humour

18 posts

Renegade Planner Lives on the Edge

Television Urban Planning

Press release: For Immediate Release

Premiering on Nine next Month, fresh from its Emmy award-winning debut season in the US, is the hit drama Material Detriment, set in the high stakes, high pressure world of urban planning. The series follows the life – and loves – of planners in a tough inner urban municipality, as they battle petty one-off developers and the larger, more sinister Mendoza Development Group (MDG).

Material Detriment centres on the tumultuous lives of its four leads:

  • Senior Planner Jack Detriment (Kiefer Sutherland) is a tough, street-wise planner. Abrasive and argumentative, he is committed to doing whatever it takes to keep his neighbourhood orderly and proper. He has little patience with the pen-pushing bureaucrats who seem to be emerging from Planning Academy, and just wants to get on with clearing the unresolved applications off his books. If he has to bend a few rules to get there, so be it.
  • Cadet Planner Dwight Rosewood (Jesse Spencer) is an idealistic rookie planner, straight out of the Academy. He graduated top of his class and his knowledge of the key planning texts is unparalleled. Strongly committed to appropriate statutory process, he is partnered with Detriment in the hope of reigning in his senior officer’s more extreme methods. Out in the “real world” for the first time, he learns a few lessons about life, loyalty… and love.
  • Team Leader John Taggart (Brian Dennehy) is the grizzled, cynical head of the branch, and the man responsible for pairing Detriment and Rosewood. Just 6 weeks from retirement, he is constantly exasperated by Detriment’s methods, warning him that one of these days, he’ll have to hand in his ID card. Yet he secretly respects his star officer, grudgingly acknowledging that without him, the branch’s processing times would be much longer. Gunned down in the 2 part series finale.
  • Junior Planner Tiffany Summers (Katherine Heigl) is the rising star of the branch, still fighting to make headway in the testosterone-filled halls of the Planning Branch. Raised in an exclusive suburb and the daughter of the Planning Minister, she constantly riles against the assumption that her wealth and connections got her the job, and that she plans on sleeping her way to the top. Her love / hate relationship with Detriment (source of much “will they or won’t they” discussion amongst the series’ fanbase) comes to a head when they attend an interstate Planning conference together.

Continue reading →

New Tunnel to Link Eastern Freeway with Kingdom of the Mole Men

Urban Planning

Roads Minister Tim Pallas has announced that studies will continue to assess the viability of linking the Eastern Freeway with CityLink via a proposed tunnel. The tunnel will run from Collingwood to Flemington, under the Melbourne General Cemetery and via a lost underground civilization of cave-dwelling mole men.

“This is a practical, real-world solution to Melbourne’s traffic problems,” declared  Pallas. “There are a lot of people out there who would like to see us pursue all sorts of fantasy-land proposals, like train lines to Cranbourne East and South Morang, or peak hour trains less than 20 minutes apart on the Upfield Line. But we aren’t interested in dreams. We are interested in feasible solutions, like the Collingwood – Moletopia – Flemington link.”

Continue reading →

New Home Showcases Innovative Alternatives to Good Design

Urban Planning

An inner-city dwelling is being held-up as a model for other architects and builders to emulate after it incorporated a number of innovative alternatives to site-responsive design.

The project was inspired by recent designs that super-imposed images of Victorian buildings onto contemporary buildings in heritage streetscapes. “We took that basic design principle to its logical conclusion,” says designer Tony Le Corboxier. “We built a three storey concrete tilt-panel box and etched an image of a well-designed and sensitively sited building onto it.” In a satirical nod to the stuffy, old-fashioned ways of the past, the building chosen as the subject of the etching was the home demolished to make way for the new building.

The new dwelling, called simply “Innovative Brilliance,” was commended upon its completion by architectural commentators, who remarked upon its avoidance of clichéd design elements such as ornamentation, verandahs, parapets, eaves, doors, windows, or architectural merit. “This building has none of those things,” said Le Corboxier. “Architects often talk of thinking outside the box. But that’s defeatist. They just haven’t made the box big enough.”

Continue reading →

The Crudtastic 4

Film

Before the disappointing Spider-man 3 there is a trailer for the next Fantastic Four movie: my possibly unfair assumption is that it will suck, which might burst the recent superhero revival bubble somewhat (although there is still the next Batman film to come).

But it could be so much worse. For example, had you realised that in 1994, Roger Corman produced a version of The Fantastic Four? The rights to the series were contractually tied to the production of a movie by a certain date; if no movie was made, the producers’ option would lapse. So a movie was produced, on an absolutely rock-bottom budget, with no intention of ever releasing it (at least not through conventional channels). And of course, it now circulates as a bootleg.

Continue reading →

Die Hungry

Film

I believe the original Die Hard is one of the all-time classic bits of action cinema, but have no high hopes for the fourth film in the franchise, because, well, I have an ounce of common sense. It’s going to suck like the vacuum of space. Beyond that, all I will say is:

a) “Internet Terrorists” = Lame. Alan Rickman’s gloriously Eurotrashy Hans Gruber would have hung their nerdy hides out to dry.

Continue reading →

Get this to the Boys in Marketing

Film

This is old news, around on the net for ages, but Ain’t it Cool just ran a link to a pseudo-trailer for Samuel L. Jackson’s upcoming thriller, and I just had to mention it, because this film may have the best title ever. (Even better than Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarves Started Small).

The concept of the film is that an assassin lets loose hundreds of snakes on a plane to kill a witness in a trial, causing the usual disaster movie thriller havoc. The title?

Continue reading →