Catch up on some movies

We've watched three movies on DVD over the last week or so that have been worth noting.

Let me put in a plug for our local library while I'm at it: they provide DVDs at $2.00 a pop for a week, and $2.00 a pop for TV series, which you can have for a fortnight. I wanted to catch up on the first series of Broadchurch the other day, because I'd missed some episodes. In the end we got it from a video store, and it cost $10.00. I found it in the library yesterday as one of the 'top of the picks' at $4.00, and I could have had it longer...  It's a great service, and we've made some really interesting discoveries as a result, even watching two entire series of DVDs in Italian: Inspector Montalbano was one of them. And then we went on to learn Italian as well...but that's another story.

First up on the movie front was Last Passenger. It's about a small group of people who get left on a train that's refusing to stop - the driver turns out to be someone, they think, who wants to commit suicide in a spectacular way. Dougray Scott and Kara Tointon star, and do a good job. The whole film takes place on the train and for the most part maintains its sense of tension. There are a few spots where things could have moved along a bit, and the plot probably doesn't want to be investigated too strongly, but overall this was a nicely tense ride. There's an affecting performance from the seven-year-old boy, Joshua Kaynama, a little boy caught up in a situation he doesn't understand and who's asked to do the impossible at one point.

The second movie was much more sure of its pacing: the tension barely let up for a moment, even when there were conversations between various baddies. This was 7 Boxes, a film made in Paraguay, which apparently isn't well-known for top quality movies; in fact several of the cast seem to have started their film careers in this movie (!)

It's about a young man whose job is wheelbarrowing purchases for customers in a market. (The wheelbarrow isn't your garden model but a long flat thing that obviously takes muscle to handle.) These wheelbarrow boys have to compete with each other to get the work, and it's tough. When the boy, Victor (Celso Franco) gets an opportunity to take seven boxes 'around the block' for some devious characters, he jumps at it, because it's going to be very well paid. The boxes of course contain something much worse than he imagines, a nasty fellow-barrow boy has been shunted out of the job by accident and wants to get it back, and those sending the boxes on their way have got things considerably tangled, much to their horror. The piece is well plotted, and all the elements keep crossing and intercrossing until there's a violent climax in which Victor almost dies.

In spite of the tension and violence there's quite a bit of humour, lots of fun with cellphones changing hands, a nice bickering relationship between Victor and Liz (Lali Gonzalez) his know-all friend who obviously thinks girls can do anything, and all manner of other enjoyable details. This movie also takes place in a fairly confined area: small in South American terms, anyway. Everything happens in a huge (and I mean huge) market area, a market that seems to go on in a maze for miles in every direction.

The last movie was Saving Mr Banks. Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks star, Hanks playing a generous second fiddle to Thompson's wonderfully arrogant performance. Thompson is P L Travers, the creator of the Mary Poppins stories. Her books are sacrosanct and the idea that Walt Disney (Hanks) should make one of his awful animated movies out of them appals her. She's been holding out for twenty years, but now she's starting to need the money, and is finally persuaded to go to Los Angeles and meet Disney, and see if she can agree to anything. There's almost nothing she wants to agree to, which makes it difficult for the Hollywood people, but in the end...well, you can imagine the end because you know Mary Poppins got made and was one of Disney's most successful films ever.

Interwoven with the modern story (set in 1961) is Travers' childhood. She had an imaginative father of Irish stock, in Australia, but he was an alcoholic, and for all his intentions to keep his promises, seldom could. In spite of this Travers, as a child, adored him, and shared his wonderful fairytale view of the world. Her childhood is a tragedy, in fact, and this has affected her adulthood, so that in spite of writing a wonderful set of stories she has become a bitter old woman. Perhaps she wasn't quite as difficult as the filmmakers make her out to be, but she was certainly opinionated, and the 'family' (the Banks family in the book, and Poppins herself) were extremely precious to her.

It's a classic Hollywood movie in the old style, with a cast of great actors (Colin Farrell plays the relatively small part of the father, and Rachel Griffiths makes a brief appearance as an aunt who obviously was in part a model for Mary Poppins). Very enjoyable, and emotional.

DairyWorks

Twice in the last month or so I've been part of a nine-person focus group looking at a particular company that sells dairy products. At the first of these two groups, which were held in the Southern Cross Hotel in Dunedin, we were primarily given choices of three brands of cheese and asked to make a number of comments about them, the packaging, the design, the way they were packaged, the detail on the packaging, and much more. We discussed them with the coordinator of the group and with each other.  Everything was recorded - with our permission - and there was also another woman there who took notes throughout. These focus groups are going on throughout the country at present on behalf of the company that's paying for them.

The three brands were Mainland, Anchor and Rolling Meadow. The first two were familiar to everyone in the room and everyone had plenty of opinions about them. The third was one that most of us didn't recognise at all, and yet they're the number two brand in the country in supermarkets in terms of dairy, in particular, and, unlike most other dairy products in New Zealand, aren't owned by Fonterra.

But the curious thing is that even though we didn't recognise Rolling Meadow, most of us have brought the butter with this brand on it, and we've also bought the cheese. In fact, when I got home I found I had Rolling Meadow butter in the fridge. I'd bought it because it was on special, I guess, and it's probably the way most people buy this brand. (They also have another brand name for their cheese - Alpine - this is sold by the Progressive chain of supermarkets. Rolling Meadow is used by the Foodstuffs chain.)

Anyway, these focus groups are happening because the company that produces Rolling Meadow and Alpine - DairyWorks - wants to increase its visibility. It doesn't advertise on television, which is interesting, so it's a surprise to find it's doing so well in the marketplace. The fact that the product is good, of course, will help (!) and their current packaging is attractive in a simple, straightforward way.

But they are looking to redesign their look, and this is what we were part of. In the second session we were given possible types of colours and design ideas and fonts that might be used and had the chance to 'vote' on these. Our vote is put towards the overall impression these things make on those running the focus groups and this is reported back to the owners. The owners, incidentally, are very hands-on people. Though the business has expanded a great deal from when it began in an old cheese factory in Temuka, near Timaru, and is now functioning nationwide, the owners still know exactly what's going on where, and will assist in an emergency, as they apparently did recently, when supplies of the cheese didn't make it to one of the Dunedin focus groups.  One of the owners made the trip to Dunedin (from Christchurch) specially, to make sure that we got the stuff.  And then did a survey of the supermarkets to see how things were going! (For those who don't know how far Dunedin is from Christchurch - on average it takes about five hours each way, if you don't get held up by traffic issues.) This is what's called having a heart for your company!

Having now 'discovered' the company, I'll be interested in keeping an eye out for the results of these focus groups (as will the rest of the people I shared this task with).  I'm pleased I decided to take the chance to get involved!

Warren Buffett

"A market economy creates some lopsided payoffs to participants. The right endowment of vocal chords, anatomical structure, physical strength, or mental powers can produce enormous piles of claim checks (stocks, bonds, and other forms of capital) on future national output. Proper selection of ancestors similarly can result in lifetime supplies of such tickets upon birth. If zero real investment returns diverted a bit greater portion of the national output from such stockholders to equally worthy and hardworking citizens lacking jackpot-producing talents, it would seem unlikely to pose such an insult to an equitable world as to risk Divine Intervention."

"How Inflation Swindles the Equity Investor" by Warren E. Buffett, Fortune May 1977

Online surveys - and an acquisition

Back when I was out of work last year, I started (amongst many other things online) doing more surveys online. Sorry, market research, not surveys.

In spite of what’s said about doing surveys online, it’s not a very lucrative way of earning money, and some of the research places don’t actually offer cash direct, but various other ways of spending the points you earn, which personally I could do without.

I’m one of those people who enjoys doing surveys, although I must admit that some online surveys are very boring in their layout. They don’t fit on the screen well, and they ask the same questions over and over, on screen after screen – until you want to scream.

I’ve always thought face-to-face surveys that just asked the same questions for page after page were badly organised, and it’s the same online. I’ve thrown the towel in with some of them, because they get tedious, and all you can think is: when will this ever end?

On the other hand, some survey companies have made use of the Net’s capabilities rather more, using short videos, and even recreating ads on screen. This is a far better way to go, and shows that some researchers have become more innovative. Let’s hope others follow in their footsteps.

Apropos of all this, I see that yet another NZ company has been taken over, this time Research Solutions, which has been acquired by Synovate. Well, well, NZ will soon be entirely owned by overseas interests and then we won’t have to worry about anything any more!

Stats and research

I read that in NZ they’ve decided to make Government statistical information much more readily available. A good thing too, since both businesses and charities and all sorts of other groups can better plan for the future.

Coincidentally I’ve just come across a group on the Net who seem to do something similar, though they get their information through market research rather than stats. They produce a number of reports on diverse subjects, such as customer loyalty, hotspot reports on places such as Mexico, the Hispanic market, what colour is and isn’t, consumption trends in China and so on. They also produce two regular reports, one on change, and the other on the latest market research.

The company is called Synovate, and they class themselves as ‘an agency with a boutique feel that offers global capabilities.’ In other words, they’re not a large organization, but they produce big results, and have a big vision. At least, that’s what I think they’re saying!

Cullen's latest idea

Some time ago we had a rental property which we’d bought in a moment of madness and regretted forever after. According to the wisdom of the person who advised us that buying the property was a good idea, we would not only earn a profit on the rent paid, but be able to claim against our taxes for a number of things, including depreciation, rates, insurance and the like.

For us it was never much of a deal. We came into the property market at the wrong time, and eventually sold at a loss. That’s the way it goes in some businesses.

But I see now that Michael Cullen, our esteemed Minister of Finance, is considering removing many of the tax breaks landlords receive. That would be scary for an awful lot of people who rely on that extra income at tax return time. It’ll be particularly scary for those who own only one or two rental properties. (The only way to make big money in the rental business is to own a number of properties, so that the losses in rent are compensated for by the gains.) And I suspect there’ll be a sudden rash of rental property sales on the market, which will possibly reduce the value of housing, and will also decrease the number of rental properties available.

No doubt Mr Cullen in his wisdom knows what he’s doing, but I for one am glad I’m well and truly out of the rental market.