Category: General

Personal Best

Morgan Avery

So you’ll know, if you’ve watched Quick Drink or Redux that I can put a bottle of White Shiraz to bed in 36 seconds (with a pause for breathing) but it turns out that if John hooks me up with a bottle of rosé, and Karl eggs me on, I can actually do a 750ml bottle in about 20 seconds flat. Am I delighted with my awesomely inappropriate performance? Why yes, yes I am. Am I gutted that this time wasn’t on video? Well, yes, that too. Everything is better with video (let’s be honest now).

Speaking of Redux – shortly after I published it, I forced a couple of friends to watch it while I was in the room, which was super super weird – I’m used to seeing my videos in a very particular context: 23″ wide on an LCD at home, and all by myself. So 46″ wide in someone else’s living room, is something strange.

So now imagine what it’s like in a room with 160 of your peers, video projected on the wall out of the blue. Here’s a hint: it’s really weird. I’m also glad it happened, people were actually laughing. (Not everyone, granted.) But, wow. People, in a large group, enjoying my stuff.  And that was tonight.  I loved it.  And I wished I’d edited more of my talking  out, replacing it with beedle-beedle-beedle.  (I love beedle-beedle-beedle.  I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.)

My output is your input. If you know what I mean.

I produce. You consume.

Consume.

Consume me.

Enjoy it all, my little internet darlings.

P.P.S. In my pished state I’m having trouble working out if I should, well, you know, whatever. But I know I’m pished, and I know that means I can’t really think that clearly right now. What do you think? Should I? I really just don’t know. These days I’m not sure if I can read ‘the signs’ or not. (I’m sure that once, very briefly, I was really good at reading girls. Now though… Well… Far out, talk about opaque. Remember how completely FAIL that other thing went? No, that’s right, you don’t – ‘cos it turned out I was just pissed, and my infatuation was actually nothing more than inebriation.) Actually, now that I come to think of it, mentioning these things here seems to utterly doom them.  Let’s pretend I didn’t say any of this stuff and just focus on the drinking, ok?  Ok.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Chemical Brothers

Morgan Avery3 Comments

[flv:https://morganavery.nz/media/chemicalbrothers.flv 640 360]

Thursday evening saw me sauntering the 10 minutes from my office down to Vector Arena for a gig I’ve been looking forward to for a couple of months: The Chemical Brothers.

I’ve been down with the boys since…  Well it feels like forever, I remember wearing the hell out of a Chemical Brothers t-shirt around the office at ihug, after bringing it back from Sydney in about 1996.  So a pretty long time, all things considered.  With that in mind I was a bit surprised by how young a lot of the crowd was.  I wonder if these little 18 year olds consider this their generations music?  Given that I was rocking out to it when they were 5 or 6 years old, they’re not right.  But I’m happy to share.

Jason Holdaway spun vinyl as everyone arrived, then Minuit played for about 45 minutes or an hour – I’ve seen them 2 or 3 times before, and they’re good, but they need to smooth things out, they took a break after every song, if they drop even a very simple loop between songs, while the singer catches her breath, it would be a much more satisfying performance – considering that two of the three people on stage are just button-dancing, I don’t think this would be too tough to implement.  The singer is very interesting, with some unusual vocal affectations.  She’s also super hot – especially when wearing a tight little nurse outfit.

When the boys came out, everything really kicked into high gear, a very large mesh LED screen coming to life with visuals (which I’ve remixed and mashed up in my video – they weren’t anything nearly as busy, or dare I say confusing, in person) that were really wonderful – I only caught a few samples as I was dancing my arse off, front and center, but they were brilliant and if you weren’t there you’ll just have to make do with what I’ve brought for you.  Sound quality was great as well, which probably isn’t unexpected given my spot front & centre of the stage.  The bass deeply palpable, at times so powerful that it felt like a strong, cold, rhythmic breeze was washing over me – in a way I don’t think I’ve quite felt since The Brain in the town hall in about 1993 or 1994.

Great stuff. Please let me know what you think of the video.

Newsflash: People don’t give a shit about the Oscars

Morgan Avery4 Comments

Or at least the results don’t particularly impact on their viewing decisions. According to a survey on that beacon of fine journalistic integrity, that bastion of quality writing (and complete heap of crap, losing relevence by the minute) the New Zealand Herald, we really don’t give a shit about the Oscars, with only around 26% saying they have some bearing on their movie watching decisions.

(I don’t want this to be about the Herald, but just how bad are they? Really bad. They appear to only hire new graduates – and from what I’ve picked up, journalism pays worse than street sweeping, so very few Smart Folk move into the area, which is why you can name so few journalists. Those few you can name have been in the game for a long time, work extremely hard to do a good job, and make a living by keeping irons in several fires. All the kids though, will probably be in the game for the short haul at best, and are little more than grist for the mill.)

Given that the Oscars are little more than another opportunity for the movie making industry to kiss the back of its own neck, where do people find out about which movies to watch and which to avoid?

Well, mostly our friends. Right?

I know I wouldn’t have heard anything about the upcoming Will Smith comedy Hancock if a friend hadn’t mentioned it. (Not yet, anyway, but of course once the buzz really started to pick up, sure.)

And depending on your interests, you might not have heard about the new Iron Man movie until I mentioned it 5 words ago, but it looks very exciting, with Robert Downey Jr as the titular lead.

(Hur hur, I said tit.)

Of course it’s not fair to say that we only hear about stuff from friends, because where di they hear about ‘upcoming movie fun’ from? Well, maybe another friend. But track it back far enough (which might not be very far) and what do you find? Almost certainly a highly skilled marketing person, carefully cultivating and shepherding the ‘buzz’. I wonder if those self-same marketing folk feel a sharp stabbing pain when all their hard work turns to naught once we discover what a POS their shiny new movie is. I hope so.

Stab stab. (Dear Jumper, thanks very much for costing me $15.50, please die.) Stab stab.

It’s too bad you didn’t listen to me about Michael Clayton, it’s George Clooney’s best movie in years.

Now check out the Iron Man trailer. It looks like a good fun superhero (in a manner of speaking) boy-movie to me.

[flv:https://morganavery.nz/media/ironman-trailer.flv 640 272]

4 Girls, God is Dead

Morgan Avery

[flv:https://morganavery.nz/media/4girlsdeadgod.flv 640 360]

Today we’re talking about ‘4 Girls Fingerpaint’, if you’re hoping for a laugh watch ‘Redux’ or ‘I Can Has Ollies?’ instead. I find the subject (exploitation) pretty serious, so it might be a bit of a bummer.

Jumper (2008)

Morgan Avery

When I saw the first teaser trailer I knew I was going to like this movie.

Then I heard about the chops of some of the people behind its production: director Doug Liman made Go & Swingers, Mr & Mrs Smith, and The Bourne Identity.
The writing team includes David Goyer who wrote the Blade movies, Dark City, and Batman Begins, and Jim Uhls who wrote the screenplay for motherfucking Fightclub.

So, chops. I knew I was in for a good thing.

But I was just so goddamn wrong.

Not that there weren’t a few good ideas… I mean, I guess. I liked all the bits with the library. And the Tokyo driving sequence with the stolen Benzo was fun.

But the thing with the bus was cooler on the trailer than in the movie. And the teleport-fighting was much better dealt with in X-Men 2 (that whole sequence with Nightcrawler in the Whitehouse was osome), than it is here in a movie entirely about teleporting and fighting!  This movie is awful.  It’s childish.  And an unrelenting idiocy pervades it, from shortly after the beginning until the end.

It felt like a good writer crafted a few scenes, and then they had some idiot’s second generation idiot teenage son come up with all of the rest of the ideas.  And it just didn’t work.

The main character (Hayden Christensen) is entirely unlikeable, only barely coming above the appropriately loathsome bad guy (Sam Jackson with badly dyed hair, phoning it in).

Hayden Christensen shouldn’t be allowed to stand around in any more movies. Just cut him a cheque and tell him to fuck off.  He’s done.

If the movie had been about the other Jumper, it would have had a chance. So much potential, but the stupid goddamn stupid stupid fucking stupid.

Just skip it.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Morgan Avery1 Comment

It’s hard to know where to start with this latest Coen brothers movie.

Not only will you be creeped out by Javier Bardem’s peformance as the massively defective, bowlcut hairstyled bad guy.

And not only will you cheer for the skilled, capable and smart good guy who seems to do the things you assume you’d do (or, should I say: I assume I’d do).

And not only will you feel sorry for all the dog shooting – not to mention brutal serial killing of innocent bystanders and bad guys alike.

And not only will you wonder just what is wrong with the sound track – nothing, music simply used extremely sparingly,  to powerful effect.

But you will also have all of your preconceptions of ‘normal’ movie structural stereotypes subverted as the film makers go completely off the playbook.  (Not in the Memento sense, but you’ll see what I mean when you watch the movie.)

It has numerous graphically portrayed instances of realistic violence, so if you can’t stand that, I do suggest you skip it.

It’s been out for a long time, so I’m sure you’ve already seen it.  I mean, I saw it 3 weeks ago.  But just on the off chance you’re a complete idiot and can’t see that this is certainly one of the movies of the year: Go see it (allowing for the aforementioned violence caveat).