a) JJ Please.. please don't

a) JJ Please.. please don't be anything but yourself, and your posts are fabulous - God knows I'm not adding to the 'Jar much these days, and you know how much I love your writing and your EOFL*s so stop apologising and keep typing, I love you and fall at the bar stool next to you buying you copious pints in gratitude for writing here. (I was going to fall-at-your-feet in gratitude but I'm not as much use there) and b) I want to talk about Celebrity Treasure Island, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the Naked Samoans, but I can't get my ducks in a line, my vowels in sequence, the cat has my tongue. I want to talk about Greer Robson's bossoms, and Nikki Watson's hipbones, and Marc Ellis' cunning and Mathew Ridge's eyebrow. I want to talk about how too many alpha males and too much Estee Lauder makeup make for a fantastic reality show. I need to share how much fun I had watching the first episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was last night, how every time I saw Kyan I sighed and melted left the same way we all did when Heath Ledger road over the brow of the hill, freshly trimmed and washed in A Knight's Tale. I want you to realise how funny their comments were even though I can't remember one single one of them correctly. You need to understand how terrible New Zealand comedians are, on the whole. That despite the fact every second farmer and his pig dog want to be a comedian, most of the people standing on the stage at the Comedy Club are vulgar and not funny. There are some fabulous exceptions to the rule, and a group of five guys of them from the Islands have a show called The Naked Samoans. I laughed last year, their no-props from-life humour was gentle and touching and funny and intelligent. Never mind that Oscar Kightley is hilarious all on his own - and i'm going to say it and you can't stop me but.. ethnic humour is funny.. whether it's Greek or Italian or Jewish or Samoan, it's funny when done with love. Except German, I've never seen anything German AND funny. *Emails of Frightening Length
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Finding Nemo� I thought they

Finding Nemo� I thought they never would. Breathing is an amazing thing; you do it upwards of twenty thousand times in a day, but you seldom have to think about it. Likewise, running up and down stairs - most people can do that without thinking about the millions of individual commands their brain has to send to their muscles to make them work in the correct sequence to avoid you falling flat on your face. When you think about these things, they�re incredible and awe-inspiring, but perhaps the most impressive thing about them is that you can do them without thinking about them. You can take them for granted. Pixar animated movies have become like breathing. You can watch without getting sidetracked by the standard of the animation. This is both good and bad. It�s good because, if you�re me, you get to follow the story at a first viewing rather than get lost in how impressive the detail on the shark�s upper lip is (very). It�s bad because Finding Nemo doesn�t have much of a story to follow. Before I get all picky, I should point out that I enjoyed it immensely and laughed often. The animation is rich, luxurious and funny, and sometimes dark and scary (really). It�s no Shrek, but it�s a nice film all the same. And I know it�s a film for kids � I wasn�t expecting Nemo to reveal at the end that he�d been faking his withered fin throughout and that in fact he was Kaiser Sose � but I expected more than the old character-gets-in-trouble-then-gets-out-of-it-again trick repeated over and over throughout. If I�d wanted that, I could have gone to see Harry Potter. The story rambles on with a series of near-tragedies that become infuriating instead of engaging. Maybe it�s just that now I�m old, and I know that with Disney it will always turn out well in the end, or maybe they just play that �It�s going to be a disaster! Oh no, wait, it�s fine� card too much. These animated movies that work for kids and for adults are a tricky business. Making them sugar-coated enough for the kids makes them not so delicious for the grown-ups, but making them interesting enough for the adults runs the risk of boring the children. It�s a tightrope, and one I�m not sure Finding Nemo doesn�t fall off a couple of times. The darker moments are really quite sinister, and the lighter moments border on puke inspiring. Admittedly, I have that Spielberg-induced fear of all things water related that I imagine many people my age (who were allowed to watch Jaws far too young) suffer from � but still, it�s a cartoon! I shouldn�t feel the need to pretend to be frightened to cover up the fact that I actually am. I also have an exaggerated cynicism that I find hard to keep in check when baby fish tells daddy fish he loves him in front of his whole school � like the squids wouldn�t kick the shit out of him for that! I think the film fell between two stools � too scary in parts for the kids, too irritating a plot with too sweet an ending for the adults. Go and see it if you haven�t already � it might not sound that way, but I did enjoy it a lot. It has lots of good bits� and at no point does anyone even vaguely hint at adopting a talking mouse instead of a child. Sorry these posts keep turning into inch hogging rants, Mish. I�ll work on being more concise.
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