It is hard living in these times. From infrastructure to scheduling to dropping lecturers like stones, it is a time of change in the world of Victoria, and I’m not so sure if I like it.
I might just be the soul living in the depths of Hunter, but I feel the years rush past me like water over stones, watch students grow wan, get old and die, and I wonder — what am I aside from a remnant of a colonial past? Am I too long-established for an uncertain future?
“Vic,” They call me. “Victoria.” Sometimes even “#VicUniWgtn,” but I am less sure about what that one means.
There is a disturbance these days. A rumbling. An anger.
From within my walls — which have seen so much debate, and salacity, and inebriation — I sense a change coming. Someone familiar. Not new, exactly, but different.
He visits me one day, dressed in the trappings of the overworld — from the beard, to the glasses, to the strawberry milkshake-flavoured cloud of smoke around him — but he has the eyes of an elder, and the ideals of one too.
“You should change your name.” He says, dark gaze locked on mine. “You have no idea how often I try to think of you and get confused by all the other Vics I’ve had.”
“How… romantic.” I reply. “But I think that’s a you problem.”
He growls, deep in his throat, and as much as I try to resist, I’m reminded of that one night, sat in that tree at the top of the Cable Car many years ago, where he’d brushed a thumb along my cheek and said, “God, I can’t wait until I get rid of your Gender Studies degrees.”
Though it hadn’t made much sense at the time, the thought is sobering, yet somehow arousing. That night had been electric, despite the slight asbestosy feeling clogging my pores ever since.
“Oh fuck,” I cry, “Strip away my low-cost lunch options!”
And he lays me out bare in front of him. I’m drawn in by his eyebrows and his laxidasical acquiring and spending of wealth. I’d call him a sugar daddy, but he really doesn’t give me that much in return.

“You know how much I love spending money on you.”

He purrs, and it’s a powerful aphrodisiac, going straight to my core (located in an abandoned copy of Salient somewhere in the Hub).
I tremble under the heat of his gaze, my soul undulating around me — though that might just be an earthquake, I can never really tell. “Mmm, take me. Make me yours!”
“Oh, Victoria —” He says, sliding home, “You want me to raise uni fees, don’t you?”
It’s painful and pleasurable, like it always is. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I can never stop myself asking for more. “Yes! Raise them! The boost to our local economy — that’s so fucking hot!”
“Don’t you want wait times at Mauri Ora to be longer? And appointments to be harder to get?”
I do. Really and truly. “Harder! Yes, so much harder. Oh fuck, get inside me. Change vital parts of my infrastructure. Make me feel so good.”
I’m a creature possessed, I’m agreeing to things I don’t even really believe in. Maybe it’s the look in his deep, dark British Racing Green eyes. Or maybe it’s the promise of changes to come. I need this. I always need this. He promises so much — one day it’ll all surely come.
But then he stiffens, grunts, and leaves me covered, like the Tim Beaglehole Courtyard after the pigeons have had at it.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m not even sure if that was spiritually fulfilling. Talk about being fucked over.
“Fantastic.” He says, and stands up. “Same time next week?”
“What about all of your promises? There’s people in need, right now. Don’t you care about them?”
“Ha.” He laughs. “Should have gotten them in writing.”
He leaves, presumably to terrorise the tuataras, and I’m left wanting. As usual.
But I don’t think I can stop. He’s a poison in my veins, my corridors, my heart, but I keep coming back. Promises are better than nothing at all.

Somehow I doubt it.
Pixels is yet another one of Adam Sandler’s ensemble movies. He gets a bunch of his mates together, makes up some bullshit, sells it to theatres, and everyone hates it.

I think.
I don’t know — I’ve not actually seen this movie. I have, however, watched CinemaSins’ Everything Wrong With Pixels more than 10 times, so I’m basically an expert in the subject.
Adam Sandler’s character — whose name doesn’t matter — is a Gamer Boy as a child, and loses a Massive Important Gaming Competition to another Gamer Boy. This defeat sticks with him for at least thirty years.
Thirty years later, there’s some conflict. I believe aliens come down to earth and issue a Gaming Challenge — or something like that. Adam Sandler and a bunch of his mates: including Kevin James (who plays the literal president of the US), and Peter Dinklage (being a total effing Chad) must beat the aliens at their own game to get them to go away.
Adam Sandler saving the world, huh? I’ve not seen someone so un-suited for their job since Trump became president.
There’s also sexism, awkward comic machismo, and all the Sandler-esque nonsense that one could ever want. It reinforces all of the stereotypes about gamers that you hate while not even attempting to subvert the tropes we know so well.
As I said above, I’ve not actually seen this film, but I do know that Josh Gad hooks up — and has babies — with Q*bert. The video game character. From 1982. I’ve not SEEN this film and I know that.
What an impact on the cultural consciousness this piece has made, eh?
I could live without that thought in my head, to be honest.
It’s been described by many as one of the worst films of all time. I’d politely like to direct those critics to the wonder that is Birdemic — and all of Netflix’s shitty sci-fi/horrors — before passing judgment, but I do understand their complaints.
I doubt Pixels is a good film — or even, a passable film — but at least it’s still a film.
Some people don’t even get that far. A lot of creators set out to make a movie and can’t find distribution, or don’t even make it past the scripting stage.
Is mocking films like this punching down? Are film critics just beating a dead horse? Should we just let Sandler fade into obscurity?
I don’t know.

VUWSA president Marlon Drake said “this role will mean there is finally dedicated support for our LGBTQIA+ community”, and it is a “big step forward for student wellbeing in our community”.
Otago University has had a Queer Support person for around fifteen years; they are a key member of their student support team. The role is employed by OUSA, making it somewhat independent from the University. They work with departments on policy changes, restructuring, lecture content, and can raise issues that students are experiencing. Otago also provides a permanent queer space for students, and has a queer resource library. Other universities around the country provide similar support.
Ex-Uni Q President, and current University Council member Alexandria Mark transferred from Otago to Wellington after one year of uni. Mark was shocked to find that Vic had so little resources for its LGBTQIA+ students.

These films… do not.
Alien Covenant (2017), Pacific Rim Uprising (2018), and The Predator (2018) are all sequels that seemed vaguely pointless to make.
However, I loved them. Not because they were good, but because they weren’t.
Alien Covenant is a batshit-insane follow up to Prometheus (2012) — and sixth addition to the Alien franchise. A spaceship crash lands on a planet with aliens on it, there’s some cloning, and Michael Fassbender has an utterly ridiculous level of sexual tension with himself. I didn’t exactly expect an Alien film, of all things, to be the place for some Fassbender on Fassbender kissing, but it was clothed in a layer of mysticism and bullshit science wankery, so I supposed it worked plot-wise.
Pacific Rim Uprising is the original Pacific Rim, except without the grim realities of apocalypse life, and with a bunch more teenagers. While it was a fun film, in many ways, I question the necessity of killing off fan-favourite characters and the obvious sequel-baiting within.
The Predator is a film about a Predator going around and killing people. There is other bits of plot involved, but really, it’s just about some war veterans with severe PTSD fighting against a couple of space aliens. One wonders if a schlocky action film was quite the place to try and seriously cover mental illness, but props to them for trying.
These three films are not good films. There’s so many things with them that don’t work. The philosophising, the attempt at seriousness — a film that’s aimed at a bored late-night audience doesn’t need those things to work.
What does work in this genre (shitty sci-fi sequels) is the comradery and the action. Covenant has some of the best action scenes I’ve ever seen. Brutal murder on an alien spaceship in Fiordland? Fantastic! Uprising has a series of giant robots fighting against Kaiju. Predator’s action scenes aren’t all that memorable, but it does have some pretty rad monsters. All three of the films are worth seeing just for those parts.
What I also love about action films — of this ilk — is the ensemble work. Putting characters into high-stress situations really allows for beautiful relationships to form. Baxley and Coyle’s arc in Predator is heartbreaking, and I ended up caring so much about Amara in Uprising. Though the films themselves aren’t fantastic, it’s parts like those where they really can begin to shine.
In truth, not all sci-fi films have to be Oscar-worthy. A fun film can exist because it’s fun — not because it has to reign triumphant in the pretension stakes. The world’s shit enough, can we not just watch things that are a bit silly sometimes?

What is Batman v Superman XXX?

It’s Batman v Superman, except not. The Joker’s kidnapped Lois Lane, Superman’s off banging chicks on other planets and has to come home to save her, and Batman, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and a bunch of random (female) characters I don’t know are also there. One wouldn’t think that I’d need a masters degree in comic books to fully get to grips — so to speak — with a porn film, but maybe I do?
There’s fewer lens flares, worse jokes, and somehow less homoeroticism in XXX than the original. Admittedly, I might have turned it off before the epic Batman/Joker sex fight scene, but I don’t think the director would have had the guts to put that in a porn parody aimed mostly at heterosexual dudes.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of women that hook up with each other — because as we all know, men who direct porn have an expansive and unproblematic view of female sexuality on screen and absolutely do not leverage that on a daily basis.
Speaking as a non-heterosexual woman, I was hoping there’d be a little more in this for me. Some porn parodies are great — there’s genuinely fantastic, hilarious dialogue in Scooby Doo XXX: The One Where Scooby Doo Never Appears (it’s been unfortunately struck from all internet pornography sites for being too good) — but the writers must have been having a
day off during this film.
Other parodies, and other genres of porn seem to give a damn about the people in their audience who don’t just want pure, hardcore smut — making it more about genuine pleasure, and less about visceral sex in your face, maniacal rooting, and shades of dubious consent — but this one just doesn’t. Once you’ve seen one blowjob scene where two people are dressed in god awful amounts of spandex, you’ve seen them all.

What more can I say? It’s pornography, and y’all know how pornography works. Batman vs Superman XXX is exactly the same as any other piece of porn on the internet, except you’ve got to suffer through twice as much sexing and four times the usual amount of mundane dialogue in order to get to one (of the many) cumshots.
I suppose some pleasure can be gleaned from the commitment to the bit costume-wise, and there’s also some not-terrible camera work, but on a whole, the entire porn looks like a low-budget student film gone terribly wrong.
Most porn films tend to be cinematographically/dramaturgically/spiritually awful, but somehow it’s even worse when there’s the appearance of effort involved.

K: For better or for worse, yeah.
B: And for starters, when you move to Wellington, that’s exciting — but then it just gets old, more and more everyday. You’re sick of seeing people that you know — especially when you’re at your worst, you’re having a really sad day, you don’t want to see anyone you know. There’s a scene with an ex in the play — and that’s such a Wellington thing — to bump into your ex in town after two years. Wellington’s one of the only places where that’s definitely going to happen, you know?

There’s nothing wrong with sitting back and watching something that you like. World War Z was raked over the coals by critics, but it’s one of my favourite films. Same with The Boat that Rocked.
Sure, there’s beauty in efficacy, in perfectly framed shots, and in arté filmés, but there’s joy in watching things that feel comforting, movies that allow you to sink back and relax in the glorious warmth of familiarity. These movies don’t necessarily have to be good, though. We don’t need to constantly strive to find the best pieces of art and cast the things that make us feel happy to the wayside.
Life’s too short to care about what film critics say, anyway.

“This show will wreck your evening, your home life, and your day. Every single episode is nothing but dismay. Look away.”

Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is a welcome absurdist respite in a world of shows that just make far too much temporal sense.

Lemony Snicket’s mad oeuvre has finally been given the remake it deserves and I am loving it. The three Baudelaire children — Violet, Klaus, and Sunny — lose their parents in a house fire. As they’re passed around from guardian to guardian, an evil actor called Count Olaf tries to trick their caretakers into giving him the children, so he can murder them and steal their fortune.

It’s a dark premise for what is, in all accounts, a pretty funny show.

What time period are we in? Who knows! Sometimes there are horse-drawn carriages, but Count Olaf also talks about Netflix, so it could be far in the future, or in a past where we invented streaming television many years too early.

The novels of ASOUE are a damn good read — a tad tangential, a tad lovelorn — but the television show finds the perfect balance between comedy and tragedy, making us feel bad for the orphans but also wanting to see more of Count Olaf’s maniacal plots.

Count Olaf, a failing actor, is played by the wonderful Neil Patrick Harris, who brings a bizarre joy to the piece, spending a ton of time singing and dancing, as well as dressing up in absurd costumes. His troupe of actors also delight, with the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender and the Hook-Handed Man being a couple of my favourites.

Our child stars also do not disappoint. Malina Weissman (Violet) and Louis Hynes (Klaus) are incredibly strong in their roles, considering how long they’ve been in the game. They’re endearing and inquisitive, and you can’t help but feel sorry for them.

This show has eight episodes per season and every two episodes is used to cover one of the books. I think this is a great decision, as it allows us to get entrenched in these new, weird locales, and it stops the writers from cutting too much from each book to fit it into one episode. My favourite episode(/s) so far have been The Miserable Mill (Part One and Two). The Baudelaires get taken to a mill and put to work. Count Olaf reunites with his ex-girlfriend, Georgina Orwell, who is the town’s optometrist, and then masquerades as her secretary, Shirley (yes, Neil Patrick Harris does full drag and it is phenomenal), to try and steal the Baudelaires’ fortune.

There’s hypnotism, a well-known Kiwi actor with a particularly heavy accent, lots of foe-yay, and far too many situations that children shouldn’t be put into. Seriously, any health and safety professional would have a coronary.

A Series of Unfortunate Events might be utterly bonkers, but it is definitely worth watching. Seasons one and two are airing on Netflix currently, with a final season or two coming in the next year.