Feijoa is kiwi for awesome fruit

It has been quite the stretch of time since you've heard from me.  I would like to say that means I have a lot to tell you, a lot to catch everyone up on but, alas, life as been pretty simple, even if it has been awesome.  To start off, let's throw out some differences in pronunciations that make my kiwi friends and I laugh: 

Adidas

the kiwi way: AH - dee - dahs

Aluminum

the kiwi way (spelled Aluminium): al - you - MIN - ium 

Oregano

the kiwi way: or - reh - GAHN - oh

I have made contact with other life forms in my hostel (finally... took me long enough) and am happy to say I have a solid group of friends over here that I hang out with pretty much every day.  Let's see... there's Heather, Markus, John, Louise, Anna, Tessa, Eve, Dave, and a few others who come around sporadically.  Those names mean nothing to you the reader, I realize, but we can pretend they are everyone's friends.  Louise had never had a pb&j before (which probably stands for peanut butter and jam over here.  they aren't nearly as popular) so that made for quite the ceremony Saturday night.

That project that I posted about last time, with all the records and presentations and iPods and music and what not, actually turned out very well for me.  The grade was a solid one, and I was pleased.  My current projects are pretty cool.  One is a documentary about the effects of divorce on the kids, depending on the age of the child with the divorce happened (depressing, right?  let's hope it turns out to be more informative and interesting than sad).  For the class I made the gramophone for I'm now in the pre-production stages on a stop animation music video, with lots of After Effects work overlaid.  If that doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry - it doesn't really make sense to me either.  I have vision in my head - a dream, if you will - and I hope to be able to pull it out of my mind and onto the screen.  I'll keep you posted on how successful that commute goes.  I anticipate lots of traffic.

My third class isn't nearly as interesting, I reckon.  Just making presentations on art cinema and writing papers on famous films.  And my teacher seems bent on stifling every creative impulse I have.  I'm forced to play by his rigid rules or face the consequences when marks come out.  

I don't really have time to continue that wacky as story I started previously, since I ought to be preparing for my group meeting in an hour and a half.  But no one really reads this blog for those stories anyway, so that's alright.  On a similar note (the similarity I refer to is writing original pieces of fiction) Alex, Ryan, Aaron and I have entered the earlier phases of developing a new movie from Pursuit of Friday.  Very exciting times.  We have three or four concepts we're tossing around, trying to figure out which one will be appropriate to pull off in a month's time (July).  Keep your eyes peeled for a new film due to release late this summer, the longest production since Diem.  And way better, that I can promise.

I'll try to not wait two weeks in between posts again.  Cheers!

Mum is the word. Actually bird is the word, but bird says mum, so we're gonna so with that

Hello my faithful followers.  Chill is the word around town as I turned in my last project today of the Great Project Rush.  I get about two weeks to casually work on new projects before anything else is due.  Tonight is supposed to be my night to sit in front of the TV and do nothing for hours, but something seems to be wrong with the cable.  Instead I've been writing a screenplay, so not a bad exchange I'd say.  It's currently titled The Brothers Coral and is being co-written with my brother, the Baron of Pumpky.  We started last summer but put it on hold for a long time.  I decided it was time to pull it out, dust it off, and finally finish the thing.

I really have nothing else interesting to sell.  Tomorrow is my birthday, which is pretty cool.  My creative juices are flowing though, so maybe I'll make up a quick short story on this cold and rainy sixth of May.

* * *

"What's the date?"

"Huh?" The old man was working on his daily crossword puzzle and anything anybody had to say to him clearly took back seat to this love affair.  What's with this guy?  the young man thought to himself, he works on these things like it's a kind of religion.  "The date.  What's the date today?"

Finally the old man lifted his head, scanning the room to find the source of the question.  Of course there was only one place the question could have possibly come from.  Every morning Henry James Fonda came into the Cafe Guillermo and every morning he was alone with the old man.  By now he had at least learned his name was Bob.  Simply Bob.  No surname had ever been given, and none required, since this Bob could certainly never be confused with any other Bobs Henry may have known.

After staring at the young man for a moment, Bob responded.  "Sixth of May" he said with perfect confidence.  The young man's eyes lit up for a brief second, then reverted back to their normal latent blue, as if trying to hide his surprise.  Henry gulped down the rest of his coffee and fished into his pocket for some change.  Whatever importance the date held to him, the old man apparently would not be finding out.  His curiosity spent, Bob went back to his puzzle.

Apart from a dazzlingly unfortunate name, Henry James Fonda was actually a relatively fortunate guy.  He had wealthy parents and a comfortable family life.  He was a successful tennis athlete in high school and got a full-ride scholarship to Penn State.  He was president of the Student Government and captain of the tennis team.  After receiving a degree in Biomedical Engineering with a grade point average of 3.54, he was accepted to do research with the Internal Association of Medical and Biological Foreign Studies.  No matter what you said about him, you had to admit that Henry Fonda was a fortunate guy.  That is, up until now.

After paying for his mediocre coffee, Henry bolted out the door and walked to the bus stop faster than he would have enjoyed.  He never liked to seem in a hurry, even if he was.  One time he was forty-five minutes late leaving for an Organic Chemistry final exam and casually walked the entire 2.2 miles to the lecture hall.  He even stopped to chat with an old professor on the way, causing him to have to finish the exam in only sixty minutes.  But this was no chemistry final, and Henry didn't have the time to walk. 

If it was really May sixth than that meant it worked.  And if it worked than the boy was right and Henry would have exactly forty-three minutes to get to his lab.  Suddenly, just before climbing onto the bus, Henry pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket and scribbled a note onto it.  The driver, thinking he was digging for change, waited impatiently.  When he finished, Henry dropped the note on the ground then jumped on the bus, paying the dollar forty for the ride.

He took a seat towards the back of the bus, away from most of the other passengers.  As he waited for his stop to come (thirty-nine minutes now) Henry found himself not thinking about what had happened or what was about to happen, but of Cheerios and grow capsules, the sponge-in-a-pill toy that grew into shapes once they were added into water.  The particular ones he was thinking about were monster shapes.  Monster shapes and Cheerios.

As his considered the fate of these everyday items and what place they would have in a world thirty-seven minutes from now, he found himself wishing he had a bowl of Cheerios right then and there, on the bus.  And a glass of water to throw some monster shapes into.  I'm going insane he thought to himself as he pushed these irrelevant ideas out of his head.  Cookoo for CoCo Puffs.  Right out the window and down to the old Looney House.  

A loud buzz interrupted his daydreaming.  He looked up and saw an old woman making her way to the front of the stopped bus.  She had just needed to get off.  He watched her climb all the way down the steps and up to the door of a townhouse.  He watched her as she rung the bell and waited for someone to come.  He watched her--then the bus moved on and he was again just stuck with watching the blurred shapes of random people and buildings go by.  He checked his watch. 

Thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes and it would all be over and done with, one way or the other.  

* * *

This story doesn't really make any sense on its own, so I guess I'll keep it going when I feel the urge.  I'm open to suggestions for a title.  Hope that kept you entertained during my lack of interesting non fiction.  

Cahiers du cinema

All is well in the land of the long white cloud.  I turned in my project to good reviews, which was nice.  I celebrated that evening by couch potato-ing it up in front of the telly- Futurama, Two and a Half Men, Scrubs, Lost, and Chuck.  Is was quite an excellent way to decompress after all that work.

telly

I hope there's something wicked on the telly! It better not be a bunch of adverts!!!1

Unfortunately, I'm back at it tomorrow.  After a relaxing weekend of showing my friend Barbara around the Wellington area (and touring the NZ  Parliament- awesome), I hit the computers tomorrow for some solid hours of editing time.  No worries, though.  This is what I do.  Wait to the last possible moment, then use that built up pressure to pump out an awesome product.

Ok, so maybe not the best approach.  It'd probably be better to have finished two weeks ago, email to friends and peers, get reviews, revise, resend, wash, rinse, repeat.  But I needed some downtime after that last project.  Plus, I already have all the filming done.  Tomorrow I'll do the editing into the final 3-5 minute video.  After that I just have a few small concepts and storyboards to write up for Wednesday, then I am free from due dates for two weeks!  A chance to chill, catch up on some of my own creative work, and even get ahead on some future school projects.  Not to mention my birthday on Thursday.  It should be a truly fabulous week.  

And now, I leave you with some movie reviews.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

So it's no Dark Knight or Iron Man, but it's a fun and explosive ride.  I enjoyed it because it didn't try to be more than it was.  It knew it was a snap crackle and pop blockbuster and hyped it up the whole time.  (I just said 'it' six times in two sentences)  However, some things did disappoint.  Poor animation, bad acting, and unconvincing sets left me outside the X-Men universe more than once.  But the second half of the film seemed to improve upon the mistakes of the first.  This won't be a DVD buy, nor am I entirely sure it was worth the 13.50 I paid for it, but if you're into an action bomb with no thought provoking strings attached (and quite a few familiar faces), this will give you what you want.  If nothing else, Hugh Jackman is a case study in the structure of the male body.  ;)

OFFICIAL TOPH RATING**:  Rent (for the X-Men marathon)

The Boat That Rocked

I think I need to start by saying that I was extremely excited about this when I first saw its trailer.  Then, as I sometimes do, I let the reviews get me down.  It apparently was  only occasionally funny and entirely too self-absorbed.  But I went with some friends anyways and, let me tell you Ladies and Gents, I was not disappointed.  I laughed for most of the movie.  It didn't have anything great to say or some long-lasting message to imprint.  Unless, of course, solid fun is a great message.  Or Damn The Man (but who really wants to hear that anymore).  I just got the feeling that I was hanging around with some of my best friends that I've known forever, having a good time.  Good for great laughs and packed to the brim with the who's who of today's pop movie scene, The Boat that Rocked is a welcome break amidst the annual HiFi BigMama-Gonna-Blow-Yo-Brains-Out blockbuster season.  Just don't expect to see Oscar winking at this one.

OFFICIAL TOPH RATING: Bargain Bin

**Here's how the OFFICIAL TOPH RATING system works.  I like to base what I thought about a movie on whether or not I think I'll buy it on DVD when it hits shelves.  It has become a good way for me to manifest my ideas on a film for others to understand.  For example, 

"What'd you think of The Departed?" 

"Shoot cuz, I'm buying that movie right when it comes out."  

While this system is far from flawless (I actually didn't know what I thought about the Departed the first time I saw it--now it's one of my all time favorites) it gets the point across fairly well.  Here's the scale:

Cry- Cry because the movie is so bad.

Nah- Not for me.  Won't be seeing this again unless someone really wants me to.

Rent- I'd rent it again.

Bargain bin- Might have to wait it out, but just don't need it at full price.

Preorder- Knocked me out cold.  I need this film.

My other internal rating system (which has nothing to do with the aforementioned OFFICIAL TOPH RATING) is lasting impression.  Maybe I enjoyed a film initially, but after a few weeks nothing's left of it inside.  If it doesn't make an impression then it couldn't have been that good.  I want my liking for a movie to grow with time, not the opposite.  That's how I know I really liked something I saw.  That's what happened with The Departed.  At first it freaked me out and I walked out of the theatre thinking I didn't really like it.  But after only a week or two I needed to see it again.  Now, even after nine viewings, it still gets better every time.

Can I get an Amen?