Review articles

Learn from my mistakes.

The Art of Always Being Right — Arthur Schopenhauer

5 Nov 2009

This book is not really about being right. It’s about winning arguments, even when you’re wrong. The 38 tactics include such classics as “Use your opponent’s views”, “Beg the question” and the ultimate: “Become personal, insulting, rude”. You’ll recognise these from many annoying and unsatisfying arguments you’ve had. This book helps you avoid them, and if necessary, use them yourself. Very useful, and all based on “the natural baseness of human nature”. Perhaps it’s best not to dwell on that.

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The Paradox of Choice — Why More Is Less

25 Oct 2009

the-paradox-of-choice
The increasing amount of choice we have now allows us to lead lives that are objectively better, but subjectively worse than before. This thought-provoking book by Barry Schwartz tries to show why the increasing amount of choice in our lives isn’t making us happier — in fact, it’s making us less happy. Fortunately, he also describes solutions to allow us to manage the negative effects of choice.

I tend to agree with him in general. Here’s a rather trivial example of a way I have tried to avoid the problem. When confronted with a restaurant menu, I try to read down the menu until I find something that sounds good to me. Then I stop, and order that thing. There are some restaurants I have been to several times where I have never read to the end of the menu, because I know that I will end up agonising over my choice and thinking I should have chosen something else anyway.

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(500) Days of Summer

19 Oct 2009

(500) Days of Summer (500) Days of Summer (don’t forget the parentheses!) is a conventional boy-meets-girl story dressed up with a bundle of enjoyable and inventive extras. It’s a lot of fun.

The film-makers dug deep into their box of tricks for this film. The timeline zooms back and forth across the 500 days. A voiceover occasionally offers explanations. There’s a surreal moment when the thunderstruck protagonist turns into a drawing and gets erased, and an even more surreal song-and-dance number during an earlier happy moment.

Even though there are quite a few cliches — such as the kindly boss, the loveable loser friends and the wise little sister — there is enough humour in the thing to keep you smiling.

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Ghost Town

9 Dec 2008

That guy from The OfficeThat guy from The Office (who despite many other noteworthy roles including this one is destined always to be known only as “That guy from The Office“) really is pretty funny. He’s much more likeable in this film than the painful idiots he plays in The Office and Extras.

(OK, his real name is Ricky Gervais. But I had to look it up.)

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Headless Chickens — live in Auckland

4 Dec 2008

Headless Chickens played their first gig in almost a decade last Friday. The setlist was packed with great songs, the crowd was into it, the sound was excellent. They rocked.

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Earth From Space — The Bads

6 Jul 2008

Earth From Space, by The BadsMellow mellifluous melodies. The Bads are a girl/boy duo from New Zealand; you could call them a guitar-based pop/rock group, or even a “popular beat combo” (as John Peel used to say). But that would just be lazy pigeonholing, so if you pretend you didn’t read that then I will pretend I didn’t write it. Anyway, it seems that of the two Bads, Diane does most of the singing, with Brett singing backup and breaking into the lead occasionally. I can’t find any information on what they each play, so I suppose they are both prodigious multi-instrumentalist polymaths.

Song titles such as Feels Like Rain, Trouble Rides A Fast Horse and Bush Fire Sunset make this sound like good ol’ country music. The first of these songs does sound pretty much like that, with its lazy drawl and twangin’ guitar, but the rest of the album shows some nice variation. The opening song Off The Rails has just the most irresistible chorus — I find it tremendously uplifting, in a minor-key sort of way. The driving Carry The Weight is another of my favourites, with powerful guitar and nice male/female harmonies.

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The Lake — Anna Coddington

24 Jun 2008

The Lake by Anna CoddingtonHere’s a set of simple, affecting songs, beautifully sung and sympathetically arranged. The overall theme is Love Gone Wrong, the traditional singer-songwriter preoccupation. But Anna Coddington turns it into something that sounds great — “beauty exploding from despair”, to use one of her own lines.

I was looking forward to buying this CD, since I enjoyed Anna Coddington’s performance a few months ago. Even though it’s been quite a long time since then, I still remember quite a few of the songs. The songs worked really well live, with Anna accompanying herself on guitar; the fuller production on the album adds another dimension without ever overwhelming the basic voice and guitar structure.

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Horton Hears a Who!

2 Jun 2008

Horton the Elephant

I had a great time at this big, fun and loud film about a big, fun and loud elephant. The story of Horton and the Whos is one of my 2-year-old son‘s favourite stories, so this was a good choice as his first ever cinema experience. He enjoyed it, and so did we. In the manner of kids’ films these days, there were lots of jokes for the adults. During the anime sequence I was crying tears of laughter. That doesn’t happen to me that often — maybe because I don’t go to very many films.

Anyway, this is definitely worth seeing. And it confirmed to me that any film is improved by watching it with a 2-year-old.

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Alec Empire and Nitzer Ebb

9 May 2008

I was listening to one of the tracks from the new Alec Empire album “The Golden Foretaste of Heaven” the other day. I was loving it but it seemed a bit familiar. The relentless pounding beat; the hypnotic, discordant basslines; the snarled vocals; the overall claustrophobic intensity of the thing. Alec Empire is a German with an English-sounding name, but his music reminds me of an English group with a German-sounding name. Nitzer Ebb were big(gish) in the ’80s but I only really got into them a bit later. I seem to own all of their albums and quite a number of singles, so I must like them. They released a career retrospective compilation (Body of Work) a couple of years ago; I thought that marked the end of the band, but apparently it just marked the beginning of their comeback.

I was amazed a year or so ago to see that “Nitzer Ebb” were due to play a gig at a local venue here in Auckland. They will most likely release a new album this year. It will be interesting to hear what it sounds like. They started out 25 years ago with noises, shouting, fist-pumping and Futurism (that’s where the Alec Empire connection comes in) but moved more and more towards traditional song structures. Apparently they have already played some of their new material live and broadcast so I can’t wait to hear it.

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God is Not Great — Christopher Hitchens

8 Apr 2008

Organised religion is a pernicious anachronism that should be abolished, according to Christopher Hitchens. His book is subtitled “How religion poisons everything” in case there was any doubt about his position. Organised religions are pretty much indefensible anyway, but his arguments are still worth reading — I learned a few interesting bits of history. And it’s bracing to see so many dogmas held up in such a cold and unflattering light.

God is not Great takes iconoclasm to new heights. Hitchens heaps scorn on the usual zealots, from Osama bin Laden to various Popes (including the current one). But his targets cover the full spectrum of celebrity, from the sublime (Mother Theresa, M. K. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama) to the ridiculous (Mel Gibson is memorably described as an “Australian fascist and ham actor”). The only famous exception is Martin Luther King, Jr, who manages to come out looking like a decent (if flawed) human being.

I enjoyed reading God is not Great, but I think it does miss the point a bit. In the conflict between Reason and Faith, Reason wins easily; but that’s because Faith isn’t playing the game. Some say that if people believe religious dogmas even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, then this simply confirms how marvellously strong their faith is. You just can’t use logic against this kind of position, but that what Hitchens tries to do. This approach only seems to work here because he is preaching to the converted. Or perhaps I should say unconverted.

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