Film Festival Love

I've been a happy wee camper over the last few weeks as the New Zealand Film Festival has been on in Auckland.

Let me count the ways I love pouring over the the festival magazine, choosing what to go to. I've been to four films this week (okay The Dark Knight doesn't count as a film festival number but, hey, I was on a roll). However I'm nowhere in the league of a colleague who told me that he was also limiting himself to the number of films he was going to this year.

'How many are you allowing yourself to go to?' Ask I.

'I've narrowed it down to eighteen.'

Anyhou, I was really looking forward to West of Memphis, the documentary about the failure of justice in the case against three teenagers whose biggest crime was to be bit left of field and, as a result, were falsely convicted of the brutal murders of three eight year old boys by a bunch of rednecks. It was directed by Amy Berg and produced in conjunction with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. (It's stunning, by the way).

We were lucky enough to have Peter Jackson present the film which was being screened at Auckland's grand old dame - the Civic.

I went with a very old friend of mine who, until recently, has been living in the States so she was well aware of the case and also really looking forward to seeing it.

Going well so far?

We make our way to our seats (with about two thousand of our closest friends), armed with a glass of wine and a packet of doritos, eager for the film to start. Peter Jackson comes on and starts to introduce it.

Everybody is craning forward, hanging off his every word.

Then, just in a moment of silence - CRUNCH! I turn to look at my friend I see the horror slowly register in her eyes at what she's just done.

Yep, you got it, totally inappropriate audible Dorito action.  This was bad timing at it's best. The Everest of bad timing. But even worse, while the Holy Grail of New Zealand Film was speaking to us. 

In the row in front, a man practically gave himself whiplash as his head snapped around to deliver a look which would freeze a bead of sweat.

And you know what's coming next, don't you?

Inappropriate giggling action. Yup, that was it. She was all over. We both hung our heads in shame while we silently shook and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And you know that when you're not allowed to laugh, that is just a red flag to your laugh bull and you're completely helpless to control it? Well that was us two. Silently shaking and shaking and shaking. Desperate for the silence to be filled up by the soundtrack of a film. It was like a car accident - time slowed down.

I have to say, it took a good twenty minutes for us to calm down. And even as I write the story, I'm off again, giggling away.

Sigh.

Mature? Clearly I haven't quite grasped the concept yet.

I live in hope.

Hit me, baby.

So it's just been announced that Peter Jackson's latest movie is going be 200 million dollar epic based on the life of Russian mobster Igor Borisovich Rabaev. While it hasn't been confirmed who is to play Rabaev, there has been a lot of speculation over who may get the role. Says Jackson, 'We had hope to cast Michael Jackson, however we have had to rule him out after his burial last week.'

While he won't yet reveal where the movie will be shot, it has been rumoured that Hobbiton is one of the locations being considered.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


That, good people, is obviously a completely fictitious bunch of sentences shamelessly designed for the purpose of gaining traffic to this blog. As I have said before, aside from the time the Australian Daily Telegraph linked to me for this post the most hits I have ever had was the day I wrote a post that included Peter Jackson and Russian mobster.

So why the need to up the ante on the traffic?

Well, you see, yesterday I received this email from my brother-in-law :

So far today:LaughyKate has had X unique visitors and X page views.
Quote Unquote has had (insert many more) X unique visitors and (insert many more) x page views.

No, I don't understand it either.

Ya see, the thing is, normally we get in the same vicinity of hits, however yesterday this blog was royally spanked by his blog.

And I'm sorry, but I am not taking that lying down. I have standards. Hence this post - an unashamed, unadulterated attempt to regain some ground by me acting my shoe size.

And while I'm here I might as well give myself all the help I can, so here we go - Google Search, I hope you have your ears on cause I'm talking to ya; Playboy Mansion, Brittany Spears naked, Daniel Craig naked, how to make money fast, All Blacks scandal, Anna Nicole Smith's drug cocktail, Star Wars, playground padding (you would be surprised/unnerved at the number of people who google this), knitting patterns (they tell me knitting is huge), what is Scientology, Chinese for beginners.

And why don't we throw in 2008's top google searches, just for good measure: sarah palin, beijing 2008, facebook login, tuenti, heath ledger, obama, nasza klasa (me either - it's a Polish social networking site), wer kennt wen (German one) ,euro 2008, jonas brothers.

Righto, I think that's enough for now.

Game on, let's sit back and count.

Performance anxiety.

I thought when I wrote a post that included 'Peter Jackson' and 'Russian multimillionaire gangster' that my statcounter went through the roof.

However the dusty road turns into an autobahn when the Australian Daily Telegraph mentions you. (They were also taken with Google Map's stellar directions in the last post) .

You could even find reference to the story yesterday on the front page right alongside the headline, 'My Dog Ate My G-string'.

I have to say, all this attention has made me just a little self conscious.

How clean is the joint?

Have I got my slap on?

Please don't tell me I have a bad underwear situation going on.

I was once unfortunate enough to say that just a little too loudly on a plane.

We were heading up to Fiji to do a bunch of stories after the 1999 coup, we were just getting settled in our seats when I copped an eyeful of something like this -

(Apologies to whoever owns that arse, but you come up when you do a Google search in images for 'revealing g-string').

I really didn't want to see that so I thought I would share and I said in a voice that I thought was just loud enough for just the rest of the crew to hear, 'Oh, that's a rather unfortunate underwear situation going on up there.'

It was loud enough for the rest of my team hear (they didn't thank me) - and the lady herself. She turned round to see three blokes staring at her rear (I was looking sheepishly at the ground by this stage).

And she wasn't totally happy with it,which you can understand. If looks could freeze beads of sweat from ten metres, we would have been four iceblocks by the time we got to Nadi.

That's my morning talk.

As I've said before, you get the big news here.

Peter Jackson, eat your heart out.

I found this sensation when I was searching for the building (that I failed to find) I refer to in the previous comments. It is home to Nikolai Sutyagin, a former gangster, in Arkhangelsk, Russia. He had meant it only to be two stories but got a little more ambitious when he went to Norway and Japan and decided he hadn't used his roof space efficiently enough, so continued to build. He added three more floors, thought it looked like a mushroom so continued to build some more. As you do.

Unfortunately after some time in the slammer, the multimillionaire lost all his ill gotten gains and he now lives in the bottom floor with his wife while the rest of the house decays around him.

I wonder how they would have gone shooting Lord of the Rings in Arkhangelsk?

More fantastic houses here.