One Nation's latest misfire (pun intended).

This month, fifty people died in a Christchurch mosque at the hands of a far-right Aussie. Both Labor and Liberal were vocal and public in condemning the massacre and quickly sent their condolences to the survivors and the families affected. Clear benevolence. But what One Nation? That party so committed to winding the clock back that they may as well want to break it... how did they react? Well, first their Senator Fraser Anning blamed it on Muslim immigration to New Zealand, an accusation that literally left him with egg on his face. And this week it's been revealed that One Nation's James Ashby and Steve Dickhead - sorry, Dickson - last year paid a visit to the US to acquire $20 000 000 in donations from none other than the National Rifle Association.  This story broke during the week because an undercover al-Jazeera reporter, Rodger Muller, recorded conversations with Ashby and Dickson over there then which he's now released, and what was the culprit according to Ashby? Alcohol.

(Dear God, that's a lamentable photo - for them, at least.)

This must be the biggest booze-fuelled political scandal Australia has seen since Kevin Rudd turned up plastered to the strip club in 2004. But more to the point, why did they seek this donation from the NRA? To fund a push to soften Australia's famously tight gun laws. Which a right-wing government implemented, too. And now their Red Queen leader Pauline Hanson has sparked controversy #5670 with a video in which she suggests the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which inspired our National Firearms Act, was a government conspiracy. Even the journalists on A Current Affair would call that a sensationalised claim! Nonetheless, if she was trying to take the heat off her two henchmen, she's clearly succeeded.

One Nation's consistent and hysterical reactionism never ceases to bewilder me. I simply cannot believe they remain prominent and supported among so many Australians. However, their policies aside, if they continue to demonstrate such idiotic behaviour as Ashby and Dickson have recently shown, I think that's a pro - it will to inspire more of us to vote against them. I hope.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #130: Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (2011).

After he openly mocks numerous gay men in the street, young Filipino Remington (Andre Salazar and later Martin Escudero) meets a drag queen named Pops (Roderick Paulate) who vindictively proclaims Remington will turn gay himself on his 21st birthday. Then jump forward to Remington at that age. He lives in the small town of Lucban, and has just met and fallen for new girl in town Hannah (Lauren Young). Unfortunately, Lucban has recently seen a spate of murders in the gay community and Remington's policewoman mother (Janice de Belen) and her colleagues have no leads. Unluckily for Remington, his behaviour and lifestyle soon quickly takes a turn for the effeminate and then he finds himself instead wanting to get into the pants of his best mate Jigs (Kerbie Zamora). Now, before he can start singing I Will Survive, Remington realises the curse Pops placed upon him as a kid is coming true, but his buried feelings for Hannah persist and so he has to set out with her and Jigs to see how he can lift it.

Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings is my introduction to Filipino cinema and it's a largely entertaining but uneven effort. Director and co-writer Jade Castro has great fun with affectionately mocking LGBT and Filipino stereotypes and culture through a horror-comedy premise, but I'm afraid in doing so he really pays inadequate attention to his film's pacing and that's its downfall. It also visually feels rather inconsistent, with some scenes very garishly designed and others very subtly which also somewhat contradicts its message of social unity and inclusion. However, Castro's passion for these themes and characters is evident throughout, and they certainly deserve a place in worldwide cinema.

Martin Escudero makes a very relatably conflicted and fabulous hero, with Zamora a reliable wingman and Paulate hams his justifiably vindictive sorcerous drag queen up to just the right level, although Young does only what she can with such a thin role. They more or less make this an engaging ride with the help of the credibly unique and celebratory narrative spin on horror comedy and the LGBT story, despite its storytelling shortcomings. 7/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #129: Graffiti Bridge (1990).

In this sequel to his 1984 movie breakthrough Purple Rain, His Royal Badness the late Prince (RIP) returns as the Kid, who's now an established rock star and the co-owner of the club Gram Slam with his associate Morris (Morris Day). In between these pursuits, he writes new songs and also letters to his deceased father. When Morris, who also owns a number of other venues now, finds himself ten grand in debt, he tries to extort the Kid with a threat to assume full control of Gram Slam. Not helping is the arrival of Aura (Ingrid Chavez), an angel sent from Heaven to sway both of them into embracing more righteous lifestyles; instead, of course, they both just fall for her. After the Kid's resistance increases and Morris deliberately undermines him by having his band perform superbly at Gram Slam, the Kid throws the gauntlet down with a music battle for ownership of the venue.

Let me flag this outright: here lies that proof that Prince wrote music far better than he wrote screenplays. While I think Graffiti Bridge is much better than the consensus (its Rotten Tomatoes rating is just 19%), it falls way short of Purple Rain because that film actually had a real narrative arc. Subsequently this is comparatively more shallow than a puddle. However, if you focus on the assured aesthetic style and swagger of Prince's soundtrack and direction (the soundtrack, perhaps inevitably, was far better-received), its bland dialogue and lack of substance I think will be more or less tolerable. Since it was produced through his own company/recording studio Paisley Park it was it egocentric for Prince to make it himself, let's face it, but by that time he was so famous he could've made any kind of film or music he wanted to. But in fairness, his direction does show a lucid flair for framing and choreography in the musical sequences (the most memorable being with Mavis Staples performing Melody Cool) and a consistent colour scheme throughout; this is also to fully emphasise the titular bridge.

Again, don't expecting something on par with Purple Rain. But don't listen to the critical consensus either. Graffiti Bridge is essentially just a (very) long-format music video - but in the most enjoyably hip way.

For New Zealand, from across the Tasman.

This week as most of you must already know, saw the deadliest terrorist act in New Zealand's history: a massacre in a Christchurch mosque, with 50 casualties and counting. One of the four perpetrators has been identified as Brendan Tarrant, who I'm deeply ashamed to say is actually Australian. I think there can be no doubt this was politically motivated terrorism given its location, although a general shooting massacre would've been little if any better. Its figures have now put it arguably on the same scale as too many US gun massacres, and it could prove to be the event that defines Jacinda Ardern's prime ministership for better or worse. But before it comes to define New Zealand's recent history for most non-Kiwis, let me as an Aussie list some more pleasant achievements by modern New Zealanders:

- New Zealand was the first country on Earth to give women the vote.

- It's now the first to have had three elected female heads of state.- The Maori were one of the few indigenous cultures to successfully resist English colonisation.- New Zealander Edmund Hillary led the first successful expedition to climb Mount Everest.- New Zealander Peter Jackson, who was rejected from a film school, is the only Best Director Academy Award winner from the southern hemisphere, and he achieved that for part of a trilogy that grossed over $3 billion.- Another NZ filmmaker, Jane Campion, was just the second woman to be nominated for that award.- NZ soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang to an audience of over 600 million at the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981.- (Naturalised) Kiwi Shelia Laxon was the first woman to train a Melbourne Cup-winning horse.- NZ physicist Ernest Rutherford, the namesake of the element Rutherfordium, became known as the father of nuclear physics.

To name just a few.

Now I know I'm just one man, and an Australian, but I vow I will do my bit from over here to always keep the Anzac spirit of mutual solidarity and goodwill alive. I apologise on my country's behalf for Tannant's acts, and my heart absolutely goes out to the casualties and their loved ones. After all, we are all Antipodeans.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #128: Kick-Ass (2010).

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a pretty standard nerdy, awkward high schooler. He lives with his recently widowed father (Garrett M. Brown) and his only real friends are the even nerdier Todd (Evan Peters) and Marty (Clark Duke), whom he hangs out with to read comics and surf the web. Dave has the hots for Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca) but to her he's practically invisible. That is, until he gives in to a persistent, curious urge to become like one of the crime-fighters he so avidly reads about. Now, after ordering a green and yellow wetsuit and two batons, he becomes Kick-Ass! Then after building his fighting skills from dreadful to rudimentary, Kick-Ass becomes an Internet hit (pun intended) when he foils an assault at a service station. This broadcast act comes to the attention of seasoned vigilante Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his very obscene young daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), who then track Kick-Ass down to see if he's the real deal. Once Kick-Ass somehow proves himself to them, they team up to go to war against New York City Mafioso Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) and his son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who pretends to be fellow budding crime-fighter Red Mist in an attempt to deceive Kick-Ass. Meanwhile, Dave must also manage to get the girl...

Here we have an action flick that for me reinvented and revitalised superhero films for this decade. An adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.'s comic, Kick-Ass is every fucking bit as forceful, immediate, bold and especially as outrageous as you'd expect from a movie with such a title. But therefore, it's also probably not for anybody on the political right, and certainly not for young'uns. Director Matthew Vaughn, who's since made the two sensational Kingsman movies, and co-writer Jane Goldman take a no-holds-barred approach to this provocative material (so provocative, actually, that esteemed US critic Roger Ebert called it "morally reprehensible") that just makes it impossible to ignore, whatever you think of it. Vaughn's direction also is ferociously well-paced and visually cartoonish for even further unbridled, contagious enthusiasm, and he employs a well-chosen soundtrack. The performances are all fun-filled and natural, with the standout probably being Moretz who instintively gives Hit Girl a surprising but dormant vulnerability alongside all her crime-fighting prowess (and her dropping the C-bomb here made the cinema audience I saw it with gasp loudly; I'll never forget that).

Kick-Ass earned its Australian MA15+ rating the hard way (roughly the equivalent of a US R rating) with some immensely brutal violence and pervasive swearing, but if you have the stomach for it and are weary of the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes, absolutely try it on for size. Kick-Ass kicks arse.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #127: Muriel's Wedding (1994).

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The 91st Academy Awards: four VERY hard pills for me to swallow.

As I may have already revealed here, as a congenital movie buff I've closely followed the Oscars since childhood, however much I've disagreed with the winners over the years. So naturally on Monday morning, I inevitably woke early to watch them live at midday Australian time. But all things considered, very rarely have I been so disappointed with the winners as I was this time. Four such ones contributed alone to that, and two were in the major categories, and while I do respect the Academy members' opinions, let me vent here and now about those wins.

Firstly, they awarded four Oscars to Bohemian Rhapsody. Never mind how anachronistic that movie is if you're up with Queen's history as I consider myself; it quite directly suggests Freddie Mercury's bisexuality led to his death. His behaviour may have done that, but not his sexuality per se. Plus during its production, the director Bryan Singer was revealed to have preyed for years on underaged males; I myself read an article (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/bryan-singers-accusers-speak-out/580462/) detailing the allegations against him, and I was profoundly disturbed. He also had quite public conflicts with crew members while making the movie. Furthermore, Best Actor winner Rami Malek (who, for credit where it's due, delivered a dazzling performance) referred to Freddie as gay during his acceptance speech and has distanced himself from condemning Singer's conduct.

Secondly, winning Best Picture was Green Book. I hated every minute of that film, because of its story and themes. To my mind, it was just Driving Miss Daisy 2.0 with a thuggish Italian American taking a passive and subservient African American through the Deep South of the 1960s and always having to guide him and save him from trouble. I found it so earnestly racist that I left the cinema wanting to puke, and its director, Peter Farrelly, has been known to expose himself to his casts and crews. I think it's already one of the worst "Best" Pictures ever.

Thirdly, Lady Gaga winning Best Original Song for A Star Is Born. Now, I have never doubted her talent, but I consider her nothing but a shameless Madonna wannabe (and I like very few of Madge's songs). Regardless, as an established pop star she did not even financially need to be recruited for that movie, particularly over so many struggling female musicians (and her co-star was already a box office heavyweight anyway). Both when she performed and won, I hit my TV's mute button and let the expletives fly.

Finally, and least importantly but most personally for me, six-time previous loser and strong favourite this time for her superb performance in The Wife, Glenn Close, lost to Olivia Colman for what I considered collosal overacting in The Favourite. Maybe I was just being too confident in Ms. Close, but her loss here upset me so much I banged my head twice on my table. In fairness to Colman she gave a nice speech, but I sincerely and easily preferred Close's performance and as I said she was already long overdue. I'm beginning to think her surname may have placed a congenital curse on her. Well, Ms. Close, Oscar may not love you but I always will.

I greatly hope next year's Awards will be better. But that won't be hard.