The same studio that brought us ‘From L ove to Bingo‘ have created yet another well made love story, entirely from stock video footage from Getty Images:
Student + Dying = Studying [F]
•May 31, 2013 • Leave a Comment
Why did I think this was going to be fun and any different from previous experiences? A part of me knows I am more than capable of acing my exams, although, another part of me is so disillusioned by the authority given to the markers — considering their own expectations, counter to my own, are potential variables against my words being graded fairly — that I almost want to counter their expectations and contest my lecturer’s theories and use the exam as my time to do it in, because I don’t believe everything I have been taught so far and can articulate my reasons why. (“Social” paradigm shift, pfftt, why not just spit on Thomas Kuhn’s grave!) However, now is probably not the time, even though I feel it should be.
Exam time just seems…unnecessary. I can’t address what I have personally gained from my learning, I can only reiterate what has been taught, proving nothing new to me. Worse still, I have no one to talk to and bounce my thoughts around with. I am frustrated. I’m not even sure if what I’m trying to get off my chest even has anything to do with exams or the University experience. Maybe, subconsciously, I just want someone to tell me I’m wrong, and that everything is going to be alright.
Will marks gained from the exams prove beneficial and payoff in the grand scheme of my life? Yes. Will the questions and content of the exams and how I answer to them have an effect on the grand scheme of my life? Fuck no. To me, exams are a way of evaluating 
course statistics by using student results to monitor the curriculum, and not expand upon the individual’s learning. Exams remind me of IQ tests, or Lotto; fun and meaningful for some, but not for others who know why. My point is, I dislike being examined. Who on Earth has the authority to tell me how well I am, based within the bubble of their own created curriculum and exam questions? (Exams; now there’s a bygone tradition due for a paradigm shift.) I’m going to brew some green tea now, light a few aroma scented candles and draw myself a hot bath before I drown myself in self-doubt and gibberish, so help me Gandalf! Then I will study.
Bookshelf Porn [new site]
•May 29, 2013 • 2 Comments‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’ ~ Marcus Cicero
How can someone possibly call their desired dream home a dream home if it doesn’t cater for books?! I keep my books in boxes but only because I don’t have an adequate shelf worthy of their display. The possibilities to express a love and respect for books just blows my mind. Who knew bookshelves could evoke such envy? Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I am beholding some gorgeous shelves: photos via bookshelfporn.com
The Baroque library Biblioteca Joanina (King John’s Library)
Prof. Richard Macksey’s Home Library, via John Hopkins University
A Bookshelf Headboard
Upstairs in the The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
A Skylight Library
A studio apartment in Paris
A slide… As popular as e-books become, nothing will ever compare to reading a good book. To be able to hold an entire world in the palm of your hands and know the power of a deity has to fold back and forth through time with the delicate lives of people between their fingertips; to know someone’s deepest desires, hear their voice and share their secrets at your leisure, and the ability to feel someone elses troubles and admire their loves, is a quality I don’t believe can be fully translated to a digital device. Something is lost, not narratively speaking but in character of the book that only a book and all its parts can form — a unique haven for a unique world and all the voices that belong in it.
E-books just smoosh stories into a single, messy multiverse that is susceptible to cross contamination with illiterate nonsense. I’m not gaga over bookshelves, but books are something special.
Well put, Lisa. It’s funny to me to think that we show better care for books than we show for each other. If anyone is interested; the best bookshop I’ve stepped in has to be Hard to Find Secondhand Book Shop in Onehunga. It’s a book-lovers comfort zone:
SCIENCE FICTION’S COMEBACK! [movie trailers]
•May 26, 2013 • Leave a Comment
Sci-fi never went anywhere, but as far as good Hollywood films are concerned, heavy-science-fiction blockbusters have been few and far in between. And no, Transformers and Battleship have no science-based elements in them so they don’t count. Nor should they be considered any good for that matter.
Fiction is one thing but Speculative Fiction has to address its core idea from an exploratory, hypothetical point of view and not simply sugarcoat the invasion cliché, which is largely what the majority of Hollywood studio produced sci-fi has equated to. Anyone see the Total Recall reboot? Not exactly the mind-trip I was expecting.
Having blah blahed, the movies below look so cool that I’m willing to forget my finicky attention to detail, just so long as I’m entertained, which these sweet trailers have already achieved — Hurry up and come take my money!!!
Continue reading ‘SCIENCE FICTION’S COMEBACK! [movie trailers]’
The Matrix: Remade by CineFix Homemade Movies
•May 24, 2013 • Leave a CommentCineFix’s use of low-tech budget effects are inventive and reminds me of what makes filmmaking so much fun:
The rooftop showdown with the famous shot of Neo dodging bullets gets the homemade makeover without VFX.
Those bullet sound-waves are cool. Checkout the CineFix Youtube Page for the comparison video and many more budget-friendly, made with love, “sweded” movie homages. I’ll just leave this here:
Continue reading ‘The Matrix: Remade by CineFix Homemade Movies’
Chopsticks — The Japanese Tradition
•May 22, 2013 • Leave a CommentAn informative educational video providing you with the proper use of chopsticks:
Almost Human [trailer]
•May 20, 2013 • Leave a CommentFeaturing one of New Zealand’s greatest exports, Karl Urban; Almost Human is a promising television series that looks highly entertaining:
Karl Urban as a troubled cop is forced to work with the department’s mandatory new “synthetic” officers.
Hoop Fighter II — FIGHT!
•May 19, 2013 • Leave a CommentMix Street Fighter with Fruit Ninja and add “the world conquering hoola hoop master…”
And you get Marawa the Amazing! slicing and dicing as one might imagine a hoop ninja could. She once made it to the semi-finals on Britain’s Got Talent because she has the aptitude to hoop close to 133 hoola hoops at the same time! Basically a black hoop in the hooping arts. She also happens to be a fan of Street Fighter, hence:
Totally amazing. Keen to learn more about hooping? Checkout http://www.hooping.org/
Writers & Readers [F]
•May 19, 2013 • Leave a CommentI wrote a short story and won the runner-up prize to see Carlos Ruiz Zafón, guest-headliner as part of the The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2013. A major part of the festival spirit — all types of festivals — is discovering new things, and what Zafón had to impart to his attentive theater audience, myself included, was inspiring and related to my style of writing nicely. I’m thinking the CWOC judges may have put two and two together. Either way, cheers CWOC, much appreciated 😀
“Carlos Ruiz Zafon is Spain’s bestselling contemporary writer and the author of six novels, including the international bestsellers ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ and ‘The Prisoner of Heaven.’ His work has been published in more than 40 languages and honoured with numerous awards.”
“Writing is an experiment.” A young reader may be smarter than the adults around them who never read books at their age, and can still grasp an adult orientated narrative, although parts of that narrative may not register with young readers because they have no comprehension of what an adult might. Many experiences come with growing old. Zafón likes to write his novels with this emotive-like intelligence in mind, and as a result his stories are peppered with intrigue for the whole family. Well, maybe not the whole family. Zafón spoke a little on science-fiction which I liked, and how much more it is to do with our present time. I can agree with that. Writing in the past or future setting allows you to look at your world objectively and cuts out all the unnecessary humdrum we are constantly surrounded with today (all the pop-culture references, social-media, etc) and concentrate on the story. And get this; Zafón deletes all his draft work and research when his books get published. “No paper-trail.”
Zafón made comments on the post-Spanish Civil War in relation to novel-writing (a question raised by an audience member in respect to people who actually lived through the War) that I didn’t fully understand, but I understood his resolve. Also, he acknowledged his translator Lucia Graves (daughter of poet Robert Graves,) who is without a doubt a main contributor to Zafón’s success in English-speaking countries. Don’t quote me on any of that, I’m not even sure if what I’ve written can be considered paraphrasing, but there is some of what I gained from going. The rest is for me 😛
Congratulations to Vishakham who was the other runner-up, and first prize winner Tessa, whose prose entry won her the competition’s top prize to a Kathryn Burnett workshop. To be honest, I am more than pleased I got runner-up and got to see Zafón. More so considering Kathryn tutored me five years ago, but let’s keep that a secret between us 😉 She’s aight.
R E–E N T R Y: GREY ZONE
•May 17, 2013 • Leave a CommentComing Soon, 7 June 2013:
Re-Entry is an independent, post-apocalyptic Science Fiction Film, set in the year 2018.
Too cool Ray Jay. I’m looking forward to this.
Movie Poster Rip-offs or Coincidences?
•May 17, 2013 • Leave a CommentDear China, this is redonkulous! I really don’t mind people imitating one another, if indeed imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, China doesn’t have a good reputation when it comes to product duplication, or rather, China is the absolute bombdiggity at duplication, largely because half the work is done for them, hint hint. China’s reputation for creating knockoffs and mass marketing is so far beyond the point or morality and legal intervention, all we can do is laugh at their by-products and ponder on America’s decision to continue movie trade deals with them.
It’s as if China’s breach of privacy and intellectual property laws have become a part of their flipping economy, and nothing can be done about it. For better or worse, I’m too entertained to genuinely care. Deduce yourself a conclusion, consumer — ripoff or coincidence:
Wow. Cheap products don’t seem to be the only things being duplicated and sold, like those bootleg copies of DVDs; entire narratives are being taken and produced as China’s own as well. Not entirely fair to the original scriptwriter. Although to be fair, the Hollywood film industry has an embarrassingly sterile record of originality. Heard of Movie Poster Templates anyone? Still, China, must try harder:
More identified sources of inspiration @ Wenxuecity.com
David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as recorded by bonafide cosmonaut, Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station [music video]
•May 16, 2013 • Leave a CommentThe first music video shot in space — Stellar pipes Mr Hadfield:
Ground control to Commander Hadfield, you are major cool. After five months aboard the International Space Station, this performance marks Hadfield’s final hours in space, before his ISS expedition ended and he returned to Earth via a Soyuz space capsule:
During his time aboard the International Space Station, Hadfield became a popular Internet figure, implementing social media to promote space science to the masses:
Good stage presence… Space, stage presence. Thanks Commander Chris Hadfield.
🎭 