Andy & Susan Borowitz/USA/1990; R4, 4-disc
Warner Bros, NZ$59.95 | Reviewed by Kim Lesch

PENNSYLVANIANS the world over are personified by a few known products of our fair state: Heinz ketchup, Andy Warhol, Trent Reznor, Bill Cosby, and his arch nemisis – Will Smith. Without Will Smith there would be no Independence Day, no Parents Just Don't Understand, no Wild Wild West!

Or the one with Norman Mailer. For a show that I'd still (marginally) regard as one of television's most underrated, convincing a grumpy old – but monumentally celebrated – anti-establishment journo-novelist to stretch his suspenders and guest star on the latest episode of Gilmore Girls is a coup indeed. Mailer was last seen in any sort of line-learning role in Cremaster 2 as Harry Houdini; here, he plays himself in a series of interviews with one especially privileged journalist.

Today, the Sunday Magazine – a glossy supplement bundled with the Sunday Star-Times – mustered up enough nerve to include The O.C. in the bottom end of its "Up/Down" column: another hare-brained variation on the "What's Hot/What's Not" style barometer. Describing the TV2 show as "vacuous" and for "teens" (well, duh), it's the kind of throwaway footnote that I normally flat-out ignore. Only this time, I felt reluctantly as if I should agree.

Reviewed by Kim Lesch

PROTESTING, as I've said many times to my anarchist chums, has many forms. Some are more sexy than others. Some involve hollering, sign holding and end in arrests. These forms are totally valid; they make a difference, they help raise awareness and allow people to express just how angry they are over unfair practices/policies/laws. The Yes Men instead protests via identity 'exposure'. Instead of going to protests with "Bush Stinks!" t-shirts, our two fearless protagonists, Andreas Bichlbauer and Mike Bannano, simply dress up like uptight Republicans and talk to various assemblies of people about World Trade policies with stunning honesty.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

VIEWING Prachya Pinkaew's Thai sensation Ong-Bak, one gets to witness a number of things: incredible feats of power and athleticism; shinbones made of Titanium; the laws of physics as Einstein knew them, defied. Now, if you're the kind of moviegoer I think you are, then this is the least you'd expect from the martial arts genre – the ability to levitate or somersault prodigiously now a wall-to-wall Post-it note on the public's mass consciousness.

After hearing Robert "Adaptation" McKee's splendid, virtuoso fulmination against the state of Hollywood/European cinema last year, people who give screenwriting lectures I review are always going to be at a disadvantage. McKee's hilariously excoriated The English Patient, Titanic and other "perfectly suck-awful" products of the media-industrial complex. "My idea of hell's watching Moulin Rouge on loop".

Reviewed by Tim Gray

WATCHING Old Boy, one wonders why the whole of Taranaki rolls out the red carpet when Tom Cruise comes to town, yet Park Chan-wook doesn't get so much as a mention on TV One's Headliners for shooting the surreal epilogue to (the Cannes Grand Prix winning) Old Boy in Aotearoa. Whatever the case, New Zealanders who missed Old Boy at last year's International Film Festival have the opportunity to repent their sins by making their way directly (do not pass "go", do not collect £200) to the film upon its release on the 14th of April.

As a lead-in to the upcoming Asia Film Festival Aotearoa 2005 (May 20-29), SAPNA SAMANT elaborates on the success and pitfalls of the Asian Cinema Aesthetic.