"i haven't had sugar in my tea since 1982," - shaun

in the midst of sailing ships... hold on, i'll start again.

in the midst of exam prep and cram studying, i'm finding this time in my life to be pretty alright. sure i'm a little stressed about exams and all that, but here i am sitting on my bed, blogging away and sipping my sugar-infused tea.

i was just talking to my sister who has been living in enlgand for the past year and a bit and just telling her about the stuff that's been happening with me at home. and when i was telling her, i thought shit, things are going well for me... and despite the looming exams, i really do feel fine.

i'm sure when the time comes i'll be stressing just as much as anyone else, but i don't see the point in stressing about shit now and just making yourself feel less confident. i mean, remember the good old days in high school where year 12 exams meant everything? well think back to that time...

did you realise anything?

well, i did. i realised that a lot of people, myself included put so much on the exams that nothing else mattered. eveyone it seemed thought that their life would be determined by their VCE results. while that may have been true, it wasn't as if one couldn't pick up their shit up and still do something productive with their lives.

my point is that in hindsight, year 12 exams weren't as bad as we thought they were. so with the exams we're facing now, while you should study and try your best with them, don't make that process all the more difficult by putting undue stress on yourself. make a plan and prioritise your subejcts. you know whic ones you're better or worse at, so allocate the time accordingly.

i'm not an overly diligent student, and my marks are hovering in the Credit range so i'm not exactly one to look to for sure-fire ways of succedings in exams. but you probably know as well as i do, that stress is just a waste of fucking time.

good luck everyone, it'll be over soon.

-LOki

STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (CONTENTS MAY QUESTION STAR WARS FANS' MEANING OF LIFE)

2/5
stars natalie portman, hayden christensen, ewan mcgregor

as i am sitting in an evidence class bored out of my mind and looking for something else to occupy myself, i wonder when the last time i felt this way, and then i remembered - it was when i was in the cinema watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

from my past experiences with the Star Wars franchise and the "new" trilogy, i wasn't expecting much from the third and final installment. but i saw the trailer for the "new" film and it looked kinda cool, so i thought i'd give. mr. lucas another chance.

boy, was i a dumbass.

not being a star wars fan myself (but taking a liking to the original trilogy), i went into cinema in two mind-sets: that this film was to be viewed within a existing story context, and secondly, that it should/could also be viewed as a self-contained piece of cinema.

regarding the former, the film provided a good transition from the "new" trilogy to the original one. but with the latter, the film, although being visually impressive, failed to stand on its own merits.

the opening sequence was enough to let me know that, again, lucas took the funds out of acting lessons and dialogue-writing and pumped them into the special effects department. i'll admit that some of the special effects were impressive, but pale compared to other films that utilise CGI technology (i.e. the wachowsk's "the matrix" trilogy) which took less time and less money to accomplish.

i felt as though the actors were being short-changed with a dodgy script which was rife with inconsistencies in dialogue, and it felt as though a 16 year-old had written some of the lines. after seeing natalie portman in "Garden State" (4/5), i was convinced she was undoubtedly a genuine talent; this made it even harder for me to see he put through an excruciatingly bad delivery of her half-assed written lines.
"YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART, ANAKIN!" she proclaims, as the scene doesn't allow her to actually act out those feelings. horrible.

not only was portman ripped off, but so was hayden christensen. i'm not a big fan of his at all, but in "Life as a House" (4/5 also), he won we over, giving an authentic and very believable performance. In Episode III however, all his acting talent is lost (or not even needed?). Instead, there are "character building" scenes that could have been executed perfectly, but were pushed aside to make way for the anticipated battle sequences.

for example, it takes all but two minutes for anakin to recover from the mortifying truth that he'd just killed mace windu (samuel l. jackson), and then pledging his undying loyalty to senator palpatine.

the script would have read something like this:
___

ANAKIN
What have I done?!

He pauses for a moment. Mortified.

ANAKIN (cont.)
I will be your apprentice!

End.

---

no development, no exposition. just get straight to the point.

also, i felt it difficult to accept or believe the relationship between anakin and his master, obi-wan. another actor short-changed but this film, ewan mcgregor has to try and deliver lame-arse lines and make them believable. anything less that a stellar effort by him would have made the relationship seem even more feeble. there were some lines, nearing the end of the film, that actually meant something. but apart from that, all their dialogue was concerned with petty condescending and empty praises.

there were, of course, some parts of the film that i enjoyed. compared to the other Star Wars films, this one seemed to be a lot darker, reflecting the underlying theme of the Dark Side slowly but inevitably consuming anakin.

there are only about two scenes in the entire film that elicited some kind of emotional response. and i'll admit, these were done superbly. the music, accompanied by the innocence of the Jedis and jedi kids all added up a a truly doomed kind of feeling.

there were bursts of comedic relief, but not via dialogue or general acting (as if), but rather from Master Yoda. some of his seemingly ho-hum antics did get me to actually laugh out loud, but he deserves that - Yoda is cool.

one more thing that i liked about the film was this: that it finally ended.

-LOki

"where's safe? where's familiar?" - shaun

you'll never guess where i'm posting from...

my front doorstep. yep, that's right.

it's 5am and i forgot to get my housekeys. not only that, my phone is out of credit so i can't call anyone to open the door. i figure, shit i've got a laptop in my back and wireless internet so here's hoping someone's online that can bail me out.

and jase... can i crash at your place? :P

-LOki

"...have a nice cold pint and wait for everything to blow over."- shaun

last night was proof that sometimes things can be quite alright when they don't go to plan. a week ago me and a group of friends had agreed to meet up on thursday (yesterday) to do some filming, continuing my already long and arduous couple of weeks. i was fine with that cos i liked filming and later editing stuff.

but in the end we didn't end up filming so that kind of sucked. i got a call from another friend however asking me if i wanted to head into richmond, melbourne, fo ra few beers and a game of pool. to be honest i wasn't really in the mood to go anywhere cos i was feeling pretty exhausted and shitty. but i eventually gave in and said i would go.

we started off with some prizza from the local pizza shop, then headed to the Great Britain pub in richmond. it's a prety run-down place, with old-school wallpapaer and couches and chairs that didn't match. but they had a nice open fireplace and the couches, even if ugly, were comfy. so me, glenn, and pete just sat by the fire talking and drinking.

it was nice cos i hadn't had a decent conversation with either of them recently and it was cool that we were able to jsut go out as a small group and just chill. noticing that i was pretty munted from the last couple of weeks, glenn tried to cheer me up, in which he succeeded - thanks dude.

we left the pub around 1am and wondered around looking for food, then eventually jumped into a cab and headed home.

as simple as it was, i had an awesome night. i knew i had uni the next morning at 9am but that didn't matter as much as just hanging out with good mates. thanks to pete and glenn for getting me out and putting a few beers and beam and colas in me.

sometimes your friends know what you need more than you do, and that is a great feeling i think; that people know you so well that it kind of takes a load off your shoulders.. you're not as alone in your thoughts than you first realised. and simple things like hanging out in a pub with a couple of friends can be exactly what you need.

and if you're still wonderin glenn, i did get over that hill we were talking about.

-LOki

"we need to be somewhere safe, somewhere that's secure, somewhere that's... big." - shaun

i just got home from federation square, melbourne, where the national gallery of victoria is holding an awesome photography exhibit organised by the art gallery of new south wales.

a huge thanks to chris maher for inviting me along to melbourne-based photographer bill henson's "three decades of photography" exhibit.

the exhibit takes up 8 gallery rooms of fed sequare with photographs from top to bottom of all the walls. half of his work is done in a photojournalistic kind of way, all in black and white and are just plain awesome. the other half features colour photography, photomanipulation, and abstract collages.

i found myself drawn particularly to the black and whites; they're mainly of masses of people in the streets, busy with thier own things.. and while they fill the the entire frame of the photo, it's looks as though each figure is in their own world. alone.

henson adds to this kind of mysterious aura by using a soft focus on most of his work, giving it a hazy, dream-like atmosphere. furthermore, his colour work adopts a subtle blue/green hue, giving an effect of both abstraction and (i can't think of a word to describe it). simply brilliant.

it makes me want to drop everything i'm doing atm and pick up my camera again.

the exhibit runs until JULY 7th, $10 entry, and worth every cent.

-LOki

"..like a drunk whose lost a bet," - di, shaun of the dead.

today was a little different. prior to going to bed last night i told myself that i was going to get an early night's sleep and be well rested for the coming day of uni. i was in bed by about 2am which is pretty good for me, but i couldn't get to bed still 7am, which is when my alarm decided to go off. i turned it off and crashed back into bed only to be woken up by my little sister 40 mintues later so i could drive her to school.

so i had 40 mintues sleep. whoop.

uni was alright, kinda cool actually cos i was able to stay awake the entire 2 hour-long Torts lecture. our lecture is a pretty cool guy and i like the way he teaches so i didn't mind coming in. but after that i went along to a friend's student theatre thing which was pretty entertaining. it was kind of like a "whose line is it, anyway?" format where the actors on stage would be feeding off of each other's dialogue, making things up as the went along. and i gotta admit, they can do it rather well.

if any of you guys are interested in going along to one of these things, they run every monday from 1:15pm till 2:15pm and i think it costs $1. it aint bad guys, so you should check it out. kudos to mark (mr. hollingsworth himself) and simon who gave both inspired and entertaining performances.

but now i've finished for the day at uni. i'm gonna try and stay awake until about 1am this morning so i can have the best sleep ever tonight.

goddamn i'm tried.

-LOki