsom at The Paramount, Wellington NZ

Despite a ridiculous time spent, for no apparent reason, queueing to get in, it was great to see another Joanna Newsom show here in Wellington, NZ.

She played a set lasting a shade under two hours long and comprised almost entirely of new material from her third album, Have One On Me, which is released on 23 February. Apart from fascinating versions of 'Bridges and Balloons', 'Inflammatory Writ', 'The Book of Right-on', 'Peach, Plum, Pear', and 'Emily' it was all new.

Someone at a recent Australian show, at Sidney Opera House, videoed three of the tracks she also played here in New Zealand yesterday: check it out. The tracklist for the whole show looks pretty similar although the order looks a little different:

SIDNEY SETLIST

01 "Jack Rabbits (Love You Again)"

02 "Bridges And Balloons"

03 "Have One On Me"

04 "Ribbon Bows"

05 "In California"

06 "Easy"

97 "Inflammatory Writ"

08 "Soft As Chalk"

09 "Autumn"

10 "Emily"

11 "Peach, Plum, Pear"

12 "'81"

13 "The Book Of Right-On"

----

14 "Colleen"

Assuming these are the real titles, she definitely played "Jack Rabbits', 'Easy', and 'Soft as Chalk' at the Wellington show. The only one of the new songs given a definite name was called 'Occident', which doesn't seem to appear here (or not under that name).  As this video is apparently playing the song '81' I'm pretty sure she didn't play that last night....

The word on the web seems to be that it will be a 3xCD album - given the amount of new material she played that doesn't seem unlikely.

Odds & Ends

23 January - Monsters vs. Aliens

I watched this while on the way over to Melbourne for a six day holiday (including Australian Open tennis, sight-seeing, and shopping). It had some good animation sequences, but took a while to seem as if it knew what it was all about; much of the humor throughout was bizarrely tangential and therefore confusing at best. The character of the US President typified the I-don't-really-understand-what's-going-on...? effect of the gag-writing - I suspect his 'bizarre antics' would leave most kids and adults equally baffled. It certainly had that effect on me.

Fundamentally, the writers didn't seem to have reconciled the film's different plot elements in a very coherent or satisfying way. This made it hard to gauge the intended audience. Was it for adults (it seemed to be a romantic comedy about a woman who is engaged to marry an obnoxious louse... and finally realises it) or was it for kids (an Alice-in-Wonderland type plot about a women is hit by meteor, grows to giant size, and is carted off to secret government facility where she befriends other 'monsters' who then save the world from alien invasion when no one else can)? Having said that, clunky beginning and lingering incoherence aside, I did enjoy the finale battle of the title.

28 January - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Yet another animated movie, seen flying back from Melbourne, but I liked this one much more. Flint is a lonely wanna-be inventor in a small, dying town (famous only for sardines, which the world has now realised "are totally gross"). He knows there's greatness-lurking-somewhere-within-him, and after some mishaps invents a machine makes food out of water. Obviously mayhem follows, during which he meets and falls for an aspiring meteorologist, can't communicate with his taciturn father, and is tempted to do the wrong thing by the town's unprincipled Mayor and his own ego...

I enjoyed the richly woven allusions and borrowings from familiar genre set-pieces (notably from Star Wars IV) and the plain whimsy of much of the movie, especially the climatic food storm at the end. Giant food is about to destroy the Earth! While the follow-your-dream plot is entirely predictable in principle, the execution is completely unexpected as heart-warming geekiness, unexpressed feelings, and giant pasta tornados all combine with great merriment.

29 January 2010 - Daedelus live at Bar Bodega, Wellington

Having enjoyed two of his albums (Denies the Day's Demise and Exquisite Corpse) I couldn't pass up the chance to see Daedelus live last night at Bar Bodega here in Wellington. So I sat patiently - well, impatiently would be more accurate - through the end of the boring Dodos and the excruciatingly bad Signer (some sort of local NZ electronica outfit who should never be allowed on a stage again) until finally, at 2am, Daedulus appeared. And it was worth it, even if I was a little tired to appreciate it fully. Great digital sound-crunching and cool duds...

It was a little heavier than I expected but listening back to Denies the Day's Demise this morning I don't know why that was - it sounded very much like what he played. In one notable moment, near the beginning of the set, he playfully remixed/reimagined a Burial track to great effect. Overall the intensity of the set reminded me of a kind of demonic disco! Which was good. Shame about the warm-up act though....