Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily in partnership with the Brain Drink, Ārepa. Today on The Spinoff, Sam Brooks reports on a surprising new government arts contract; Toby Manhire investigates plans to make Google and Facebook pay for news; and Sela Jane Hopgood looks at why the cost-of-living crisis is hitting Pasifika hardest. But first, why this movie about a morose Belgian housewife has just been named the greatest film ever made.
Christopher Smol: “Cinemas only offer two irreplaceable edges over a high-end home setup. The first is the feel of a crowd – spontaneous cheers at Captain America catching Thor’s hammer, full-throated laughter at jokes you would barely snicker at alone. The second is absolute focus. It’s a big dark room with a code of silent decorum, whose only light source is the thing you’re all there to focus on. “Jeanne Dielman is the latter kind of flick. And for the duration of its tenure atop the Sight and Sound list it speaks for the snobs. Serious film culture is increasingly rarefied, dwindlingly relevant, but still a world worth exploring. Jeanne Dielman is not just a movie anymore, but a provocation: a piece of art that’s unapologetically difficult, and a rewarding challenge for a new generation of cinephiles to rise to.”
Live Updates: 40 Covid-19 deaths over past week, more than 34,000 new cases CNZ just picked embattled agency We Are Indigo for a $5m+ digital arts platform NZ’s Covid-19 response to be investigated by Royal Commission of Inquiry New Zealand just signed up to a global staredown with Meta and Google The cost of living crisis is hitting Pasifika parents the hardest
The addicts’ ball: 40 years of Narcotics Anonymous in New Zealand Toby Manhire ‘: ‘The essence of the recovery story, really, is undramatic, even banal: the span of another day, the passage of time, the coming back. “The folks you sat with on Saturday,” Ben told me, “are all loosely involved in this kind of practice or know they have to be to stay clean, no longer occupying the chaos that Carr and Crace convey so brilliantly (which is just another day in the office to all of us). And as a result they are no longer dying, tying up the emergency services.”’ What it is not, however, is stuffily didactic or earnest. The reality is looser, funnier. “There’s no piety,” said Ben. “Just a lot of camaraderie. We’re all trying to live. Become better people. Lead decent lives.” And there’s a “dark humour” that pervades many a meeting, he said. Plenty of members who are, like him, “constitutionally cynical”.’
Bernard Hickey: Wayne Brown should sell the golf courses instead All the brilliant and bonkers things on Shortland Street this year Volunteering is easier than I thought
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Why a film about a Belgian housewife is the greatest ever made
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