Everyone Knows Someone From Lord of the Rings, And Other New Zealand Fun Facts

Tomorrow is Waitangi Day - which, as you likely don't know, is a national public holiday in New Zealand to commemorate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (if you want to know more, attend any kind of school in NZ). So I thought, what better way to celebrate than tell you a few home truths about the country I've lived in for my entire life. Because you've always wanted to know more about New Zealand. I suppose.

1) Everyone knows someone who was in Lord of the Rings. 

If you watch Lord of the Rings (as most NZers are required to do and required to like), then yes, you're essentially watching a nine hour long tourism video for our vast green landscape and mountains. And then you add in the nine hours of The Hobbit and wow, that's 18 hours of tourism endorsement from Peter Jackson. Seriously, it will take most of you 18 hours to fly here, so you may as well just spend that time watching Middle Earth because all you can really do here is make like a Hobbit and go walking around on mountains and stuff. But anyway, one of the coolest things is that in those 18 hours, literally everyone in NZ can go "hey, I know someone who worked on this". I know several jockeys who were a part of the big horse riding scenes. And just recently the guy who was used as a height scaler (because he is over two metres tall) for scenes where Gandalf and the Hobbits are together just moved into Dannevirke, and now he lives next door to my sister. I have him a membership at Blockbuster, and he is besties with Peter Jackson. Plus some guy from my high school did effects work on The Hobbit. So yeah.

We Might Be Hollow, But We're Brave: Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring (and Lorde)

But every song's like: Gold teeth, Grey Goose, Tripping in the bathroom, Bloodstains, Ball gowns, Trashing the hotel roomWe don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams
But everybody's like: Crystal, Maybach, Diamonds on your timepiece, Jet planes, Islands, Tigers on a gold leashWe don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair

Why the hook from Lorde's uber-phenomenonal song, Royals? It isn't just that I'm madly in love with the girl who makes me feel largely inadequate as someone in a school year ahead of her (damn you talent god for not making me musical), but because Royals became somewhat of an anthem for the NZ teenager, and somehow the rest of the world caught on. I mean, last week (or last year, whatever), I bought a copy of Vogue Magazine, purely because it had Jessica Chastain on the cover, and I was confused by how there were 65 pages of advertisements before the actual magazine started, and one of the options for a Christmas gift were $490 place-card name holders. Like, it was a big deal that I spent $25 on buying my Mum The Heat for Christmas. But hey, this is a reality for some people - and that reality is something that has been touched upon by many films in 2013 that I've unofficially called the "Look at My Shit New Wave". Falling under the umbrella of this slice of history that we'll no doubt be studying in a few years is The Wolf of Wall Street, Side Effects, Blue Jasmine, Pain & Gain, The Great Gatsby and The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers, which I'll be focusing on in this post. I'm told that films like American Hustle and The Counselor could fall under this umbrella, but I haven't had a chance to see them yet.

It is kinda funny how Lorde's music became big in 2013, defining teenagerdom, when we had The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers to define teenagerdom in film (bar The Spectacular Now, which paints a different, if equally true picture). The funny thing is that several songs off Lorde's album, particularly 'White Teeth Teens' and 'Tennis Court' wouldn't be out of place if they were to headline the soundtracks of those two films. They both depict the obsessive nature of teenagers, and how they dream of projecting a better life filled with diamonds on their timepieces and tigers on gold leashes. However, where The Bling Ring has already privileged teens wanting more, Spring Breakers has empty teenagers left broke and bored by their studies trying to achieve the kind of life the kids of The Bling Ring already have.

2013 was the Year of...

2013 was a pretty big year. Perhaps not in my film watching (which will be shown in my unofficial Top 15 that'll be posted up tomorrow morning), but there were plenty of things that I loved about this crazy year. So here's a big gigantic mess of the things that made 2013 what it was for me, some of which are movie related, most of which is culture related, and just the general happenings of 2013 that will remain landmarks for the year. Kinda like flipping through the back pages of my diary. But more interesting than my diary would be if I actually had time to keep one.

The Actors 

Daniel Day-Lewis
Yup, this was definitely my biggest actor obsession of the year. Spurred off by my drama class doing The Crucible, and then turning into this big thing where all I'd do with my spare time is watch his Oscar acceptance speeches over and over (I haven't watched one in about three weeks - have I been rehabilitated?). All other spare time was taken up by watching all of his movies. Which brought me to the lovely My Beautiful Laundrette, the awe-inspiring My Left Foot, the rather restrained The Age of Innocence, the amazing In the Name of the Father, of course The Crucible, the gutsy The Boxer, the violent Gangs of New York, the heartbreaking The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a rewatch of There Will Be Blood which boosted my love for the film, a rewatch of Nine which dragged down my supposed love for that film, and a couple of watches of Lincoln which just exemplifies how Daniel has mastered his craft. I wish I had at least 40% of his commitment.

Bradley Cooper
This has been a banner year for Bradley Cooper, an actor who I've long been in love with since The Hangover back in 2009. Along comes Silver Linings Playbook, which shows what I've long known: Bradley Cooper is one talented actor who is more than just the "eye candy" status that the woman's magazines like to lay on him. The Place Beyond the Pines gave him another chance to show how talented he is, and I hear that he's one of the best things about American Hustle. Hopefully The Hangover has been long left behind, and it is only up from here.