Naked Samoans

                 11.05.2000 - 

                 Laugh Chamber
                 Review: Russell Baillie

                 The full title to this latest instalment from the still fully
                 dressed troupe is Naked Samoans Episode One: Wake
                 Me Up Before You Go-Go. 

                 Yes, a prequel and as the Wham! song title indicates,
                 one which has a thing for the 80s. 

                 The trouble is this third strike following Naked Samoans
                 Talk About Their Knives and Naked Samoans Go To
                 Hollywood seems a step back in more ways than just
                 chronology. 

                 It certainly sounded like a crowd pleaser judging by its
                 amused first-night audience. And it would seem from
                 the venue that they are getting more popular every year.

                 But it still felt like an overstretched skit. No, neither of
                 its predecessors was exactly a work of storytelling
                 genius, but at least they tried. The biggest effort in
                 writing this one might well have been coming up with
                 that title. 

                 Of course, it does have its moments. Setting its story
                 among a bunch of fourth-form breakdancers on the eve
                 of the Queen St Riot give Oscar Kightley, Shimpal
                 Lelisi, Dave Fane, Mario Gaoa and Iaheto Ah Hi a
                 chance to have some nostalgic fun and to, er, bust
                 some moves. 

                 And they do take some amusing pot shots at quite a
                 lengthy 80s pop culture hit-list. 

                 Those random targets include The A-Team, the movies
                 Footloose and Rumblefish (one of Fane's characters is
                 "Motorcycle Boy," his "KC" cap alluding to old the
                 Ponsonby Polynesian gang the King Cobras), and
                 unfunky 80s white pop (another Fane character is
                 "Vienna," cue Ultravox song). 

                 However, that wind-back of the years also means that
                 the delivery of Wake Me Up ... frequently resorts to
                 something quite juvenile. 

                 True, most of the characters are too, but that fall-back
                 silliness helps make for a downhill slide of interest in
                 the show's second half. 

                 Granted, the sound mix - there's a live DJ helping
                 supply the music and occasional sound effects - had
                 first-night gremlins. 

                 And Fane, returning to the boards much slimmer but
                 seemingly otherwise unaffected after suffering a stroke,
                 was his old wild-eyed multiple personality self and an
                 often hilarious show-within-a-show. 

                 But otherwise, a case of diminishing returns and all up,
                 Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go is less the full George
                 Michael, more an Andrew Ridgeley. 

                 The show continues until Saturday.

Dirty City

                 11.05.2000 - 

                 Silo Theatre
                 Review: Susan Budd

                 If Dirty City were not a comedy, it would be a modern
                 tragedy. 

                 A successful businesswoman is brought to the brink of
                 disaster by life in the fast lane. 

                 Craving the warmth of human contact, she humiliates
                 herself in desperate sexual ploys to gain the attention of
                 an indifferent artist. 

                 Her lover adds insult to injury by dumping her and
                 leading a putsch to supplant her as head of their
                 corporation. 

                 Her 29-year-old son is trapped in the behaviour and
                 emotional maturity of a 9-year-old. 

                 She is incapable of making a decision without
                 consulting a guru, mute apart from intoning "Om" at
                 intervals. 

                 But this is farce, slick and manic. 

                 Margaret-Mary Hollins, power-suited to rival Jenny
                 Shipley, commands the stage as Cynthia Turnbulls.
                 Agile as an acrobat, she cavorts on the boardroom
                 table, preens and purrs like a big cat and pursues her
                 prey with single-minded determination. 

                 Seldom without a cheesy grin, she is terrifying and very
                 funny. 

                 Mistress of the quick change, she parades before a
                 sculptor in ever-decreasing costumes, forcing him to
                 flight through her sexy undulations and deep-throated
                 roars. It is comedy of embarrassment as she alternately
                 flaunts her sexuality and bullies a succession of
                 gobsmacked men. 

                 Jonathan Brugh, who is her equal in the art of quick
                 change, plays the assorted blokes. He shines as the
                 guru, wrapped in a big shawl, his eyes rolling in answer
                 to each question. 

                 As the son in ghastly scenic jumper, he bobs and
                 bustles to great effect. And as a ruthless corporate man
                 he displays a perfect blend of overweening ambition and
                 fake modesty. 

                 It is inevitable that Cynthia wins the day. The scene in
                 which she munches through a bread roll while weeping
                 and haranguing a boardroom table and its entourage of
                 spineless usurpers is marvellous. 

                 Dirty City is almost a satire, but for the mania of its
                 comedy and the fact that, despite all her ghastliness,
                 Cynthia is essentially admirable and more than a little
                 likeable. 

                 It is also splendidly, joyously over the top, revelling in
                 the fun and games of power. 

                 The show contines until Saturday.



                 Laugh! Lines: Thrills alive with the sound of
                 Glass

                 11.05.2000 - Comedians at this year's International
                 Laugh! Festival tell us what makes them ticklish. 

                 Introducing ... John Glass. 

                 Name of show: The Sound of Glass. 

                 Being a comedian - the job you've always wanted
                 or an escape from a proper one? Discuss with
                 examples of previous work: 

                 Hell, I thought it was a real job. I had some work
                 experience on an ant farm once but I got off on the
                 wrong foot, killed my homestay family on the first day,
                 all billion of them. 

                 Your major point of difference from all the other
                 acts at this year's festival?

                 a) room service b) fuzzy ears c) good posture - you
                 choose. 

                 Your urge to get up on stage and make people
                 laugh is more the result of a) psychological
                 imbalance or b) towering confidence?

                 c) the rent. Having-to-pay-rent syndrome or rent-arrhoea
                 affects a wide number of comedians. A chronic
                 condition that usually surfaces once a week and can
                 only be alleviated by the haemorrhaging of money. 

                 Who or what always makes you laugh? 

                 The tickling of a little spot just behind my knee. 

                 And when you do, do you snigger, chuckle, giggle,
                 guffaw?

                 I like to titter. 

                 The funniest word in the English language is: 

                 Cockamamy. 

                 Is comedy still the new rock'n'roll?

                 Feng shui is the new rock'n'roll. Comedy is the new
                 Morris dancing. 

                 *The Sound of Glass is at Manifesto nightly until
                 Saturday, 7 pm.


Our Back Yard - Black Grace
                 Dance

                 09.06.2000 - 

                 Maidment Theatre
                 Review: Bernadette Rae 

                 Neil Ieremia takes the national sport, cultural identity,
                 our international image, the very heart of Godzone, and
                 gives it a good old once-over in his hilarious and clever
                 new piece of dance theatre, New Religion, which
                 occupies the second half of the slick new Back Yard
                 programme. 

                 Naughty Neil has got actor Bruce Hopkins slung up
                 above the stage in a reclining chair, chafing on just like
                 one and a half million other male souls of our land, in
                 the wee small hours of a Big Game Day. 

                 Except Hopkins' passion is coloured purple in a
                 selection of sonnets from the great bard, including a
                 finale that sings the certain praises of Black in very
                 superior style. 

                 But you will recognise the gist, all right! 

                 Meanwhile, on the lower layer, Black Grace's dance
                 team proper, decked out in crushed velvet pantaloons,
                 are joined by beefy actors Oscar Keightly and Geoff
                 Dolan, as a pair of know-it-all coaches, endlessly
                 verbalising - just like those endlessly boring real ones
                 on TV. 

                 The grandest of music plays as that familiar drama, all
                 centred on an egg-shaped ball, is reflected out from a
                 dozen sharply cut facets, laying the country's very soul
                 quite bare. 

                 The message may be too much for genuine hardcore
                 fans to take - but the alienated minority will enjoy the
                 perspective, and the dancing is fantastic. 

                 It should be compulsory viewing for all makers of sports
                 programmes and sports page editors. 

                 In the first half of the programme is the beautiful In
                 Moving Memory, which Auckland has not had the
                 pleasure of seeing before, and Ieremia's Deep Far,
                 which has pleasured us quite frequently, and does so
                 again. 

                 Sandwiched between the two comes Creek Boys, a
                 collaborative creation depicting the young male growing
                 up in Cannons Creek, Porirua, suitably embellished with
                 obvious, autobiographical insight and an original music
                 composition by DJ Manuel Bundy. 

                 All in all, Black Grace have never looked so good - to a
                 man. But Player of the Day still has to be the
                 multi-talented Sam Fuataga, for his vocal contributions,
                 Break Boy cool - and true communion with that leather
                 ovoid!


Soap comes to the stage 
 
04.09.2000 - By GILBERT WONG 
There's a new game in town. In television circles it's called spot the actor/scriptwriter/network executive, and is prompted 
by a play Serial Killers, a satirical look behind the scenes of an almost familiar soap opera. 
Set around the "table of pain," writers and storyliners let their psyches run wild as they explore the creative tension 
between writers and actors; writers and network executives; writers and television. 
We learn things that we're not sure we want to know. As the character and writer Simone says, "We writers write stories 
that lead to actors becoming famous which means they have way more sex than we do. Hence ... The War." 
These writers call actors "warm props"; they refer to the editors of women's magazines as "the trash bitches"; and they 
see audience demographics, a key tool television programmers rely on, as " ... the stealth bomber of television. The least 
exact science in the world." 
First-time playwright James Griffin can write from experience. For more than a decade his name has scrolled down in the 
credits of programmes from Gloss and City Life to Plainclothes, Marlin Bay and Shortland Street where he is script 
supervisor. 
Griffin, whose natural state seems to be ironic detachment, is quick to put in the compulsory disclaimer: "You write 
characters. The views expressed by the characters are not necessarily the views of the playwright, that's what you do as a 
writer, isn't it? 
"I will confess that I have stolen snippets of dialogues and stories of people's lives. But if people are going there who know 
the telly world and say that's so and so, they should know the characters come from a different place than reality." 
People think writing is a lonely job. Not in television. Writers sit around a table debating ideas, characters and plot. For 
Griffin the play led to the rediscovery of a solo pleasure. He could sit down in the evenings and write. By himself. No 
producers. No script editors. No network executives. No meetings. No input. 
"Theatre is something where there is no committee involved. The nature of television is group writing which is what the 
play's about. To be able to bury yourself in your office at home and tap away is a rare pleasure," he says. 
Griffin, 38, was born in Whakatane and grew up in Hastings. He finished a degree in political studies and a diploma in 
broadcast communications at Auckland University before taking on a job in 1985 as a trainee script editor at TVNZ's 
drama department. 
Despite nostalgia for the Hawkes Bay, Auckland is now home. He lives in a Grey Lynn villa with wife Tania and their 
children, Ruby and Max. 
Since 1989 he has earned a living as a freelancer. He has a contract as script supervisor on Shortland Street for South 
Pacific Pictures in Henderson. Of the skills he has practised, storylining, the process of plot development which lies at the 
heart of Serial Killers, was the most fun, he says. 
A prolific writer, Griffin's main problem has been the length of his scripts. His first versions of Serial Killers would have 
added up to more than three hours of stage time. With director Colin McColl, who has directed Shortland Street, Griffin 
trimmed it to a more digestible two hours. 
It was fun. He could luxuriate in a scene that could run for up to 15 minutes, a leap in focus from the average Shortland 
Street scene of 90 seconds. 
After reading the play, it is easy to accuse Griffin of letting off creative frustration. He jibes that I should see what was cut. 
Then adds: "There's nothing wrong with a good vent now and then. I guess my views on television will come across. We 
don't have the television we could have. Once you become a senior writer in television you see everything from every side 
and understand why the programmers and network executives make the decisions they do ... 
"But they're just wrong." He is emphatic here. 
"Sometimes they're so wrong and they underestimate the audience so much. They have this amorphous mass view of the 
audience and they dictate what you need to fill the precious few gaps you get to put our own culture and drama on 
screen." 
Griffin believes the ideas should come before the need to satisfy a particular audience. "I'd rather see television that 
stirred me and made me go 'Ohh, that's nice.' It doesn't need to be elitist or drive away an audience." 
He cites classic television like Seinfeld and Hill Street Blues which broke the formulae for sitcoms and cop shows. With 
strong creators who were able to maintain their ideas, the programmes became popular and critically acclaimed. 
Griffin says local television need look only at the great successes in American television. Ally McBeal, The Practice, ER 
are shows that win ratings and please critics because, argues Griffin, creators like David E. Kelley and Steven Bochco 
have maintained their control of what is screened. 
Perhaps, then, Serial Killersis a first, a play about the most pervasive medium we have and what's wrong with it. For 
writers it can be a bruising place. 
Griffin: "When you write for television you have to put up such a strong shell. You're forever giving your work away. You 
do things for money rather than creative satisfaction. You deal with that by taking professional pride and keeping some 
distance from your work. If you put emotion into it, that's when it will get ripped away from you, and that's when it hurts. 
"Maybe that's what's missing from television. Quite often you don't have that emotional input, you get well-told stories, but 
without a kind of love in it." 
Griffin, who affects amused irony in conversation, catches his tone and swiftly returns to flip self-mockery: "Not that I want 
to go all hippie or anything here," he says, smiling. 
* Serial Killers, directed by Colin McColl for the Auckland Theatre Company opens on Friday at the Herald 
Theatre. 

Soapy song from the heart 
 
04.09.2000 - 
You love soaps? You can sing the theme tune from Shortland Street? In Serial Killers, the soap comes to the stage. 
Director Colin McColl and writer James Griffin have created a mini-soap Heart of Hearts within the play which will screen 
on monitors. 
The imaginary soap comes complete with its own infectiously inane theme tune, sung by actor Kevin Smith. 
Get ready to sing along: 
Making love is easy 
When your heart is on the wall 
Don't wake me 'til I dream tomorrow 
Dream it all away - and you know 
In the tide of reason you can make it to the shore 
Take it easy 
Heart of Hearts 

Tandi Wright as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
Tandi Wright - Leaving behind telly soap to grapple with Shakespeare 
 
04.09.2000 - By SUSAN BUDD 
Looking like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Olive Oyl, Tandi Wright has wowed audiences and critics in the role of Helena in 
the touring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
Slim and leggy, with a mop of platinum curls, she wrestles her swains to the floor. Shakespeare's words trip off her tongue, sounding 
more like Ponsonby cafe-speak than 16th-century blank verse. 
Just 30, she has returned to the stage after four years on Shortland Street as nurse Caroline Buxton, a woman unsure of her sexuality. 
Now she is rediscovering the thrill and risk of theatre. 
"Working with such a high calibre of people, watching them every day pushing the limits, made me realise that I must do that too," 
she says. "I wondered if I could do it and to my great delight I think I can. 
"Part of it is me saying I bloody well can do this, so I try 110 per cent, and part of it is probably bluff." 
After some very complex text work with the director Simon Bennett, Wright observes that Helena leapt out as insecure, neurotic, self-
absorbed and interested in nothing but her love for Demetrius - a guy she describes as a total drip. Love is blind, she laughs. 
Wright also feared it might be possible to mess up badly. But no, the audiences roar as she wrestles her hapless lover. "Audiences 
always enjoy watching women beat up men," she says. 
The touring New Zealand Actors Company production is proving enormously successful. "We have had quite a few letters saying, 'I 
brought my husband along kicking and screaming and he spent the entire next evening regaling our friends.' Many have never seen 
Shakespeare before and loved it," she says. "School kids love all the sexy, rude bits and Puck, because he is so wild. They shout and 
whistle and make yowling cat noises when Helena and Hermia fight." 
At forums after each school's performance, Wright has been impressed at the calibre of questions. One was, "Do you have to have a 
passion to be an actor?" 
She agrees that you do, because it is not easy financially or emotionally. "You have to realise that people are not going to like you all 
the time, that you have to have faith in your own judgment," she says. 
"Acting challenges me the way nothing else does. This profession puts you on the line. Truth is the key to acting. Audiences will suss 
you if you are not being truthful." 
After four years on television, Wright is accustomed to recognition, but has managed an initial return to anonymity. 
"I had a wonderful day when I first had this fabulous hair job and went into Newmarket with my glasses on and it was like freedom 
but it has worn off, unfortunately." 
Her mother, Dinah Priestley, was a core cast member of Close To Home, before achieving success as a maker of batiks. She is now in 
the field of oral history. Her father, Vernon, was a successful journalist who now runs a safari business in Zambia. Her sister Justine is 
a film editor in London and edited the Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September, about the massacre at the 1972 Munich 
Olympics. 
But she is unconcerned: "If I get used to this feeling, it could be a very positive thing because, though the uncertainty is destabilising, 
it is also energising. There will be no sitting on my laurels." 
If none of her irons heats in the fire she plans to travel to India. "I love travelling and it is good for you to realise your insignificance in 
the scheme of things," she says. "When I come back I am struck by the intensity of light and the slightly over-regulated society where 
I can't make a move without someone knowing." 

Brent Harman returns to run Prime. 
 
TV: Prime mover turns channel towards a bigger share of viewing market 
 
04.09.2000 - By LOUISA CLEAVE 
Move over and make room for us in the bed - that's the message to TV One from Prime Television's chief, who is a former 
head of TVNZ. 
New Zealander Brent Harman, TVNZ chief executive from 1991 to 1995, has returned from five years in the United 
Kingdom to head Australian-based Prime Television. 
He says Prime could operate as a complementary channel to TV One rather than as a competitor. 
Prime has been operating here for two years. 
Entering its vital third year late last week, Harman said the channel was doing well. 
The company's annual financial results will be released later this week. Last year it reported a $A4.3 million ($5.2 million) 
loss on its New Zealand channel. 
An Auckland media buyer said Prime had not increased or lost its audience share - 3 to 4 per cent of all viewers in prime 
time - during its first two years of operation. 
Bridget Soljan, television manager for Total Media, doubted Prime had made any impact on TV One's advertising revenue 
or taken much of its audience. 
She said the channel said Prime was cost-efficient for advertisers and had reliable programming, but could promote itself 
more. "A lot of people are still not aware of it and where they can find it." 
Harman said it was a priority to increase Prime's coverage from around 70 per cent of the country to the 93 per cent 
threshold which would allow it access to New Zealand On Air funding. 
"It's not something I would be confident about saying we could do quickly but that would have to be Prime's aim. We could 
have access to New Zealand On Air funding and have more local programming. 
"We can talk to Sky about sports rights. Sky would find it a bit difficult to justify selling us any mainstream sports rights 
while we're at 70 per cent, but I think at plus-90 per cent they would enjoy having another buyer for their rights." 
Harman said Prime had already carved out its niche in the New Zealand market, aiming for older, upmarket viewers with 
quality British dramas and documentaries. 
"You've got TV2, TV3 and TV4 all targeting the younger audience so really we're in competition - although I'd barely 
describe us as competition - with TV One." 
Rather, said Harman, TV One should "roll over in bed and make room for us. If they roll the other way and crush us that 
would barely be in the spirit of public service broadcasting." 
Prime has had its victories over the bigger channel. Harman says the channel had stolen programming such as The Bill, 
Last of the Summer Wine and The Games from under the nose of TV One - "programmes that once upon a time you 
would not have imagined being anywhere else except TV One." 
Harman is disheartened to learn of TVNZ plans to resurrect regional news which, under his reign at TVNZ, was scrapped 
because, he says, New Zealand On Air stopped funding it. 
He had hoped Prime could expand its regional news coverage to cover the major communities where it transmits. 
"Local news is expensive but by the same token it could be a unique attribute of Prime. 
"We've got local news in two areas at the moment and I'd like to see us expand that to all areas." 
However, Harman said it would be mad to take on TVNZ, and its news resources, in regional news. 
"It would be much harder for us, in fact it would be near on impossible to compete with TVNZ in local news. I would like it 
to be us that did it but I would like to see local news reintroduced one way or another." 

Performance: Auckland Philharmonia (September 2) 
 
04.09.2000 - 
Bruce Mason Centre  
Review: Tara Werner 
As Raymond Hawthorne said so mellifluously in his reading from the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, the play runs "two hours' traffick 
of our stage." 
In comparison, this final Band and the Bard concert only contained roughly 63 minutes of music. 
No wonder the audience felt short-changed on Saturday night. 
Yet the idea of mixing words with music is an excellent one, especially when presented as convincingly as Hawthorne's all-too-brief 
introduction. 
Ironically, his original reading had little to do with setting the scene for Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, being Mercutio's fanciful 
speech beginning "O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you." 
By nipping in the prologue beforehand, the actor provided a more relevant preface to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy 
Overture. 
Still, some of the musicians must have felt they were playing in a living nightmare straight from Queen Mab's nocturnal reveries 
during the programme. 
Members of the woodwind in particular seemed to be having an off night. A note breaking in the clarinet's opening theme in Borodin's 
In the Steppes of Central Asia nearly ruined the atmosphere of that work entirely. 
Fortunately equilibrium was achieved, and the strength of the composer's superb orchestration soon revealed itself. 
Likewise, Tchaikovsky's dramatic musical interpretation of Romeo and Juliet's tragic love affair was threatened by some suspect 
intonation in the woodwind section. 
Conductor Vladimir Verbitsky may have tried his hardest but despite all the hiss and fire, this was not exactly the orchestra's best 
effort. 
Fortunately, the two works beforehand contained the most satisfying playing in an otherwise highly variable performance. 
Schubert's youthful (some would say precocious) Symphony No 1 may have been a Haydn and Mozart clone, with a bit of early 
Beethoven thrown in for good measure, but it was played well and with zest. 
And Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Flutes and Strings RV533 saw sisters-in law Christine Mori and Jennifer Seddon-Mori play with 
equal mellowness, the music's light and shade given careful consideration through contrasting dynamics. 

Kids into Books: The Bad Beginning 
 
04.09.2000 - 
Author: Lemony Snicket 
Illustrator: Brett Helquist 
Publisher: Harper Collins, $17.95 
Age group: 8-12 years
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. 
In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. 
This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. 
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial 
features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery and despair. 
I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

                 Film Festival: Rotten business

                 08.07.2000 - By GRAHAM REID 

                 The Sex Pistols changed many lives, aspiring filmmaker
                 Julien Temple's more than most. After accidentally
                 meeting them in their dockland rehearsal room one
                 afternoon in 1975, he followed them as they became the
                 most reviled band in Britain. 

                 He filmed their shambolic, thrilling live shows, sat
                 junkie-punk Sid Vicious down for a rare coherent
                 interview, was assaulted in the street for being associ-
                 ated with them and even now the band looms large in
                 his life with his new documentary feature about the
                 group and its times, The Filth and the Fury. 

                 After the skyrocket career of the Pistols exploded,
                 Temple made the hilarious Rock'n'Roll Swindle movie
                 with the band's manager Malcolm McLaren. It was
                 McLaren's version of media manipulation. It was also
                 largely lies and exaggeration, and Temple says his
                 latest Pistols documentary — which draws on hundreds
                 of hours of band footage, interviews, clips of musicians
                 and television advertisements from the period — is the
                 necessary corrective to Swindle's cartoon portrayal of
                 life on the frontline of social chaos and four-chord truths.

                 "There has been a lot of theorising and philosophising
                 about the Sex Pistols," says Temple, "but the missing
                 piece was always the voice of the band. I've tried to
                 make this a human story rather than a theoretical one. 

                 "Swindle was written as a deliberate polemic thrown into
                 the ring when the band split up. It was designed to
                 provoke and confuse the kind of idolising fans the group
                 had attracted. 

                 "What the Sex Pistols hoped to do was break down that
                 idol-worshipping relationship and encourage people to
                 express themselves rather than living through star
                 figures. 

                 "The attempt with Swindle was to confuse reality and
                 fiction, but over the years those ideas have perhaps
                 been taken too literally. This film is to partly correct
                 them." 

                 Where The Filth and the Fury scores over its
                 predecessor is in the period footage: the flop-haired pop
                 of the day they were up against, the broader context of
                 London's rubbish strike and IRA bombings and the
                 mundanity of life on the dole ... 

                 "You can't understand that group without understanding
                 where they came from," says Temple. "They were very
                 much shaped by their time and class background. They
                 were defined by what they wouldn't be able to achieve
                 and how narrow their options were. Their anger and
                 desperation came out of that and fuelled the music." 

                 But that anger, in retrospect more focused than it
                 seemed at the time, made them the scourge of Britain,
                 especially after Bill Grundy's television interview.
                 Through stop-frame replay and commentary by the
                 band, The Filth and the Fury shows how provoked (and
                 initially well mannered) they were before it descended
                 into schoolyard slanging. 

                 In that moment everything changed. There was a
                 bandwagon for politicians to leap on, the Pistols
                 became convenient scapegoats and they were
                 assaulted in the streets. What was malcontent
                 underground rock'n'roll noise became characterised as
                 a social revolution to be exterminated. 

                 "There was a moment when it almost seemed like a
                 coordinated hunting down of them if they went out of
                 doors. That seemed sinister. 

                 "But when councillors were saying they were better off
                 dead that was part of the game, it was a victory for the
                 Sex Pistols. You knew they were shaking them if
                 authority figures looked at kids like that. That response
                 was expected, what wasn't was serious violence on the
                 street. And MI5 blacklistings." Temple, by association,
                 was a target too. Walking down Oxford St reading NME,
                 a fist came slamming through the pages. 

                 After the Grundy show, however, the band also realised
                 the power they had and manufactured outrage. Temple
                 recalls them being paid to smash up a hotel lobby while
                 photographers flashed away. 

                 "It was a combination of having fun with it and riding the
                 monster and also the monster fighting back and in the
                 end reestablishing some kind of control." Temple's film
                 probes all this through period footage but also interviews
                 with the remaining band members today. Vicious
                 comes off remarkably well in a long intercut interview.
                 He is a person again rather than the T-shirt icon he has
                 become. 

                 As expected, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) makes the
                 most pertinent, interesting comments. He also breaks
                 down when talking about Vicious who, lest we forget,
                 had been a friend from before the band started. He died,
                 Lydon says, reminding an audience of the often ignored
                 obvious. 

                 "Sid was a very interesting human being," says Temple,
                 "but obviously an addictive personality. He destroyed
                 himself with the heroin but before that he was a
                 wonderful character. I think the interview we have with
                 him shows his humour and an overview of what's
                 happening and how awful it is to be trapped in
                 addiction." 

                 And Lydon's tears remind there was as much affection
                 as rivalry between the two. But the band was destroyed
                 from both within and without. After the Grundy show
                 Johnny Thunder and the Heartbreakers arrived from the
                 States and with them came heroin and Nancy Spungen,
                 the woman who became Vicious' girlfriend and drug
                 procurer. 

                 The underground was dragged into mainstream
                 attention, Vicious started his relentless slide, the
                 American tour was ill-conceived and McLaren absented
                 himself. It was over. 

                 Temple filmed Vicious' My Way video: "Getting him out
                 of bed was the main job on that shoot. But in a sense
                 the group was always destined to end, they certainly
                 weren't a 20-year plan of a rock band." 

                 Today Lydon lives as an exile in Los Angeles: "It's an
                 odd city for him to be in because he's so connected to
                 England. Say what you like about him, he is what he is.
                 He certainly hasn't mellowed." But punk has been and
                 gone and the crucible in which it was created is different
                 now. It's been done. 

                 "It won't happen again in that way," says Temple, but
                 that doesn't mean something else won't happen. I hope
                 it will. It's overdue." 

                 * The Filth and the Fury screens at the Auckland
                 International Film Festival on Friday, July 14, 11 pm
                 (Sky City Theatre), and Sunday, July 16, 8.30 pm
                 (Civic).
Augie issues Storm warning

                 08.07.2000 - 

                 Critics can say what they like about movie of the
                 moment The Perfect Storm (ours has his say over the
                 page). But we thought we'd ask the experts too. So TV3
                 weatherman Augie Auer what did ya think?: "The TV
                 weather guy sits there looking into the screen and has a
                 comment like, 'My God, I've never seen anything like
                 this in my life'. And I kind of mumbled under my breath,
                 'Yeah, and you never will', because it's a little pushed
                 over the top. 

                 "They show a cold front which rams into this hurricane.
                 Hurricanes are run by the heat of the ocean and land
                 and cold air kill them. And there's cold air being
                 ingested into this storm and it should have phased it
                 down and killed it. 

                 Yes, he knows it's a true story but Augie says the
                 storm which eventuates in the movie would take several
                 days to happen, "and this is almost instantaneous."
                 That's Hollywood for you. 

                 Meanwhile, TV One weatherologist Karen Olsen says
                 she is looking forward to the movie after reading the
                 book: "I'm interested to see how they will portray the
                 storm in the film." 

                 A LONG DELIVERY FOR MILK 

                 Those keen to see Harry Sinclair's latest movie The
                 Price of Milk which has its New Zealand premiere at the
                 Auckland International Film Festival on July 20 but are
                 waiting for its commercial release should be warned: it's
                 not likely to return to our screens until the New Year. It
                 seems the film is going out into the world first — it's
                 been sold to an American distributor for US release next
                 February as well as Canada, Japan, Germany, Russia,
                 Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and, of course, Iceland —
                 but a local distributor hasn't yet been found. 

                 Tuned in: Bright stars up for Dark Knight

                 08.07.2000 - By LOUISA CLEAVE 

                 Ivanhoe - he isn't the host of a local gardening show, but
                 the loyal knight and star of a new locally made
                 television series, Dark Knight. 

                 The "sword and sorcery" adventure, which starts on TV2
                 tonight and plays as fast and loose with Sir Walter
                 Scott's original story as Hercules: The Legendary
                 Journeys did with Greek mythology, should recruit a
                 legion of fans - and we await any crusade for the
                 channel to move the series from its bizarre 10.30pm
                 time slot with interest. 

                 Dark Knight, starring English actor Ben Pullen as
                 Ivanhoe and Charlotte Comer as his companion
                 Rebecca, was filmed entirely around Wellington but
                 there is no point looking for the Beehive in the
                 background. 

                 It has been eclipsed by the imposing Rotherwood
                 castle, the family home of Ivanhoe. His epic quest is to
                 restore King Richard to the throne his nasty brother,
                 Prince John, has happily taken up. The opening scene
                 of tonight's first episode gives a taste of the special
                 effects to come when the sorcerer employed by Prince
                 John to destroy Ivanhoe snatches a spell book. 

                 The ghostly protector of the tome comes screaming out
                 of the darkness in a hair-raising example of the
                 computer wizardry said to equal that of Lord of the
                 Rings. 

                 And it's already popular on Ivanhoe's old stomping
                 ground - Dark Knight premiered on Britain's Channel 5
                 last Saturday to more than one million viewers.


                 08.07.2000 - By GRAHAM REID 

                 Maaka McGregor has had a good day. In Auckland for a
                 week from his home in Titahi Bay and talking up the
                 Wai 100% album he has recorded with his partner Wai
                 (aka Mina) Ripia, he's just come from Mai FM. 

                 His pitch met with a positive, if unpublishably
                 enthusiastic, response from programme director Manu
                 Taylor. A good day. 

                 McGregor is under no illusions how difficult it will be to
                 get tracks off Wai 100% playlisted. The album is all in
                 Maori and even Mai FM - whose local content and te reo
                 commitment have sometimes been questioned - was
                 never going to simply fall into line. 

                 But with a little editing, says Taylor, the track Te
                 Tokomauri Manawa will certainly get airplay. It's
                 possible Mai FM - or indeed any contemporary music
                 station - would find something on this album of te reo,
                 block rockin' beats, hip-hop textures, wairua-soul and
                 chant-based melodies. 

                 McGregor and Ripia have carved an album long on
                 tradition and diversity. There's even an aerobics track
                 which McGregor says they have sampled and extended
                 to a half-hour version. 

                 "There are a lot of marae aerobic programmes now so
                 we've got some music using poi rhythms, at 156 bpm,
                 and with Maori lyrics." 

                 What pulls Wai 100% into a cohesive whole despite its
                 market-friendly diversity, are te reo and the use of
                 amplified poi beats, a technique pioneered by Dalvanius
                 on the Poi E album and occasionally explored by
                 Moana and the Moa Hunters. 

                 "For us, that's where our sounds come from, what
                 makes us unique is our language and our sounds,"
                 says McGregor. 

                 "Many of the [songs] we as Maori produce are
                 monotonal and away from western song structure. But if
                 we include sounds of poi and breaths and [foot] stamps
                 in a more contemporary form, the ears out there will
                 start going,'That sounds good.' 

                 And Wai 100% certainly sounds good as it brings the
                 collective experience of McGregor and Ripia together.
                 McGregor was a member of the seminal Wellington
                 reggae-rock band Aotearoa while at school ("We got
                 permission to go on tour before School Cert, it was like,
                 'This is our career!"') and has played with Moana and
                 the Moa Hunters, Dam Native, Upper Hutt Posse, Marie
                 Sheehan, and is currently in Southside of Bombay. 

                 He started as a guitarist and moved to drums and
                 percussion, and for Wai 100% he has played all the
                 instruments (additional keyboards by Iain Gordon) and
                 had it mastered in Sydney's 301 Studio. 

                 He has been with Ripia since meeting her on the road in
                 1988 when she was with Moana and Moa Hunters. "Her
                 dad passed away two years ago and she went through
                 a lot of emotions. She wrote the songs for Wai 100%
                 from out of that." 

                 Despite its unhappy origins, Wai 100% has a
                 celebratory feel - and McGregor says the response
                 since its launch in Wellington a month ago has been
                 enthusiastic, especially from those overseas who've
                 heard it. 

                 And as much as the album is up to the moment in
                 contemporary production and sound, so too is
                 McGregor and Ripia's company Minaaka Ltd which
                 boasts an elaborate website with links to French sites. 

                 By chance the pair met Frenchman Jo Le Guen, who
                 attempted to row from Wellington to Chile earlier this
                 year. They hit it off and the filmmaker who was shooting
                 footage of Le Guen for a documentary asked to use
                 some of their music for the soundtrack. 

                 The filmmakers' website builder offered to construct one
                 for them, and now McGregor says they are looking to
                 creating a new one in French, encouraged by news that
                 their aerobic track is getting play in Paris clubs. 

                 McGregor says they are looking at distribution of the
                 album in France and working up a live show involving
                 DJs, poi players and singers. 

                 And McGregor has a clear answer for those who would
                 say their album might be more accessible if it had some
                 lyrics in English. 

                 "Our language is dying and the buck stops with me and
                 with you and with everyone in this country in order for
                 our language to survive. This is our way of contributing
                 to the survival of the language in a contemporary form. 

                 "If we didn't perform in Maori, in 30 years there'd be an
                 even bigger lack of Maori and Maori music out there. 

                 "We should all have been brought up speaking Maori so
                 it's natural progression for us to speak two languages."



                 Warning: fair Aussies advancing

                 08.07.2000 - 

                 Television brought them into our living rooms and briefly
                 made them part of our lives. It was almost as if we knew
                 them, even though the more we knew the less likely it
                 seemed we'd want them round for dinner. Yes, they
                 were Bardot, those mouthy, well-groomed Australians of
                 the truly blissful persuasion. After showcase
                 performances here earlier this year they have decided to
                 do a proper tour with a proper live band. Their timing
                 could be good again: the new I Should've Let You Go
                 single is creeping up on radio. 

                 Bardot dates: Palmerston North, Manawatu Stadium
                 (Saturday, Aug 5); Christchurch Town Hall (Sunday,
                 Aug 6); Wellington, Queens Wharf Events Centre
                 (Wednesday, Aug 9) and Auckland, Logan Campbell
                 Centre (Thursday, Aug 10). Tickets on sale through
                 Ticketek from Thursday. 

                 From Australia also comes comedy act The Four Noels
                 (actually three Kiwis making a living in Australia's funny
                 business). They wowed crowds during the recent Laugh
                 Festival and are back for a limited season at the Classic
                 with their Magnificent Seventeen show. They will also
                 reprise their earlier original award-winning show, NHOJ
                 Space Explorer.




Technical skills save sinking plot

Movie Reviews

Gone Fishing: George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg in the Perfect Storm, 
and below, Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman, the comic who becomes a cult 
figure.

THE PERFECT STORM**
Cast: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane, Mary Elizabeth 
Mastrantonio Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Rating: M (low-level offensive language) Running time: 125 minutes 
Opens: Now showing Village, Hoyts, Berkeley
cinemas
There is something wrong when a movie based on a true story is actually 
saved by an artificiality.
In this case it's the technical wizardy which recreates the brutal 
weather 
which hit the North American Altantic
seaboard in October 1991, the subsequent catastrophes at sea from that 
historic meteorologial event becoming the
subject of Sebastian Junger's 1997 gripping and meticulous bestseller.
It's hard not to be equally enthralled and shaken by the final reels, 
where 
we witness the fate of the fishing boat the
Andrea Gail and her crew - which the film extrapolates from Junger's 
work - 
as well as the subplot following the helicopter rescue of a stricken 
yacht's crew and its own ironic aftermath.
But there is much that is awful about the early parts of the film. It's 
as 
if director Petersen - undoubtedly qualified for
the job because of the sealegs and feel for nautical claustrophobia he 
acquired when making Das Boot - is awaiting
for his special-effects budget to be approved for much of the first 
hour.
Certainly, screenwriter William Wittiliff boils down to a superficial 
pulp Junger's contemplation of the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, 
their nearest and dearest, and the Gloucester 
Massachusetts fishing community. But the
melodrama and dialogue are so leaden it may come back in another life 
as a 
keel. And James Horner's relentlessly
swelling score is more likely to induce motion sickness than the 
rolling 
decks.
You start to feel sympathy for those in front of the camera.
Clooney and Wahlberg (as longliner captain Billy Tyne) and Bobby 
Shatford 
(crew member) appear to think they are in
a much better movie. But around them
things clang - like Tyne's little speech to fellow skipper Lina 
Greenlaw 
(Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) about the joys of
being a swordboat captain that sounds as if it was composed by the Old 
Sea 
Dog Greeting Card Company.
There's four other crew too, all with their own soap operas left on the 
dock as the Andrea Gail heads out for one last
haul of the season.
But if those characters are ciphers on dry land, it's hard not to 
become 
attached to their fates even before the swell
comes up.
When it does - with black mountainous waves and a skies of inky menace 
- it 
chills deeply, then thrills. Though as
the megastorm unfolds, the film's depiction of the Andrea Gail's battle 
brings with it a sense of unease with the
visceral excitement. It is, yes, a sinking feeling which has to do with 
making a rollercoaster ride out of a real-life
tragedy. Here "based on a true story" should have meant something more 
than 
showing - spectacularly as it turns out
- just how cruel the sea can be.
- Russell Baillie
MAN ON THE MOON***
Cast: Jim Carrey, Danny Devito, Courtney Love, Paul Giamatti Director: 
Milos Forman Rating: M (contains low-level offensive language) Running 
time: 119 minutes Opens: Now showing, Rialto cinemas
It's probable that only three people in this country have heard of Andy 
Kaufman, alleged genius.
If you don't know the name, then you might remember the American sitcom 
that took him from obscure comic to cult
comic, Taxi.
Still don't recall? He was the mechanic from an obscure Eastern 
European 
country who wore white overalls and had a
voice like he'd been sucking on a bottle of helium.
Some thought he was the star of the show. He was certainly the 
character you either loved or hated. That was, as it happened, 
Kaufman's point - and is clearly also the point made by
director Milos Forman's biopic-cum-tribute (which is so late on cinema 
release here that it is already available on DVD).
Kaufman's line seemed to be this: the performer must provoke the 
audience. 
He did this by mounting elaborate
hoaxes, big and small, on crowds large and little.
The trick, the cunning plan, was to distort the relationship between 
the 
performer and audience, to take the crowd in,
to antagonise a lazy public.
That was Malcolm McLaren's gag too. The Sex Pistols, he's always 
claimed, 
were more about confrontation than the
music.
Screenwriter Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have decided that 
Kaufman thought so too, so Jim Carrey's
Kaufman says his act was "just like punk rock."
That might well be revisionism. But Forman's Life of Kaufman is in many 
ways as confrontational, as much a hall of
mirrors as the man himself is said to have been.
Man on the Moon does repeat, pay homage - and in some cases embroider - 
many of the comic's routines and public
outrages (though Taxi is reduced to a montage, probably because it's 
well 
known). Time hasn't changed them, you either love or despise his 
antics.
Carrey, Hollywood's reigning rubber face, delivers a performance which 
deserves praise. He has studied and perfected
every tic, every vocal nuance, and he truly disappears into character.
Yet Man on the Moon is strangely unengaging. With the lines blurred 
between 
fact and fiction, Kaufman and Carrey,
reality and unreality, the man at the centre of the story remains an 
enigma, a clown without a true shape.
In a sense the film never really gets to the point. It is, much like 
Kaufman's life, a series of obscure attempts at self-amusement.
- Greg Dixon
HEAVEN 
Cast: Martin Donovan, Danny Edwards, Richard Schiff, Patrick Malahide, 
Joanna Going, Karl Urban Director: Scott
Reynolds Rating: R18 Running time: 103 mins Opens: Now showing Rialto
There's style to burn in Reynolds' second feature, but the substance is 
problematic to say, the least.
Even setting aside the continuity queries (the film's multicontinental 
provenance means that cars switch from
righthand to lefthand drive as fast as you can bellow "Cut!"), this 
seedy, hackneyed thriller is much more concerned
about how it looks than how it conies across.
To be fair it does, at least for long moments at a time, look damn 
good. 
Reynolds, whose debut feature The Ugly explored the relationship 
between a serial killer and his therapist, 
shows considerable technical control. But for all its
mid
Pacific pretensions, Heaven is dogged by the problem that bedevils too 
much local product - a script given the go-ahead when it should have 
been regarded as a work in progress.
Donovan (a staple member of Hal Hartley's casts) plays Robert Marling, 
an 
architect who has made something of a
mess of the plans for his own life. His wife Jennifer (Going) has left 
him and is getting it on with
her Psychiatrist (Malahide, the desiccated Casaubon of television's 
Middlemarch). Meanwhile Marling is renovating
the gloomy nightclub
 of Stanner (Schiff), a Scorsesian psychopath with whom he plays 
life-or-death card games, assisted by Heaven
(Edwards), a transvestite clairvoyant whose predictions considerably 
improve her employer's success at the table.
Stanner's club is
called Paradise. Unsubtle irony is this film's long suit.
When Marling, rather by accident, rescues Heaven from a nasty rape in 
an 
alley, she transfers her fortunetelling
allegiance to him. Stanner is not amused.
Reynolds' debt, if not his allegiance, to Quentin Tarantino (remember 
him?) drips from every frame of this selfconscious nonsense, and though 
he flips back and forth through time 
with some deftness, viewers who can
remember Antonioni's Blow up almost 35 years ago may feel they have 
seen 
it before.
Production design and cinematography and editing combine to create an 
atmosphere of unease and the
Performances are more than competent.
But it knits together Poorly and engrosses barely at all.
- Peter Calder
For a critics' guide to what's showing at cinemas, see Movies in Brief, 
page D21. Full reviews are also available at
www.herald.co.nz

It's all a question of tone, really

Rock
Russell Baillie

Tone For The Road: On their third album, the deftones are showing signs 
of hitting the big time

THE DEFTONES White Pony (Maverick)
Whoever the first band was to add "tone" to their name, they sure 
started 
something. It's still an adaptable rock suffix,
as this week's column does its desperate best to prove.
The Deftones are onetime, standard-issue Californian rap metallers who, 
on 
their third album, are showing signs of the
Big Breakthrough. Maybe as this album shows, that's because they have a 
patch to call their own among the genre
we've started calling nu-metal. A sensitive, more thoughtful, tuneful 
and 
adventurously musical approach, which at
times sounds like a splicing of Faith No More, Smashing Pumpkins and, 
when 
singer-guitarist Chine Moreno feels
like going for the high notes, U2.
There's quite a few of the sweeping latter to early tracks Feiticeira 
and 
Digital Bath, before the darkness descends on
the raspy jagged down-tuned guitar surge of Elite. The Faith No More-
ish RX 
Queen, Change (In the House of Flies)
and Knife Pary show an appealing blend of gothic dramatics and sweeping 
choruses. Elsewhere, the mix of sinewy
energy and a feeling that there's something smart going on behind all 
that 
aggro - as on Street Carp - can also remind
of that up-and-coming local band Shihad.
If it suddenly sounds late in the piece as if the Deftones have turned 
into 
a certain other Californian art-metal outfit, it
means you've reached the bellicose duet with Tool
singer Maynard James Keenan on Passenger. But not to worry. That guest 
spot 
is just one overwrought touch on an
album that fair revels in them. They may not be God's gift to nu-metal 
but 
you get the feeling that the Deftones just
may be the right band at the right time.
THE BLUETONES Science and Nature (Mercury)
'Tones No 2 are the outfit that proved a bit of a Britpop B-team on 
their 
1998 debut Return to the Last Chance Saloon,
but they leave an impression this time round. Not that the resulting 
album 
is anything that special, just an enjoyable collection of sometimes 
crafty, frequently toe-tapping songs, some (opener 
Zorro) suggesting the wiry style of
Supergrass/ Suede, especially
because Mark Morriss' pinched voice is pitched somewhere between fey 
and 
Finn. Which also means they can
sound like mid-period Split Enz on The Last of The Great Navigators and 
that perhaps Neil's lawyers should be in touch about Mudslide.
A pointless instrumental midway undoes some of the good work, as do the 
smirking automotive double entendres in
Autophilia. But it all ends variously warm and fuzzy, care of the 
skifflepop of Slack Jaw and the extended folky finale
Emily's Pine.
THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES Pay Attention (Island)
And from the two-tone department ...
this umpteenth album from the veteran Boston ska'n'roll band arrives 
after 
their long-time-coming success of last
album Let's Face It and predicably takes an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it 
approach.
Mixing guitars which swerve from ska chop to bar-band chords, bouncy 
brass 
and the voice of garrulous gravel-voiced
frontman Dick Barrett, there's a quaint appeal to their hand-me-down 
approach.
But even the highlights So Sad to Say (Iggy meets Dexy's Midnight 
Runners), 
High School Dance (an amusing alma-mater revenge ditty) and Riot on 
Broad Street (an American-Irish Pogues) 
can't stop many of the 16 tracks verging on sameness. Still, it's a 
rigorously energetic uniformity. 
 The Elsewhere column has taken a week off.

Small screen options
Our pick of the new videos
Boys Don't Cry **** Running time: 114 mins In stores: Now
Teena Brandon is a lonely girl who would rather be a boy. One day she 
gets 
a short haircut, sticks a sock down her
jeans and goes into a bar to try her luck. By the time she leaves her 
home 
town of Lincoln, Nebraska, and moves to
Fails City in 1993, she has become Brandon Teena. Brandon (Hilary 
Swank) is 
a nice guy and soon he and Lana
(Chloe Sevigny) are an item. For Lana, Brandon is a world away from 
local 
men like John (Peter Sarsgaard) and Tom
(Brendan Sexton) who hang out at the trailer park where she lives, the 
gas 
station, the country bars. It can't have a
happy ending, and it doesn't. Brandon was raped and, after the 
authorities 
ignored the complaint, murdered a few days later. You already know who 
did it. This is a true story (a 1999 
documentary, The Brandon Teena Story, has
played in film festivals here) so I'm not giving anything away by 
telling 
you the ending.
The strength of this movie lies in it telling; its feel for its 
characters; the inexorable unfolding of an infinitely sad story; the 
performances from Swank and Sevigny, strong and tender and lonely and 
dignified in the 
middle of a rat's nest.
Swank won the Best Actress Oscar for this role earlier in the year. No 
wonder.
-	Ewan McDonald

Game of the week
Shogun: Total War Electronic Arts PC $99.95 M15
Computer games are increasingly following the pattern of Hollywood 
movies: if it works once, the chances are it will work again, and 
again,and again. So we are getting sequels, prequels, sons of, and so 
on. It takes a brave company to break the mould 
when games cost in the tens of millions to make. Shogun, while not 
quite breaking the mould, certainly cracks it. 
It is a splendid game, rich, deep, satisfying and beautiful to look at. 
A mix of turn-based strategy and real-time 
action, it is more than the sum of its parts. Set in medieval Japan, 
Shogun captures the period beautifully. After a couple of hours, you'll 
feel like a Samurai warrior.
The plot, as the title says, is strongly war-based, but there's far 
more to it than fighting. The turn-based part of the game is much more 
important and involves all sorts of machinations, including diplomatic 
deception, court intrigue and even assassination.
The actual real-time combat takes place in superb 3D but can be 
bypassed altogether. However, die-hard strategy fans who choose to do 
this will be missing out on lots of fun. And while the general precept 
of collecting resources to fund buildings and military units is old 
hat, management is much tighter than in similar games.
Again, many of the units -
archers, cavalry, infantry units' - pop up in other games, but how 
about geisha girl spies and ninja assassins? They're unique and 
properly used, can alter the course of a game.
The downside to Shogun is that it is hard to pick up. But perseverance 
will pay off with hours of fascination and pleasure.
Peter Eley

An intricate, unnerving journey into
rottenness

THE HUMAN STAIN By Philip Roth Jonathan Cape $57.95 Reviewed by John 
Connor
THE TITLE of Philip Roth's latest novel, The Human Stain, invites a quick 
snicker if we recall what Portnoy's
complaint was in Roth's novel of that name. So, let's have a quick 
snicker and enjoy it while it lasts because there is
nothing to snicker about beyond the title page of The Human Stain..
When Roth pulls back the blankets this time he reveals much worse stains 
than those left behind on Portnoy's
sheets. Faunia Farley, one of the most damaged characters in a novel full 
of damaged characters ponders what she
calls "the human stain - we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our 
imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error,
excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here."
This bleak, almost misanthropic view of the world permeates the novel. 
Things might appear clean and scrubbed but
there is always a hidden stain.
It is so ingrained and so close to the surface that sometimes all it 
takes to reveal it is a seemingly innocent word.
Athena College in New England seems clean and scrubbed. So does its most 
brilliant professor, Coleman Silk, but
he utters a seemingly innocent word and the stain is revealed. His long 
and illustrious career is ruined.
Maligned by his enemies, deserted by his friends, he loses his job, his 
wife, his children and his mind.
Desperate for the truth to be told but unable to find the right words, he 
turns to novelist Nathan Zuckerman and asks
him to tell the story. Recognising Silk's madness, Zuckerman refuses. 
When Silk and his mistress, Faunia Farley,
are killed in a suspicious car accident, however, Zuckerman decides to 
find out the truth and tell Silk's story.
What he discovers is a stain that goes much deeper than the petty, 
vindictive politics of a small New England college.
For the past 50 years Coleman Silk has been living a lie, a great 
American lie.
The Human Stain joins a long list of novels dealing with the moral 
rottenness of American society.
Unlike most others on that list, it will not be an also-ran. Roth is 
supremely good at what he does. He is able to keep
the reader guessing, eager to find out what happens next, but he is much 
more than a good storyteller. He
understands the fascination with the malevolent, the perverse, the 
misfits and failures and takes us on an intricate and unnerving journey into their minds. 
All the stains are revealed but the journey is not over.
Although The Human Stain is a deeply moral novel, Roth understands his 
characters so well there is never any moral
condemnation of them. In the end he takes us beyond their stains and 
reveals their humanity.
John Connor is an Auckland writer and lecturer.

Exploits of Cinderfella

SPINDRIFT By Greg Billington Reed $24.95 Reviewed by Jack Leigh
W HAT real men do in the popular imagination is drink beer, talk dirty, 
ride motorbikes, fight, shoot deer and rage
about rugby. They carry on much as expected in this debut novel. But wait. 
Their sporting passion is not footy but
basketball, which sounds a bit wussy for a start.
Fortunately, author Greg Billington is better than the sum of his cliches 
and has a sure touch when it comes to
describing life in the bush and aboard a trawler at sea. The skill and pace 
of the book's finale, in which several lines of
action culminate against the setting of a violent storm, make up for the 
slower patches which draw energy only from
sordid flashpoints of the violent and thrill-seeking kind.
It is the tale of a Cinderfella named Martin and his two ugly brothers,
Henry and Jimmy (a wild man who tries to jump his car across a bog at one point, but 
lands nose first with "an oozy 
wump"). Martin yearns for a clean, outdoor life as a deckhand on a fishing boat but 
cannot break away from the hillbilly brothers and their life of crime.
What follows is a lot of lowlife trivia and considerable injury to Martin, 
whose redemption is ultimately in the hands of a couple of good friends, one a trawler 
skipper named Jack.
Martin woos the lovely Celine by netting some flounder.
Can he tell her he assembles motorcycles from stolen parts? Can she tell 
him she was enticed into the sex industry?
Can their friendship survive the social garbage all around them?
Billington spends a lot of time on the appearance of things - very 
successfully in the descriptions of bush and sea, but less so in his delineation of human 
beings. Look elsewhere for a rounded 
depiction of New Zealand life.
But the writing overall has vitality and imagination, and the action sequences are as 
compelling as the waves
sweeping skipper Jack's storm-tossed trawler.
This book offers an easy and entertaining read that goes the distance, from an author 
whose ideal vehicle in the future might be the all-out thriller.
 Jack Leigh is an Auckland journalist.

Angel disappoints

THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE By Kate O'Riordan Flamingo $29.95 Reviewed by Sarah 
Quigley
THERE are certain expectations surrounding contemporary Irish writers. They seem to 
have developed a reputation for
achieving perfect tragi-comedy with just a hint of eccentricity. And at 
first glance, O'Riordan's new novel seems as if it
will admirably meet these criteria.
Her English characters are appropriately upright. First up is Robert, who 
is celebrating his 36th birthday as the book
opens. Living in London, slightly reclusive, a bachelor and a restorer of 
paintings, he is hovering at the junction
between respectability and boredom. Anita and Peter (is the twee rhyme 
intentional?) are his best friends but they
also represent everything he secretly wants to avoid: a "double-fronted 
mock-Tudor in tree-lined cul-de-sac" life.
The stage is set for romance. Enter the engaging and slightly offbeat (read Irish) social 
worker Angela. A chance meeting with Robert results in an instant mutual attraction and 
subsequent 
afternoon "art" sessions. While Robert
paints her beauty and lusts after her charms, Angela, draped in a scarf and 
not much else, tells him about her Irish
roots, which include a collection of eccentric aunts and a mad uncle in an 
attic.
But much of her past remains a mystery, as does her present. At regular 
intervals she disappears off the face of the
earth. So when Robert realises he is falling head over heels, he sets out 
in pursuit of the truth.
Is Angela hiding unsavoury secrets? Or is she, as her name suggests, 
Robert's saviour?
The punning connection with the "Angel" of the title is deliberate. 
and its obviousness says much about the
book. In comparison to O'Riordan's surefooted Boy in the Moon this novel is surprisingly 
clumsy and overwrought.
Occasionally its descriptive passages reach the heights (or should that be 
lows) of a Mills and Boon novel. "She
looked so like a penitent puppy dog, with her long grey curls bobbing and 
the glistening blue eyes widened so
appealingly, he couldn't resist."
The plot, too, hinges on a complication of true romantic-novel 
implausibility, which leaves a reader feeling both
frustrated and patronised. With one conversation (which would be inevitable 
in real life) Robert and Angela could
instantly discover the truth about each other.
Instead of which they lumber along at cross-purposes. Sub-scenarios, such 
as Robert babbling about his love to an
uncomprehending Japanese tour group, are equally unbelievable.
And this is the overall impression left by the novel. There is plenty of 
comic potential but something goes wrong with
its execution so that, instead of laughing. you end up cringing.
Perhaps O'Riordan should be concentrating less on her Irish humour and more on her 
instinctive insight? It is partly because you sense what it might have been that The Angel 
in the House 
ultimately disappoints. There have been
some great Irish reads in recent times, including O'Riordan's own work. 
Unfortunately this isn't one of them.
 Sarah Quigley is a Christchurch writer.

Culture's vultures defend their famous hoax

INTELLECTUAL IMPOSTURES: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHERS' ABUSE OF 
SCIENCE By Alan 
Sokal and Jean
Bricmont Profile Books $24.95 Reviewed by Michael Peters
INTELLECTUAL IMPOSTURES grew out of the now-famous hoax perpetrated by Alan 
Sokal, a professor of physics
at New York University, who published a parody article in the American 
cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996.
The article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative 
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity (included as an
appendix in the book), sported a range of authentic but nonsensical 
quotations about physics and mathematics by
prominent French and American "postmodern" intellectuals.
In a discussion of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the paper 
argued
that quantum gravity is an archetypal postmodernist science.
Sokal's article caused a huge furore in the Western academy. It was such a 
successful parody that it hoodwinked the
editors of Social Text and embarrassed many of the cultural left.
Intellectual Impostures is the attempt to capitalise on this notoriety: in 
part, the explanation, the confession and the
extension of the argument for the satire. The book aims to pursue two 
targets: to show how famous French
intellectuals have "abused scientific concepts and terminology" and to 
critique "epistemic relativism" as Sokal and
Bricmont express it, "the idea that modern science is nothing more than a 
myth, a narration or a social construction,"
Certainly, the effect of Sokal and Bricmont's work has been to belittle and 
satirise the misuse of scientific concepts
by the likes of Jacques Lacan, Julia
Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and 
Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio. To each of
these thinkers, the authors devote a chapter. In addition, there are three 
"intermezzo" chapters on epistemic
relativism, chaos theory, and G delc/os theorem and set theory, a brief 
epilogue, and three appendices.
In the chapter on Lacan, for instance, Sokal and Bricmont criticise his use 
of topology (the branch of mathematics
dealing with the properties of geometrical objects), imaginary numbers and 
mathematical logic. Lacan uses various
topological objects to describe the structure of mental disorders, 
asserting that the torus has the same structure as
the neurotic.
Sokal and Bricmont maintain that Lacan has only the vaguest notion of the 
mathematics he invokes and the scientific
processes that it is part of.
Many critics thought that the hoax and
this book have exposed the pseudo-science of postmodernism and French 
theory, revealing that many of the French
intellectuals did not really know what they were saying.
The mere fact it was published, as the authors themselves explain, proves 
very little - "at most it reveals something
about the intellectual standards of one trendy journal." What effects, 
unintended or otherwise, did it create? It created
tremendous bitterness and controversy between some scientists, who hold 
what we might broadly call "realist" views
of science and cultural theorists, who have begun to question the 
cultural authority of science. It exacerbated the so-called "science wars." It also split the 
academic left and it helped to 
generate a new level of antipathy and confusion
against postmodernism.
While there are repeated assertions by Sokal and Bricmont that their real 
quarry
is not postmodernism, but simply the repeated abuse of scientific 
concepts by postmodernists, it is the case that
other academics, journalists, and the public have taken the book as a 
more general attack.
Why is this book important in New Zealand? It is part of the broad split 
between the scientific realists and literary and
cultural (postmodern) theorists those who support a realist account of 
science and those who embrace some version
of social or cultural construction of reality.
Yet the debate concerning postmodernism and postmodernity in New Zealand, 
has not yet occurred here or only in a
desultory fashion: it has been sidelined, kept under wraps, and silenced 
in various ways.
 Michael Peters is an associate professor in the School of Education at 
the University of Auckland.

Insights of a privileged alien

Great Companion: Bill Bryson is charmed and charming 

DOWN UNDER By Bill Bryson Doubleday $49.95 Reviewed by Margie Thomson
LIKEABLE, likeable Bill Bryson. Who better to guide you through the vast 
geography, culture and quirky foibles of our
Ocker neighbours than this relentlessly anecdotal, charmingly curious and 
eclectically well-informed travel writer?
I have to admit this was my first Bryson book but, after some very happy 
hours chortling on the couch, I now look
forward to sampling what I can see will be the easy delights of his 
previous works.
Beginning with the startling mystery of Prime Minister Harold Holt's 1967 
disappearance into the sea, Bryson purports
astonishment not only that Australians could simply lose a Prime Minister 
but that the news "had never reached me."
Australia's extreme periphery to the Known World is a constant refrain 
throughout the book (disconcertingly for New
Zealanders, whose own world status must shrink accordingly), but whereas 
someone
like Paul Theroux might have sneered nastily and irritatingly at Aussie 
inconsequence, Bryson is intrigued, charmed
and enthused by the immense, ancient island continent. In fact, he says. 
he "adores it immeasurably".
Many writers have been intrigued by the idea of Australia - by its scale 
and the incredible emptiness of its Outback, its bizarre and brutal beginning as the largest 
prison in the world, its 
treatment of the Aborigines, and its extraordinary wildlife.
Bryson tackles all these topics and many more (the considerable bibliography at the end 
of Down Under gives some
idea of the effort expended in preparation) with light-hearted 
thoroughness and dashes of hilarious and, for an American, surprisingly self-deprecating 
humour which at times can make you weep with joy.
In the course of 300-odd pages, he travels from Sydney to Perth aboard 
the Indian Pacific railway, and later from
Sydney to the Blue Mountains and on to Canberra ("Australia's greatest 
obscurity"), Melbourne, Adelaide, as well as Queensland and the Northern Territory - all 
the obvious places.
But there are surprises as well, most notably his visit to Shark Bay on the coast of 
Western Australia. This is a 
place made extraordinary by its proximity to
almost nowhere - 4000km to Sydney, 5000 to Brisbane. 4000km to Alice 
Springs - but also because it is the home of "some low, dark, primeval-looking masses" 
which just happen to be 
stromatolites: living replicas of the very first
organic structures to appear on earth 3.5 billion years ago.
Peering into the warm, clear water of Shark Bay, Bryson can see tiny 
bubbles of oxygen rising in streams from the
formations. "For two billion years this is all the life there was on 
earth," he notes with wonder, "but in that time the
stromatolites raised the oxygen level in the atmosphere to 20 per cent 
enough to allow the development of other,
more complex life forms: me, for instance. My gratitude was real."
It is this awe, this sense of himself as a kind of privileged alien in a 
strange and wonderful place, that makes Bryson's work so endearing. He is indeed a 
delightful companion for an armchair journey to anywhere.
 Margie Thomson is the Herald books editor.

NEW AND NOTICED Gilbert Wong
THE NUDIST ON THE LATE SHIFT by Po Bronson (Vintage $24.95)
Who better to explain the weirdness that is Silicon Valley (shorthand for 
the whole shebang that spawned e-business, the PC, the Mac and the net) than a feature 
writer for Wired? The high tech 
culture on which the world of business
increasingly resides sometimes has the ambience of any overheated 
speculative technological resource. One can imagine Gutenberg's mates hawking the new 
movable type  in the same way: 
"This will democratise information, Your Holiness." Instead many of the characters 
herein sound like Kevin Roberts 
going on about "viral marketing." That's the
entrepreneurs. The real brains behind Silicon Valley all seem to wear Teva 
sandals and T-shirts and speak in their
own incomprehensible dialect - foo, turbo, giga. A scary insight into the 
new paradigm.
THE LIVES OF ANIMALS by J.M. Coetzee (Profile Books $17.95)
A vanity project perhaps, but a forgivable one. Coetzee, invited to give a 
lecture at Princeton, instead delivered a
fiction about an academic invited to give a lecture. The two-time Booker 
Prize winner does not disappoint. His prose
cuts to the bone of existence like a laser scalpel. There are no grand 
flourishes, instead the inimitable precision of a
master surgeon of the mind and emotion.
REEFSCAPE by Rosaleen Love (Allen and Unwin $32.50)
At 58 the author learns to scuba dive, the better to gain a new perspective 
of the Great Barrier Reef. This is part
memoir, part history and part meditation on the reef and its history. It's 
an idea that seems obvious once the book is
sighted, and Love handles her topic well. As she writes, "Why we consider 
the reef beautiful does not rely solely on
the stories we tell about it but springs from the reef experience and draws 
on the sensual as well as the knowing
self."
SLEEPING SOUNDLY by Dr Antonio Ambrogetti Allen and Unwin $29.95)
Ambrogetti works at the Sleep Disorders Centre at Royal Newcastle Hospital 
in Australia. That such centres are
proliferating along with sleep disorder support groups and internet sites 
shows that we may one day look back on the 20th and 21st centuries as the period when 
everyone could have done with 
more shut-eye.
Personally speaking, I find it very sad that a good sleep-in is now a 
luxury rather than a regular occurrence.
But sleep debt exacts worse tolls. Most road accidents occur in the early 
hours when our bodies are silently
screaming that we should be asleep rather than at the wheel of a Mack truck.
While there is little new for those who have already read up on the 
subject, Ambrogetti is interesting on what happens
during our dreams. The former theory du jour was that dreaming was a process akin to 
defragging a computer hard
drive: tidying up loose data links; current theory suggests that during 
dreams our bodies undergo genetic
programming, ensuring we retain our individuality.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MADNESS by Kaz Cooke (Penguin $6.95)
Cooke is hilarious and that's very rare. This is a subversive attack on 
mini-advice books and the whole, sad Martha Stewart, simple-living thing. Cooke says 
forget about pining for more time and better-quality relationships: just pack more in, is 
her answer. I quite like her advice to "Preserve your own 
lemons, sun-dry your own tomatoes and embalm your own relatives."

Beyond beige

Brilliant Colour at Home by Elizabeth Hilliard, Kyle Cathie Ltd, $49.95
The most fun you can have on your own at home is ... playing with colour. 
And you don't need. to be a professional
decorator to  change your bland, polite space into vibrant living quarters 
sparkling with vitality and colour.
Well, that's the thesis of this book and the author is correct: all it 
takes is a sense of daring. What do you have to
lose when paint is so cheap nowadays? 
Elizabeth Hilliard trained as an art historian but she's now a journalist 
who specialises in decorating. She and her
family live in a 70s house with truly authentic colours of the period: turquoise, burnt 
orange, violet, sky blue, leaf green and white.
There's no need to assume the mantle of purist and feel constrained to use 
only the correct period colours, as she
has. But if you need a nudge Hilliard's book is the perfect elbow in the 
ribs.
 Not only does it enthuse about colour, the book also breathes colour
from every page. So even if you go no further than reading about other people's fun with 
the rainbow, you'll love to have the book somewhere nearby. Give it to a friend stuck in 
the off-white mode and stand back and wait for the explosion.  - Barb Rogers

How to go Med

Mediterranean Living by Lisa  Lovatt-Smith, Seven Dials (distributed by
Hodder Moa Beckett),
This is possibly the best ideas book on the shelves right now and one to 
guard jealously, or your friends will spirit it
away.  
Lisa Lovatt-Smith ("made in Italy, born in Spain") has a love affair with 
the narrow strip of land that borders the
Mediterranean Sea.
"On this privileged ground we all eat the same things, are attached to 
the same rituals, live essentially the same life
in the same land of secular architecture. This sea ... creates its own 
homogeneous culture endlessly absorbing
newcomers and their ideas …"
To the rest of us, people who are emotionally rather than officially Med 
householders, the invitation is extended to
step inside the homes of the locals. We visit Giorgio Armani's luxurious 
hideaway on the Isola di Pantelleria (between
Sicily and Tunisia). There he is, dressed all in black, with his 
decorative house guest, the actress Lauren Hutton, who
is dressed all in white - the better to let us see the rustic, rambling 
home renovated to resemble a local village cluster.
Armani and his guests lounge on enormous cushions covered with matting, 
instead of on outdoor furniture. That's an idea you could work with back home.
Pop into the splendiferous villa on the Cote d'Azur of Cheska and Bob 
Vallois, a Parisian couple who deal in art deco
furniture. Here, though the furniture is the point, the view is 
mind-bogglingy beautiful, too. A design voyeur's paradise.
Mimmi O'Connell, decorator to the rich and tasteful (now there's a concept), has a 
Mallorca project featured here. Her signature is evident in the left-alone rusticity, 
overlaid with comfort. Black and white ticking on plump 
upholstery, barber's poles casually propped
against the wall, black-painted "serious" furniture, romantic beds, 
deceptively simple kitchens - these are all part of
the O'Connell magic.
Then there's the Corsican refuge of French stylist Marie Chauveau which 
mixes cement-finished walls with a limited
palette of local colours (ochre, sky blue, toffee) to create an almost 
homely minimalism for the sophisticated rustic - who could live in New Zealand if you 
added a few windows ...
Not all the homes are beautiful but all are inspirational to the last 
page. And no, you can't borrow it.
-	Barb Rogers

Cult of the object

100 Designs 1100 Years by Mel Byars with Arlette Barre-Despond,
RotoVision (distributed by Bookwise) about $59.95.
The designer's skill in elevating the utilitarian into functional art 
items has long been recognised, although just as often taken for granted..
While we applaud such singular objets d'art as Philippe Starck's 
modernist, sculptural lemon press (1990) and the elegantly austere high-backed Hill 
House chair designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1903), we pass lightly over the 
nipped-waist rhythms of Alexander Samuelson's classic Coca-Cola bottle of 1915 and the 
ubiquitous and, serviceable Tupperware designed in polyethylene by Earl Tupper in 
1945.
100 Designs/100 Years offers a snapshot of effective and eye-catching 
design down the past century with a potted
history of the product or designer and parallel text of significant 
contemporary events.
So here is a century of design from the simple Box Brownie camera (George 
Eastman 1900)  through  to Shiro
Kuramata's sway-back chest of drawers, (1970), to Jonathan Ive's 
shimmering 1998 iMac computer in its transparent carapace.
A charming informative coffee table browser of appropriately clean layout 
and design - and you'll never look at Post-It Notes (designed by Arthur Fry and Spence 
Silver in 1980) in quite the same way again.
- Graham Reid

Bring your own wheelbarrow

Big Boy: Helmut Newton's very big book and Philippe Starch stand (above) with a 
glimpse from inside (left) Shoe by Tristan Webber, from Italian Vogue last year.

THE TERM coffee-table
 book takes on a whole
 new meaning with the
 launch of an enormous
 book of photographs
 from the king of sin, Helmut
 Newton. Sumo which weighs in at
 30kg, is 70cm tall by 50cm wide
 and comes with its own stand
 designed by French design wizz
 Philippe Starck (you can't buy it
 separately, either).
 Fashionistas, fans of photography and fetishists will get to see
 this publishing phenomenon
 when it is launched at Dymocks
 stores in the Atrium in Auckland
 City and in Newmarket and
 Wellington next Wednesday.
 Benedikt Taschen, the
 German publisher, is quoted as
 saying he took on the enormous
 challenge because "I wanted to
 build a monument to the most
 important photographer of the
 20th century." A copy of that
 monument, signed and numbered
 (out of only 10,000 worldwide)
 will set you back $3800. Brad Pitt
 has three.
 Newton, who is 79, has been
 capturing fashion images with a
 cold eye and a cruel heart for
 decades. The 480-page book covers every aspect of his career,
 ranging from fashion shoots to celebrity portraits.
 'If you baulk at the cost consider this: a single print by Newton costs between $7000 and
 $22,000 with some fetching $150,000, depending on the image, and its size.
Barb Rogers

All stitched up

IF YOU'RE interested in needlework from the past check out Embellishments, a textile 
and clothing exhibition at the Auckland War Memorial Museum (until 
July 2). Assistant curator of applied arts
Angela Lassig has chosen pieces from the permanent collection and given 
them an airing to coincide with an
embroidery fest in Auckland this month called Embroidery 2000. This formal 
sack dress (pictured) dates from the
18th century and was worn by the donor's ancestor who was maid of honour at 
the court of King George III of
England. A perhaps more poignant display, Love from Len, features pieces from the 
battlefields, ranging from work done by soldiers to items of military dress and insignia.

United States of Gardening

Enrich your knowledge and jolt your ideas with some new books from home and abroad.

Gardens		Rose Thodey

Little Formalities: In her chapter on formal lines, Small-Tree Gardens author Hazel 
White considers how these geometrically placed poplars ease the transition between this 
modern home and its canyon-country setting.

TWO, NEW books from California, Small-Tree
Gardens ($49.95) and Garden Retreats ($59.95), both published by Chronicle 
Books and distributed here by Southern
Publishers Group, approach gardening from a refreshing and uniquely American angle.
In Small-Tree Gardens, Hazel White extols the virtues of gardens based on 
trees. The subtitle, Simple projects, contemporary designs, sums up her approach - page 
after page of enticing compositions show how effectively trees
can be used in the small spaces most gardens occupy today.
After a preliminary couple of chapters on designing with trees and simple 
tree-gardening skills, the book is divided
into four sections: trees used as centrepieces, formal lines and 
exclamation points, natural groups and pint-sized
trees. Several examples of each type are given, with detailed how-to 
instructions, including tools, ingredients and maintenance.
At first glance, the choices may seem rather too cold-climate for 
Aucklanders, but most of these compositions would
grow here and White's suggestions for under-planting will provide 
inspiration for those looking for new combinations.
Leading up to a pair of smoke trees (Cotinus obovatus), for example, she 
uses rue with sedums and grasses for a "richly coloured, flowerless fall garden." 
Simplicity and originality reign supreme, the spirit behind the author's vision
captured by Matthew Plut's artistic photography.
 In Garden Retreats Barbara Blossom Ashmun explores the myriad ways you can 
go about creating your own outdoor sanctuary.
Having helped you decide on your style, she discusses how you can divide 
your garden into smaller areas or rooms
complete with roofs or overhead trees and pergolas.
Then she looks at the entry garden where the scene is initially set before 
moving on to the paths that take you on
your journey of discovery, rounding it off with the furnishings and 
structures and, finally, the plants that will provide
interest throughout the seasons.
Writing from the heart, Ashmun uses her own experiences and those of 
friends and clients to show how individual the
journey of garden discovery can be.
For a compact-looking paperback, this book is densely packed, one that you 
can keep dipping into or take to bed for a soothing read.
Slightly disconcerting at first is the use of different shots by 
award-winning gardening photographer Allan Mandell of
the same parts of certain gardens. But in a way this illustrates the text 
well, in that ideas and gardens are revisited from different angles.
Not for those in a hurry, Garden Retreats is a relaxing stroll rather than a mad dash, 
reflecting the deeply therapeutic nature of gardening as the author sees and lives it.
A new resource book for teachers and home-schoolers will make it easy to 
introduce children to gardening. Learn to Grow ($29.95) has been produced by Earth's 
Own Ltd, a Christchurch company whose objective is "that each child
has the opportunity to grow a plant from seed and experience the many 
benefits that this activity can generate."
Aimed at New Zealand primary schools (up to year eight), the book is linked 
to the curriculum and is packed with stimulating activities, from growing beans in a jar 
and sprouting herbs on sponges to the magic of sunflowers - or even square pumpkins.
Fun ideas for using the children's new-found skills at home are included, as well as 
keeping a garden journal, pests and useful insects, birds and animals, flowers and vege 
gardens with attitude, tuning into the seasons, vegetables
and the effect they have on your body, and growing fruit and flowers to eat 
and drink.
One of the big advantages about Learn to Grow is that it has been designed 
as a usable resource, so teachers can
make photocopies and transparencies of the pages to use within their own 
school or at home.
Published by User Friendly Resource Enterprises Ltd, the book is available 
from Earth's Own Ltd, Freepost 1846, PO
Box 12-202, Christchurch, or fax: (03) 332 7441.
Botanica's Pocket Roses ($39.95, Godwit) is the latest release in this 
series of chubby, user-friendly guides. Its size
is dictated by the number of roses included (more than 2000) and I had to 
search for a while before finding something they'd left out - so the claims to 
comprehensiveness are justified.
As with the two earlier Botanica pocket guides - on trees and shrubs, and 
annuals and perennials - plants are listed
in alphabetical order, rather than by type, making it easy for the newcomer to find his or 
her way about.
The introduction contains cultivation advice and suggested roses for special purposes. 
Wild roses are covered in the beginning, before the 
main dictionary.
Each entry is reasonably detailed, considering the condensed nature of 
the book. Ann Endt, for example, is a New
Zealand rose bred by Ken Nobbs and usually known only to old-fashioned 
rose aficionados. Yet it gets full coverage,
with details of flower and bud shape and colour, fragrance, foliage, 
biographical background on Ann Endt herself, breeding and date of introduction. On the 
other hand, you won't find the very latest roses here - entries go up to the mid-90s.
Photographs are clear and true to colour - often a problem with red roses
in particular. Rose-lovers will have no trouble finding a place for this cram-packed, 
compact guide on their groaning book shelves, but it is more likely to spend its life off 
the shelf, rather than on.

Café a divine diversion off the main trunk

Eating Out		Graham Reid

THE SIGN outside the excellent Red Eye Cafe in Wanganui says it all: Life's 
2 short 2 eat pies. And the Red Eye - a
great place to break a journey when heading to Wellington by the scenic 
route between Raetihi and Waikanae - doesn't disappoint.
Open for breakfasts and lunches until 2 pm and dinners from 6 pm, Red Eye 
has a funky, casual ambience which
seems to suit local business people as much as itinerant backpackers - and 
it boasts an extensive menu.
Folks from big cities tend to think provincial towns can't offer the 
breadth of menu, yet Red Eye gives the lie to that
The breakfast menu includes salmon with avocado and pickled ginger on
maple rye and smeared with cream cheese topped with poached egg ($8.50). It 
is little short of divine.
Their blackboard offers everything from dips ($3.50) and soups ($5) through 
Tom Yum Mussels ($10) and Thai curries (vegetable, lamb, chicken) to venison ($17).
And if you are heading south to the capital, make that diversion along the west of Taupo 
and through Raetihi and stop for dinner at the Red Eye.
You'll save yourself quite a few dollars on Wellington prices, will meet 
some very nice people, get a glimpse of unusual artworks on the walls and can treat 
yourself with fine food.
The lamb rack you had in Wanganui - chargrilled then oven-roasted with mint 
and cumin crust served on a garlic potato mash with whole roast mushrooms and 
vegetables, $17.50 - is one you might want to mention to friends in
Wellington when they start bragging about their cafe culture.
 Red Eye Cafe, 96 Guyton St, Wanganui; phone (09)345 5646.

Welcome Break: The Red Eye Café courtyard is the ideal spot to break your journey.

Feat of Soviet engineering
REVIEWS
Auckland Philharmonia Auckland Town Hall Review: Heath Lees
By the time Schubert's immortal C-major tune arrived in the Rosamunde 
overture last Thursday, the toe-tapping
around the hall was palpable, showing that everyone had -relaxed after a  surprisingly 
untidy opening to a familiar piece.
But familiarity is hardly the word for Hovanhess' The Holy City, whose 
opus 218 number suggests it was relatively late
in the composer's 90 years (and still counting).
Surprisingly, the work's harmonic style hardly moves beyond that of 
say, Vaughan Williams, though its technicolour
effects are innocently attractive.
Its solo trumpet lines were arrestingly played on the golden instrument 
of America's Michael Sachs, who stayed on
the platform for a finely polished solo performance in Hummel's E-flat 
Trumpet Concerto.
It was disappointing that the orchestra was so self-effacing in this 
work, rarely catching the bite of the rhythms,
resorting to a bland tone in the middle movement, and in the gallop of 
the finale, leaving all the energy and flair up to the soloist.
However, the second half of the concert revealed that they had been 
saving themselves for Prokofiev's Fifth
Symphony, one of the Russian's best compositions, but difficult to bring 
off in performance.
Under Vladimir Verbitsky's sympathetic direction, the orchestra quickly 
got inside the music and set up that intensity
of performance that makes such a festival out of a live event.
In the first movement, the multi-layered, edgy counterpoint was 
beautifully controlled, and the brass excelled
themselves in one of the best scores they have in the repertoire. (Some
people believe the tuba player should be paid double in this work.) The 
crowning glory was in the third movement
which is a world in itself, cutting and skipping from lean, motor-driven 
chugs to the harsh, military stomp of the
jackboot, and every so often clearing to a horizon of compassion and 
human engagement that makes you feel happy
to be alive after all.
The sheer miracle of Soviet engineering that forms an unstoppable 
crescendo in the finale was powerful stuff too, and
made a fine ending to this Royal and
SunAlliance concert.
Auckland Philharmonia Bruce Mason Centre Review: Tara Werner
As Raymond Hawthorne said so mellifluously in his reading from the 
prologue of Romeo and Juliet, the play runs "two hours' traffick of our stage."
In comparison, this final Band and the Bard concert only contained 
roughly 63 minutes of music.
No wonder the audience felt short-changed on Saturday night.
Yet the idea of mixing words with music is an excellent one, especially 
when presented as convincingly as
Hawthorne's all-too-brief introduction.
Ironically, his original reading had little to do with setting the scene 
for Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, being
Mercutio's fanciful speech beginning 'O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you."
By nipping in the prologue beforehand, the actor provided a more relevant 
preface to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet
Fantasy Overture.
Still, some of the musicians must have felt they, were playing in a 
living nightmare straight from Queen Mab's
nocturnal reveries during the programme.
Members of the woodwind in particular seemed to be having an off night. A 
note breaking in the clarinet's opening
theme in Borodin's In the Steppes
of Central Asia nearly ruined the atmosphere of that work entirely.
Fortunately equilibrium was achieved, and the strength of the composer's 
superb orchestration soon revealed itself.
Likewise, Tchaikovsky's dramatic musical interpretation of Romeo and 
Juliet's tragic love affair was threatened by
some suspect intonation in the woodwind section.
Conductor Vladimir Verbitsky may have tried his hardest but despite all 
the hiss and fire, this was not exactly the
orchestra's best effort.
Fortunately, the two works beforehand contained the most satisfying 
playing in an otherwise highly variable
performance.
Schubert's youthful (some would say precocious) Symphony No 1 may have 
been a Haydn and Mozart clone, with a
bit of early Beethoven thrown in for good measure, but it was played well 
and with zest.
And Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Flutes and Strings RV533 saw sisters-in law Christine 
Mori and Jennifer Seddon-Mori
play with equal mellowness, the music's light and shade given careful 
consideration through contrasting dynamics.

Words With Music: Raymond Hawthorne

Fine landscapes recall battles with radicals

t.j. mcnamara
Art critic

Home Ground: Peter McIntyre was often at his best when his eye was on country he 
loved, as in this detail from King Country and Woolshed, painted in 1975.

Shades of battles long ago hover over two exhibitions this week. There was 
a time last century when the work of
Peter McIntyre was used as a stick to beat any sort of "Modern Art."
Conversely, his work was considered the absolute sellout to the forces of 
conservatism by anybody connected with
any art movement thought to be radical.
McIntyre, whose record as a war artist was a proud one, as the paintings 
held in the Auckland Museum attest,
continued after the war to paint landscapes and official portraits, and to 
produce work which could be reproduced in
books that emphasised the picturesque side of New Zealand rural life.
What made him so unpopular with the liberals was not only his work - 
conventional and acceptable to a wide public – but the recognition he achieved, the good 
living he made, and the Jaguar he drove.
McIntyre and his supporters felt that abstract artists could not or would 
not practise drawing. Abstract art was a cop-
out. Yet, paradoxically, McIntyre's confidence as an artist gave strength 
to both camps.
The memory of these battle lines is evoked by an exhibition of paintings 
and drawings that were left in McIntyre's
studio.
The show, at John Leech Gallery in Remuera, is a good guide to the nature 
of his achievement apart from the war
paintings.
McIntyre was essentially an illustrator. His paintings make excellent plates in a book.
The deft, broad handling of his work gives enough information so that they 
carry well when reduced to a size suitable
for a book and the colour is easily matched in printer's inks and is 
vividly bright.
When his eye was on country he loved he could convey the light on the hills 
and the feel of the land extraordinarily
well. King Country and Woolshed is a fine example here. The skill of his drawing and his 
control of paint is exemplified in Waikanae - Trees and Beach.
The same skills are shown in the highly competent watercolours and drawings 
of Venice, though there is less heart in
the work. What is surprising is the powerful
colour of some paintings done in Australia. Aboriginal Mother and Child is 
a tight group set against a vivid orange
background. The closeness of the mother and child still works as comment on the fate of 
such relationships in the light 
of publicity of the stolen generation.
Similar ripe colour gives impact to Outback Still Life with Grass and Rocks 
which, in retrospect, is a powerfully
experimental work.
There is enough material in this unexpected exhibition to show how good 
McIntyre's kind of art could sometimes be
and to demonstrate that he has his niche in the history of art in New 
Zealand.
In the 1960s, minimal abstract art would be dismissed because of the kind 
of work it was. These days we judge
whether is it good of its kind rather than generally dismissing the style 
outright.
The exhibition Veriditas, by Valerie Nielsen at the Vavsour/Godkin at 35 
High St, is a lovely and appealing show
within the parameters of its style.
Each painting is a lyrical assemblage of four or more neat rectangular 
panels linked by similarities of shade and tone.
Some panels are densely coloured but others are clouded by hints of soft 
shapes like mist or cloud.
These strong harmonies do not exactly depict bright skies but suggest the 
space of sky and the movement of clouds in a series of serene images with a special 
character of their own.
The areas of misty colour give movement to each work and the arrangement of 
the panels gives tension, even drama.
This is notable in a column of green that stabilises Waiting Space and in 
the vivid red outer panels of Lumbro del
Rosa, which contrast with the pale centre.
The work that sings most explicitly of airy light is Adjacent Skies and the 
most subtle is Seed, where the merest
touch of rose colour in a panel on the right keys up the whole work.
To complete the week it is worth noting that Gretchen Albrecht's exhibition 
at Lopdell House bridges the whole era
from her early surreal Chagallesque work through her evocations of 
landscape to the splendid arcs of her lunette
paintings.
The show combines paintings and prints, although it is ostensibly about Albrecht as print-
maker. There are some fine prints and a group of lithographs inspired by Piha are 
particularly splendid. But the show and the artist's reputation rest on her painting.

Critics' choices
Volger Quartet Chamber Music, Concert FM, Thursday, Auckland Town Hall, Monday 
September 11.
A double-serve for fans. Concert FM broadcasts the quartet live from the Wellington 
Town Hall on Thursday before the quartet, formed by East Berlin musicians Tim Vogley, 
Frank Reinecke, Stefan Fehlandt and Stephan Forck performs in Auckland. The Financial 
Times said of the quartet: "In terms of lucidity, dramatic intensity and propulsive 
urgency, these performances showed a mature mastery that was quite breathtaking."
There and Back, Patterson Parkin; New Works, Sam Foley, Chiaroscuro Gallery, until 
September 16.
Patterson Parkin displays a whole range of skills in round, textured abstractions, colourful 
wall reliefs and stylish nudes which recall both Klimt and Cubism.
-	T.J. McNamara
The Candlestickmaker with Jacob Rajan, India Ink Theatre, Maidment Theatre, from 
September 6 to 23.
The eagerly awaited follow-up to Krishnan's Dairy (production problems mistakenly 
called it "Krishnan's Diary" in these pages last week) is a play about metaphysics, love 
and cosmology featuring a duck, a 300-year-old cook and off-stage, the wonder wrought 
by Nobel prize-winning physicist Subramanyan Chandresakr.
-	Gilbert Wong


