Reasons to speak a fake language
Watching Nude Tuesday, Paddy Gower, and local government mayhem
Kia ora koutou, and welcome to The Spinoff Weekend, the newsletter that wraps up the best of The Spinoff and the internet from across the week. I’m Shanti Mathias, taking over from Chris Schulz. Expect this newsletter to contain lots of the same, with maybe a bit more of my obsessions with sad music and cycling. This week Nude Tuesday was released. Is this movie in gibberish New Zealand’s rudest film ever? Plus, houses are still expensive, Paddy Gower made another show about drugs (the legal kind this time), and the Auckland local body elections are off to a very weird start. Pour yourself some Coffee Supreme and settle in; you’ve made it to the weekend. - Shanti Mathias, staff writer
Why does the nonsense language of Nude Tuesday work so well?
Nude Tuesday, a comedy film shot in New Zealand starring (among others) Jackie van Beek, Jemaine Clement and Chris Parker, is out this week. There’s a unique gimmick to the film, set on a fictional mountainous island: every line spoken is in a made-up “gibberish” language. The film has been subtitled separately by comedians with no knowledge of the plot; even music used in the film are covers of songs in a made-up language. Sam Brooks talks to language designer Perry Piercy and subtitler Julia Davis about how the made-up Scandinavian language works, and what it achieves in the movie.
How do you make a movie with this much nudity, filmed in a cold location, safe for all the actors involved?
A vital message from The Spinoff’s publisher, Duncan Greive
If you’re reading this, you’re hopefully getting value out of The Spinoff. Yet like many publishers, The Spinoff has suffered a significant drop in members, despite our costs continuing to increase. On one level I understand why our membership has dropped away. There’s a cost of living crisis, and inflation has made life hard for many of us. It’s totally normal to feel like you don’t need to support your local media organisation at a time like this.
The promise we’re making to you is that we’re actually better-suited to times like this than the pandemic itself. Our plan is to return to something more of what made us – coverage of culture, politics, te ao Māori and more with heart and humour. We will do that with features, essays and opinion pieces, but also podcasts, comics, video and newsletters. We are here to help walk you through this fascinating new era, and feel well-suited to being your guide.
But we can’t do it without you. The Spinoff has been cut out of the government’s enormous $100m plus Covid-19 campaign, which has been a boon to the big media companies and social media platforms. We returned the wage subsidy, unlike almost every other media organisation. The public interest journalism fund was narrowly targeted and is winding down. The big tech companies are refusing to do what they did in Australia and make meaningful deals with local media. And the recessionary drums continue to beat loudly, impacting the commercial spend we rely on, along with you, our members.
All of which is to say that we need your support more than we ever have. So please, if you can, click here to support The Spinoff by becoming a member today.
Anna Rawhiti-Connell: On Paddy Gower: On Booze
Paddy Gower has spent the last year or two making a reputation for himself as the main character of documentaries about substances. After tackling weed and P, his latest documentary On Booze was released this week. In it, he confronts his own relationship with alcohol, embedded in him from a young age. Bulletin editor Anna Rawhiti-Connell watched it, and came away thinking that as much as Gower is a privileged man presenting “revelations” about a well-known societal ill, there’s also vulnerability in how he chooses to talk about alcohol. It’s an issue where it’s important to find the right words.
Mohamed Hasan in The Pantograph Punch writes about the burden of being the sober Muslim at arts events
Did you get a $32,000 pay increase last year?
Our heartfelt and not-all-envious congratulations if so. For the rest of us, data expert and actuary Emma Vitz delves into the hard numbers about house and mortgage prices since this time last year. She calculates that as an average across the country, you’d have to be making $32,000 more than you did a year ago for a mortgage now to be as affordable as it was then. The average increase in median household income in New Zealand last year was actually $2.5k.
New season of ‘Local Body Elections’ dropping soon
The first polls for the Auckland mayoral race are out, and Leo Molloy is having a normal one. Toby Manhire went to the campaign launch for the would-be leader of the supercity, where Molloy insulted all of his opponents, saying that contender Efeso Collins was an “endangered species” that he’d like to hunt and mount on a wall. The poll had Collins and Molloy at 21% each as voters’ preferred mayoral candidate. In other local government news: Wellington City Councillors delay decision making on speed limits again, why the Christchurch stadium is so expensive, and do Aucklanders even recognise their mayoral candidates?
Everything else
Get in quick! The millennial lifestyle subsidy is coming to an end.
Toby Morris’s Side Eye looks at the wanton destruction of Tāmaki Makaurau’s maunga.
It’s coming home (New Zealand deserves fantasy writing from here!)
Some good dogs do their bit for kauri dieback
Sāmoa’s first female prime minister has earned the respect of Auckland’s Sāmoan community, writes Sela Jane Hopgood
A ‘minor’ cabinet reshuffle can mean what you want it to mean. Toby Manhire on who’s in and who’s out.
Korean superstars BTS take a break.
Jeanette Fitzsimmons was building a better world, says Gareth Hughes.
New Zealanders top bloggers from last decade look back on the heyday of the medium, where they were paid almost nothing to write a lot.
And finally, the trailer for Netflix’s adaption of Persuasion has dropped. Is Dakota Johnson too beautiful to pay sad ex Anne Elliot?
Thanks for continuing to cover local politics. I wonder if you're going to offer the policy/info tool you have in previous elections (can't remember what it was called)? It was really so useful for getting to know all the candidates but I imagine quite labour-intensive on your end.
At least we won't have to try to figure out all the dhb candidates this year - hopefully that might result in more participation as it'll be a bit more straightforward to vote