Musings of an Idiot

Beautiful weekend

It has shaped up to be a beautiful weekend with no rain whatsoever on these 2 days and some really lovely sun. I haven't gone indoor rock climbing as one needs a climbing partner and at this point I don't have anyone. I put the idea forward to Benji and both of us have agreed that maybe it is not such a good idea to try that together, considering the weight difference between the two of us, so I will wait for a climbing partner and then give it a go.

The Auckland International Film Festival is just around the corner and in the past 3 years I have never been to see anything at the festival because I never found a movie that I wanted to desperately watch. But this time around there are a fair few movies which interest me, so went over and bought tickets to a couple of them - 'Tristam Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story' and 'Road to Guatanamo' - interestingly both movies by Michael Winterbottom. Not related to the film festival - 'Superman Returns' is being released this Thursday and they are re-launching the IMAX 3D screen again at Village Cinemas on Queen Street, so will be watching the movie there.

Watched a couple of movies over the weekend - 'Thumbsucker' and 'Wolf Creek'. Thumbsucker was a coming-of-age comedy and it wasn't too funny. It has a lot of missed moments and the editing rhythm is off synch with the performances, which were pretty solid (even from the teenagers). It downplays the humor so much that it almost kills the movie. And because the editing is out of synch, the movie just felt way too long even though it was normal movie length ( I came close to dozing off around the 50 minute mark).

Wolf Creek on the other hand was a much better movie than I expected - it takes a long time for the movie to start off. It has a 45 minute setup time and then all hell break's loose. There is no suspense to really speak of but it is brutal and unrelenting in nervous tension when it gets going. In a way the direct comparision would be to 'Hostel' which kind of follows the same story telling pattern with huge build up time before breaking into brutality from which the horror comes from. It almost feels like the storytelling technique in horror is going through a change. Hopefully someone finds a balance between traditional horror and new age horror.

I cooked something new today and learnt an extremely valuable lesson - a meal has to be balanced out between dry items and wet items otherwise it is hard to enjoy the meal to the full extent. I cooked some chicken skewers marinated in indian spices and curds (unsweetened yoghurt) and served them on rice along with chargrilled red peppers, sliced olives and peppered omlette. I undercooked the rice a bit and then did not prepare any wet dishes, so it was a tough lunch to have even though it tasted good. So a lesson learnt for the future.


There is a third movie project which is now under development and it is as exciting as 'Nowhere'. At this point all I can say is the movie is tentatively titled 'FIVE' and the reason I am excited is that I would like to make this as a 'zero-budget' movie with the focus on telling a good story within huge resource constraints. David M. is writing the story and it is going to be a great collaborative effort. The plan is to shoot the movie in Feb'2007 with the aim for sharing it with everyone by July'2007. More details will follow soon...all in the due course of time.

I think I will go offline for now. Might watch another movie or so.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Food, Movies, Nowhere to Love

posted by Amit @ 5:28 PM