Movies

J’ai vu La Mariée était en noir la semaine prochaine; j’ai aimé le film. C’est commencé avec une femme parti chez mère pour Paris dans le train, mais elle a débarqé avant c’est parti la gare. La femme, qui s’appelle est inconnue, est allée un fête. Elle tuer un homme; nous n’avons su pas. Elle a chasseureuse; elle tuer cinq hommes.

Nous avons appris les hommes tuer son marie a la jour de mariage; elle a pris sa revanche.

When people say, “Avatar had $50 million in subsidies” it conjures up a particular image: Joe Taxpayer ladling $50 million to a bunch of film moguls. It’s understandable, not least because it’s how things like SMPs used to work, but it’s not true. Subsidies are many and varied; I can think of at least three major types off the top of my head:

Exemption

The aforementioned subsidy for film production is a great example of this; film-makers get a break on their taxes in New Zealand. The thing is that when people toss around the idea that these cost something in a direct form they’re being, charitably, economically illiterate. No-one gave anyone anything. We simply neglected to take something. There is, you could argue, an opportunity cost, but in many cases, we can have something we wouldn’t otherwise get (Avatar work), or we can get nothing.

Framed that way, they sound quite tempting, right? Not always. We don’t have a capital gains tax in New Zealand, which means a major sink for our investment dollar in the last 7 or 8 years, even more than in the rest of the Western world, has been property speculation - not even property development, but borrowing money to buy houses that already exist in the hope a greater fool will make us rich. Unlike making movies, it’s not an activity that really spreads the wealth around; a built house requires pretty minimal upkeep. It may even have a perverse result, as rents rise to cover the costs of mortgages taken out with a view to capital gains, more money goes to service debts raised with offshore borrowing, rather than into the New Zealand economy, and we skew the view of what we invest in from activities that generate good first-world employment (special effects, software development, what have you), and into hoarding bricks and mortar.

So if we do have tax exemptions to attract foreign dollars, we ought to be quite careful that they’re an overall benefit.

Paying Your Bills

You’re a high-carbon-output business. Well, in New Zealand, I’m giving you money. Lots and lots of loverly money. That’s because I’m paying for your carbon credits.

(No-one’s paying my employer’s carbon credits, we just hand to spend a lot of money doing things like reducing the footprint of our server rooms with virtualisation and consolidation programs.)

There are no shortage of activities like this. Cities build sports stadiums for profitable sporting businesses to use. We cover the costs of businesses that might otherwise go broke.

Giving You Cash

Our domestic cultural industries are beneficiaries of this one; we ladle money into TV, local movies, ballet, opera, symphony orchestras, you name it. Outrageous Fortune collected almost $50 million during it’s run; whatever my share of that was, was totally worth it to hear the word “nungas” on TV, I might add.

In business these used to be our standard subsidy for farmers and other industries we’d decided we want to cultivate but couldn’t actually, you know, turn a profit. Sometimes that’s a good thing - I’d rather live in a New Zealand with an NZSO than not, for example - but in the case of SMPs, it damn near broke the country.

The Bigger Question

Implicit in the criticism of subsidies for Jackson’s work is that this in some way proves his companies haven’t really added value to the New Zealand economy, that he’s bludging off us in some dirty, underhanded way, slipping dollars out of our pockets.

As I noted above, it’s not really true; tax breaks cost us nothing in and of themselves, and have arguably helped funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the country for productions involving the likes of Jackson and Rob Tapert (remember him? Been making internationally-known and profitable TV shows in New Zealand for the best part of a couple of decades?).

Moreover, the roots of the idea that there’s something wrong with encouraging particular industries is rooted firmly in the neoliberal religion that markets are perfect, governments are crap, and that governments oughtn’t pick winners. Now, if that argument’s coming from Richard Prebble or Roger Douglass, well, I think it’s a bunch of crap - after all, the East Asian neighbours, such as South Korea, we looked down on as third world countries when I were a lad have shot past us on the back of heavily controlled, directed, managed economies, not neoliberal paradises. Come to that, Britain’s economic rise was butressed by mercantalism, and China’s development is as a result of tight monetary control and a willingness to direct the economy whereever deemed strategic.

But I digress. I think it’s a load of crap. What’s odd, though, is that the flurry of concern about these subsidies so often comes from people who seem so otherwise uninterested in neoliberal dogma. The same line of thinking that argues taxs breaks distort the economy, the government shouldn’t pick winners, is the same line that says privitisation was and is good, that the Employment Courts are unfair and unreasonable, and so on. How many of the people bitching about Jackon’s “subsidies” are actually interested in that line of thinking in any genuine manner? How many are simply looking for another club to belabour someone who appears to have committed the great Kiwi sins of being very successful in his fields, wealthy, and uninterested in issuing grovelling apologies for daring to achieve these things?

To elaborate on my earlier comments: when a movie starts with a montage of one character’s life which runs through a lost pregnancy (or possibly news of infertility, it’s hard to tell), a lifelong regret at not having fulfilled a dream, the death of one of the principal character’s wife and then plunges into him going to court and being committed to elderly care with the resultant loss of his home, I find myself thinking a number of things; high amongst them are “No wonder Ada wanted to re-watch this with me so she could ask questions about what’s going on after seeing it at her creche’s movie day”, and “What the hell? Did her creche really think this was a great movie for three year olds?”

(And yes, I know a three year old is probably missing/glossing over a bunch of stuff in Up that I might find disturbing or distressing; the fact she wanted to re-watch it with me so she could ask questions rather suggested she noticed something was up, though.)

I can also add that when there’s the scene where Fredrickson sets the chairs back in the house, the most poignant question you can be asked is, “Daddy, why is he putting the chairs back up and sitting in them?”, because getting “Because he misses his wife” out is something of a challenge at that point.

Is it a good movie? Absolutely. But definitely one that may require a bunch of talking through with a small.

(On the other hand it’s less disturbing than Ice Age, which Ada doesn’t, unlike Ice Age 2, want to watch again.)

“Shall we if there’s good music on the radio?”

“No. I want Nightwish.”

“I see. Which Nightwish song do you want?”

“The one where he is running away because they think he has done something wrong.”

Daddy’s little metalhead.

Also, Up. Ada likes it. I found it verging on the harrowing. Good, you understand, but, my, that’s a pile of emotive in a kid’s movie.

The fact the writer and director combo for The Eagle of the Ninth is the same as for The Last King of Scotland, and that the writer gave us Her Majesty, Mrs Brown, gives me some cause for optimism that it could be rather good.

Whatever Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe do with Robin Hood cannot-cannot-be worst than Kevin Kostner’s butchery.

This time out: Starlight and Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.

Don’t bother reading further if you’re looking to see what I’m like when saying lots of nice things about films.

In which I examine Layer Cake, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and V for Vendetta.

I watched Lipstick on Your Collar when it was on TV; I think it may be the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen on TV. Time has, if anything, made it even more so, especially given where the actors have popped up since then.

I would not believe Baz Luhrmann hadn’t seen the first of these clips before doing his version of Like a Virgin.

One of those classics of the Eighties I never got around to see at the time, I whipped this out for the semi-regular dinner-and-a-movie-with-Amy.

First impression: the muzak is awful. Really, really awful. Getting Alan Parsons to do the soundtrack may have seemed like a good idea in 1985, but it wasn’t.

Once I got over that, I liked it. Granted, I couldn’t resist making fun of the bit where Rutger Hauer takes out Michelle Pfeiffer’s dress and is nuzzling it, because at that point, if I was Matthew Broderick, I’d be thinking worried thoughts about how the knight who saved me might be into a whole world of swapping black leather for nice silks and being known as Rutgina, but anyway…

The special effects haven’t aged well, but the cast members all turn in decent enough performances, there’s a suprising lack of cringe inducing lines, and Matthew Broderick makes his little theif pretty amusing; the Evil Bishop is nicely done. An enjoyable little swords and sorcery/love story film.

OK, it fades a little after a strong start, but I still love 300 getting the treatment it begs for.

Thanks to Pearl.