Intricate series of....

Tonight we went and saw a movie called Blackspot. Its a local indy NZ film made with a mere $30k and lots of help from friends. It should be watched by all of you. It came out in 2008 and has been hopping around international film fests ever since. It might be out on DVD, I have no idea. But you should watch it. Its got a bit of a slow, yet intriguing beginning, and then the madness falls from the sky. Its amazing.

Today I also had the best hot chocolate I have ever had anywhere. Really. It was like drinking cake.

I've always had a huge amount of faith in Tim Burton, despite things like Planet of the Apes and Charley and the Chocolate Factory, which work for some people, just not me. Then I heard that he was doing Alice and Wonderland a while ago and became very very happy. Then I heard it was a mash of CG, stop motion, and real life, and then I became slightly less happy (though still happy) and a bit wary. Then I saw this and happiness is restored!

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2009/06/alice_in_wonderland.php

So our NZ 48 Film won the national audience favorite award. So thanks again for all those who voted!! Its nice to have North America in your pocket when it comes to voting for things.

I learned to snowboard this past week! This, in itself, is pretty awesome, but its made even more awesome by the fact that I learned to snowboard on Mount Doom. The locales call it Mt Ruapehu, but trust me, its Mount Doom. Its big and imposing and still an active volcano. It turns out that I am better at snowboarding than I expected to be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not good. At all. Rather bad in fact. But I didn't break anything, and my bruising was minimal, so in my book this makes me an olympic contender. By the end of the third day my limbs were too shaky to continue really, and a last minute fall had me hitting my head so hard that it gave me a migraine almost instantly. It really sucked. Heather on the other hand, appears to be some kind of snow ninja, and when she falls, rather than slamming her head on a rock or scraping her face on some ice like I do, she manages to twist her body until she is upside down, board over head, and bobs and weaves around all obstacles while accelerating upside down and backwards down the mountain only to emerge from the tumble completely unscathed. Its like watching fire in space. Despite the fact that I cannot stop unless I slam into a mountain I think I will probably snowboard again, finances permitting. Its way more fun than I thought it would be, and its way less embarrassing now to be buried in snow by a six year old now that I have some ability to give them as good as I get.

So I hate to ask, but we just found out that there is another audience award that our NZ 48 hour film could win. You can find it here: http://www.c4tv.co.nz/Team-Killah-Walz--Orca---Otack-Otack-Otack-Fall/tabid/1020/articleID/5239/cat/854/Default.aspx

We find out the results of everything tonight, so I'll keep you posted! Tell your friends!

So last night was the finals competition for Wellington for the 48 Hour Film Fest. It took place at the Embassy theater here in town, which you may remember from the world premiere of The Return of the King. It was the building that had the giant Gollum on top of it. The Embassy also had the largest theatre screen in New Zealand, and perhaps the biggest one I've ever looked at. The cinerama looks small and inadequate in comparison. The theatre is covered in photos from LotR and other events, and it has its own bar on the second floor, with a fine selection of gins.

Last night Heather and I gathered along with the majority of our 48 Hour team and shared several bottles of wine and learned that Guillermo del Toro was going to be in attendance, though I never saw him. We talked about how much fun we had making this film, and how exciting it was to be able to see the other finalist, who would most assuredly be better than us. The time came and we entered the Room With The Screen (because the embassy only has one... its amazing) and were greeted with a V Energy Drink on each seat. They were one of the largest sponsors of the 48 Hour, and all kids like free sugar. There was also a packed house, and several reserved rows of seating down in the front. We wound up sitting in the back, which is the only way our group could sit together, but the screen is so huge you couldn't tell the difference. After our Master of Ceremonies got many of the pleasantries out of the way we watched the 12 finalists. But not before watching the winner of the Best Worst Film. It was really really good, and rather hilarious, and had many people being hit about the head with large tree branches. The 12 other movies were shown alphabetically which landed us right in the middle. Audience response was a bit less enthusiastic than last time, but that can be forgiven I suppose, I think everyone was worn out after laughing and clapping to the wonderfully done musical we had just watched.

After the films were shown awards were given. Going into this I had no idea that there were categories other than "winner" and "not winner" so I was pleasantly surprised to see "Best Cinematography" show up on the screen and hear "And the nominees are" come from the mouth of our MC. The surprise continued as our film was nominated. We did not win and moved quickly onto the next category, Best Score, which of course went to the aforementioned musical which was about internet dating and had a tie with piano keys on it as the main instrument. After that the was an award given out by one of the sponsors, so I figured this was the end of the awards, and I was happy to have seen such great films.

However I was wrong, and when all was said and done our film was nominated for best cinematography, best score, best costume, and best editing. But even better was the fact that we won best actress, best sound, and sexiest short. We also won best makeup. This makes me very very happy. There was much cheering and Heather and I had to make our way from the back of the theater to the stage to get our certificate. And we didn't just win best makeup for the final 12. Because some people who didn't make it to the finals were still nominated for stuff. So this means we didn't just beat 12 people. We had better makeup than 169 entries.

Finally we also just plain won. We were picked as Wellington's best, which now means that our film will face off against five others from Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Gisborne in a televised event on June 20th. Its on Channel C4, in case any of you have some magical power to see NZ tv. C4 is also currently showing Flavor of Love 3 and I Love New York, so its all quality viewing.

All in all it was a fantastic night. I celebrated before and after with good friends, drank good gin, got some free energy drinks, and, in theory at least, Guillermo Del Toro got to see us win best makeup, which is ok in my book.

Turns out our film won the Audience Award for our heat. We get to see how the judges voted soon.

Suck it Whale Rider. (really though, their film was pretty good. they got second, which, as you all know, is first loser... Just saying)

I have no idea what that means, but it was apparently the name of our entry to the 48Hour fest, which we got to view last night. I rather enjoyed it, and to be totally honest, it was far better than I was expecting. The editing and sound people we had working on it are very talented, and it showed. We were also one of the only videos in our heat that used makeup artists, which also showed. You'd think that the short that managed to bring in the girl from Whale Rider as a ringer could have rustled up a MUA. Not so much.

The films ranged from a story about a man lost in the jungle that was made entirely out of paper puppets (the whole film... not just the jungle) to a short about Butoh dancing (you should look it up, its wacky!) to something that might have been about virtual reality and alternate universes or maybe dreams... it was really hard to tell. The quality in the films also varied greatly, and you could tell the people that had thousands of dollars worth of equipment to work with (our group was one of those).

The viewing itself went rather well, the audience laughed at all the appropriate moments (tuba parade) and were silent when they should have been (lead character's suicide) and there were even some oohs and aahs during the blood gag, which made me happy. It looked really good when it was on the big screen, which was my biggest worry.

And for those who asked, I did get a DVD of our movie, cause our sound guy is awesome. It even has bonus features.

My back hurts a lot. This is why.

The filming of our movie for the 48 hour film fest went as well as could be expected. We actually wrapped early, which is impressive. I have no idea what the name of the film is called, nor do I really even know what its about, mainly due to the near constant state of flux the script was in. All it takes is someone mentioning they own a tuba and the whole thing gets rewritten.

We got to film in a hospital, which was neat. We were in the training wing of the Lower Hutt hospital, which is about a twenty minute drive outside of Wellington. The training wing was broken into two sections. The functional and only partially creepy side, and the abandoned and petrifying side. I'll explain each.

The functional and only partially creepy side was where the actual filming took place. Its also the place where doctors in training go to practice their trade without a high chance of killing someone. Its a long hallway complete with reception desk and two lecture rooms. There are two complete bathrooms, equipped with showers and everything. Three storage rooms, six "patient" rooms which pretty much just have empty beds and fake valves in them, and two body rooms. These rooms have a fair number of beds in each of them, and each bed has at least one fake body in them. Some had partial bodies which I can only assume are trauma victims, and one bed had five babies in it. Each body has this weird vacant stare on their faces and their mouth are slightly open. You can see the organs on some of them. In one room it appeared that a lung had fallen out and rolled under a bed. All this wouldn't have been so bad had the lights been on, but since they were off I kept expecting these faux corpses to sit up and try to feast on my flesh.

The abandoned a petrifying side was another matter entirely. This is, of course, the side that the makeup station was in. The room that we got to practice our trade in was covered in cobwebs, and several wetas (yes, the studio is named after a bug) had to have their carcasses brushed of the table before we could set up. Our producer was nice enough to find us some mirrors though (which was really impressive) so it wasn't a total loss and actually was a pretty comfortable place to work in, but the chairs were really short, hence the sore back. At least this is what I thought until it started to rain the roof leaked. But this was towards the end of the night, so not much harm done. The rest of this half of the wing was made up of rooms with horror film style flickering florescent lighting, broken and overturned furniture of various kinds, soiled mattresses, soggy cardboard, plumbing with brown water and a dry erase board that had instructions on it dated from May 2001. This side was also freezing, which led me to believe there had to be a broken window somewhere. It was dark, and cold, and spooky, but there was an incredibly nice girl on set who brought us soup from time to time and gave Heather and I a ride home, so by the end of the night it was almost cozy.

The makeups went well, except the workload was far more than either of us expected, but I think that will probably always be the case in this industry. We had a cast of 15 that needed to be fully made up, as well as several injuries that kept getting added as the night went on. There were also a couple of blood gags that needed doing which I was not at all prepared for. Thankfully, I was in the training wing of a hospital, and was able to scavenge surgical tubing, a clamp, and a syringe to make a blood rig. I did not however, have to MacGyver anything, seeing as how this is exactly I would have made the rig had I been prepared for it. It was awesome. The people we got to work with were fantastic. One actress plays a ghost for the Disney channel. Our editing guy is from Winnipeg. Another actor is Chilean and at one point in the evening told the German of the group that salsa dancing was "too too passion to teach." He was awesome. Also awesome was the Irishman who, back in Ireland played trombone for an orchestral 90s pop cover band. We also had a chef on set who made a great vegetable soup, and a free case of V energy drink that I do believed was purloined from film fest HQ. The cast spent all night in matching blue underwear and at one point they participated in a parade down the hall led by the aforementioned tuba. Like I said, when a tuba shows up, you do some rewrites.

Our film, which was turned in 3 minutes before the deadline, will be shown on thursday along with 11 others. I don't think any kind of victory will come our way, but the experience was well worth it.

Way to doom us all!


http://www.geekologie.com/2009/04/scientists_create_chemical_gel.php

So this weekend Heather and I will be doing the NZ 48 Hour Film Festival. We got the call to do it a few days ago from someone we've never met. They got our phone number from someone we've never met. I have no idea how this second person got our number, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. For those of you who are unfamiliar with 48 hour film fests in general they work like this... you have exactly 48 hours to make a short film (very short, no more than 7 minutes, plus 60 seconds allowed for credits). This includes writing, editing, the score, the actual filming, all of it has to be done in 48 hours. You are not allowed to start early, and the judges help to ensure that this is the case by making everyone show up at the start time to pick up their team's genre of film. The genre is picked randomly from a list of close to two hundred, with such wonderful options as Atomic Age, Musical Biography, Fairy Tale, Doomsday, and Erotic Thriller. We just got the email from our producer letting us know that we pulled Religious, which is probably one of the easier ones to work with. In addition to your genre you are also given three "random elements" which are mandatory things you must have in your film. (For that matter, everyone's random elements are exactly the same... makes judging easier I suppose) You are given a character, a line of dialogue, and a prop. This year they are "Alex Puddle, an exaggerator" "It doesn't fit" and "A rock," respectively. There are close to 30 people working on this film, and i think we have 5 writers, so hopefully throwing this all together won't be too tough.

On a mostly related note, I can get two liters of blood delivered to me from the south island in about 18 hours.

I was on the bus yesterday when a woman was hit by a car. She had run between my bus and the bus behind it and tried to cross another lane of traffic but wound up stepping into the path of a car. She hit the front corner of the car hard enough that she bounced off and was flung back into the bus I was on. When she hit the bus she must have hit an edge of something, because it cut open the side of her neck, just beneath her jaw. She then fell flat on the ground and had a seizure.

By the time I had realized what had happened and had gotten off the bus the three girls she was with were screaming and rolling her over. I could see that the majority of her skin from her chin was hanging off the bone and she was laying in a large puddle of blood. Her white scarf and shirt were also soaked in it and a bystander was frantically holding a cloth of some kind to the gash in her neck.

To the credit of the Wellington medics they arrived faster than I have ever seen a rescue service show up. They were also faster and better organized on the scene. They got the bleeding stopped before the police could clear everyone out. I finished my errand in town and by the time I made it back that way about twenty minutes later the police were letting the driver go, as he was not to blame. Once they left the only evidence was an off color patch on the pavement.

The only thing I could think the whole time was that her blood was the wrong color. It was far to brightly colored than what I would have used. I hope those thoughts don't make me a bad person.

Last night we went to what is perhaps my new favorite bar. Its called "Alice" and, as you might have guessed, Alice in Wonderland themed. To get there you walk down a poorly lit alley and go through a door which leads to a thin hallway. There are dark red curtains that run the length of the hallway and continue onto the floor, leaving only a small patch of floor running down the middle for people to walk on. The hallway turns twice before opening into a small room that holds maybe fifty people at most. Everything in the room has a skewed perspective. For example, the hallway actually ends halfway up the wall of this room and were it not for a pit full of barstools you could walk onto the top of the bar. On the left are two small tables that came up to my calf, accompanied by two equally small chairs. Beyond that is a four foot high, gold filagreed door with a round fishbowl mirror set into it. The door handle is also gold, and very ornate. Over to the right is a large, long, white table, that is too tall to sit at and a too short to comfortably stand at. Above it is what appears to be a makeshift chandelier, pieced together from very thrift store lamps and light bulbs. Along the top of the walls is a single shelf, on which is a hookah and several teapots. On the walls are copies of the illustrations from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and well as quotes from the books written in ornate script and hidden in various nooks and crannies around the bar. The menu is all Alice in Wonderland themed, of course, and the first page of drinks are for two people to share and are served in antique tea pots with mismatched tea cups and saucers. You can also order absinthe. I couldn't decide which was more appropriate for the night, but eventually settled on The Mad Hatter's Tea For Two, which was fairly decent, and incredibly alcoholic. It was Vodka, Vanilla Vodka, Peppermint Schnapps, muddled with an enormous amount of mint and finished off with some lemon juice. It was remarkably creamy and nicely chilled.

When we left we passed a door that I did not notice on the way in, and I was told that it is the back entrance to Boogie Wonderland, which is a dance club with a light up glass floor. The front entrance to Boogie Wonderland is half a block away, so the physics of the night and the building were a bit puzzling. The only thing missing was a cat, but given the nature of the bar I could have missed the hovering smile.

So it occurs to me that its been about a billion years since I've posted anything, and some of you may think I am dead. I assure you, this is not the case. My excuse is that pretty much nothing has changed. Its still summer here, the weather is still amazing, and I am still unemployed. Though really, I haven't been trying that hard. I'm waiting for one job that I've applied for to get back to me before I try the proverbial full court press and blanket the city in my resume. The problem that I find while trying to find a job in my line of work is that many of the studios here are hidden. They hide from the general public, most likely to prevent your Average Joe from running in off the street waving a script above their heads yelling about how its the best thing in film since Citizen Kane. This makes my job of finding a job rather tricky. There have been a few so called "potential leads" but they have just as much chance of success as my punching every third person I see until one cries out "I'm a producer, stop hitting me."

Despite nothing really happening, there have a been a few instances of randomness, as I would expect in the life of a Vanhee. For one TRH and I have apparently stubbled on a hair styling competition or two. I went to get my hair done and the owner of the salon (who, by the way, did a great job) mentioned two competitions that she and her staff are entering. One of which sends the winner to Paris for the international competition. Its not really about the makeup in the least, but the overall look wouldn't be complete without it. Its something at least.

We also woke up one morning with a cat on our bed. This cat had followed us home after TRH took me to see the Charles Mingus Big Band (which blew my mind... just saying). It walked all the way from the bus to our front door where we said good night to the cat and went inside. We poured ourselves some wine and sat down to watch some Six Feet Under. About 20 minutes later I reach over to grab my wine and see that the cat has his head in it. Schatzi (as his tag indicated) had found his way around to the side of the house, up on a ledge, in through the bedroom window, and over to my wine. We both thought this was rather hilarious, petted Schatzi for a little bit, and then tossed him outside. The next morning he was curled up on our bed, sleeping like he owned the place. Six hours later he finally woke up, stretched, and left. I can only assume he went to get food, as we weren't feeding him. After that, he came back, and spent another night. We haven't seen him since. Except we did wake up one morning to see paw prints all over the kitchen counter, the TV, and the windowsill.

Speaking of Six Feet Under, cause I totally was, you should watch it. Its five seasons of pretty great show with culminates in the single best episode of television I have ever seen. The closing montage on the final episode not only made me cry when I watched it, but also when I thought about it next day. It was stunning. For a show that focuses so heavily on death hardly any of the main characters die. So when the final ten minutes of the last episode wipes out the cast as the viewer follows them over the next eighty years or so is so well done and well executed that it has set the bar for all TV that I will watch. Which is unfortunate, because I don't know if I can mentally handle anything that is better than the closing episode.

I have made this twice now. It is great. You should all make it too.

On a side note... I don't measure anything. Sorry.

"Damon's pile of crud and stuff"

Ingredients:
Chicken - some
Bacon - some
Asparagus - some
Onion - some
Spring Onion - some
Green beans - some
Garlic - some
Chillies - optional

Cous Cous cooked with a bullion cube of some kind.

Spices, also of some kind. I tend to just grab various unlabeled jars when I cook. Again, sorry. Chances are I used Garlic salt, white pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, oregano. I also used anywhere between zero and all of the following, depending on how many times I reached for a jar and grabbed the wrong one but didn't care enough to grab the right one. Basil, Rosemary, Chili powder, black pepper


Directions:
Cook it.
Stir it all into a big pile.
Eat it.

Its nothing fancy, but it tastes healthy.

So New Zealand has two large events that happen in February. The first is Waitangi Day, which is essentially independence day... kinda.... Its the day when the European settlers and the Maori decided to stop killing each other and have a beer. Here in Wellington this is celebrated by various dance performances, traditional and otherwise by both the very very young and the very very old and everyone in between. There are also "art shows" which is apparently Kiwi for letting the hoodlums loose with spray cans pointed in designated areas and walls around the town, which results in some really fantastic Maori art with a touch of hip hop added in. Its quite impressive really. There is also heaps of food and drink and booths set up where people sell various crafted trinkets and tidbits. People walk around in dressed in traditional Maori garb and fun and merriment are had by all.

The second event in February is The Sevens. The sevens is the international rugby tournament for the year and its hosted in Wellington. The tourney is held over two days; a friday and a saturday. It is a single elimination tourney with a whole bunch of countries. (USA sucks at rugby, but at least we beat Wales... in your face!!) It show support for the teams one might think that a fan would wear the jersey of their favorite team, or perhaps their colors... but not in NZ. Here, fans show their support by getting as many of their friends as possible together to get drunk while dressed in matching costumes. So you look outside and see eight Captain Planets walk by. Its awesome. Usually the festivities begin friday night as soon as everyone is off of work, having spent the day listening to the games on the radio. This year that was not the case.

This year both events fell on the same day. This equals chaos. Because the start of the Sevens coincided with Waitangi Day people had the day off work, and thus were dressed in costumes and drunk by 10:30 am. It was like a two day frat party. There was free booze in the streets. Free. There were actually booths set up giving out samples of booze. Groups of cops and robbers and batmans and robins roved the city staggering drunk at lunchtime, singing various rugby chants and blowing whistles. They walked down the middle of the street and crowded the buses until the doors wouldn't close. Heather and I just sat down at a restaurant and ate some enormous chicken wings and drank some beer as we watched the hilarity in the street. It was like a mix of Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July. We even saw a group of priests that had toddler shaped puppets sewn face first to their junk. The only thing better than this was a member of the group of Obamas tripping and knocking a girl dressed as slutty bumble bee into a fountain.

In this country Mild, Medium, and Sharp cheddar are referred to as Mild, Tasty, and Old, respectively.


That is all.

Mr. Bun - Breakfast foods and pastries

Mr. Pie - Pies of all variety, meat and otherwise

Mrs. Higgins - Cookies, muffins, and brownies

Sir Breadwins - Fresh baked bread and pastries


I've decided to find out who to throw my lot in when the Four Food Families break from the shadows and war spills into the streets of Wellington. These four cafes are all within three or four blocks of each other. I thought the fact that they were all named after people seemed to be a bit too much of a coincidence to not be underworld gang related. That, or we have been living in a hotel for far too long. We move to our new place Sunday.

The Red Head and I have been here for about a week now, and so far all is well. Wellington is like any large major city, except really really small. We can walk from one end of town to the other in an hour. Seriously. Its that small. And because its that small everything else in kinda miniaturized. What is essentially the Capital Hill area is about three blocks long. The heart of the shopping district is four blocks long. The apartments are smaller, the refrigerators are smaller, and the washers and dryers and contained within the same small machine. The portion sizes are smaller, as are the beers and cutlery. The buildings are smaller, to help deal with the constant strong winds. The people so far, appear to be normal sized.
Wellington does have something big though, and thats the Colossal Squid they have on display in the Te Papa museum. The museum is really quite nice, and free. Pretty much every museum in town, and there are a lot of them, are free. Its great. The squid though, was caught... somewhere I'm assuming, (we didn't stay to watch the educational video because the screen was surrounding by tiny screaming children with accents) and now its on display in what is essentially a giant mason jar filled with formaldehyde. Its about 8 feet long and looks remarkably like the aliens from Independence Day.
The city is beautiful. There are plants and trees everywhere. It makes seattle look a bit like a barren wasteland. Seattle has tons of very nicely landscaped areas, which are planned out and look very nice. The areas here are not planned in the least. It looks like when they built the city they just didn't cut into a lot of it, and left the forest to do whatever it wanted to. The fact that a lot of areas are too mountainous to build on or near just adds to this. Then there is the water. Which is turquoise and clear enough that from the hills you can see deep into it. People surf and sail and play on the sand with their families. It appears to be summer break here, or else no one works. Because everyone is always at the beach. Not that I can blame them, it looks fake its so pretty.
TRH and I also went to the zoo, which was much better than I thought it was going to be. It was pretty much a basic zoo, which the normal standard of animals, but then it also had kangaroos, dingos, wallabies, and kiwis (which are nocturnal and scary as hell). It was a very photogenic zoo, due to the fact that the cages didn't really look like they could keep any animals in at all, and in several cases I was close enough to be eaten should I have angered the animal inside. They also had these warning signs all over the place. They were cartoon signs instructing the reading what not to do and why. For example, through a series of pictures I learned that if I were to throw garbage at a monkey it would cry and its arm would bleed and a very tall zoo keeper would frown at me and show me to the exit, and then I too would cry. The signs were amazing.
Now we are apartment hunting, which can be difficult because we don't own a fridge. The fridge is not standard in an apartment here. Its strange. On that note, heres a list of things we've seen in NZ

2 Three story tall Santa statues
A goat on a golf course
Bacon flavored Cup O Noodle
A copper cowgirl street performer
3 jugglers
A 14 year old playing a rock version of Pachabel's Cannon on his electric guitar
Nachos made with sloppy joe meat
Very colorful Cemeteries
A homeless man with a didgeridoo

Go see Seven Pounds and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Bring tissues.