Well, I have moved out of home. I'm now living in North Fitzroy. It's a bit of a change but it's going well. I'm living with 3 other guys and the house is pretty big, my room is certainly much bigger than my old room.

Last week was a bit of a mess. Car troubles and I lost my glasses. It's unusual for me to lose things so I think I must have just been tired and not concentrating, but nevermind.

MIFF has been a bit underwhelming this year. I ended up watching seven films, meaning that I had three left over on my Minipass. Bit of a waste really. I could have gone this weekend, but having lost my glasses it would mean that everything would be all fuzzy on the screen. I'm not that fussed though.

The films that I saw were:

'Hahaha', 'Beeswax', 'Splice', 'Four Lions', 'The Wedding Party', 'Flickan' and the 'Accelerator 2' short film program. Nothing really blew me away or stuck with me, although of those films 'Four Lions' was the standout for me. It was pretty funny and well written which you'd expect for a film written by Chris Morris and the 'Peep Show' writers. The one thing I didn't expect was so much slapstick. It was a like a classic farce.

'Hahaha', 'Beeswax' and 'Flickan' were all good films. 'Splice' and 'The Wedding Party' were pretty average. And the 'Accelerator 2' program was a bit of a mixed bag. There seemed to me to be a number of films that had a similar tone or theme. When the film 'When the Wind Changes', (directed by Alethea Jones, a lecturer we had last semester) came on, it was a refreshing change as it was really the only solidly comedic film on the program. It was funny and well done and one of the standouts. Also, the film 'The Kiss' was a solid, tension building film, another standout.

So I guess you're probably wondering how I got to be this tall. Well, let me tell you, it took years of hard work. You don't get to be this tall just overnight!

This blog has gotten a bit looser, as you can probably tell.

I just got a haircut. Haircuts are never something I look forward to, but over the years I've gotten used to them as a sort of necessary annoyance. Anyway, it's done now. And I feel better.

It's raining. It's cold.

I watched 'Toy Story 3'. Watch it, it's brilliant. Pixar are so consistent with their filmmaking. Compare it to the latest 'Shrek' film which I haven't seen but, it can't be good, right?

I've been watching lots of 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job'. I love it, it's the best.

Plus, I've started listening to 'Creative Screenwriting' podcast after recalling a somewhat drunken conversation at a party a few moons ago. It is excellent and quite inspiring.

I started writing properly yesterday and after a bunch of pages of rubbish, I found one reasonable sketch. So that's something.

So there you have it. A scattered blog.

Here's a blog, just for you. I made it out of sticks and glue.

Today I went to the 'Titanic' exhibition at the ol' Museum. Tell you what, it was damn good. The exhibition has actually been really well thought out, every room conveys a different mood, it draws you in, it doesn't just feel like a museum exhibit, it's evocative, interesting, it tells a story. It somehow personalises the whole thing, engages you. Of course, it's hard to mention the 'Titanic' exhibition without also mentioning the film 'Titanic'. So there, I have now, glad I got that out of the way.
Patrick's rating: RECOMMENDED (in bold)

Hey, so I've watched a few movies lately. These include 'The Road' (bleak, depressing, but quite nicely filmed and acted), 'Get Him to the Greek' (not bad, funny in parts, quite patchy in tone and narrative though) and 'Towelhead' (Not bad, not amazing). But the one I really want to mention here is 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans'. Directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage, this film pretty much blew me away. It's bold, extremely unconventional and yet it sits nicely in the hard-boiled detective/noir genre. It's really funny too. I'm a huge Cage fan, I'll happily watch anything he's in and even if the film is horrible, I normally enjoy whatever Cage brings to it. In this film, Cage is given license to go absolutely batshit crazy. This = awesome.
Patrick's rating: See it! (in bold and italics)

Well, an entire semester has passed by. Whoosh, just like that.

Last night was our screening night at the Rivoli. It was a fun evening, it's always interesting watching everyone's films. Unexpectedly, our film picked up a couple of awards which was a nice surprise.

It's been an intense semester, particularly the pre-production and shooting of our 16mm film. However, in some ways I have found that this semester wasn't as stressful as last year. Maybe that's just because coming back to a course after having completed a year, you know what's expected, you have that experience behind you. Even though the projects are harder, you're doing it with a year's experience.

I've enjoyed this semester. My favourite subject turned out to be Directing. Mainly because it exposed a lot of the acting world to me and taught me a lot. Plus it was always engaging and interesting.

So where am I now? I'm on holidays. Sort of. By that I mean, I'm not at uni for a while, but I don't want to look at it as a holiday. It's important to keep momentum going, to keep working hard.

Some things I'm into at the moment:

TV

'Misfits'
The premise of this show doesn't sound all that appealing necessarily - it's basically like 'Skins' meets 'Heroes'. But the writing on this is excellent, every episode explores the characters further while developing an interesting narrative arc. Yes, the characters have powers, a bit like 'Heroes', a bit like 'X-Men'. But it's not really about the powers as such, instead they're simply narrative devices used to explore the character.

'The Inbetweeners'
Extremely funny, well written sit-com. It doesn't feel all that original and yet it still feels very fresh. Simon Bird is excellent in the central role but this show is very much about the dynamic between the characters. Yes, another 'Skins' comparison, but this show feels like 'Skins' except played purely for laughs.

'Community'
If you're not watching this, why not? Best U.S. sit-com for a little while, well, maybe this and '30 Rock'. I like Abed and Senor Chang the best.


MUSIC

The National - High Violet
I really liked The National's last album 'Boxer'. This one is good too, probably not as many hooks as 'Boxer', but still a very solid album.

Hot Chip - One Life Stand
An infectious album. Every song is great. 'I Feel Better' was stuck in my head for days.


RADIO

These three are making me laugh consistently. Track them down.
Hancock's Half Hour
Adam and Joe
Knowing Me, Knowing You

Well, yes, here we are again I suppose. It's true, I have been neglecting this blog somewhat. The reason? Well, I suppose when I started this thing, the idea was to chronicle the movies that I watched and to add in some other stuff too. Lately though, well, I've kinda stopped watching movies and thus, this blog has lost it's core structure. I still watch movies here and there of course, but I haven't deliberately been setting out to watch things.

Why is this exactly? To an extent, I felt like it was a bit of a chore at times. I wasn't getting the most out of the movies. Perhaps I wasn't in the right mindset? I was movie-d out I guess. So that's my excuse for fewer blogs, but I can assure you that the blogs will pick up again soon. Oh, I suppose the other thing is that my writing focus has been directed elsewhere. I have been focused on this zombie film project, but to a greater extent I have been writing a lot more short humour pieces for this other project I'm working on.

This week? Lots of work, I'm afraid. Soccer on Monday. Thursday I ventured out into the rain and met up with Kaiser, Lachlan and Caitlin at the Astor to watch 'Kill Bill 1' and 'Kill Bill 2'. I'd seen these films before, but not together on the big screen. You know what? I don't think they're very good, really. I feel that Tarantino's recent films have been a little too affected by that Tarantino-esque sensibility lately. It's as though he's been told a little too often how great he is and so the films have become a bit self-conscious. It's as though he's almost saying "Hey, you thought that was good, check THIS out!" That doesn't make them bad films, they're distinct, unique, interesting films all of them. But they just feel messy to me and the visual side of things tends to be a lot better than the writing. I do believe that Tarantino writes really great individual scenes in these films but altogether they don't feel all that cohesive. I'm not a big fan of the way he divides these films into chapters either. Interestingly, a lot of the stuff he was being lauded for in 'Inglourious Basterds' - structure, the mixing up of languages - it's all already prevalent in the 'Kill Bill' films. I don't know, I just felt that scenes tended to go on a little too long, dialogue was drawn out and nowhere near as punchy as in his earlier films. And at the end of the day, the storyline to 'Kill Bill' is pretty boring. If I was asked to choose which film is better, volume 1 or 2, I would probably argue that 2 is superior, though chiefly due to the presence of Michael Madsen, who gives the film a lot of character. But that's really just a personal preference.

Well, it has been some time. I've been exhausted, I think.

Big weekend. Chris and Amelia's wedding on Saturday. It was a nice wedding. Long day when you combine the wedding, the in-between afternoon tea bit and the reception so I was pretty tired by the end of it. Nice though.

Sunday I went into the city with Michelle and met up with Lorry, Anna, Pete and Duy. We watched 'The Wiz' at ACMI.

'The Wiz' (1978) directed by Sidney Lumet

Wow, I really did not like this film. It was basically a re-make of 'The Wizard of Oz' but pretty shithouse. The songs weren't memorable, it was overlong, Diana Ross wasn't likeable at all in the main role, she was a bit too screechy. The design of the film looked cheap and hasn't dated well. A lot of it is quite creepy and yeah, it was a struggle to get through. There seemed to be a song for every moment in the film - irritating. Lorry started groaning every time a character would start to sing, it was indeed very groan-worthy.

'Daybreakers' (2009) directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

A really cool, original take on the vampire film. The story felt fresh and interesting and not all that predictable. Although it was cheesy in parts and the cinematographer seemed to love using the slo-mo effect, it was highly entertaining throughout. I really enjoyed it.

Sometimes I drink too much coffee and I feel anxious.

Big, huge, epic weekend. Saturday, Chris's bucks party. It involved a lot of paintball and eating all that I could (which wasn't much). Paintball hurts! But not as much as I thought it would. Still, now I'm covered in bruises. It was a boiling hot day and wearing all the protective gear and the camo stuff, I was sweating right from the start. The games were pretty fun, although it took me a little while to get into it. I found that I really enjoyed finding a good spot and then sniping people. Once I worked out the trajectory of the paintball, the wind and weather patterns and other variables, I was well into it. Exhausting though.

Sunday I was feeling rather wrecked. That didn't stop me from heading over to Lachlan's place where we began writing this feature film. I reckon it went really well. I've never really co-written something before, but it seemed to make things easier, it's a lot of discussion basically. So yeah, we worked out the overall framework of the story, some of the key scenes and characters. Should be good.

'Sydney White' (2007) directed by Joe Nussbaum

A pretty mindless Amanda Bynes teen comedy, sort of a modern day re-telling of 'Snow White', but not really. I enjoyed it, even though it was pretty rubbish. It was fun to just watch the different shades of orange that Amanda Bynes turned from scene to scene.