Well the cold snap is over and I’m drinking some lovely red wine right now when I should really be getting some rest for this weekend.

Have to wake up at 8-9ish and make my way to Pukekoe to do a talk/help out with some school kids, I’m not even sure what exactly I’m meant to do, but its on the way to Auckland as thats where I’ll be for the film fest of course. Lots to see this weekend and hopefully I’ll make it to them all.

Meanwhile there seems to be a lot of people I know flying away this week. My mum took off to visit family and have a holiday, my brother should be back from his jazz band tour in Tonga (I think thats where he went), one I know is headed to the states, one I think is heading back from the states soon, another two are headed to Thailand and one will keep going to Europe and I think I’m forgetting some others, but can’t remember who or where anymore. Random.

But anyway, the Cinematography prize from the 48 competition arrived this week and its a neat little 3CCD HD camera that records straight to an SD card and also has a portable 40Gb hard drive that you can transfer stuff to and copy to a computer later, which is pretty cool, but the camera is a little difficult to manage on a ‘pro’ scale of manual focus, which makes it more of a home handicam that shoots in hi-def, but its still a neat very tiny gadget that will hopfully become useful to something in the not too distant future.

But anyway, this’ll be a nice getaway for a while watching movies and catching up with friends this weekend, so here goes with the fun. Once I get some sleep, man I’ve got to learn to go to bed earlier.

In the meantime, check out this sweet random video called Jedi Gym. It’s amusing, but if you watch the whole thing, it has a great payoff that I think is great.

By request, more Hellboy promo videos merging the big red with series titled character Chuck.

And again…

Ghosthunters…

Some kinda weird PSA with kittens…

And something to do with something I have no idea about…

…Jaysis.

Jaysis, I get over one crippling flu, come out of it feeling awesome and then I’m crippled straight after by ridiculously cold weather. The recent winter snap has got everyone complaining that its cold and I wasn’t gonna jump straight onto that bandwagon but shit me somewhere warmer, it’s cold.

For the last few nights I’ve struggled to get into my car because the frost has sealed the doors tight and at one point had to go in through the backseat doors and kinda kick the drivers side open, which then allows me to spend several minutes in my ice tomb waiting for the damn windows to clear up of all the ice.

Things to try to do tomorrow should I somehow not feel compelled to stay in bed where it’s only slightly warmer than a penguin’s testicles: buy a bigger heater. In an old style house like mine, oil heaters don’t do shit. That or get the fireplace in my room working.

Probably one of the more bizarre discovered ‘possible murder’ scene stories I’ve read in a while…

Joyce Germain, 59, was found dead in the bathroom of her ground floor unit in Darlinghurst in April 2006. The inquest into her death will hear from four persons of interest.

Ms Germain’s body, which was half naked, was found covered with clothes, a hard hat was on her chest, and the cord of an iron was loosely wrapped around her neck. The cord of a toaster was wrapped around and hanging from a shower curtain rod and red lipstick was smeared over parts of the bathroom

Okay, which is weird of course, but when you go into the details of the investigation…

She had been wearing a dress that was found to be pulled up near her shoulders. A knife was also found in the bathroom but Ms Germain had not appear to have any knife wounds on her body.

A syringe was also found in the bathroom, it contained DNA from a neighbour, Chady Wazir, a person of interest.

Wazir told police he had found Ms Germain dead and had remained in the apartment with her body for some time shooting up next to her body.

However, he denied inflicting any injury to her.

And then…

Another man, Robert Kaminga, came to the attention of investigating police after yelling from his balcony above Ms Germain’s flat that he “knew who did it”, Det Const Milburn said.

When he went upstairs to speak with Mr Kaminga, the detective said, he found “leather items, whips and chains hanging from the walls” for use in sexual activity.

Det Const Milburn said Mr Kaminga told him: “You can be my master any time, come round after work.”

When he reminded him it was a serious police investigation, Mr Kaminga replied: “Doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.”

Okay, I’m pretty much copying and pasting the most of the article, but those are the highlights of strangeness that seems to surround this case. Can check out the full article here.

Mental.

A late post I know, but I spent a wonderful weekend drinking, socialising and generally keeping away from the computer. Now that that’s over, I’ll be getting back to dealing with the growing pile of work thats filling my plate.

But to recap, we didn’t win 48. Not nationally anyway, it was a long shot, but damn was it fun. I had a bit to drink, but still very much enjoyed the whole night and the show that was put together for the finals. Lots of great films on display and I await the DVD to rewatch them all. Our film seems to have been a small topic of debate on the 48 forums, there’s actually been a lot of flak flying around over the choice of winners, the direction of the competition and blah, blah, blah. This seems to happen every year, but this year in particular it seems to have spawned a lot of debate. In our particular film, when actually mentioned (which isn’t much really), people either loved it and thought it was a top contender, while others hated it and thought it was a cheap piece of crap and either way, I don’t really care. It’s good to have made a film that got a reaction and you can’t please everybody and from reading more and more of the forums that don’t stop getting posts and replies, it sure is the case.

I haven’t gotten around to uploading our film online yet as I seem to have run into a few compression issues, but it’ll be sorted out by the end of the week hopefully. In the meantime, you can view it on the C4 website and vote for us in the audience award, though I think there’s only a day left on that. Man do I leave things late. Ah well. Check it and all the other finalists over at https://www.c4tv.co.nz

Just over four hours to go. Just found a nice write up in the Herald about the finals tonight, plus Peter Jackson has finally announced his wildcard picks, none from the Tron unfortunately, but both I’ve heard quite a bit about on the 48 forums, so this’ll be fun and interesting. Our description was…

Sum of All Parts
Horror, by Guerrilla Monkeys (Hamilton)

Unnerving serial killer nasty which casts Kerry Post as a psycho nerd with a thing for dismembering his women victims, its grimness offset by an amusingly eccentric soundtrack and Ross MacLeod’s impressive lead performance.

So cool we got a mention on the soundtrack and Ross’ performance. Awesomeness. The full article can be read here.

Think it’s time for me to get off the computer, tidy up a bit and get ready for tonight.

Bored, but the Hellboy campaign entertains me greatly. Here he is on Inside The Actor’s Studio.

Awesome.

Quite possibly the greatest lightbulb commercial ever, if not the greatest ad ever.

This seems to have been a good week of catching up with people I’ve not seen in a really long time. Or at least heard of in a long time. Even briefly chatted to old friend Malcolm who’ll be getting married in a couple of weeks over in Germany. Wish I was there for it, best of luck to the both of them.

Meanwhile it looks like I’ve kicked off the most of this flu, which is good and there’s now less than 24 hours to go till the 48 finals are played and the winners are announced. How am I feeling? Relaxed for now, like many others I’m just putting it in the back of my mind for now and trying not to think about it. Might be harder tomorrow evening, but that’s where liquor comes and saves the day. Thanks booze. I’d marry you if it weren’t illegal.

I even got brief word from a friend in Auckland who had coffee recently with the Auckland winners. If I remember correctly, they were also quite surprised at their win, trying not to think much about it and generally feeling pretty much the same as me. I wonder if that’s what it’s like for all the regional finalists.

Anyway, today has been a day of cleaning and organising, though not very well having already watched all of the first season of Entourage today, which is very good fun. It’s amazing how much crap I had piled up in my desk drawer, but the more daunting task is my computer which is almost full again and will require hours of sorting and burning just to clear up over 1 terabyte of music, movies, film projects and other random junk I keep accumulating without sorting. Can’t wait.

Wow, I just spent a whole paragraph describing the act of cleaning. Were you excited? I was on the edge of my seat. Here a Tom Waits press conference to make up for it.

Now announcing it here first, the 48 Hours competition national finals screening for Hamilton will be at the Academy of Performing Arts, top lounge, this Thursday from 8pm onwards. The actual screening is on C4 at 8.30pm (til 10.30pm) if you can’t make it to the actual thing, else, see you there.