This Week's Bits

Issues dissected in this edition include: the Government's emissions target; the SAS and Afghanistan and the Corrections Association responds to comments by Bill English that it's refusing to allow double bunking in prisons and are therefore responsible for the need to privatise prisons.

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MP3, 15m22s, 3.5MB

The Weekly Roundup

Features interviews with The Little Bushman; Misery and a in studio performance by The Checks.

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MP3, 12m46s, 2.9MB

The Age Of Stupid

British documentary maker Franny Armstrong has been right on the front lines of social protest for some time now. Her debut film McLibel documented the fight of two environmental activists who had been taken to court by McDonald's over a phamplet they distributed which was critical of the company. That film was made for nothing despite taking ten years to film. Her next film was called Drowned Out where she followed the plight of a family whose home was to be destroyed following the building of a dam in India.

Her latest film is her most ambitious as it took her to seven countries on a tiny budget to film the lives of six people whose lives have either links to or in some way been affected by climate change. It's called The Age Of Stupid and stars Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?

It has it's joint Australian and New Zealand premiere this week and I spoke to Franny over the phone from London.

Further reading

The film's website including details of the NZ premiere.

Brendan O'Neil's outraged review on Spiked Online.

The 'making of' The Age Of Stupid.

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MP3, 19m55s, 4.6MB

Incredible Hot Sex With Hideous People

On Saturday the 15th of August at the Cross Street Studios the first Auckland Zinefest we've seen in quite some years took place. A number of zine makers and enthusiasts had stalls at the event which included talks by guest speakers.

One of those was Bryce Galloway (you might recall he was in a band called Wendy House), the creator of one of the country's longest running Zines called Incredibly