From The Lord of the Rings to Border Patrol: how Sweden sees us

My visits to Sweden have been few and far apart, since it is quite a distance to travel from New Zealand: summer 2002, autumn 2003, winter 2010, and summer 2024. There are many interesting observations one can make with so many years in between, seeing how society has changed with brief snapshots from each visit, […]

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To our Sunday colleagues, you should still be on air

Above: Sunday host Miriama Kamo.   [Originally published in Lucire] To our colleagues at Television New Zealand’s Sunday, including Lucire alum Mava Moayyed, we bid you godspeed and good luck. Your programme didn’t deserve cancellation. This country needs proper, long-form current affairs, and with Sunday airing its final episode [on Sunday] night, this has come […]

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Which other Glen A. Larson production did this girl group appear in?

  This girl group appears in three Glen A. Larson productions that I can think of, and probably appears in more. Switch, Knight Rider and Cover Up are the three I know of. Their fashions and hairstyles, plus those of the audience, would place this in the first part of the 1970s—by the time they […]

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The history of the ITC white Jaguar Mk I, recovered

  In a Mastodon conversation, Andrew Ryan (well known to many car aficionados as ‘The Car Factoids’) reminded me of the infamous ITC white Jag—the Jaguar Mk I that plunges into a quarry, originally filmed for The Baron. I wanted to share with him a page to which I had contributed that included all the […]

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Nice to be back on The Panel

David McCallum with Melinda Fee and Craig Stevens in The Invisible Man. (Who’d have guessed? Illya Kuryakin and Peter Gunn on the same show!)   Haven’t had this much fun on RNZ’s The Panel ever—since for once I knew my fellow panellist, Alison Mau. Both Ali and I weren’t in the studio with Wallace Chapman, […]

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Farewell to Universal Media Server, hello Plex Media Server

After many years, I’ve had to remove Universal Media Server. I used v. 6.3.1 for many years and I see that was launched in 2016. I know that wasn’t the first year I began using the program, so I could well have had some form installed for the last decade. I stuck with v. 6.3.1 […]

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Generation Z has the right idea with flip phones and digital cameras

  This may be a source of comedy on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but to me it’s obvious why young people are opting for flip phones and digital cameras. They’re smart enough to think: why should I have a device that’s addictive and wastes my time? Why should I spend time on websites […]

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Remembering Nehemiah Persoff, 1919–2022

Nehemiah Persoff as a corrupt Latin American finance minister, Phillipe Pereda, in the Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’ (1969).   I read that the wonderful Palestinian-born character actor Nehemiah Persoff passed away this month last year, aged 102. I remember Nehemiah most from the third-season Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’, which is among the best […]

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A format so old, it’s new and radical

Above: I spy Natasha Lyonne and a Plymouth Barracuda. So the car is part of her screen identity? So it should be, it’s television. I might have to watch this.   Two very fascinating responses come up in Wired’s interview with director Rian Johnson on the Netflix release of his film Glass Onion. I’m not […]

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