How Do I Blog?

Update

What’s been going on with me lately? Not a lot to be honest…

Sike.

I’ve been ridiculously busy. New career has been skyrocketing as some positive news regarding our shareholding has meant a lot of work for us at Head Office, plus in general the job has been very engaging… but also financially rewarding. It’s good to have payoff commensurate with effort!

I also got to visit Daydream Island recently for a “conference” where a lot of “heavy working” (drinking) was followed by periods of “reflective introspection” (vomiting) and this led to an “appreciation of our working environment” (lounging by the pool).

Outside of work, life as usual continues, Evie awaits the birth of “baby brother” eagerly and our recent 3D scan was good to get a closer look at the little fella. I think both Clare and I have gotten more comfortable with the idea of a Mini-Me hellraising around us for the rest of our lives… ahh, parenthood is bliss.

I’ve been playing poker again, I know, I know… but in the past 120 days or so I’ve had over $5k US in profits so I must be doing something right! I’m enjoying the game, playing MTTs only really, just need to make sure I don’t get addicted and try to play lots of different stuff all the time.

And other than that…

The Wire - Season 4

I thought it impossible to top season 3. The writing was impeccable and the scope of the narrative pretty astonishing, some of the emotional swings and loss of familiar faces was a big impact. Well, it just goes to show that they can create tangible connections in a short period of time that hit home just as hard, if not harder due to the nature of their particular struggles, as we follow a group of schoolkids getting taught at school and in parallel to that, the real life teachings of the corners. It’s heartbreaking and frustratingly inevitable as we chart the rise and fall of some youths and the lives that some of them cannot escape. This season simply cemented and then gold-plated its status as “best show on television”.

I’m currently a third of the way through the final season, and it is no disappointment.

District 9

I’m still not sure how I feel about this on an overall basis. I wasn’t actively put off (much) during the screening I attended, except at the key stage which I’ll cover off later in the review, but looking back on it the stuff that it did well is (for some reason) clearly undone by the (frankly, quite dumb) broad-stroke approach they took in making this flick.

Starting off as a gritty pseudo-documentary retelling the origins of a nomadic and rather pathetic alien species pejoratively called “Prawns”, who are herded into ghettos and exploited by the local Nigerian gangsters for their inexplicable love of cat food, the film puts its best foot forward. You are sucked into the day-to-day doings of a hapless goof charged with the unenviable task of relocating the entire Prawn populous in an attempt to minimise crime and destructive disturbances both from within and without. It’s worth noting that the protagonist (Wikus) isn’t terribly likable and this a slightly refreshing standpoint for a movie to take… not too often is your character unlikable unless he’s a charming rogue, or devastatingly handsome anti-hero, or whatever, and usually that character makes a turnaround like say a Han Solo saving the day moment… aaaaannd this movie is no exception.

But I’ll get to that.

The initial groundwork in detailing an incredibly complex history is masterfully done in a series of “interviews” and news reels from the past two decades. You get a real sense of the scope of the problem facing the country but I never felt they did quite enough with it. There wasn’t any real indication of the international community having any involvement here, which seems quite preposterous to be honest. No mention of the UN or International Concerns, but instead some faceless (presumably SA) corporation are given the “shadowy government” role for the course of the film. This is fine for creating some biomech-R&D intrigue with secret labs and white coated Gordon Freeman types, but it totally removes the ability to make any sort of compelling social commentary. The parallels between the Prawns treatment and Apartheid are blatant and resonate well enough for a metaphor, but aren’t really played with terribly much.

However, quite neatly and without breaking immersion the movie side-steps from its pseudo-doc feel to an immediate-feeling action narrative as all hell breaks loose. Wikus is put through his paces after his accidental exposure to alien biotech (with some nice references to The Fly) and once diagnosed, is whisked away from everyone into a secret lab to be used as a conduit to alien weaponry. After some experiments and the conclusion that he’s going to be chopped up into little bits, he manages to break free (in a very convenient fashion, I might add) and then the chase vehicle component of the story begins and it becomes a sci-fi action movie.

Unfortunately all the popcorn trappings that come with the genre start to traipse in and mix with the original setting and fresh take on a sci-fi premise. A sadistic Prawn-hating commando is drafted in to hunt down our protagonist, the reason for father-in-law being an evil scheming corporation head became apparent and the voodoo-inspired Nigerians jump in the mix to provide some additional cannon fodder. The reasons why they are doing what they’re doing are fair enough, it’s quite simply laid out, the problem is that it isn’t terribly interesting. So we then look to our protagonist for a challenging dramatic arc and characterisation to fill in this void of rather bland fare.

It’s just not there. Wikus starts off the movie a generally unlikable prick and (in my eyes) ends it not terribly different, except physically. He’s quite clearly a racist and that never changes through what I was shown. And yeah, the whole “he becomes like them and hence gains understanding” angle only works if they explore it guys, so don’t try to pass off the mere physical transformation as anything more than that. In terms of demonstrably understanding the Prawn’s viewpoint, Wikus grows not one iota beyond eating a tin of catfood and growing a few ugly appendages. We know he’s not a monster (or particularly smart) by his refusal to kill a Prawn and then his attempt to break back into the facility to help Christopher (a fellow Prawn) escape from Earth using the biotech fuel for their command module. That’s really the extent of his development though, because later Wikus gets a disappointment from Christopher regarding the true extent of his predicament and lashes out, clobbering his only hope and then (again, stupidly) crashing their only chance of escape and his only chance of saving himself from the condition plaguing him. He launches right back into the selfish stupid mode that got him into the position in the first place, and you know what, while I commend them for challenging the audience with a non-standard protagonist … the end result is that I really didn’t care for him by the end of the story and didn’t particularly want him to be saved from his own stupidity and ignorance.

What followed next was some of the most awesome action sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time. On a conceptual and visual level it was fantastic, the visceral delivery of these scenes was somewhat undercut by the lameness of the script and the terribly inevitable, sloppily constructed “change of heart” for the character (hence why I think the character didn’t really “change”).

That said, I could probably watch Wikus wipe out the gangsters and commandos for ages as the splatter factor and ingenuity of the visuals really gave the action a naturalistic and realistic (yet alien) feel. They really nailed this part of the movie.

So… yeah, not much more to add to that I’m afraid. An incredibly conflicted B.

Should you continue to pursue something as a hobby and on the very outside of your intentions, as a potential dream-job, if you know that getting there is extremely, extremely unlikely?

This question becomes especially potent when you combine it with the fact that finding time to allow for your natural drive to come through is difficult and your enthusiasm is somewhat dampened by the realities of what you are trying to achieve.

To contextualise this, I’m talking here about being a writer and that on a daily basis my brain is filled with imagery from fiction I’ve devised and I have a strong desire to get it out of my head and to share it with the world. I’ve long ago given up the ghost of being a writer of novels or stories, I don’t read enough any more to do that and to be honest, I think I was only acting out on my desire to put words to the images in my mind. Images that are inspired by moving pictures and cinema.

I am very passionate about film and what I love most about cinema are the enduring images, the scenes that stick in your mind, and the awe and spectacle that can be achieved by implication rather than outright manipulation and CG creation (though those things can be pretty fucking cool too when done right). I’ve been tinkering with screenplays and script format for about a year now and have a couple of hobby-horse scripts at various stages of development, I had the time to work on these during a considerable downswing at work where I had a lot of capacity to sneak in hobbies.

Outside of work, other desires and laziness factors creep into eating up my time - plus I’m so busy at work in my new role, and happy doing it too, to sacrifice the work quality to squeeze in hobby time. The reality that my ideas are ultimately Big Budget movies, not small independent cinema that I could perhaps struggle with on the fly and assemble projects with arty friends, and that cracking Hollywood isn’t exactly the easiest challenge.

So, do I give up on pipe-dreams and allow my natural procrastination to stop me from “wasting” my time writing scripts if they are ultimately too big for me to have a probability of converting?

Should I stop worrying, be happy, do what I can when I can and just hope that some day other people appreciate my natural genius?

le sigh

I am very conflicted.

I picked up one of these when I saw it on sale at a local electrical store, I’d been eying potential mp3 players for a while and had already decided long ago that it would be anything but ipod as I’m not a fan of iTunes, their battery life or their poseur hipster status symbol. The aforelinked site offered favourable reviews of the Sony line and I’ve never had any problems with a Sony product in my life so I figured why not.

It’s a lovely bit of kit. I’m not sure if the media management software is necessary but its functional and easy to use - except in the area of playlists, whereby you just need to sync up to WMP11 (or equivalent) and transfer via that. The UI is slick without being flashy, quick, easy to use and minimalistic. The sound is great and as you would expect, the earbuds provide clear sound. The unit itself is very slim and lightweight with a nice metallic front over a hard plastic back.

I only got the 4gb model despite having some 40gb of music because I’m a rotational person and like to swap-in/swap-out to force me to listen to new things, otherwise I’d probably listen to the same 100 or so albums forever. It also does video but I got over the idea of 240×320 resolution movies or TV around the same time as David Lynch.

I took it for my first jog (or rather jog-walk-hybrid) today and it performed well. My running playlist kept me on the move including such hits as Training Montage and Hearts on Fire from the Rocky IV soundtrack.