Reviews for The Selling of New Zealand Movies

The average rating for The Selling of New Zealand Movies based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-06 00:00:00 Linda Owens-Wright Shelton's book, at first sight, sounds like the sort of 'history' you might regard as ho-hum: full of names and places and details of deals and government interference (and the lack of it). But the author has an engaging style, and because of his own involvement with everything he writes about, he carries us along at a whiz-bang and entertaining pace. He covers both his career and the films he's been involved with in detail, and his enthusiasm for what he's been doing for the last 25 years (including his time as a film festival organiser) along with the anecdotal material he includes, serve to make this not only a valuable history but also one that gives the reader considerable insight into a side of the film industry we seldom hear about.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-11 00:00:00 Jon Julian Ferguson This was a lecture that Russell wrote during the first world war, and thus, contained vital tokens of his political thought along with romantic language he used to encourage. I chose to read this because I am endlessly interested in Russell's critique of BOTH ideologies of conservatism and socialism. In these pages, one can find Russell's explicit denunciation of capitalism and the wage system (as he calls for it to be abolished) as well as his complete disregard for any form social organization resembling anarchy. He makes sweeping phycological observations about human nature (narrowing our desires down as humans to either Possessive vs. Creative) as well as unsubstantiated sociological observations about human interactions. Russell also does not find time to punctuate which institutions he feels are necessary or which aren't which could contribute effectively to his argument. As a statist and a liberal, Russell does little to add to contemporary thought regarding social democracy or welfare state promotion and instead perpetuates thinking along the lines of John Locke and Wilhelm Von Humboldt. The only difference, and its the reason why I love to read anything Russell wrote, is that he uses such beautiful, hopeful language for his visions of a future society. In short but poignant sections, he always finds conclusive sentences to mark this eloquent departure: "There can be no final goal for human institutions; the best are those that most encourage progress toward others still better. Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active" (17).