Biography: New Zealander with UK citizenship, went to university in Surfers Paradise, Australia (don’t laugh, they have one there), swam with dolphins in the South Island, rafted 200 miles through the Grand Canyon, traveled by dogsled across the Canadian arctic, hiked through the Indian Himalayas, worked three years in mainland China, lived in Japan a couple of years with a robot dog, and now getting by in Beijing (before, during, and after the Olympics). None of this has anything to do with film reviewing, but it makes a durn good bio, don’t it?

Favorites: The Ten Most Influential Movies on My Once-Impressionable Mind: 1. 2001: A Space Odyssey 2. The Boy Friend 3. Romeo and Juliet (1968) 4. Dawn of the Dead (1978) 5. Catch-22 6. A High Wind in Jamaica 7. The Shining 8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 9. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 10. Empire of the Sun