October 2008
3 posts
Four surprises in 24 hours
I have been subject to four things that took me by surprise in the last 24 hrous. Here they are in no particular order:
Saw V – What surprised me more than this actually being the fifth Saw film in the horror series franchise was that the advertisement I saw on the back of a bus revealed that it is actually getting a cinema release on October 23, i.e. it’s not going...
Reflection
I decided it’s time for a bit of reflection about this blog; what I learnt and what I thought I knew.
I had never written a proper blog before this one. I had made attempts at it: a couple of times during my undergraduate degree and once when I was living overseas in order for friends and family to keep up with what I was doing, or for me to pontificate about what I thought annoying. But it...
The element of surprise
It’s time to face my fear. I have come to despise this time of year; the first half of Spring. It’s not because of hay fever, Spring bringing on a yearly spending spree at the chemist stocking up on antihistamines to curb the frustration of uncontrollable sneezing and itchy eyes. And it’s not the indecisive Spring weather, brain-frying one day and icy the next. No, this is much more psychological;...
September 2008
5 posts
There most certainly Will Be Blood
Poster from Paramountvintage.com
Having missed out on catching There Will Be Blood at the cinema earlier this year, I was looking forward to it being released on DVD. I found it had already been moved to three night new release by the time I got around to visiting the video shop; I grabbed it, drove home and watched it.
It is not difficult to see why Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father,...
Opeth's Sydney concert at Big Top
Keeping metal fresh can be quite a task, but as reviews of their albums (at sites such as allmusic or PopMatters) reveal, one band that keeps the bar high and expands upon previous efforts is Opeth. Metal is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but the unique part about this band is that despite heavy distortion and metal growls, Opeth also have something to offer those who would not normally...
A guide to all media
Before the rise of Web 2.0 brought us sites like Wikipedia and Youtube, finding readily availble information was a lot more difficult. And on my first outings on the Internet back in the late ’90s, the 28 kbps and later 56 kpbs dial-up modems wouldn’t have really cut it for large downloads or watching videos. The sound of my modem dialling the server (then with a company called...
Writer's block?
I’m probably not the first and I probably won’t be the last. What does one write about when they have writer’s block? How about writer’s block!?
I haven’t been to see any films after Hellboy II:The Golden Army and I haven’t been to any gigs recently (although this will change on Saturday night…wait for the update!). I checked digg.com, and probably the most interesting article was about the new...
August 2008
13 posts
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - special effects only
Hell Boy II: The Golden Army is an intriguing movie. But this does not mean it is a good movie.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which won three Oscars and was nominated for a further three was hailed by critics as a masterpiece. The grisly and grim reality of life under Franco’s fascist Spain was shown in contrast to a fantasy world created by a young girl. While the spectacular special...
Nostalgia
One of the top videos at digg.com at the moment with 2821 diggs (at the time of writing) is the song Happy Happy Joy Joy from the surreal early 90s cartoon Ren and Stimpy. The show was over the top in almost every way and looking back on it, none of its potency has been lost. Probably the main reason this video has so many diggs is due to its nostalgic value (and also that it remains extremely...
Time to change
Explore the consequences of climate change and what’s being done about it at Shireen’s blog.
A night at the Opera House
Tujiko Noriko performed at the Sydney Opera House’s The Studio last Friday night (22/8/08). I went along to the concert not knowing very much at all about the avant-pop experimental artist from Japan and came away pleasantly surprised. Before the concert, I had heard one song called ‘Penguin’ (see below) and had read a short piece about the singer in The Sydney Morning Herald.
The...
The night sky
At the end of last year, I bought a telescope. Not knowing anything about astronomy, I waltzed into the Bintel (Binocular and Telescope) shop in Glebe, failed to hide my complete lack of knowledge about the hobby, and eventually walked out with a 10” Dobsonian telescope (photo on left).
Ironically, it rained that day, and it either poured or remained overcast for the next couple of weeks. I have...
A film list
With all these film lists on blogs and websites around the Internet, I decided to create a list of my own. There is a scene in The Matrix where Neo (Keanu Reeves) observes Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) jumping from the roof of one building to another. Neo stands there stunned and states the word: “Whoa”. So it is from this utterance that I decided to create a non-exhaustive list of:
“Four films...
Interacting with fans
The Internet has changed the way in which bands can interact with their fans. Pitchfork reported that the finalists of an online competition to create a video clip for a Radiohead song were announced on the aniBOOM website today. Back on 10 October last year, the ever inventive Radiohead released their album In Rainbows online and allowed listeners to pay whatever they felt the album was worth....
Uniforms
The Oscar’s red carpet this is not. Green and gold, or shades of blue, grey and silver? Bleary eyed Australians who stayed up until 1:00am to see the Australian Olympic team march into the Bird’s Nest on Saturday morning were apparently shocked by the design of their uniform. After watching 201 other countries and territories enter the stadium during the opening ceremony in Beijing, viewers had a...
“And I say you’re as right as right can be,” replied Sancho,...”
– Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, Part 1 Chapter XXV, trans. John Rutherford (Penguin Books, 2000, p. 216)
Power of the internet
Strange things seem to happen in Martin Place in the city. Only a couple of months ago on June 24, I was making my way toward Wynyard station at lunch time when I realised I was in the minority of people actually moving. This was a bizarre contradiction to the usually frenetic promenade I was used to. All these people were standing dead still in a variety of poses and it was eerily quiet. That...
The very first blog entry
Welcome to Andrew’s blog!
After initially arriving at a website advertising a startling array of drinking glasses made by a company called ‘Tervis Tumbler’, I realised that the letter ‘e’ would need to be removed from the word ‘tumbler’ before I could make any progress in my Tumblr blogging career. “What is a ‘Tumblr’?” was the question I asked myself when I accessed this website last...