Just got back from a night of shooting some 48 Seconds stuff. This is like a warm up excercise for the 48 Hours competition where you recreate a scene from a movie and incorporate V into it somehow. We’ve had a retarded number of movie ideas and shot two scenes, one from a Cimino film and another from a De Palma film, which are hopefully amusing if not retarded.

We’ve also got ideas to do scenes from a beloved Rob Reiner film, a classic John Carpenter scene, a kickass Michael Mann scene and an everyone’s favourite Christopher Walken scene. Whether we’ll manage to do all of these by the deadline remains to be seen, but it’ll definitely be fun.

The one I’m really keen to do though is the Christopher Walken scene, but the thing about doing a Christopher Walken scene is that you’ve got to talk like Christopher Walken. Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to do a decent enough Walken accent, so our goals by the end of the weekend is to practice and perfect a decent enough Christopher Walken, cause I really like the scene and if we can pull it off, it’ll be hilarious.

Anwyay, back to some editing, more filming tomorrow and more editing by the end of the weekend. Fun times.

• Bought a new phone… sexy Nokia N95 8GB. Old phone’s battery couldn’t keep a full charge going like a drunk teenager couldn’t keep it’s virginity at an after prom party.
• Was left half a crayfish on the doorstep to my old house with a note attached addressed to me. Whoever did this has yet to reveal themselves and I wish they’d do so sooner. Images viewable on facebook here. Seriously, who the hell did this?
• As of yet, haven’t registered for the 48 Hours Furious Filmmaking Competition, but according to the local papers, I’m challenging the whole region to beat me and my team. Something I’m pretty sure I haven’t said, but an have agreed to go along with anyway. Mind you, the challenge didn’t need to be issued out, cause apparently, several groups have their goals set simply to beat me. Charming.
• Been still looking for regular media work in Auckland, though sheepishly slowly, I blame the recession, my lack of actually living in Auckland and the fact that I’m currently distracted by 48 Hours and 48 Seconds stuff and several music videos I should really get more ahead of.
• Good friend and all around nice guy Tim Leslie got married the other week to his darling girl Lusi. Hope they enjoyed the wedding card and messages we left them.
• Other good friends and awesome super couple Joe and Marama just had their baby daughter born the day. Two weeks overdue and an induction needed I think… I’m gonna refrain from making lewd comfortable uterus jokes… so congrats!

There’s so much more I know I’m forgetting to post right now, but this’ll have to do for now.

Christ it’s easy to slack off on posting blogs sometimes… So what’s happened since the last time?

Went to The Kills concert which was awesome. They were, the venue was total crap and packed full of ‘hip indie’ kids which annoyed me to no end and the place was too small for the size of the crowd, but The Kills themselves were fantastic and thanks to some inside sources, we got to go to the gigs after party. Also got to exchange a hello with Jamie and snap a picture with Alison Mosshart who’s nothing but retardedly hot both on and off stage. But apart from that, was too much of a chicken shit pussy to talk to them in depth or anything.

Settled into new flat and it hasn’t been as insane as previously… hoped for or hoped against? I’m not quite sure at this point. But its good, but I’ll still be looking for work in Auckland, which at this point I should really gear up a notch or two on doing.

Had several setbacks last week, most prominently my current phone which has come to be my favourite phone of all the phones I’ve owned so far, started gargling death rattles and has pretty much up and died on me. New phone has been ordered and hopefully will arrive by the end of the week. Great timing on that one as I’ve actually got a need to establish quite a few contacts and phone calls with it.

And in the other more blog worthy news is that registrations for the 48 Hours Filmmaking competition opened last week and since then I’ve been asked on a daily basis if I’m entering again this year and the answer is yes. I’ll be entering in the Hamilton regions one final time, at least in a competitive level with the intention of winning. Of course, that’s not my main intention, but that’ll be a drive for doing it this year. If I enter in further years, in the Hamilton section at least, I’ll be doing it just for pure, retarded, fun reasons (ie filming myself naked for seven minutes singing the theme songs to 70s TV programs while churning a barrel of butter)… actually, screw it, that’s a great idea and it’s going on the ideas pile for this year.

Dear god my head is hurting like a motherfucker. Drank quite a bit last night.

This week a DVD for this year’s 48 Hour competition arrived in the mail. It’s pretty funky and they’ve gone the extra mile of including a 3rd disc with the best of the rest shorts. They’ve done this in previous years, but didn’t last year due to time constraints or something. Either way, it’s cool and I look forward to checking them all out sometime when I’m free, cause there is a lot of films on there. At least 100 I think.

Anyway, this hangover is quite awful. So here’s evidence of a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy here. And an article for those wHo want to test some sex toys here.

Seriously, hangovers suck.

I’d completely forgotten to upload it and was only reminded it wasn’t up last night, so finally here is our regional winning 48 Hours film: “Sum of All Parts”

Also artworks section has finally been uploaded, though not updated since the old site. New drawings to come soon. Almost feels like there’s progress going on with this site…

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.

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.

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.