I saw Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron’s impeccably-built space thriller, a week and a half after everyone else. That didn’t stop me from unintentionally collating a list of the film's plot points and images in those nine days. Similarly, it was little over 48 hours before I could sketch a rough outline of what had happened in the Breaking Bad finale, and I haven't even started watching the series yet.
This is the digital age, where media is consumed and discussed with incredible speed, and there’s a little bit of disregard for those who are playing catch-up.
Screw playing catch-up, though. We’re on the bleeding edge here. It used to be that New Zealand would get the 35mm reels of film after they’d been everywhere else in the world. Now, the internet allows us immediate, unprecedented connections to the world’s film and television. Now, we can access video on demand, streaming services, online stores; now, we can go to the cinema and watch pristine digital prints on worldwide release dates. We still have problems, with restrictive direct import laws stifling viewer access, bizarre release windows for any film that isn't a studio tentpole and myriad issues with our copper and fibre networks, but cinema and television are accessible in so many more ways now.
Hi. I'm Adam Goodall. I’m a 23-year-old who recently graduated from Victoria University with an LLB (that’s Law) and a BA (Hons) (in film, natch). I have an obsession with the South Korean New Wave, and East Asian cinema more generally; I adore the Coen Brothers, Park Chan-wook and Wong Kar-Wai; I count among my favourite films Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï and James Wong’s Final Destination 3.
I’ll be providing approximately 50 per cent of the blog posts under The State of Things’ banner.
Despite this blog’s lofty title, Adam and I aren’t always going to be writing about Big Ideas – but they won’t be far from our minds, largely because the way our generation experiences visual culture, and cinema in particular, is inextricably linked with screen technologies. Whether it’s a digital 3D movie seen at imax or a two-minute YouTube clip watched on a smartphone while waiting for the bus, the device-centric how and where of what we’re watching – and how many other people are watching with us, and what they think – has become as important as what we watch. One major question that’s been in the back of my mind for a while, encircling this notion, is this: In an era when there’s no longer any such thing as rarity, can there be any such thing as the expert critic?
It’s astounding, really, that in 2013 we, as a country, still don’t have so many of the legal avenues for consuming media that other countries have – quasi-legit browser add-ons and EULA-breaking workarounds excepted. Last I checked, Netflix still wasn’t terribly fussed about ever setting up shop here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the new season of Girls, which starts on HBO in January, didn’t show up until March on our watered-down, more expensive equivalent, SoHo. Meanwhile the Internet indifferently ticks away with its plot-points, spoilers, and sometimes-worthwhile think-pieces about stuff we can watch (illegally) but not purchase – or at least not purchase digitally, or in a timely fashion.
This blog will, from my end at least, probably be more critical analysis on actual movies than commentary on a stubborn industry’s dying business model, though I’ll certainly be trying to get some of that in from time to time as well.
My name’s Hugh Lilly, and I’ll be writing the other half of The State of Things.