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(Inspirational tableau courtesy of Clare.)

Today I went with my friends Yalini and Robert to see the Complete History of Cinema (Abridged), a comedy show put on in the Botanic Gardens as part of the council’s SummerTimes program. A stage was set up in a leafy corner of the gardens, and the happy folk of Christchurch were encouraged to go along to sit on the grass with a picnic and enjoy the show.

All parts in the show were played by three actors, who started out by telling us that even though modern big-budget movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, their show, summarizing all of movie making, was made on a budget of $100.

Then they burst into a really rather clever song in which they mentioned the names of all 80 movies that have received the Oscar for best picture. Sometimes the names were just listed in time to the music, but in other places they managed to string semi-comprehensible sentences together using the names.

Then they presented a series of vignettes, of varying degrees of success, some lampooning particular movies, others particular genres, others particular personalities. I particularly liked the ode to “Awesome” Wells, during the delivery of which the actor’s tummy swelled to huge size.

They started their spoof of Star Wars with a good attempt at the famous screen crawl, which wound up saying:

A long time ago,
In a galaxy far, far away,
George Lucas took
A bit of Dune,
Flash Gordon,
The Seven Samurai,
And mashed them together to create:
Merchandising.

The best skit came at the end, when they presented their version of Titanic – set to music. The iceberg came on singing “Cold as Ice” by Foreigner, and the Titanic/Iceberg interaction was handled in rap.

The show was slightly marred by the many crude sexual jokes. These were too oblique to be noticed by the kids in the audience, but they were neither funny nor clever, and should have been left out. Still it was a fun and pleasant way to spend an idle hour or two.

Every year during the summer Christchurch hosts the Lantern Festival. The primary draw is the large assortment of wire-frame models of people, animals, and mythical creatures that are hung from the trees or placed in the river and the fountains of Victoria Park. The lanterns are covered with paper or maybe silk, and illuminated from within with electric lights. Of course the effect is best seen at night with the lanterns are lit, but the night my friend Jess and I visited the crush of people was so great that it was near-impossible to get anywhere or see anything. Also it’s rather hard to take effective photos of the lanterns at night. So I went back the next day to get some shots of my favourite lanterns: