Writers, illustrators, and photographers

I received this as an email this morning. There may be others who'd be interested who haven't received a copy. 

 

An invitation to an information evening for writers, illustrators, and photographers

Where: Vodafone conference centre, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable Street, Wellington 6011

When: Monday evening, March 3, 6.00–9.00 pm

Do you contribute to the Ministry of Education’s teaching and learning resources? Are you interested in doing so? The Ministry of Education publishes an extensive range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short plays, teacher support material, illustrations, and photographs within the Instructional Series (Ready to Read, the Junior Journal, the School Journal, the School Journal Story Library, and Connected).

This is an opportunity to find out more about content needs, the Ministry of Education’s preferred suppliers for resource development and design services, and the commissioning of content.

With the closing of Learning Media Limited as a Government-owned educational publishing company in 2013, the Ministry of Education welcomes this opportunity to provide writers, illustrators, and photographers – and the agents and organisations that represent them – with up-to-date information about contributing to the Ministry’s Instructional Series publishing programme.

Virtual attendance through a live webcast will be available to anyone who cannot attend in person. Wellington-based writers, illustrators, photographers, course tutors, agents, and organisations are encouraged to attend in person.

By attending the presentation in person, you accept the possibility you may be filmed, with the understanding that this will be used in the live and recorded webcast and may be used for further Ministry of Education informational purposes at a later date.

Parking is available at Te Papa in the evening from 5.00 pm for $6.00.

Handouts will be provided on March 3 and will be downloadable from the Ministry of Education’s website (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/) afterwards. The event will be recorded for edited playback afterwards.

RSVP: By February 15 to Peggy Nesbitt (peggy@lifteducation.com). Please let Peggy know whether you would like to attend in person or virtually. If you are only able to attend virtually, you will be sent a weblink and a password when you RSVP.

Questions: Participants attending in person are encouraged to submit questions by February 15 but may also ask questions on the night. People attending virtually must ask questions by email by February 15 to ensure that they are addressed on March 3. 

Forward this invitation: The Ministry wishes to encourage new contributors – including Māori and Pasifika contributors – to become involved in its publications and online resources and would like to broaden its contributor base. Please forward this invitation to other writers, illustrators, and photographers that you are in touch with.

For further information: Contact Peggy Nesbitt (peggy@lifteducation.com, phone 04 381 2251)

Passing by and Time

James Nesbitt is a fine actor who doesn't always get parts that give him enough to get his teeth into.  Furthermore, he's an actor who can show vulnerability without it seeming in the least bit hammy.  We caught up with a TV movie the other night called Passer By (a somewhat unusual 'spelling' of this common phrase - usually it's hyphenated if it's not treated as a single word).  Nesbitt plays a man who seems to have it altogether, but when one night coming home on a suburban train he's forced to make a decision as to whether to help a girl who's likely to be sexually assaulted if he leaves the train, he still decides to get off at his normal stop, suggesting she pull the emergency cord if there's further trouble.  Once off the train, he comes to the place where he can make an emergency call himself, but still fails to speak into it.  The consequences for the next year of his life, and for his family, are traumatic, as he's more and more pushed into having to face his cowardice and his unwillingness to get involved.

It's a play that hits home to all of us: how far are we willing to go to help a stranger in distress, someone who means nothing to us in terms of relationship, and whose only connection with us is their common humanity?  Nesbitt's character is given grace in more ways than one, as it turns out: from his wife (who's a good deal wiser than him, but who hasn't personally had to face the crisis), from his 14-year-old son, who's having trouble himself with bullies at school, and from the police.  The young woman who's attacked, of course, has to live with the ongoing trauma, and decides to repress it to a great extent, and comes to despise Nisbett's character.  The story could have ended far more tragically than it does; however without any great tweaking of the characters, it manages to offer a satisfactory and hopeful ending,   Nesbitt's wife in the film is played by Siobhan Finneran, who's perhaps now more famous as the sharp-tongued personal maid, Sarah O'Brien, in Downton Abbey.  Here she shows a much softer side, though it's combined with considerable strength.  Nesbitt's troubled son is superbly played by Ben Smith, who was 15 at the time, and already had considerable experience in television (he'd first appeared when he was four.)  His part certainly needed an experienced actor, since it combines violence and vulnerability in fairly equal measure.

On a different note, we watched In Time, last night.   This is set in some future time, though it doesn't appear to be too far away.  At this point everyone is genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, and then given only one more year to live.  By swapping and buying 'time' they can achieve longer life spans (the first female 25-year-old we meet is actually 50), and of course, those with enough capital in 'time' are effectively aeons old.  There's a difficulty with having all that time available: this form of immortality can become increasingly tedious, but it's also dangerous, as those with greater amounts of time are at greater risk from those who want to steal their 'time' from them.  Time can be transferred from one person to another, like a kind of debit/credit system, or can be bought from places that charge increasingly large amounts of interest.  It doesn't pay to think too much about how this system works; during the course of the film it makes sense enough for the viewer to go along with it.

The film stars Justin Timberlake (as a young man from the wrong side of the tracks - the 'ghetto') and Amanda Seyfried as the daughter of one of the most wealthy men in the country (she lives in 'New Greenwich').  Through various circumstances they meet, and wind up on the run - from the Timekeepers.  These are a kind of police unit that aims to keep some sort of balance in the society, ensuring the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor (the latter often only having the means to accumulate one extra day, or less, at a time). 

The story behind the film has been done innumerable times before, but the twist in having 'time' as something that can be bought and sold adds an interesting and novel approach.  The cast of mostly mid-twenties actors is excellent, though I'm not sure that Justin Timberlake is quite your action hero.  He pulls it off, and adds some warmth and humanity to a character who could have been nothing but macho. Seyfried is a nice match for him, and the two become a kind of Robin Hood duo in due course.  At the end of the movie we see them continuing on their goal of robbing the rich to give to the poor; given the world they live in, it may be the only way the film can end, but it seemed just a little less than satisfactory.

The world they inhabit also seems a little constricted: there are lots of empty streets, and in the ghetto everything visible has been reduced to blandness: there are no shops, apart from pawn shops, so it's hard to work out how anyone manages to eat or clothe themselves. There's no entertainment, apart from one or two streetwalkers.  Even the Mission gives away only 'time' - no food or clothing or shelter.  When people do appear in the streets, it's as if they have nothing else to do all day.  Even in New Greenwich there's a shortage of bodies.  Perhaps this is intentional, part of the kind of world that we're experiencing.  It certainly feels a little odd.

The film is sharply directed (and written) by New Zealander Andrew Niccol, who leans towards stories in which the world isn't the way we normally experience it (The Truman Show, Gattaca).  A small-scale action movie, perhaps, but worth watching.

English and Irish

I've watched a couple of movies on TV lately: firstly Five Minutes of Heaven, and secondly, Happy-go-lucky. Let's look at that second movie first. It's directed by Mike Leigh, so naturally it's going to have some off-the-wall feel to it, it's going to be superbly cast, and superbly acted, and it's going to leave you thinking about it for some time after.

But it's also supremely annoying. I've just been looking at some of the reviews of this movie, in which Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, a woman in her thirties who jokes and laughs her way through everything, and who seems to have (to me) an instinct for not understanding how she's affecting other people (particularly those who aren't like her in any way). Hawkins is marvellous in the role, but it doesn't take long for you to feel there's something unlikeable about her. Have I been around gloomy people for too long, and can't stomach someone who's supposedly so full of life and so full of get up and go?

I don't think so. The reviewers all praise the film, and particularly Hawkins; few of them seem to think she would be unbearable to live with. (Her flatmate manages to do so, but she has done for ten years, and they have a longstanding friendship.) Poppy teaches at a primary school and does the job well; she's also fairly sensitive in a scene with a mildly deranged man she meets while out walking alone at night in what would appear to be a rather dangerous area. The rest of the time she rubs many people up the wrong way. Should they be so rubbed? Perhaps. The main one is Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. He's an exceptionally uptight driving instructor, with a most peculiar (but apparently successful) approach to teaching people to drive.

However, I had more sympathy for him than for Poppy. She's plain irritating as soon as she gets in his car, refuses to listen to him, goads him, provokes him and pretends a lack of concentration on the task in hand that drives him absolutely crazy (almost literally, in the end). He's not an especially pleasant character, but to me he doesn't deserve the treatment Poppy dishes out to him.

Nor does the bookshop owner we see briefly at the beginning. He's a morose man who plainly doesn't want to make small talk. Poppy insists on babbling on - it's almost as if she can't stop the endless joking and nonsense, as she demonstrates throughout the movie - and in the end you side with the man in wishing that she'd just leave the shop and leave him alone. Curiously enough, when she goes for a flamenco lesson with the principal of her school, while her eyes keep doing the goofy thing and her body language is still in joking mode, she actually keeps her mouth shut, mostly. The flamenco teacher is as neurotic as the driving instructor, and has a major blow-up in the middle of the lesson. Characters in Mike Leigh movies are never straightforward.

Finally Poppy meets a 'nice' bloke and it all seems to go well. He could still be in the picture after the movie has finished, as it were. But could any guy stand Poppy's nonsense for long? Or would she, having finally found a man who appreciates her, let her tongue have a rest? It's hard to think so.

Five Minutes of Heaven is the story of a Protestant Irishman (Liam Neeson) who, as a teenager, killed a Catholic youth in Belfast - and nearly killed his younger brother in the process. The younger brother is subsequently made to take the blame for the death - his mother insists on saying: You could have stopped it, which is plainly nonsense, but it eats into the boy's soul.

As middle-aged men the two are due to meet again via a TV programme. Neeson's character has done time for the murder, and spends his days warning the world about the perils of ideological thinking in teenage minds. Reconciliation is expected, but the surviving boy, now something of a perpetual nervous wreck (James Nesbitt plays him as though he's going to explode any minute) is just as likely to kill the other man in front of the cameras as forgive him.

The television filming is aborted, and Neeson and Nesbitt eventually find their own way through the mire, with a final violent confrontation. It's a serious, intense piece, with barely a moment of lightness in the intensity, and perhaps it's over the top in its own way (a number of reviewers have felt the ending is too contrived). I found it more satisfying to watch, however, than Poppy's endless gavorting...