Every challenge is an opportunity (Hsing Yun)

A lovely woman with a guy
who is too damned content with things!

"Write more interesting blog posts!"

Stark and interestingly, this was the advice given by a work colleague who has taken an interest in my quest goal to go viral this year.

My colleague, let's call her Mandy, is quite right and although I reacted with stunned silence when she energetically and perkily gave me that pearl, that nugget, she's right (she's seldom wrong - there was that one day last year, but I digress).

Feels a little like that scene in a Woody Allen film when aliens tell him to tell funnier jokes after he asks about the purpose of his life.

Not that easy! But that's okay...it's not about easy. Or it is but to get to easy I'll need to get through hard.

Oh, oh, and she also said, "Be controversial".

Also, not that easy. Especially for me - I don't want to upset anyone. I also don't have contrary points of view, generally, and I am not about to be insincere. Hmmm (that was me pondering).

But I appreciate Mandy's advice and interest and I need to remember - every challenge is an opportunity.

Love and peace - Wozza

She's making movies on location (Dire Straits)

What just happened?

If it's a movie about making movies, I'm there!

Recently I watched What Just Happened? A film starring Robert De Niro as a movie producer. Here's the low down.

It was okay but the Rotten Tomato rating seems about right.

What it did do is made me think about their appeal because ordinarily, I'm not really bothered with how something works, I just enjoy the product.

It started many years ago when I saw a TV programme focused on starlet shenanigans going on with directors and producers. I forget its name.

For some reason I became interested in these peeks behind the artifice (which are themselves artifice - like being in a roomful of mirrors).

Watching Day For Night was a big moment - Roger Horrocks used it to kick start his film studies paper.

For me, when it's in the hands of cinematic masters like Truffaut, Allen, and the Coen brothers, the faux documentary style makes for a more realistic and heightened sense of drama, plus the fiction seems absolutely appropriate to the subject matter.

My top 5 movies about making movies:

• Day for Night - François Truffaut
• Woody Allen's Stardust Memories
• Barton Fink by The Coen brothers
• Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story 
• The Purple Rose of Cairo, also by Woody.

Love and peace, and...cut - Wozza

The winner takes it all (ABBA)

Draws. The British and Irish Lions and All Blacks fought out a series draw after the third test ended up at 15-15.

The drama of sport? It felt more like a cosmic joke. 

A tantalising win for the AB's seemed on offer until the bizarre French referee ended the game in a complete anti-climax.

Leaving aside the cowardly decision by the ref to change his mind after another annoying check with the video ref (too many refs spoiling the game), the hollow feeling we all felt because of the result was interesting.

Americans can't stand a drew. Someone has to win.

Other sports can't stand a draw. Someone has to win.

So we have overtime (NBA/ NFL/NHL/MLB), or a tie-break (tennis), or a penalty shoot out (football/ hockey), or something else entirely to break the deadlock.

Why? Because we need someone to win, to dominate, to provide bragging rights, to satisfy some deep need/craving we have.

On Saturday night Steve Hansen trotted out the 'kissing your sister' analogy again - I really don't like that tired joke. Something vaguely off about the hint of incest involved.

Instead, I do love the genius opening to Woody Allen's Stardust Memories movie (which turns out to be a movie within a movie by Sandy Bates of course):




That's the feeling, precisely, of a draw. Somewhere - there's another train, a better existence, a win, that we gaze at longingly, but it's out of reach - impossibly on a parallel track. We long for it, and we try for it anyway, but without success.

In the end Lions and AB fans were all together wandering aimlessly around a rubbish dump while gulls circled in the sky.

Love and peace - WNP

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering and it's all over much too soon (Woody Allen)

Hope you're keeping up with the 50 books in 52 weeks countdown. You're not! For shame.

We're up to Week 20 and Books 21: Memories Dreams and Reflections (Marianne Faithfull) and 22 The Wishbones (Tom Perrotta) have come and gone. 

I especially enjoyed Marianne's collection of thoughts, much as I did her first autobiographical effort. Mick Jagger still looms large over her memories and that's cool.

The Perrotta novel was taken a punt upon because the back cover said - The American Nick Hornby. Which turned out to mean he was working the same sort of subject matter as High Fidelity, rather than a reflection of Nick's style.

I'm onto number 23 this week: ...but we need the eggs (Diane Jacobs). It's subtitled 'The Magic of Woody Allen'. Published in 1982, it's a look at Woody Allen's films up to and including my favourite - Stardust Memories and before the Mia Farrow person life tabloid meltdown/train wreck.

SWMBO hates Woody but I find his work hilarious and fascinating. Reading about him can be a chore but I love being reminded of these classic movies.

Love and peace - WNP

They put raisins in the pork roast and butter on your bread... (Lasse Karlsson)

A student recently asked me what was my favourite film of all time and the answer is always easy: Pelle The Conqueror.

I first saw it with Sam and Stas Sivak in Nelson in the early 1990s.

I bought a VHS copy of the film a short time later and showed SWMBO and the weirdest thing happened. 

She loved it too.

Normally our tastes in movies are very different. If proof is required - Woody Allen has her running for the hills while I love his movies (Stardust Memories is my favourite but Bananas, Mighty Aphrodite, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, and Annie Hall are all in my top movies of all time list).

Somehow we are united in our love of this long Swedish film with English subtitles set at the end of the 19th century. 

A brief run down from IMBD: A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life. Pelle starts to speak Danish but is still harassed as a foreigner. But none of them wants to give up their dream of finding a better life than the life they left in Sweden.

There are so many haunting images in the film. There is so much laughter, so much sadness and so much strength. 

I love great stories about relationships - especially fathers and sons, I love stories about rites of passage and I love films that are inspirational. 

Pelle The Conqueror is special.

It's my favourite film of all time. Nothing comes close.

Love and peace - Wozza

If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear some daffodils in your hair.

We've had a glorious weekend - the little weather pixie should be wearing sunglasses and sipping lemonade. Spring has really arrived. We have only the one lamb still (called Chunky) but the daffodils are now starting to bloom in earnest and buds are appearing on our trees.





We received our first emails from Samantha in San Francisco - here is an excerpt:

"Yesterday was such a fantastic day! we ended up going for a walk along the
coast to dead man's point before heading into some part of town and getting
authentic mexican burrito's for lunch, which we ate on the grass next to the
exploratorium. I saw Robin William's house, more of Golden Gate park, a flock of
pelicans and some crows. Then we met up with Ian (Jesse's brother) and went rock climbing..well not me, i just watched. But the best part had to be dinner! we
drove across the Golden gate bridge to Marin to Jesse's mum's and WOW Cathy made me a vegetarian stuffed pepper, salad, potato salad and New Zealand wine and the rest of the gang had steak n stuff. we sat outside next to the pool with candles until dark. The owls came out and started hooting every five seconds so we retreated indoors where we all got peach sundaes and sat down to watch the
Giants game. I didn't understand at all, especially when the whole family was
yelling at the screen ??? I'm just chilling...writing emails, listening to
music and watching all the surfers get destroyed by the waves."

Suffice to say we are all desperately jealous of her! She told us about a local second hand book shop that even has LPs. Sounds like heaven to me.

Jade is also busy planning her escape next year to Toshi station to pick up some power converters. Actually it's either Victoria University in Wellington or Massey University in either Palmerston North or Wellington.

I love hearing from all of you out there in Wozza's World. I love getting everyone's emails but must mention PJ's ones in particular. I never know what part of the world Pete is going to email me from. Recent ones detail his experiences teaching English in China and he sounds like he's thoroughly enjoying life. And thanks Michael for the San Francisco music selections.

Many of you out there are Woody fans and will appreciate this message (sent to me by Steph - many thanks Steph!).





Love and peace - W

And in the end on dreams we will depend

It's been a wet weekend. In preparation I hired out a stack of movies. Basically I went into the video store and got 11 movies I hadn't seen before as fast as I could. One was Cassandra's Dream. A Woody Allen movie from 2007. I love Woody and thought I'd watch it when Jacky was working or sleeping or out with the horses or...Basically Jacky HATES Woody.

Oddly we do have a Woody and Diane Keaton still from Annie Hall on the wall. Clay gave it to me years ago and it's survived Keegan's attempts to borrow it over the years. Jacky loves it. Go figure. But she won't watch a Woody movie. No way. No how.

So this morning, as she slept in, I started watching it. Not with a great deal of hope I'd have to say. The last few years since his last great film - The Mighty Aphrodite - have been very bad! Here's the list since then with him as writer/director, and he's nothing if not prolific: Everyone says I Love You; Deconstructing Harry; Celebrity; Sweet and Lowdown; Small Time Crooks; The Curse of the Jade Scorpion; Sounds from the Town I Love; Melinda and Melinda; Matchpoint; Scoop.

How many of those have you even seen? Did ANYONE see Sweet and Lowdown?? Okay - so not a rich field and I watched those last three through gritted teeth out of duty to the genius of Stardust Memories, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Bananas, Hannah and her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors and The Mighty Aphrodite.

The verdict? Cassandra's Dream is a film that you should see and think about. Now, as a rule, I'm also not crazy for Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor (here playing brothers) but Woody has finally stopped casting younger versions of himself and has given these two actors something memorable to chew on. The use of Cassandra in the title clues you in to the idea that warnings will not be heeded; that we're probably heading into tragedy territory so I won't be spoiling things for you if I reveal that, as in Crimes.. , the bad guy gets away with things and it's not a happy ending for the brothers.

Why should you think about it? Because it deals with some big issues - the choices made; their consequences and the moral decay of modern life. I found the movie a hopeful one and, while not a comedy, there are some comedic moments that tell us Woody isn't taking himself too seriously. The brothers each face their individual crisis after they've murdered someone and Woody's writing allows them to work through the consequences of this act well.

And there's a great shot of London Bridge!

Funnily enough, Jacky wandered into the lounge about an hour into the movie, sat down and watched. At the end I asked her if she liked it - and she did! I then revealed the fact that she'd watched a Woody movie and her comment was, "Yes but he wasn't in it!" Can't argue with that.

Love and peace - W