Anotherblog

More work on the blog

I’ve done a little bit more work on the website. It’s getting easier now.

New Look

I put a bit of effort into changing the look of the site - more than you might imagine, as I am grossly inexperienced in the ways of html and photoshop, so it was all one big learning curve. I’ve yet to do anything significant, but I’ve also spent hours and hours on it, so that’ll do for tonight.

Poor effort

Yes, the mini-review of “Glory” was indeed a poor effort. The problem is, I liked the film but didn’t love it; it affected me, but in rather conventional ways; and I was impressed with it in the same way I was impressed with “Patton” and “Saving Private Ryan” and “Full Metal Jacket”. It’s good, in fact it’s very good, but for all that it’s a wee bit bland. Mathew Broderick looks very young in the part, which the script works with very well - his indecision and sincerity come through, especially in a scene with the whipping of one of the soldiers. Denzel Washington does an angry-young-man role with passion, surprising me since he’s since become professionally bland (evidence: Fallen, Courage Under Fire, Virtuosity, Crimson Tide, Philadelphia. He may be more interesting in other recent films, like Training Day, but I haven’t seen ‘em). Once again, the whipping scene - great acting, especially once I’d found out that the tear was real.
An aside. For some reason, screen tears always fall down from the middle of the eye, making me suspect the judicious application of an eyedropper. When I cry, it invariably drips out of the tear duct itself, next to my nose. Which will also start dripping. I think the difference might be that screen tears very rarely meet the balled-up fist of smearing and wiping - for some reason, the emotion is so large, so profound, that people’s arms are paralysed and they can’t wipe ‘em away. In fairness, a) entirely justified in the whipping scene as he isn’t *allowed* to move his arms, and b) makeup.

While I’m at it…
Screen kisses. Here’s a game to play: whenever there’s a big romantic scene (I’m not talking about Glory any more, by the way) especially in an action movie, and the leads start kissing, watch the jaw action and say the following:

“Chomp, chomp, chomp. CHOMP, chomp, chomp. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!”

It will not be hard to match the Chomp sounds to the gobbling attempts of the kissers to eat each others tongues. Count the number of chomps before the editor cuts away. Report back to me. I’m going to make a list, and find the longest chomping kissing scene in the movies.

Papillon (SPOILERS)
I rented the DVD of the old escape film “Papillon”, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman yesterday. It was directed by Franklin J Shaffner, three years after his quite impressive work on “Patton”, so I was looking forward to it. However, in the intervening time Mr. Shaffner had apparently seen several Sam Pekinpah films (actually, almost certainly so - “The Getaway” stars Steve McQueen and was released the year before Papillon.) The result: that weird 1970’s blood that looks redder than red and is shown off at every opportunity. A man gets shot in possibly the lamest escape attempt ever shown on film, and they focus on the blood pumping out of the man’s head for a good couple of seconds, while the audience goes “eugh!” and then gets bored and starts to look for the plastic tube. Also, that lovely out-of-fashion use of zoom, present in “Patton” but not ubiquitous until now. Combined with a dreadful script and profoundly slovenly editing, I was entertained a bit, mostly by the acting, but bored lots. There was a fair amount of tension due to the early introduction of a guillotine that the commandant claimed would be used at the slightest provocation, provided said provocation wasn’t the lead character’s, who is allowed to attempt escape twice and also throw boiling liquid into a guard’s face and beat two other guards into unconsciousness and throw a tomahawk into a police officer’s shoulder, which then bleeds a rather interesting bright shade of red.
The script. Was hilarious. I haven’t read the book, scurrilously rumoured to be mostly-made-up, but the film sounds not only made-up, but made-up-as-I-went-along, complete with *two* separate mysterious strangers (tattoo-man and strangely-running-man) who show up at just the right moment to rescue the main character, *two* outcast groups (the lepers and the natives) who inexplicably don’t kill the main character despite their shown tendancy to do just that, and of course the bare-breasted native girl who takes to the main character and leads him into the bushes but disappears with the rest of the tribe the next day, so that we don’t suffer the minor inconvenience of having to show *him* leave *them*.
Still. Kudos for getting Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman into a muddy pool with a live and obviously active crocodile for a good minute or so.

The Bank (SPOILERS)
I saw the Australian film “The Bank” last night. Before I get stuck into the film, I have to comment on the DVD which has quite wonderful extras, including two short films by the same director, and a look at the whole process of putting the film together including a lengthy introduction to sound design - fairly elementary, but egad! What effort! Thoroughly impressed.
The film itself had some plot problems. When we finally reveal the main character’s motivations, it ain’t a big surprise. The whole film has been building up towards it, and there really is only one way for it to go, and it does so. However, despite the obvious turn that the plot takes, the laboriousness of the setup, you get the feeling that the main character could have made it a lot easier on himself if he’d just *acted a bit more like a bastard*. As far as I can tell, the only reason he doesn’t behave like a corporate arsehole (and he shows that he’s perfectly capable of it in a courtroom scene) throughout, is that the audience wouldn’t be as sympathetic that way.
But I reckon it would have worked, and it would have changed the tone of the film, concealed the “big surprise” much more effectively. They could have made the film *apparently* about a greedy mathematical genius and his Gordon Gecko mentor, played up the potential for betrayal in both directions, made it look like a film about corruption - and then pulled the rug out. They wouldn’t even lose the sympathetic characters - the film already has them, in the bankrupted couple court-fighting couple.
Despite the obviousness of the plot twists, it was effectively done - I should probably cut it more slack because it *did* keep me engaged. Decent performances, a wee bit of CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP between the main character and his love-interest, and some lovely photography.
The mood of the film was terrific. It was shot with deep contrast, a lot of black and dark reds and greens. There was one particularly stylish shot of the main character from above - it shows him walking out of the office, tracks with him as he walks across the square. The square is polished marble, and the reflection of the building follows him as he walks along. Every bit as impressive as that focus-pull-through-the-dark-reflection shot in “The Usual Suspects”.

Sickness

The sickness and sleepiness seem to be about over now, but I had to cancel the re-scheduled squash game with Ted. Hopefully we’ll pick it up next Wednesday or before. The bug was finally defeated last night - I slept in until about 10:30am on Friday, then went back to sleep at 2:00pm and was finally up at 10:30 this morning, feeling much better. Somewhere in all that sleep I watched “Glory”, which was really very good, emotional and full of meaning and hilarious one-liners from Chris Rock and well-written characters and kick-arse aliens and powerful battle scenes and tension and giant muppets. Yeah, I was pretty feverish. Why do you ask?

Final Cut Pro
I finally got FinalCut Pro going with OSX, and got back into editing Bullet Hole, now approaching it’s 18 month anniversary since the shooting stopped.

Mac

I got the mac hooked up to the internet today, after noticing that the mac has a built-in network adaptor. After a gruelling session with the PC, getting my internet connection working again (it was all the fault of that lousy firewire network stuff I was trying to do) I found an old network card and, noticing that the cable modem connects via a network cable to a USB cable, I tried eliminating the middle man. Voila! One much faster internet connection - as it turned out, the USB connection was being a bottleneck. Spurred on by my success, and with the newfound knowledge gained from my support call, I plugged the cable modem into the mac and had it working within ten minutes. Lovely! So, this blog is being posted from the mac.
Next stop: I think I’ll forget about the firewire network for the moment - the technology seems a little immature - and get a cheap ethernet hub, connect the cable modem directly to that, and both computers too. That’ll do.

Still sick
But I got nice phone calls from the folks and from Jennie and an email from Uncle Michael. I’m especially grateful for this because at the moment I’m feeling a little housebound. No luck so far in finding a movie magazine that does cheap ads along the lines of “cheerful idiot will work on short film for free. Own transport, has sound gear and some experience.”

Blogs
I read through Chris T’s blog today, after Dave pointed out that he had been writing one. He mentioned once - very briefly and flippantly - that he has an interest in acting. That’s all it takes, boyo. Actually, Chris T is one of those very interesting charismatic types with a quick wit and almost certainly a good screen presence. Like Ted.
I was flipping through the links and noticed that Lindor has quietly started her own blog as well - and a very disturbing hymn to boybands it is too. If only I could harness this power for good. Or at the very least, *my* brand of evil.

Q: What did you get for your birthday, Andrew?

A: a cold. At least, I’m pretty sure it is - Anna’s had a cold for the last week or so, and just when I thought I was going to escape, it hits. Oh well. I’ve been taking vitamin C and zinc tablets which my Dad assures me are the most effective treatments. He’s a doctor, for one thing, and he hardly ever gets sick, for another. Mind you, he’s disgustingly healthy.

Squash
At least Ted emailed to cancel squash today - he’s feeling sick too, and loaded up with work. Get better soon, Ted! We’ve got a squash appointment on Saturday!

Blah
Not much else to talk about, really… I just watched Groundhog Day and enjoyed it as much as the last time I watched it, which must be over five years ago now. The themes are simple and almost kind of cheesy - the whole redemption arc - but done so, so well. Next, I’ll watch with director’s commentary on, but I’m thinking of saving that for a film evening - Andrew Orman also makes short films, and we’d discussed having film evenings in which we watch films with the director’s commentary on. I own a couple of candidates - The Usual Suspects, Groundhog Day, Brazil, 12 Monkeys and Chicken Run. There’s also the shortened version of Brazil with the very instructive commentary on how the re-editing was done. Must get this one together.

Library

First day of my “Going to the library to work”. I managed about an hour of good stuff before being distracted into reading film magazines, but there’s still hope - there are only so many film magazines at the library…
I worked on Fork. There are probably more urgent projects, like Bullet Hole (now that I’ve set a date for the festival) but this kind of thing is best done as a last-minute rush anyway. Perhaps.

Filmwise
The first day of the filmwise competition that I entered last month… there are about 150 contestants, and the winner is the highest score after three rounds of questions. I’m not sure what the prize is, or, indeed, if there is a prize at all. But what the hell, it’s a competition, it’s by my favorite film quiz people, so I’m putting in my best effort. For the first round, I think I worked out many of the questions, and with the help of Dave and Simonster got the rest. There are a couple of educated guesses, but I’m hoping for 100% for the first round. I’ll find out on Friday.

Groundhog Day
I found, to my delight, that the Groundhog Day DVD has a director’s commentary. Since it wasn’t available to rent, I bought it… call me unemployed, but there are just some things I can’t resist even if it eventually means selling the house. I also rented a bunch of films. Watched “Stand By Me”, pretty enjoyable but the characters were a bit stereotyped. Still, it made sense of quite a few film-quotes I’ve heard over the years. I was tempted to rent out a couple of the films that were in the filmwise competition just to confirm that they were the correct answers, but held out, mainly because they didn’t have those DVDs in stock.

Storm

I was roleplaying on Saturday night when Rosie, Chris & Amanda’s dog, started whining piteously. We ignored her for a while, but she got more and more frantic and started beating at the door, so they let her in. We found out why about ten minutes later - the thunder and lightning started up, and then the rain and the wind and the groaning crashes and the blackout and the tree that fell over onto the garage and the powerlines that fell on the road. It was incredible, one of those moments that stays with you all your life. We were watching out the back window and saw the wind whipping the rain into mist, then blowing the mist through the straining branches of the trees straight at the window. The wind got stronger and stronger. A ticking noise started as leaves and twigs and hailstones hit the window, and then the window started shuddering with the force, and we all stood back, fearing it would smash. I went to look out the front window, figuring it was safer, and then went back to the back window. It took me about ten seconds to register - and perhaps I didn’t, perhaps it was Chris’ reaction that clued me in - that the car out the front, which I had just been looking at, had a tree lying horizontally over it, not quite touching, but resting flat on the roof of the (now demolished) garage. Chris’ first reaction was to notice that the gutter had been broken, then our gazes sort of slid sideways, the sound of gears grinding, and we suddenly realised what had happened. Wow. We waited for the rain to ease, then (with much encouraging from me) Chris ran to the car and reversed it out from under the tree. It didn’t look particularly dangerous - the weight wasn’t over the car at all - but there was the possibility that it would scratch the hell out of the paint work.
We’d noticed a couple of deep groaning sounds as well, which I suspect was the transformer on the power pole - after the third groan, the power went off. When we looked out of the front window again, we noticed that the power lines had a distinct sag. In fact, one of the lines had sagged so low that it was only about a metre from the ground - if Chris had reversed another three metres, he would have hit it with the car! None of us can work out whether it had been that way when Chris was reversing or whether it happened afterwards.
It was extraordinarily lucky. Firstly, the car is completely fine. Secondly, the tree fell in such a way as to only wreck the garage (and a bit of the guttering), which Chris and Amanda were going to demolish anyway. Thirdly, they were, at some point going to chop the tree down anyway!
Anyway, after photographing as much as we could, we called the SES and various friends and relatives around Sydney, establishing that everywhere else was alright (a bit of an exaggeration - I later found out that Simon L, the terrific HR guy for my old company, had his roof staved in by a big tree, and that about 100,000 homes were without power at one point). The rain stopped and we walked over to the local shops (which were also lacking power) and got Chinese takeaway - the only fast-food place still open. They were operating on gas and candlelight, and hooboy it was hot in there. We passed quite a few knocked over trees on the way back, and settled back to roleplaying by candlelight.
By midnight when we’d finished, the SES guys had arrived and quickly put some yellow tape on the power lines dangling over the road (which wasn’t adequate - we heard a couple of cars getting their paintwork severely scratched), but we weren’t any closer to getting the car out of the driveway - a bloody great power cable was still hanging directly between the car and the road. No taxis were available - raining, Saturday night - so in the end I just lifted the cable while Amanda drove the car under it.

I’ll put some pictures up on the site as soon as I can…

Icewind Dale
Completed. That was a week of being really lazy, a complete write-off, but something I wanted to do, so what the hell. Anna’s kind of used to this obsessive dedication to a game - her brother’s are much the same, and she is similarly addicted to Spider. Anyway, enough said on the topic, except that there was a very annoying bug near the end of the game that meant that a vital object could (and did) go missing, forcing me to redo a couple of hour’s worth of the game. That sucks.

Fitness
I tried jogging to the corner store on the hottest day of the year, and found that I was very unfit. No surprises there, considering my efforts with squash, etc. So I pulled out the old unicycle last night and had a go at riding around the block, only to find that I’d lost a lot of the skills - I can idle (stay upright on one spot) but not ride forwards at the moment. Whoa. So I spent a bit of time going backwards and forwards on the pavement, watched by bemused neighbours.

The Picture Of Dorian Gray
I just saw the film of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, typically renamed for US audiences, but actually very well done. The B&W photography and lighting were excellent, especially a scene with a swinging lamp that would alternately illuminate the main character’s face (from the side) and the wall behind him, leaving him in sillhouette. Nice.

Game
Since finishing Icewind Dale, I’ve been doing a bit of work on my “Logical Fallacies” game, rather than doing any of the myriad of writing or film projects. More info when I’ve got something more substantial together…

Otherleg film festival
Right, I’ve decided the date. The Otherleg film festival will be held on Saturday, 30 March. It will feature “Bullet Hole”, “Hand Relief”, “Greta”, “Reach Out And Touch Someone”, “Timeless”, “Society Cookery”, and anything else that we’ve managed to get together by that time. It will also be a costume party - theme, “movies”. I’ve been to a party with that theme once before - the scope is terrific. One person came as an Alien - they’d put together this huge paper mache head - and another, dressed perfectly normally, came with a bottle of tomato sauce. When asked what his costume was, he put the bottle on the ground, stood on it, and said “Manon Des Sources”. Lots of scope. Anyway, everyone’s invited. Start time 6:00pm, bring booze, we’ll provide food, which will either be another Hangi or a BBQ. Official invitations later, but if you don’t get one it doesn’t mean that we hate you - we’re just terribly forgetful. Come along and shame us…

Sick
Anna’s one of those people who won’t go to a Doctor. She’s been sick for a couple of weeks now, but has still been going into work every morning, and earning huge profits every day (last night was almost a record-setter). Sigh.

Squash

Another game of squash with Ted, but this time I’m not nearly as exhausted afterwards, nor am I hurting to quite the same extent. This is partly due to improved fitness in the one intervening week, no doubt, but more simply because I didn’t push myself as hard. The result? Well, Ted still whipped me, but of the nine odd games we played, I won three. I reckon Ted’s the better player, and we’ll see this once we’re both fitter.

Timeless
So, Jon & Kate are over here at the moment, downloading the soundtrack (done by a guy in the US) for Jon’s short film, “Timeless”. I’ve had a listen (Jon’s listening to it now on the CD I burned) and it’s pretty good. Definitely improves the film. I’m starting to seriously think about hassling Evan about doing a soundtrack for “Hand Relief”. And then, there’s “Bullet Hole”, still in post-production hell. I’m really not short of procrastination projects.

Terrifically, horribly lazy

Yes I am. I’ve been playing “Icewind Dale” for a couple of days now (most characters are at 8-9th level) and I’m finally getting sick of it - so sick of it, that I don’t think I’ll be playing Balder’s Gate II for a while, nor Balder’s Gate: Dark Alliance, which is apparently just as much of a hack ‘n slash as Icewind Dale. I’m feeling pretty relaxed.

So what have ya done?
I’ve done a couple of chores, tried to help out Jon with his short film “Timeless”, which unfortunately has the cameraman breathing heavily into the microphone for a couple of shots. I tried routing the sound out of the computer, through my noise-reducing expander/voice optomised eq/opto-compressor/vocal saturator/opto de-esser, which is a terrific bit of technobabble, and then back into the computer. Turns out that my line-in for the PC is kinda lousy, so the whole thing picks up far too much noise on the round-trip, so no go. Bummer.
The “Disorder” story is coming along, but I keep reworking it as I keep finding out things about the Disorder. It’s not even a very long story, but I’m trying to capture a point of view of a whole order of monks in it - or rather, a dis-order - which is pretty hard to do.

Crimson Nightmares
I’m rewriting the script for “Crimson Nightmares” at the moment, too. We had a script meeting at Jon & Kate’s place with me, Ted, Kyla and Andrew Orman, discussed the script, and watched “Demon Lover Diary” again, which still amazes me. In the script discussions, Ted didn’t really want to do “Advent”, so it passed over to Andrew Orman, so it’s Andrew & Andrew to play Advent & Equinox. “Crimson Nightmares” is an old script by friends of Jon & Kate, already filmed, but rather badly. We’re going to remake it, but hopefully better - we’ll have more time and better equipment. As the script was a quick knockoff by Rupert Booth & Co., we talked about what needed to be done to make it more elegent, and the task fell to me as I’m the one who’s unemployed. I’ve got a big list of changes (also a big list of suggestions for edits to “Hand Relief”) which I’ll go through in the next week or so.

Firewire network
Bill had a go at getting the firewire network between the PC and the Mac up and going, but so far no good. The PC is the problem. Big surprise. Bill has some software that he reckons will do the trick. We’ll see.

Squash
And I’m just about recovered from squash, in time for another game tomorrow night. Here we go again…