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Whacking Permalink Archive 24 January 2004
Terrific film, and a technical wonder. The best effort from that studio since the original Toy Story, it's a charming tale for all ages and the most visually stunning animated film ever produced. I'm not joking about the visuals: some of them are breathtakingly vivid, and some underwater imagery looks real. Real as in lifelike. The supporting cast stole the show for me: Barry Humphries as Bruce the shark, Geoffery Rush's pelican and Willem Dafoe's delusional fish who plans aquarium breakouts are all side-splittingly funny. And you know the best part about the movie? No fucking songs. Praise the gods for that small miracle. I wonder if the success of Pixar-style computer animation has spelt the death-knell for traditional "flat" Disney-style animated movies, which are now well and truly light-years behind in visual appeal, wit and sheer energy. Even something as fun as Aladdin now looks painfully dated. And if you buy the
DVD, you can activate the "virtual aquarium" feature, which
is ideal entertainment for when you are up to your eyebrows in chemical
refreshment. Some more on the Israeli flag issue. I had an amicable meeting with the powers that be in Human Resources yesterday, and essentially, I'm very happy with the way the university has handled it since it attacted some press attention: the flag is back up, internal ANU procedures for handling grievances have been clarified at both ends, I'm back doing my job, and everybody's happy. Well, almost everyone. It seems the person who made the original complaint - and a couple of his supporters - have shown up at the ALS forum, claiming I've misrepresented the whole situation, that the whole complaint was really about "visual pollution" in a professional environment, not Israeli flags. A couple of others have asserted I made too big a deal about the whole thing and I should get a life rather than "make trouble for my employer". If the nature of the original complaint was indeed only about aesthetics, then it is indeed a pity the whole issue became what it is. Nevertheless, I have some problems with this stated position. First, the "visual pollution" argument does not explain why the Israeli flag was singled out for attention while the motorcycle pictures were allowed to stay (I certainly was not given any explanation of "aesthetic" reasons), nor does it explain why the images were acceptable for five years before the Israeli flag went up. As I have written in one of my replies, the arguments about my new office being a more busy, public and "professional" workspace are nonsense. It does also not explain why - if the reasons was purely aesthetic - the issue was handled through admin channels rather than a simple amicable discussion. Since I had no idea who made the complaint, there was no opportunity to discuss the matter. Most importantly, I had no obligation whatsoever to remove the flag under any ANU policy. Yet a couple of discreet discussions with senior university officers strongly suggested that I should remove any "offensive" material in a public workspace. So the quiet, "internal channels" approach didn't do much good. So, I was made to remove an Israeli flag (dubiously singled out from other "visually polluting" materials) - which I was not obligated to do - and told I had no grounds to refuse. And people are wondering why I went public with this! Finally, the question
none of my detractors have yet answered: why is an Israeli flag considered
offensive or provocative? |
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Support Brave Multinationals!!!
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Saw
the latest Pixar effort on DVD tonight.
