🌲Review - "The Seekers" (1954) dir. Ken Annakin🌎

'The Seekers' is a British, Colonial epic set, and partially filmed in, New Zealand. It is one of the few foreign films (or films in general) to be made in or about NZ during that period. 

The verson I watched had suffered from colour deterioration, making some scenes hard to see. 

Story wise, it was watchable, but dated. 

As expected from a colonial piece, the New Zealand landscape and the Maori culture are on exhibition - almost fetishised. The introduction notes that the NZ government arranged for the co-operation of Maori tribes to make the film. A claim which seems paternalistic, also weird,  considering the main Maori actor, Inia Te Wiata, was based in London.  

An awareness of History seemed not to be important. The Maori fight the settlers using spears, not Muskets. The look of the Pakeha settlment resembles the American frontier more than the Antipodes. The landscape as shot at Pinewood studios looked different from the scenes in NZ. 

Overall, the Seekers is an all right film, but it's interest is more important as a document of how "the south seas" were perceived in the mid 20th century and as a rear example of a (partially) New Zealand film, rather than a timeless movie.

🌎Review - "The Torchbearer (2016)" dir. Stephen K. Bannon🔥

Torchbearer is better than some other Bannon/Citizen United films. undefeated was physically and mentally painful to watch. Torchbearer restricts itself to mental torture. 

It looks much better than the undefeated, limiting its use of stock footage to when it is more appropriate and uses archive footage and location shots, which at least match the topic of conversation. 

Torchbearer opens with sound bites from comedians and the media attacking host Phil Robertson for holding extreme beliefs. I didn't know who he was, but it isn't important because none of the criticisms are addressed in the film. Whatever he is, he is a typical choice for a Bannon film; a university educated (Masters in Education according to Wikipedia) person who tirades against Universities. St Paul preaching to the pagans, we are told, is like preaching in the middle of Harvard.  

That gets us to the biggest problem of this movie; It is factually garbage. According to Bannon/citizens united/Robertson (if any of them actually believe their message), Isis's biggest problem is that have rejected God. Isis aren't religious fundamentalists but a hippie death cult in the vein of The Manson family or Jonestown. In fact, all of humanities problems occur when people abandon God. The American Revolution was more peaceful than the French Revolution because American values come from God unlike the French, which was secular. Nazis were bad because they read Nietzsche instead of followed God. 

This film's points are as obvious as an Egotist with his name on the side of buildings. Images of the Nazis are flashed up against pictures of Planned Parenthood (get it?) while we are reminded that Scopes was supported by the ACLU and Oppenheimer read Hindu texts.  

There is nothing to be gained from watching this film.

On the plus side, this film isn't very long. 

💻Review - "Jpod" by Douglas Coupland🗣

This is a annoying Canadian novel from a decade ago about early-2000 youth culture, the rise of China and video games. It hasn't aged well, probably due to the fact that it is not good. 

The protagonist is Ethan, who works in a computer game company with Wacky coworkers and he has a wacky family. Characters do wacky things that nobody in the novel finds particularity strange. Events just happen but that isn't interesting, so the characters just discuss pointless stuff, possibly to simulate boredom (yet the novel describes the characters a super focused and working nights). It is a novel which includes a list of all three letter scrabble words and the author appears as a character. 

Everything that this novel tackles has been done better somewhere else and reading it just annoyed me.  

💸Review - "Generation Zero (2010)" - dir. Stephen k. Bannon🇺🇸

When Bannon was occupy

This film is better than "the Undefeated". I didn't hate it. It still isn't good. Bannon's style of of putting vaguely related stock footage under audio of interviews is used here. This time it is about the 2008 financial crisis. 

Adopting Generation Theory, the idea that the culture of generations travels in cycles  from complacent to crisis, the film offers a conservative explanation of why the market crashed. A gaggle of baby boomer politicians/academics/pundits etc. explain that young people in the 60s (their own youth in that period is left undiscussed) radical changed the moral centre to focus on the individual. This allowed for the great capitalist era of the 80s followed by the financial crisis. 

I don't think I have much more to say about this film.

⛪️Review - "Sunday Teasing" by John Updike🎇

Great Updike story about a pseudo-intellectual who spends Sunday winding up his wife and ultimately reflecting on the hollowness of life.  

It has one of my favourite opening lines; "Sunday morning: waking, he felt long as a galaxy, and just lacked the will to get up, to unfurl the great sleepy length beneath the covers and go be disillusioned in the ministry by some servile, peace-of-mind peddling preacher."

I'm not sure why I like this line so much. Parts of it are simple, the use of 'he' for an unintroduced character both sticks us right in the middle of the story, and helps us to see from, Arthur's, the protagonist, point of view.  

There is something else I like about this line. Possibly because it has the entire conflict of the story in this first sentence. The use of Galaxy to describe Arthur's early morning state, also links to the cosmological perspective which Arthur takes in his life. Through the story Arthur is focused on theology, but seems unrestrained when it comes it winding up his wife. This last bit is preconsideredIn this opening lines; he is avoiding is church, the practical, and intra-human application of his beliefs.

🇺🇸Review - The coming war on China: dir. John Pilger🏝

It is disappointing that this movie doesn't work. It was almost a good movie about how American imperialism has, and is continuing to, damage small-island communities in Asian and the Pacific. But instead the film tries limply to make the argument about US aggression against China by spending it's time focusing on the wrong evidence. 

The film is Made after the victory of Donald Trump and touches on the increased likelihood that his victory has meant for war. But here the proportion is all wrong; while spending Forty minutes about nuclear testing during the Cold War, the film only briefly mentions the Donald. No mention is made of, for example, the Lunatic Michael Flynn who had seemed to believe China has worked with Al Qaeda and Isis. (Unless Pilger somehow had predicted Flynn's rapid fall and knows that he would be gone for good.)  

While parts of this film elsewhere could have been good, a bizarrely sycophantic section in the centre of the film focuses on modern China. This brief section of the film parrots the mainstream Chinese media line. While a film about US aggression does not need to explore every abuse and atrocity that China has been involved in, The Coming War on China engages in full-blown red-washing. That is unforgivable.  

📆Review - Billy Liar (1963), dir. John Schlesinger💷

Thoughts tending to ambitions 

*Spoliers*

Billy Liar is a kitchen-sinky type movie starring Tom Courtenay as the title character. During the film, Billy imagines himself as a general of the fictional country of Ambrosia which is fighting a war. These fantasies are getting in the way of his life. At the start of the film, we are introduced to Billy awake in bed, already late for work. Instead of rushing to the job, Billy is saluting and  we are shown the adoring crowd and military parade. 

These disruptive behaviour is similar to what Eli Somer calls "Maladaptive daydreaming". The folks who suffer from MD suffer from complex, detailed, daydreams  often with themselves as great figure. 

Maladaptive daydreaming limits Billy's life by the end of the film, when instead of running away to London with the only girl who seems to get him, he returns home to dwell in fantasy. The film shows Ambrosia's army marching back with Billy as he returns home. 

These kind of lifestyle problems destroy people's lives, and society is only just beginning to look into it now. But this marvellous, little film had it all figured out over 50 years ago.