(Above: Rowe goes where mad hatters go, and more Rowe here).
First a personal note. The pond had long dithered, delayed, obfuscated and avoided. It noted many dire warnings but was still compelled. Because Everest ...
So last night the pond sat down and watched Alex Proyas's Gods of Egypt.
The argument raged long into the night. Was this the worst Australian film ever? Was this the worst film ever made, period? Of course, it's unfair to include a film like Plan 9 from Outer Space in this sort of competition. Ed Wood had no money, and besides, he has a delightful biopic of his lived angora-sweater life to his credit.
To be fair, you have to compare apples with apples, Gods of Egypt with Ridley Scott's Exodus Gods and Kings, or Beresford's King David or Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs, or Cleopatra, or any Cecil B. DeMille epic, like The Ten Commandments, or The Mummy, or more particularly the wretched sequel, or Ben Hur, or The Robe, or King of Kings, or spreading the net a little wider, a Dune, Heaven's Gate, or Battlefield Earth. But all of these, even the ones that broke a studio, had some redeeming kitsch or camp Sontagian value.
Gods of Egypt is just a total, comprehensive, incomprehensible mess. How did it come to be? Why does Screen Australia exist? Why was there not a total sacking and ransacking of the organisation? How does Proyas get out of bed? Oh sure, Garage Days wasn't good, but at least it was set in Newtown ...
The pond struggled, and then finally understood it existed as a metaphor for people who don't get it. In short, it was a metaphor for the Murdochians still struggling to understand why they were so totally tone deaf ...
Naturally the reptiles of Oz were in full Gods of Egypt mode this day ...
The digital page was full of worrywarts full of worry ...
There's something sublime about the reptiles running the Nats rabbiting on about 'aloof' Libs ... as if being as dumb a climate denialist stick as Barners is where you want to be ... so naturally the pond was drawn to Dame Slap ...
Trust Dame Slap to get the wrong end of the stick. The problem with the innovation message wasn't innovation per se ... it was that blather about innovation came from a horse's arse that had installed copper and HFC and multi-modal multi-nodal luddite technology around the land.
You can't preach innovation while peddling Queen Victoria's technology, and pandering to reptile climate science denialism. You can't talk innovation while keeping company with luddites.
You can bet that Dame Slap didn't have the first clue, and that we were in for a genuine Gods of Egypt delusional column ...
Actually the reptiles are now blaming everyone except themselves for the counsel they provided to Turnbull, Abbott and the whole damn thing ...
And dammit, in this very column, Dame Slap continues to provide wretched counsel, silly advice, a genuine Proyas-like flood of folly ...
The founder of Ozemail? No you deluded goose, the perpetrator of copper and HFC and satellite throughout the land ...
It's just as typical and as condescending for Neil Mitchell to get it arse up. Ivory towering about common folk from Cranbourne with three kids and a mortgage and a humble salary and driving to work and wondering about innovation ... what's the bet that at least one of the kids turned out a nerd and keeps whining about the copper and the slow game speeds?
As usual, it's the up themselves commentators that sell their constituency short and profile them as dumb simpletons incapable of thinking for a nanosecond about life and innovation and some basic needs ... like being connected (yes, the pond's relatives in Tamworth now roam the street like zombies with screens in hand and constantly checked).
Only Dame Slap could return to the fall of the Berlin wall as relevant to this discussion, only a rabid ideological zealot could introduce it when it's as relevant to the future as a catastrophically awful Alex Proyas film.
As for blather about capitalism lacking romantic appeal, words fail the pond ... we're talking about government here, not undiluted tooth and claw free markets, we're talking about what government might do to facilitate a future where millions in Australia pursue their preferences ... we're not talking ancient copper and wretched HFC ...
But do go on, do go on and entirely miss the Proyas point ...
No man left behind? Turnbull must fall into step with the George Christensens, Cory Bernardis, Tony Abbotts, Erica Abetzs, Andrew Bolts and the world of the NBN hating, climate science denying pack of the Oz commentariat?
Now there's a recipe to ensure the Tories will keep on missing the entire point of innovation.
Who's sounding and looking Alex Proyas stupid now?
Oh okay, even the man who made Gods of Egypt shouldn't have to take the blame for the loony right. What do you say Paul Keating?
Sorry, if Dame Slap's loony tunes is any guide, the loons are marching in lock step into the future ...
PS DP, you forgot Target Earth which got a run on teev the other night ... and I still have the Plan 9 From Outer Space DVD, thank you.
ReplyDeleteBut I admit that coming from a barefaced Dame Slap I was stunned to read this:
"Turnbull must own this election by owning his mistakes. Not just for the cameras as he did yesterday, though that's a start. Owning your mistakes means understanding them. Voters don't flock to you because you've had brilliant careers in the past or because you think you're brilliant now."
Now that actually makes sense ! Umm, well anyway it comes very close to what I was thinking when I saw Malware's "mea not very culpa at all" performance on teev last night. With a performance like that, Mal might almost be in line to join Micallef as a lawyer turned public jokester.
But then, a roaring return to form with just a little "praise" of the Malheur when she said:
"The founder of Ozemail ..."
Oh dear, that little Liberal lie again - when they're not trying to tell us that Mal "invented the Internet". Who was it that said that again ?
Anyway, as you pithily responded, DP: "The founder of Ozemail? No you deluded goose...".
Just for the record, the founder of Ozemail (and the founder of Malware's fortune) is Sean Howard. All that Turnbull did was put in $500,000 in 1994 then sit back and collect the dividends ($57,000,000) in 1999 when Ozemail was sold to Worldcom.
Ozemail went nowhere, typical of this so-called financial wunderkind. It's price ballooned before the sale, why? Vampire squid's tentacles? TPG, primus, dodo, etc were small fry when Malware latched onto Ozemail but did more business than Ozemail by the time it was sold at a dodgy premium. Goldman sachs had their hooks well into WorldCom and brokered the Ozemail sale to them for a ridiculous price. Not long after that Worldcom crashed, the biggest collapse ever to that date. Malware walked away with $57m, and goldmansachs had offloaded their rotten WorldCom stock onto suckers before it burnt. Malware had by then joined the vampire squid in other large scams in Australia.
Delete