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Cool Stuff In Movies #1 /  by Jose Barbosa

To say that The Shawshank Redemption was a "grower" is to perhaps simplify what was to become the film's eventual fame. Released in 1994 it's become one of the most loved films made in the last twenty years, receiving the audience it deserved only after it was released on DVD. Why it never took off in the movie theaters has confused me ever since, most of the cast and crew seem to point to its atypical title as a barrier to enticing the general public; something which only adds to my confusion. (beware, spoilers be ahead)

It's a beautiful movie, shot with almost faultless  direction by Frank Darabont. Those helicopter shots flying over Shawshank penitentiary make the point that all those inside are defined by its walls, while Thomas Newman's score adds a kind of dignified melancholy and seems to say: places like this are inevitable in a world where its guardians are corrupt.

There's plenty of cool stuff in this film, but for some reason there's one moment that's remained in my mind ever since I first sat down to watch it. It comes at 1:33 in the accompanying clip. Andy Dufrense has just crawled through "500 yards of shit smelling foulness" and the next we see of him he's back in what was his natural environment before the frame that got him locked up in Shawshank all those years ago. He's withdrawing the money the crooked warden Norton has laundered by getting kickbacks for using prison labour on public works. With the deal done he's asked if there's "anything else." He replies "yes, could you add this to your outgoing mail?" It's evidence exposing warden Norton's corruption and it's addressed to a local newspaper, the repercussions of which prompts Norton to put a gun in his mouth.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZwhqoENZsY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Look at the shit eating grinning on Andy's face, he's enacted his revenge and he doesn't even have to mail it himself. It's a wonderful moment where all Andy's planning has come to fruition. And yet it's also Andy playing a part so the bank doesn't suspect anything. The smugness we see on his face is Andy before he went to prison, the next time we see him he's wearing a ragged shirt and hard at honest work sanding a boat on a beach. Apart from being an advisable course of action after breaking out of jail, Andy's keeping his head down because prison and his wife's death have changed him for the better.

There's something really cool about getting someone else to do your mailing for you. I confess that ever since seeing this scene I've always taken pleasure in asking people to add my mail to their outgoing post.

Malcom Gladwell on Twitter and Activism /  by Jose Barbosa

"The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires."

So Twitter and Facebook are good for getting people to vote for your band on that online competition, but quite rubbish when you need someone to help you move house. As ever Gladwell's stating the obvious here ( in an interesting way, no doubt), but there's enough people who think a tweet will move mountains for the message to be necessary. link

A Short Family History /  by Jose Barbosa

This is my Great-grandfather's souvenir book from Cairo when he served in Egypt during the First World War. It's pleasingly brown.

See? It's Egypt.

Those itinerant dealers ... I'm told they were quite a problem in Northern Africa during the first half of the 20th century.

That's my great-grandfather, Frank Higginson, in the middle looking like he doesn't necessarily approve of this tomfoolery, but is happy to indulge a quick photo as long as someone brings him a drink.

And this is the Higginson family crest. The motto below reads: "I'd rather die than be dishonored" which is staunchly awesome. It's quite different from the Barbosa motto which reads: "I'd rather die than eat improperly prepared trifle."

Welcome To My Nightmare /  by Jose Barbosa

I'd love to have a monthly column in a local rag, perhaps the Eastern  Courier or Metro rather, as I suspect they pay reasonably well. Swiping directly from Warren Ellis (the cunty comic book writer not the bearded Australian troubadour) I'd call it I Hate It Here. It would be a bastard's compendium of Auckland listing all the aggravations that Aucklanders swallow everyday like the curdled spunk from the ball sack of God. I'd lacerate the woman in Parnell this morning who pressed on with her moaning, even though I'd explained how I didn't see her when I pulled into the park and was happy to release it to her seeing as she'd been waiting to reverse in.

I'd fling the spittle around explaining how it's impossible to find something to eat in the CBD after ten o'clock in the evening that isn't a kebab.

I'd bemoan the lack of a rail loop, commuter trains from the Waikato, an integrated ticking system, how the trams were ripped out decades ago and how we all cry ourselves to sleep thinking about how those lines could have been the basis for public transport routes.

There's more, but I'm sure you can grasp the general direction in which I'm heading.

There's nice things here too, though. Kelly Tarlton's is quite cool, there's that Vietnamese sandwich place on Lorne Street and I like the Leys Institute public library; it's the most relaxing place on earth, mainly because its Ponsonby clientele spend more time distressing their beefy-ts than using their local library.

It is actually rather interesting to note that the people who are the most audible in the condemnation of their home are the people who've traveled the most. I'd like to distance myself from that lot. They're the ones who can't understand why we don't have olive trees everywhere and think the more patisseries and esplanades we whack in the better. They're the Euro-fuckers, and while I have been to Europe, I think it's nuts to expect New Zealand to conform to a lingering holiday dream. I suppose they'd want to lace the streets with imported Parisian dog excrement  just to lend Auckland a Gallic air.

So, come the Supercity, things will be worse, I'd expect. Things always get worse. I suspect we'll go through a couple years of rolling dysfunction in all sectors of the new amalgamated administration, a lovely gift from a Government who pushed this thing onto the dais half dressed. They knew, of course, it would have odd socks, but waved away the KY, grabbed it by the hair on the back of the head and got to work.

Yay.