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movies: the invisible

I'm going to start with my final thought on The Invisible and work backwards I think...

I came out of this movie feeling vaguely unfulfilled by my movie experience, although I'm somewhat at a loss as to WHY I was unfulfilled.

Maybe because it's a remake of a Swedish film (are dark and brooding and slightly depressive movies what the Swedes are known for?)... maybe because I was REALLY unhappy with the way it ended... maybe I was expecting something different when I went into the cinema... I dunno.

Ma said that she was taken along on the ride, but I don't know that I was so much.

I will say this though... the title is something of a misnomer... the main character isn't "invisible" at all... okay, he is... but not in the traditional "Invisible Man" kind of way. And the blurb that Greater Union used... so very much not helpful.

A supernatural thriller about a writer who finds himself trapped between the world of the living and the dead - completely invisible to the living.

The main character isn't a writer, he's a high school student (okay, he WANTS to be a writer... but that doesn't make him one).... I wouldn't exactly say it was a "thriller" either, at least not in the conventional sense.

It also seemed to take a REALLY long time to get to the "trapped between worlds" bit... there was all this angst and blah blah blah. I did sit there at one point and try and work out why it just wasn't doing it for me... it wasn't the acting, that was actually pretty good, even from some of the very minor characters... okay Justin Chatwin as the lead is a bit of a one note actor, but even he's not that bad. The directing is pretty good I think... although I may be a little biased there before it's David S. Goyer, and I liked his work on the Blade series, particularly the last one (although maybe he should just stick to writing them rather than directing them). And the script wasn't THAT bad... yeah, it could have been tightened up in spots, but you can say that about pretty much any movie ever made.

If I had to pick a weak link, I would say the script... but I actually just don't know... maybe the acting actually saved some of the script.

I know I'm not giving this movie a very resounding, or particularly clear review, but it bugged me, and I think I would be better off if I could figure out why. I do know that I hated the ending... I'm not saying it wasn't the RIGHT ending, it certainly was where the movie was heading to... but I hated it anyway.

Can you tell I'm just really ambivalent about this one?

yani's rating: 1 spoiled dead teen out of 5

m&m yani

Simpsons... Southpark... now M&M Yani!

Become an M&M!

Although I didn't realise that any of the M&M characters had hair!?

Current Mood:

thermonuclear war

I may have just started thermonuclear war with my highly annoying upstairs neighbours (AUN) ... which may in turn lead to thermonuclear war with ALL my neighbours...

This could be fun...

Or, you know, like real and actual thermonuclear war it could just end with everybody dying...

The gang of annoying children were screaming out in the courtyard again... and instead of just screaming at them and then closing the door I did the scream on my way to the letterbox... and unfortunately looked up and made eye contact with AUN Father... I'm not sure now whether he gave me a half smile in support or what the hell, but a look passed between us, and since I've been wanting to have this particular conversation for a while I said that his kids needed to stop running around up there as well.

And he turned on me.

I possibly picked the worst possibly minute to do it, since his kids are supposedly both up there asleep... and why wouldn't they be asleep at 5:30 in the afternoon when they're up until at least 11pm every night. So a nice little afternoon nap before the evening stomping.

And the fucker just wouldn't let me finish a sentence, which always pisses me off... and as I got angrier, the louder I got (okay, I was already pretty loud because he was upstairs and I wasn't, but still) and the pissier I got.

Then he started heading for the stairs, so I headed towards my open apartment door not only so that I had an escape route, but... actually I was running on adrenalin by that point, so I don't really know what other reasons compelled me.

But the stupid fuck just picked up a pile of the junk mail that AUNs must deliver around the neighbourhood and ignored me.

Once I came inside though he started whinging to somebody... one of my other neighbours obviously, and I heard him say that he was going to call the landlord.

You do that Sonny Jim.. you just try it, because I have one or two choice things to say to him too.

Fuckit... I'm shaking like a leaf here. I knew this was going to happen at some point... well, not this exactly... but I'm surprised that there hasn't been an irate parent on my doorstep before now. I've just HAD it though. I've lived here for nearly ten years... and although I've complained about other neighbours during that time, I've never complained THIS much for THIS long about THIS many neighbours.

It's just the noise... if it was just the grown-up neighbours without the kids then I would grumble, but I would cope. I just want peace and quiet in my own house... I don't want to ALWAYS have to either have the teevee or some other noise going on in my apartment to drown out the sound of my neighbours. I want to be able to sit in my little red sofa and read a book in peace. Am I going to get it if this thing develops into World War Three... lord no, because they can obviously drive me crazy with the minimum of effort just by inflicting the kids on me.

So stay tuned, I could be blogging from a cardboard box by the end of the week... or even worse, Ma's place (okay that's not really true, but I know we would drive each other insane inside about a week).

Current Mood:

montage monday: linear park sunday

What do you know... I managed enough shots yesterday for a Monday Montage...

Oh, and for the record, yes my thighs are indeed killing me today... stupid climbing...

This might turn into one of those long rambly posts that doesn't really go anywhere... don't you just love them?

I'm doing something of a music thing today... I'm guessing it's the fault of listening to the Top 40 show on Nova yesterday both while I was out and then after I got home... I haven't done the whole "radio on in the house" thing for about a billion years (plus I HATE the commercials and innaneness of a lot of commercial radio), but it worked out okay... so this morning I dug out my Ultra Lounge CD... On the Rocks (Part One). There were a bunch of them that came out in the late 90's, Austin Power-eske versions of a range of songs. Then when that was finished I went digging around for a bunch of other stuff in a similar vein. At present I have Natacha Atlas on... very cool and groovy in the laid back reminding me of having cool late night dinners with friends kind of way.

Oh... Natacha just finished, so I swapped her over for Jazz Moods for Late Nights... I'm in that groovy retro kind of mood I guess... I also have a few other discs of a similar oeuvre picked out to play later.

Anyway...

I'm a little cranky... I totally missed National Underwear Day this year... okay, not really cranky, but maybe a touch disappointed... I missed out on getting to post pics of some hot guy in his underwear again...

Ah well...

While attempting to come up with something that will hold together as English language for this post I'm also flicking through a variety of other people's blogrolls, and the Pinkboard Blog List just looking at as many Aussie gay blogs as I can find. I dropped a couple of blogs off of my list yesterday and I kind of want to find some new blogs to visit...

I dunno... maybe I'm forgetting how I got interested in a lot of the blogs on my blogroll in the first place. I don't remember anymore how many of them instantly grabbed me and just MADE me keep coming back... and how many were kind of the "slow burn" kind... where any given post isn't thrilling necessarily, but you build up an idea of the person and sometimes have a relationship of sorts with the blog, whether or not you ever post comments there and it's the accumulated relationship that makes you keep coming back.

But I'm not finding anything that grabs me... there's too many blogs posting videos (which my system usually just doesn't cope with, or else takes forever to download, thank you dialup), so as soon as I see too many of those I go for the little 'x'... and anybody who posts song lyrics generally isn't going to hold my attention... I dunno, I'm just a fussy bitch I guess.

But then we knew that already didn't we...

I think part of my current "must find new and interesting bloggers to read" psychosis comes from the fact that my stats profile for the last week or so has been a steadily dropping line... on the face of things that's fine... I've said before that I'm not in this for the hits, and I know I'm never going to be Famous Gay Blogger Number 1... but it is a little disheartening when I bottomed out at maybe 90 pageviews yesterday.

Add that to the fact that I've had one comment in the last week's worth of posts (not that I'm fishing for comments... well, not yet anyway... although I do have a plan for that later in the week), and, well... I'm a little bloggerbummed.

I also can't escape the fact that it's, you know... that most dreaded of phrases... my fault. For a gay blogger, my life really isn't very gay... or very anything just at the moment (but that's a whole other conversation). And if life isn't that gay, where does that leave my blog.

Of course then it comes back to a version of something I heard in a documentary on Friday night, Here's Looking at You, Boy (which I very nearly missed because the TV Guide didn't bother to mention it was about queer cinema)... crap... I can't remember the exact line but it's along the lines of "does being a gay person who blogs mean I have to blog about gay things" (only in the documentary they were talking about directors, not bloggers, obviously)... okay that's not quite right, but it sounded good when I heard it on Friday.

Actually there was something else in that documentary that made me think... somebody was commenting about Brokeback Mountain and said "why THAT film?"... which I found interesting... why did Brokeback turn into this big "crossover" gay movie... the one that all these straight people went to see? Was it because everyone involved, the actors, the director, the writers, etc were straight? Did that make it a "safe" gay movie... or was it because the characters were mostly repressed... not flamboyant or even just "regular" gay characters? And if they'd made the same movie with an openly gay director, or openly gay actors in the leads, would it have generated the buzz that it did? Don't get me wrong, I love the movie, but the documentary did get me thinking.

Changing tack now... Being born in the seventies and living with both a mother and grandmother who bought cookbooks during that era (sometimes for the actual cooking, sometimes just for the pretty pictures I think), I'm familiar with the rampant scariness of 70's era cookbook photos... but Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 is a whole different beastie... it's scary AND amusing, all at the same time... go look... really...

And that lead me to The Institute of Official Cheer... sorry, I just like campy ads from the past... and snarky commentary of same...

Speaking of campy and skarky... I must also admit my current secret shame... I like this current season of American's Next Top Model that's screening on Ten at the moment (hmmm, actually I think it's Season 5 from 2005... what's up with that...especially when the most recent series has them coming to Australia... the mind boggles really)... I know... it's bad and it's wrong and all the rest, but it's amusing too. Originally I tuned in (after an episode of Big Brother) because of the photoshoots they do and the makeovers... I'm a sucker for the makeover... and I like watching the results of a good photoshoot... and now I'm addicted... it's my secret shame... well, not so secret now I guess. Whoops!

See I told you this was all rambly and wasn't going to go anywhere...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 236

Candied Nutterings... Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Voyage :: To the Centre of the Earth


2. Patricia :: Patrice


3. Transformation :: Bumblebee


4. Vocabulary :: Words


5. San Francisco :: Gay, gay, gay


6. Edward :: Scissorhands


7. Sawyer :: Lost


8. Literary :: Critic


9. Tiger :: Shark


10. Seal :: Bay

Current Mood:

sunday ramble

You know those Sundays when you just look out the window and think "I should be out there doing something"... the sky is blue, the sun is shining, you're bored out of your brain and there isn't even anything interesting on teevee to distract you...

Today was one of those...

So I decided that since it's been about a year since I took myself off on my last excursion of Linear Park (not counting my daily walk, because that takes in bits of it... but I'm talking different bits... more easterly bits) I should go for another ramble down there somewhere... so I grabbed my camera and my earphones for my mobile so I could have some radio action and jumped in the car to find a spot to start from.

I ended up snagging a different section yet again... though it did overlap with part of both my regular walk and my last walk. I also braved the "rope bridge" (centre photo above) I saw last time... which was a whole world of uneasy by the time I got halfway across, since it just undulated and swung in time with my steps and made for a slight case of butterflies. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with either heights or skinny little bridges... but skinny little bridges that sway and move and don't seem all that stable, even though you know they are... less of a fan. What was really odd was after I got off the bridge my legs were still compensating for the movement for a while, which just felt weird.

Unlike the other times I've done the LP run, this time I didn't stay "on road"... I did what I've been wanting to do for a while and went "off road" near where I went looking for the graffiti last time (the first of the three shots up the top)... a little precarious at times clambering over the boulders and whatnot, and I'm sure my thighs will be protesting sometime tomorrow with all the unusual action (actually, forget tomorrow... they were already protesting when I got up from the keyboard after typing this out), but interesting... okay, maybe not THAT interesting... but I was impressed with myself.

Of course, because I'd left the path and moved away from it while it was climbing higher and higher I had to get back up there again at some point... and I had two choices... retrace my steps or else try and clamber up the side of the hill... I chose the latter and I managed surprisingly well actually, given that it was actually really steep (the final shot on the right). I know it doesn't look that bad in the photo... but I was looking straight down on it with the camera, plus I'm the one who climbed it, so trust me.

After I made it back to the path again I looped back eventually and dropped my jacket in the car (I should have known better and just left it in the car but it was chilly when I started out), then went for a wander in the opposite direction, towards the Zoo and where I normally do my walk. On the way I went past a bunch of other bits of public art... some I knew where there and have seen before, like the Angel that I featured once, others not so much....

And the latter category is where the "you are here" comes from... it's this big stone arch thing, and then a large stone with the words engraved in the top of it. Just in case there was any confusion about where you were...

I did think briefly about swinging over towards the Botanic Gardens, maybe having a bit of a wander in there... but the sun seemed to have slipped behind some grey clouds so I kind of nixed that idea (which of course means that the sky turned beautifully blue and clear not long after I got home)... but it was just as well since I was living on borrowed time with my camera battery and it killed itself shortly after I headed back along the side of the Zoo. And because the Universe likes nothing better than thumbing its nose at me, once my battery had completely and totally died I had this beautiful shot of a couple of the Siamang gibbons up at the very top of the climbing frame thing in their new shared enclosure (with the orangutans)... perfect shot... no camera... grrrr...

T'was a nice walk tho... and it got me out of the house for a bit...

Current Mood:

everything test

I stole this one from Eddy... and holy monkeynuts it takes FOREVER to do... also it's a little too Amerocentric for my tastes, so some of my results might be a little skewed...

There are many different types of tests on the internet today. Personality tests, purity tests, stereotype tests, political tests. But now, there is one test to rule them all.

Traditionally, online tests would ask certain questions about your musical tastes or clothing for a stereotype, your experiences for a purity test, or deep questions for a personality test. We're turning that upside down - all the questions affect all the results, and we've got some innovative results too!

Personality

You are more emotional than logical, more concerned about self than concerned about others, more atheist than religious, more dependent than loner, more workaholic than lazy, more traditional than rebel, more engineering mind than artistic mind, more cynical than idealist, more follower than leader, and more introverted than extroverted.

As for specific personality traits, you are adventurous (69%), greedy (67%), slutty (59%), innovative (57%).

Stereotypes

Punk Rock (73%)
Prep (69%)
White Trash (55%)

Life Experience

Sex (38%)
Substances (8%)
Travel (0%)

Politics

Your political views would best be described as Libertarian, whom you agree with around 45% of the time.

Socioeconomic

Your attitude toward life best associates you with Lower Middle Class. You make more than 56% of those who have taken this test, and 54% less than the U.S. average.

Other

If your life was a movie, it would be rated PG-13.

By the way, your hotness rank is 43%, hotter than 6% of other test takers.

TAKE THE TEST

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Current Mood:

rampant sala-ness

Yani fall down, go sleep now?

Jezum H Crow... what a day!

As always we were out of the house by 8ish this morning and after the usual shoppingness we tried to pack in as much SALA stuff as we possibly could.

Which, I have to say, meant that we ended up seeing quite a bit of interesting yet slightly ordinary art... some of it more interesting and quite a bit of it quite ordinary.

Twelve different locations and or exhibitions and or installations in fact... unlike last time I don't know that I had any grand favourites... I liked a little bit here and a little bit there but nothing really blew my mind.

Of course that could be because I'm a little knackered and I've seen SO much stuff today, and I'm possibly a little buzzed on caffeine, since it makes up the majority of the liquid I've had to drink today.

I have to say that I was a little unimpressed when we stopped for coffee and muffins at Tin Cat Cafe... now we've been there a ton of times before today, but we've only ever looked at the various artwork they have scattered about the place and then legged it, we've never stopped and sat down... I have eaten there once some time ago... for my birthday one year in fact, and it was nice... a little expensive and overly chi-chi-la-la... but nice. But today... good lord... I mean seriously... you make somebody an iced coffee and how hard it is to put a muffin on a plate and bring said plate out to the table at the same time as the coffee... or, you know... right after. Today however, we got our coffees and we waited... and we waited... and we waited... and it's not like they were rushed off their feet... they just weren't doing anything... and it was only when the guy that was working there came back inside from wherever he'd been that I caught his eye and he asked me if everything was okay or whatever... and even after I said we were waiting on muffins, it still took him about FIVE MINUTES to sort himself out. Seriously... get plate, put muffin on plate, add fork, serve to customer... what's so freakin complex about that!?

Okay, rant over...

Oh, wait, that's not true...

On Thursday I featured the work of SALA participant Eddie Major (who emailed me yesterday to say hey and thanks for the feature, how cool is that!)... and I'd planned to go and take a look at his stuff this afternoon, since the pub it was featured in was open, according to the SALA guide, from 11am to 4am... so, you know, basically we had all day to get our act together. So we rock up at the pub, find a carpark nearby, head over... and the whole place is locked up tight as a drum! Turns out they only open from 6pm because of Winter or some nonsense... people, you're a PUB... and you aren't open on a Saturday afternoon because? Okay, so you're in the useless part of town that seems to completely shut down over the weekend... but still!

So it turns out the one thing I really wanted to see today, I didn't get to see... *pout*...

I did have Ma bring down her vacuum cleaner this morning, because I figure when I start poking the dust bunnies with my toe and picking them up to throw them in the bin, it might be time to vacuum again. What? I barely have room for all the stuff I already own, let along a big ol' vacuum cleaner. Anyway, we moved all the furniture around, vacuumed the carpet, and everything looks nice and spick and span... well, you know, mostly... also changed over my last "regular" light bulb to the long life curvy fluro kind (actually we did two of them last week, but the one here in the bedroom wasn't bright enough, so we swapped that one over with a new brighter one and put the less powerful one in the bathroom...

And after the big bout of domesticity, we headed out to grab something for dinner and ended up at the very nice lesbian owned burger bar, Burger It!, which I've mentioned before, and which never fails to give good viddles. Okay, maybe the fries are a little over salty (can I get some water here?), but the burgers are delish.

So now I've been on the go for what seems like forever... I've actually been up for twelve hours, and out and about for maybe ten... and, to coin a phrase, I'm simply buggered darling!

I think I might go collapse on the couch for a bit now...

Current Mood:

photo friday: spring babies

Spring is definitely on it's way... even though we have about half a month of Winter left...

The mornings are getting lighter earlier... the evenings stay light a little longer... the temperature is a little better (although it's still bloody freezing inside my house most of the time)... and the birds seem to be making with the reproduction...

Actually there seem to be a bunch of baby swans around of late (either that or I keep seeing the same babies over and over and over)... and they're so cute... with their grey fluff and waddling about or trailing after Mum and Dad in the water....

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