New Zealand Conservative

BE WARNED. THIS REVIEW HAS MAJOR SPOILERS AFTER THE FOLD. SO DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE

[Update] The film opened strongly this weekend in the U.S, making it the #3 highest grossing movie on Friday, and #5 for the whole weekend. The low-budget PG-13 drama about a college student (Shane Harper) who sets out to prove God's existence raised eyebrows Friday when it brought in $2.8 million from just 780 theaters — an impressive $3,613 per-screen average. That was better than any movie in the market except for “Divergent” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” It was running third after Friday and will likely come in around $8 million for the three days. ~ Source The biggest surprise of the weekend is undoubtedly the success of God’s Not Dead, an inspirational drama about a college student who defends his belief in God against a non-believing professor. Here’s how the top five played out: 1. Divergent – $56 million 2. Muppets Most Wanted – $16.5 million 3. Mr. Peabody and Sherman – $11.7 million 4. 300: Rise of an Empire – $8.7 million 5. God’s Not Dead – $8.6 mill...

Fictional gay TV couple that ACLU is lobbying  to get "married"  This is getting ridiculous now. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a lobby group whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." (Thanks WIKI ). And what do they want today? They are pushing for a gay fictional couple from the TV series Modern Family  to get married because they think it will bring more acceptance of gay marriage. So they've started an online petition in the hopes that they can pressure the writers of the show to make it happen. In their own words - "For many, Mitch and Cam are the gay couple with whom they interact with the most," the ACLU noted. "Inviting 13 million people to Mitch and Cam’s wedding will only bring more people into the push for marriage equality." They and other homosexual advocacy groups bem...

According to Breitbart , HBO’s mini-series The Bible has just gone on sale in the U.S on DVD and is the biggest selling mini-series in 5 years, and on blu-ray, the biggest ever. This is after huge viewer ratings on the television network itself. The History Channel’s just-wrapped miniseries The Bible isn’t done changing the pop culture landscape quite yet. The program’s ratings gave the cable channel a massive boost, holding firm against even the season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Now, the miniseries’ home video debut has become the biggest selling TV on DVD in the last 5 years and the biggest miniseries of all time on Blu-ray, Digital HD and DVD in its first week of release. According to the Association for Christian Retail, The Bible is the fastest pre-selling faith based title in its 60-year history. It also ranked first across digital stores including iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, Xbox, PlayStation, CinemaNow, and GooglePlay. That can’t be right, because no one is reli...

Madonna 'fuming with M.I.A' Madonna "wasn't impressed" with M.I.A's obscene Super Bowl stage stunt. The Queen of Pop was joined by the British star and Nicki Minaj during her 12-minute medley at this year's half-time show. The trio performed new track Give Me All Your Luvin' on stage, where M.I.A got a little overzealous with her hand gestures and flicked up her middle finger during the show. Her obscenity caused outrage among organisers and audiences alike, and now sources claim Madonna is furious at the star's stage antics. It's not like Madonna hasn't pulled stunts in her time to attract attention and keep it now - is it? The banality of it all is what astonishes me.

Lady Gaga got the MTV award for best female video , and she accepted it whilst playing a male character, self-described alter ego Jo Calderone. So she's made some kind of point about genders and all, and now I'm almost convinced the MTV awards could be a lot better by being half as long.  Instead of all this "best male video" and "best female video" gender stereotyping (and how many best male videos don't have females in them anyway?) why don't MTV just have a "best video" and be done with it? And if everyone gets out of the awards twice as fast, we can turn our TV sets off much sooner.  Just think of all the carbon pollution we save the planet from! Parting thought - there has to be some cosmic irony that Lady Gaga wins the best female award, and Justin Bieber picks up best male video, and thanks God and Jesus in his acceptance speech.  And all the girls in the video were dressed!   What's that about?  If this isn't proof o...

Oh dear... Lady Gaga has a new song out, and it's sure to be a hit. The song is called Born This Way, and here are some of the lyrics - CHORUS: I'M BEAUTIFUL IN MY WAY 'CAUSE GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY I WAS BORN THIS WAY DON'T HIDE YOURSELF IN REGRET JUST LOVE YOURSELF AND YOU'RE SET I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY I WAS BORN THIS WAY DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN DON'T BE! IN THE RELIGION OF THE INSECURE I MUST BE MYSELF, RESPECT MY YOUTH NO MATTER GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BI, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDERED LIFE I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY I WAS BORN TO SURVIVE NO MATTER BLACK, WHITE OR BEIGE CHOLA OR ORIENT MADE I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY I WAS BORN TO BE BRAVE Yes, I admit that I am cherry-picking the lyrics (you can Google the rest), but these are some of the ones I wanted to focus and that I take issue with.

I've noticed that in the Editorials page of the paper version of the NZ Herald that recent letters over the last few days have been very critical of the shows playing on TV here. I have to agree; there is hardly anything worth watching anymore, and the number of crime shows seems to be increasing. There seems to be a slew of shows obsessed with violent crime such as Criminal Minds, Special Victims Unit, CSI, NCIS, City Homicide,  etc. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with a good crime show, but why so many and so violent? There's a huge jump between the shows we used to watch as kids (Magnum P.I, Remington Steele, etc) to the violence that is displayed on TV today. There's a new show on Sky tomorrow (thankfully we don't get Sky) about mobsters in the prohibition era that promises to - Be prepared for black-faced minstrels, raunchy sex scenes, corpse nudity, shoot-outs, midget boxing and chilling 'moiders' – 'Boardwalk Empire' doesn...

Kylie Minogue mentor Mike Stock says Lady Gaga's performances are not family friendly and sexualising children. Mike Stock – one third of the legendary pop factory Stock, Aitken and Waterman – said the music industry had gone "too far". "It's not about me being old-fashioned," he said. "It's about keeping values that are important in the modern world. "You can't watch modern stars like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga with a two-year-old – 99 per cent of the charts is R'n'B and 99 per cent of that is soft pornography.  "Kids are being forced to grow up too young. Look at the videos. I wouldn't necessarily want my young kids to watch them. I have to agree with him. I flip across to the music TV stations sometimes and a lot of it is, as he says, simply soft porn. It's no wonder kids are growing up too soon.

AC/DC Lead singer Brian Johnson on Charity concerts "I don't tell everybody they should give money - they can't afford it," said Johnson, whose band won the first Grammy of its 27-year career last weekend for best hard rock performance for its song War Machine. "When I was a working man I didn't want to go to a concert for some bastard to talk down to me that I should be thinking of some kid in Africa." This is not to say that Mr Johnson is indifferent to the sufferings of others. Johnson said his band preferred to carry out work for charity in private and spend some of their own money. "Do a charity gig, fair enough, but not on worldwide television," he said. And there's the point. Anyway the Haiti earthquake has seen a reprise of "We are the World" thing with a whole lot of faded jaded stars gathering together to remake the archetypal charity song. Those in good with the organizers will get to solo half a verse, those l...

Has anyone else seen the latest TVNZ 'On Demand' advertisement on TV? It's basically asking that at the end of your life when your whole life flashes before your eyes, would you rather see your own boring life or would you rather see yourself surrounded by famous people and actors (because you've been watching TV) as this will somehow be more satisfying to you when 'the end' finally comes. As ad campaigns go, I find it rather ineffective; perhaps it will get more people to stop watching though and actually go and enjoy life, which is a good thing. The idea of having better memories at the end of your life because you'll see the people in the TV shows you've watched is rather cynical though; it reminded me of the video wall in Ray Bradbury's excellent novel Fahrenheit 451 in which people interact with a soap opera that constantly runs and nothing ever happens; it keeps the people sedate. In a case of life imitating art, TVNZ has just started a web-onl...

Patrick Swayze is dead. On an unrelated note, so is my Ipod. It's not even a year old. Related Link: Stars pay tribute to Patrick Swayze ~ NZ Herald

The arctic is melting and unless John Key agrees to meet with Phil Goff it is only going to get worse Whanganui is spelled incorrectly on all the maps and Michael Laws has yet to apologize to the school kids who told him this. People are still smoking . Terrorists are discovering new and novel ways of self destructing , I hate to think what new indignities will be added to airport screening. Still at least there are still a few people left who have a reason to celebrate .

Heteronormativity. What a word! My spellchecker doesn't even recognise it. But then my spellchecker doesn't recognise spellchecker either, so maybe that's not really saying much. So what does "heteronormativity" mean? The following will explain. "Despite the assumption that children's media are free of sexual content, our analyses suggest that these media depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape," wrote researchers Emily Kazyak and Karin Martin, in a report published in the latest issue of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) publication Gender & Society. Kazyak and Martin said they studied the role of heterosexual relationships in several of the highest-grossing G-rated films between 1990-2005. The results, say the researchers, illustrate two ways that the children's films "construct heterosexuality": through "depictions of hetero-romantic love as exceptional, powerful, transformative, and magical," a...

The British comedian who made the character Borat famous, has now turned himself into Bruno, a flamboyant homosexual fashion journalist from Austria. And all is not good with this. [His character] is supposed to send-up the ignorance and intolerance of real-life individuals he meets during a filmed journey across the US. However, he has instead been accused of promoting gay stereotypes. Surely not! Several liberal groups claimed this week that Bruno's behaviour and image - he has bleached hair, wears copious amounts of make-up, and appears to strip-wax his legs, buttocks and chest - will actually end up promoting rather than undermining homophobia. "Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be OK with it," was the stern prediction of Rashad Robinson, of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "Sacha Baron Cohen's well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others." Ms Robi...

Following on from the staggering success of Earth Hour, a yearly event where concerned citizens burn alternative sources of fuel to celebrate the fact that they have turned the lights out, I'm suddenly rather keen on the idea. I say "staggering success" because like all devotees of Earth Hour, I know there is no need to check the newspapers to know this idea "just works". The planet can now be saved, as people are now psychologically prepared to accept the tough prescriptions of "Environmental Experts" to set humankind back on the path of carbon neutrality. Just the easy stuff at first, like one child per family and tax rates of 80%, moving up to banning breathing, until finally we all become part Amish, part Hippie and live on a commune. Told you the easy stuff came first. Furthermore, after one hour of the lights on dim, sea levels will probably not rise by half a centimetre now for another few years, and the average polar bear has 70 centimetres l...

The film 300 portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, in which 300 Spartans held off a huge Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days. It angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks. If I remember the movie correctly, at least one of the Spartans was a conniving, backstabbing coward who lusted after the queen. A bunch of those in the political assembly were blind idiots who followed a good speech. So it wasn't all one way traffic. The Iranians ignore that part of the movie and focus on the historical inaccuracies to do with King Xerxes and the Persians. Comic book writing genius Frank Miller (Dark Knight, Sin City) and the producers of 300 have already gone on record saying they play loose with the facts. Anyway, we expect that from Hollywood and comic book writers. Especially if the movie ever starts with "based on a true story". I'm not sure anyone would be...

Just for you techno geeks (of which I am one). If you haven't been into iTunes for a while, you'll notice something new - Kiwis can now buy and rent movies straight from iTunes; not that it helps me, having no broadband (thanks again Telecom!). I might rent a movie (if I could) but I don't know about buying one from iTunes. I'm too fussy when it comes to picture quality.