I have ticked off most of the stuff on my shopping list for the movie - just another 10-15 items to go. First shoot date is this coming Sunday and we are still putting final tweaks to the script. Doing a movie on such short notice/time span has definitely been a huge challenge and a big learning curve. I have an idea for the 'Five' website (finally!!) and now have to implement it.
Still sleep deprived for a good portion of the time - I might get some sound sleep tomorrow night (keyword is 'might').
Sir Nicholas Stern's report on economic impact of climate change has come out and it seems to have finally shaken people up. You can read it HERE. If you don't want to read the full report then check this out to read the summary.
I am just restless and wide awake. I don't feel one with the universe right now for some reason. There's got to be more to life than just this.
In my state of restlessness, I went and pre-ordered 'The Fountain' graphic novel edited by Darryn Afronsky from amazon.com (click on the image to pre-order if you feel like it). The back story is that the movie was originally supposed to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchet with a US$ 75 million budget but because of creative differences between Brad Pitt and the director - the movie got shut down. When the first version of the script was shelved and production was halted Aronofsky rewrote the script and re-envisioned the film. The first version of the script was turned into a graphic novel illustrated by Kent Williams.
Book Cover
The movie did get revived with half the original budget and new stars - Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. The movie opened to rave reviews and some infamous 'booing' at Venice Film Festival. Personally I can't wait to see this movie but it doesn't get released in NZ till Jan or Feb 2007. You can watch the trailer for the movie HERE.
Nothing much to say except for the fact that most of it has gone into preparing for the movie. I need more hours in a day.
I will leave you with a couple of pics (click on them for larger image) which I took at the school where there was an external production happening.
Innocence
It's a kind of magic
Oh yeah - spent a couple of hours in the rain along with Benji trying to change a flat tyre on my car. It wasn't bad - wasn't great either. Atleast there is a sense of achievement in doing that. I'll take it to the mechanic tomorrow and make sure that I tightened up the bolts properly - don't want to loose the tyre while driving.
I had my first proper swimming lessons today. I definitely need heaps of practice just to stay afloat - literally. It was fun though.
Acting workshops are going well. Improvisation is so much fun and that much more challenging because you have to be in that moment all the time. It is so close to production that it is hard to believe - a week and a half and we will be shooting the movie. Need lots of sorting out to do this weekend -especially with buying food supplies, accessories etc. We now have public liability insurance and statutory liability insurance along with third party damage with fire and theft cover for the company car. Learning from the last movie - insurance is a definite must even for 'no budget' films so that they remain no budget movies and don't end up being a twenty thousand dollar movie because you accidentally damaged something worth 20K.
SIPF decision came out for October round of funding and 'Nowhere' still hasn't got the financial support it needs [a sophisticated way of saying that we didn't get the funding]. I don't know if I will ever get any kind of funding from New Zealand. A bit disappointing but oh well, cest la vie..
The weekend trip to Tauranga and Mount Manganui was heaps of fun. We (Julia, Barbara & Me) went in Barbara's car and it was a fun road trip. It was overcast for most of the weekend but thankfully it did not rain till today i.e Monday.
Friday evening workshop extended till almost 10.00 PM and it was great fun. The characters are shaping up nicely and I am almost killing myself with nervous anticipation of things to come.
Richard with Marjan
Marjan
Anita
Anita, Marjan and Richard
I was too tired to heat up any food after coming back home at 10.30, so Benji and me went to this Asian restaurant called 'Momo Tea' (close to our house), which stays open till 3.00 in the morning. It was an experience and a half - I asked Benji to look around and see how everyone was so fashionably dressed even at 11.00 at night while we were casually dressed. Benji laughed and said that is probably not the reason we would stick out - as it turned out everyone there was Asian except for the two of us. The food wasn't bad at all - will probably go back there when midnight hunger pangs strike.
On Saturday - the road trip started early. I drove to Barbara's place and dropped off my car there and we then picked up Julia en route. Our first stopover of sorts was at Owharoa Falls and then we had another stop over at Waihi where they were having the monthly arts and craft market. [P.S - All photos are enlargeable if you click on them]
Owharoa Falls
Owharoa Falls - at the base Sleepy town of Waihi
Arts fair in the community hall
We were famished by the time we got to Tauranga. We had lunch at a Turkish place called Zeytin and the ambiance felt really authentic and to top it off the food was finger licking good, it impressed on us so much so that we had our lunch there the next day as well. Once done, we roamed about the CBD for a while before checking into the backpackers.
Lunch @ Zeytin
The backpackers we stayed at, Pacific Lodge in Mount Manganui was a cool place. The guy who runs the place, Murray, was really funny and eased us into our room. It was a good place to meet people from different parts of the world- all nomads or people in transition. We dropped our stuff off in our room after that everything is a blur in terms of the number of times we were in Mount Manganui and Tauranga. We avoided climbing Mt. Manganui straight away because it was overcast and it looked like it would bucket down with rain any minute. The weather cleared up early in the evening which gave us the opportunity to hike up the mount.
Mount Manganui (from the beach) Magic Hour
Empowerement and liberation
View from the top
Barbara, Me & Julia
View of Manganui Beach
A Beach volleyball tournament in progress
Tip of the Cliff
Julia is ecstatic over reaching the end of the cliff
Who are you looking at?
Just before we left Tauranga on Sunday evening, I bumped into one of my mates from South Seas - Bren Frank at the cinemas. It was good catching up with him again after a long time. He is currently working in the lighting department on '30 Days of Night' which is shooting in Auckland.
A guy fishing in the Waikato river
We took a detour through Hamilton and had a brief stop over for a stroll plus dinner before returning to Auckland. All in all it was a fun trip which came at the right point in time.
Today morning I went over to David M' place to check out a couple more locations in the Waitakeres and went for a walk even though it was raining (it has been raining the whole day). It was good but then I had a realization and we cancelled the hike to 3 other places. Now this week will be busy with organizing stuff and scheduling for 'Five' along with the usual workshops.
A walk in the Waitakeres
I have put up a couple of items on trademe for sale - a comic book and 1GB of laptop RAM, so if you are interested or if you know of someone who is looking for that stuff then bid on it.
I'll sign off for now. Till later, Amit
[P.S - I have started taking swimming lessons since I thought it would be a good idea to know how to swim considering that NZ is essentially 2 big islands.]
oooh. And one more thing - you can watch the first 4 minutes of BORAT here. Be warned that you could find a fair few things offensive within those 4 minutes.
It has been a long and intense week. Things are only about to get busier from now. Had a couple of long and productive workshops for 'Five' and it has been creatively challenging but fun.
I am off to Tauranga for a couple of days for a quick break but the weather doesn't look too good - overcast and drizzling.
Auckland is celebrating Diwali festival and it was the first time I went to the celebrations since I have been here in New Zealand. It was heaps of fun and the best bit was the Indian food stalls. Since Indian vegetarian food is so yummy - the whole weekend shaped out to be a vegetarian weekend.
Started off Saturday by watching 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby' and it turned out to be way more funnier than I thought it would be. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are really funny but the one person who really makes the movies even more crazier is Sacha Baron Cohen as the French challenger, Jean Girrard. It was a fun movie.
Then I caught up with Barbara, Julia and Andrea to go to the Diwali festival and it turned out to be heaps more fun. The crowds, the food, the ambiance - everything added up. There was so much good food and delicacies on offer that I couldn't resist myself. Later, we went and saw 'Little Miss Sunshine' (yes I watched it a second time) and it was still great fun. Stood up really well even after the second viewing - still as funny. We came back to the festival for some more Indian food and then watched the last few performances - including a fantastic bhangra performance before retiring for the day. It was a long but relaxing saturday.
Here is Saturday in photographs -
A man playing flute to indifferent pedestrians
The crowd starting to build up at the fair
Julia and Barbara shopping
Indian textiles and handicrafts on sale
A bollywood dance performance
An outsider's perspective
Barbara with an Indian thali while Julia is ordering some Paav Bhaji
Andrea excited about trying some Kulfi
A punjabi skill performance by a kid
A bhangra dance performance
Crowd enjoying themselves to the music
The mixed and varied crowd joining in the excitement
More food stalls
The festival of lights
As far as Sunday is concerned - I have been slowly chipping away at the script revision for 'Five'. Slept for a fair bit and later in the evening - went to the Diwali festival again - this time with Benji, to watch the fireworks. The fireworks display was underwhelming and a disappointing end to what was otherwise a great festival celebration.
Another week starting up tomorrow and things are just adding up. It is a period of creative nervous excitement for me.
Time passes, scars don't. They try and heal but the hurt opens up the wounds all the time. Pain is another form of pleasure but pleasure doesn't heal either. It is so momentary that the pain becomes all the more real. A paradox that is hard to break.
Out of the Blue
I just returned from watching a new NZ movie titled 'Out of the Blue' and it was a haunting look at the 1990 Aramoana massacre - which shook up entire NZ because of it's brutality and pointlessness. The movie explores the event with faithfullness and you feel the horror of the event unfold and frighteningly so because of the unpredictability. There is no gratituous violence - when it happens, it is quick and brutal (even the off-screen deaths). The cinematography is painfully beautiful and the edit is nicely timed. The movie is definitely a good one, made all the better by spot on acting by everyone.
It has been a crazy week - script, workshops, trying to get avid media composer running on my laptop, rebuilding my laptop, meetings and viewings at school, pre-production work for 'five'. I can't run Media Composer on my laptop as it is having problems with my graphics card which in turn is causing a video lag, which can't be fixed. So I am returning back to Avid Express Pro HD - it is still a great editing tool but doesn't have as many facilities and finishing tools as a Media Composer.
'Little Miss Sunshine' is a cute and hilarious movie - you have to watch it if you get a chance. It is filled with some lovely performances from everyone especially Alan Arkin as the foul mouthed, heroin injected grandpa. The movie is full of classic moments and the ending is more satisfying than you can imagine. A definite gem.
The trailer for '300' has hit the web and it looks dazzling to say the least. I downloaded the HD trailer and have watched it a fair few times and it definitely wants me to see the movie. Ultimatey I guess that is what a trailer should do - excite the audience into wanting to watch the movie without trying to tell the whole movie in 30-60 seconds. You can download the trailer for '300' from HERE.
Some people just can't sleep. And I am not one of them. I sleep like a baby 95% of the time and it takes a fair bit of noise for anything to wake me up, which can be testified by my numerous friends and family members who have tried waking me up when I am in deep sleep. Special mention to the time in Delhi when I fell asleep in the afternoon while mom went out shopping. I woke up to loud banging on the door and opened to see mom all flustered. I didn't understand the big deal but it turned out that the entire neighboring apartment flats were helping mom in pounding the door for close to 30-45 minutes before I opened the door - I barely heard the noise. In retrospect - i actually find it really amusing that I can sleep like that.
So what am I doing typing this blog at 4.15 in the morning? INDUCED INSOMNIA - involuntary too.... Now I can't go back to sleep, so thought I might as well update the blog and start working on 'Five'.
Friday night was fun - first went to a farewell party for Kirstin and Karen (& Jerome) - who will be leaving New Zealand soon. After that caught up with Anita, Marjan and Andy for a different kind of workshop for 'Five'. Extremely productive and it served the purpose I was intending it to. Here are some photos from there:
On saturday the one thing which really shook me up was seeing a cat run over by a car. It happened like this - I took a turn to get onto a main road and slowed down immediately as I saw a cat make a run for it to get across to the other side. It was running pretty fast but the first car coming from the opposite direction hit it and I saw bits and parts shatter. I didn't look in detail because I was afraid on what I would see but at that moment it really sunk in as to how temporal all living creatures really are. We live a fragile life in a fragile world and it doesn't take much to shatter that fragility.
[P.S - The soundtrack for 'Pulp Fiction' isn't bad at all. Also check out a music video from a NZ music group called Minuit - they are definitely one of my favorite NZ music groups - Ruth has an enticing and different voice. I used one of their tracks in 'Memories of Tomorrow' - with permission ofcourse.]
Hard to believe that time has again proved tricky to keep track of. It is thursday evening and another week draws to a close.
I finally put in my citizenship application yesterday after filling out the form and getting signatures and stuff. Now keeping fingers crossed for things to sort themselves out. Also had the first workshop with the actors for 'Five' on Tuesday evening, which proved to be really good and intense. Now just have to accelerate things even more since we are a month away from shoot now.
Watched a couple of movies - a really depressing australian movie titled 'Look Both Ways' [really well shot and directed and acted but still very depressing] and a really bad horror movie titled 'Saw 2'...ooops did I just say that?
Went to the Auckland Art gallery to attend the reading of a theatre play titled 'Mike and Virginia' written by Kathryn Burnett & Nick Ward. It was heaps of fun and overall had lots of stuff going for it. Once a couple of things are smoothed out, I think it would be a fantastic play to watch.
Auckland Art Gallery
Aotea Square @ night
Here is what I was feeling like this afternoon - pretty random but still beautiful.
Fever is gone (I think!!!). Sleeping through most of today did me some good.
Saturday was a good game of badminton but I had to leave before our 2 hour period ended as I felt the fever coming back. In the evening, caught up with a friend who has come up from Wellington and managed to catch 'An Inconvenient Truth'. It is a compelling movie and I would say is highly recommended for everyone to watch - especially the skeptics who think global warming is a whole load of shit. Irrespective of what your political inclination is I think it is extremely important to rise above the petty politics and think about the planet. As a movie - it is not perfect, it has its flaws. - like intercutting the subject matter with Al Gore's personal life didn't make much sense. It definitely cut off the flow of the movie at times but it is still a compelling watch because of the science behind it. Global warming is a reality and I think we are definitely inching closer to the 'point of no return' faster than we can imagine.
I got out a new lot of books from the library and this time instead of picking up books that interest me I just picked up the first 3 books on the recommended read shelf. I started reading 'Shut Up & Sing' by Laura Ingraham and by the 3rd page I was getting frustrated by the author's pig headedness and wanted to close the book. But it is unfair doing that to any book - so decided to finish the first chapter and see if I wanted to continue any further. By the end of the first chapter I had only one thought in my head - if this is what america's socially conservative, middle class americans believe in then that country is really fucked. When a book starts off in a defensive counter attack on ideology then you know that the author is nothing but a pure hack. I skim read some pages across the book and it has the same problem - the author really is dillusional and divorced from reality.
I put the book away and started reading 'Natural Born Cyborgs' by Andy Clark and it is proving to be a fascinating read.
Watched 'The Aristrocrats' and it was a great documentary. It's tagline is 'No Nudity. No Violence. Unspeakable Obscenity'. And I would say that it is an understatement but it was hilarious seeing some of the best comedians tell the same dirty joke. A must watch and definitely a game you can play with strangers and friends alike and watch them squirm. (:-)
