Utopia, you are standing in it!

Comparing Michela Wrong and David van Reybrouck

David van Reybrouck’s account of Congo’s modern history is basically an orthodox chronological account and political analysis interspersed with interviews with the many veterans and eye witnesses he has tracked down and spoken with at length.

Wrong’s account feels completely different, less chronological or, indeed, logical, more thematic. Instead of historical analysis, she brilliantly conveys what it felt like to live in Zaire under Mobutu as she sets about systematically exploring and describing different aspects of Zaire society and culture. Her vividness of approach is demonstrated by the way the book opens with the fall of Mobutu in 1997, going light on political analysis and strong on vivid descriptions of what it felt like to live in a crumbling, corrupt third world country.

Chapter one dwells on the role played in so many African states by key international hotels in their capitals, in…

Traffic (2000) Director: Steven Soderbergh

★★★☆☆

Based on a 1989 British television show called Traffik, a masterpiece theater series that tracked the movement of heroin from Turkish fields to the streets of Europe, Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Traffic explores the global dilemma of the international drug trade as it affects various people inside and outside the United States. The unique cinematography and editing in Traffic shows a remarkably bipolar world: the color tint in Mexico is yellow to convey a dusty desert akin to the wild west, whereas in the United States scenes are color-tinted blue to indicate cold, sterile, hopeless environs. Scenes in Mexico are portrayed as lawless and dangerous, whereas scenes in the U.S. are portrayed as calloused and unforgiving. Soderbergh won an Academy Award for Best Director for Traffic, and the film itself was nominated for Best Picture.

In the film we meet two Mexican…

Rain Man (1988) Director: Barry Levinson

“Of course when they bring the pancakes after the maple syrup it’ll be too late…”

★★★☆☆

Rain Man is a bittersweet comedy/drama that occurs mainly on the open road. It is about the troubled relationship between two brothers, Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) a high-functioning autistic savant who lives at the Wallbrook Mental Institution and whose life is timed by a rigid series of schedules in order to maintain psychological stability; and a slick Los Angeles hotshot named Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) who is only interested in money. When Charlie Babbitt’s father dies he learns he has merely inherited a classic car and little else, and instead the bulk of his father’s fortune totaling $3M has been placed in a trust held by the Wallbrook Institution. Charlie travels across the country to the Wallbrook Institution where he discovers his previously unknown brother, Raymond.

When Charlie…

The Parliamentary seats put aside especially for Maori – they provided Labour with five MPs at the 2020 general election – are among the issues that are off limits during something described by RNZ as “a sweeping review of the country’s electoral laws”.

It will include voting age, the three-year term, party funding and the “coat-tailing” rule.

But the government has been careful to ensure the seven Maori electorates (although it  lost two of them to the Maori Party at the last general election) aren’t swept away during this clean-up of our electoral system.

As Faafoi explained without the hint of a blush, the review will not consider changes to Māori seats, local elections, changing from the MMP system, or fundamental constitutional changes such as becoming a republic or having an upper house.

Moreover, he said some rule changes – he described these as “targeted” ones, such as changes to…

In Germany that is.

Age before beauty they say.  But after last week’s inconclusive election in Germany it’s the forty-something leader of the Green party, Annalena Baerbock, and her generational compatriot, Christian Lindner of the market liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who are making the running in coalition negotiations, leaving the sexagenarians who head the Christian and Social Democrats out in the cold – for now.