Jaz Design

The mister and I watched Garden State last week. He told me not to get my hopes up, but I really enjoyed it. Yeah it’s cliched, it’s not five star acting, but it’s sweet. There’s a few things that made me think. I think if you fancy something that ends up a bit feelgood, something a bit soppy, something a bit odd, then this is your movie.

Amazon Synopsis
Andrew ‘Large’ Largeman (Zach Braff of TV’s Scrubs) is returning home to New Jersey for the first time in nine years to attend his mother’s funeral. A struggling actor in Los Angeles, he’s been living under clouds of medication prescribed by his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm). After drifting through the funeral with the same emotional numbness he’s felt for years, he reconnects with old friends Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), a gravedigger, and Albert (Denis O’Hare), a millionaire who invented noiseless Velcro. In a doctor’s office, he meets ebullient Sam (Natalie Portman), an epileptic whose lust for life inspires Andrew to feel things that his medication long denied him. Over four days, he develops feelings for Sam he didn’t know he was capable of, and faces up to the resentment his father holds toward him about an accident that happened long ago.

Stardust. Beautiful, enchanting. I came out of the cinema thinking that real life was sometimes incredibly boring compared to the story in the film. I guess in real life you have to make your own magic

I have to admit I do think it may have been aimed at teens younger than me. It was easy to see through some of the effects and some of it did seem quite childish. That said, it was a lovely story to escape with for a few hours once the lead stopped wearing his rose tinted glasses.

Brilliant cast list, I didn’t find myself wondering what other films they’d been in when I was watching – I was too engrossed in the performances. I’m really not a fan of Robert DeNiro – mostly because of the types of characters he plays, but I really enjoyed his part in this film and thought he did it brilliantly.

If you’re looking to escape for a few hours, you love fantasy or you love an entertaining lovestory with sky pirates, this is the film for you.

My reasons for wanting to see this are as follows:

• It has the director of Wrong Turn. Wrong Turn was fantastically rubbish and hilarious. And actually from a visual perspective not bad.
• Eliza Dushku is one of my favourite actresses because Faith was clearly the best slayer and I’ve wanted to be her since however old I was when season 3 of Buffy came out – 13? She also does a better job in horror films than Sarah Michelle Gellar – who was just the worst thing ever in The Return (what the hell was that film supposed to be about? Usually I can at least laugh at rubbish horror but this one, I was just so bored) and alright I’ll give her a little credit for the Grudge, because the Grudge was awesome. But still no.
• The title makes it sound so deliciously rubbish, how can I refuse? Now I’ve read the synopsis I am a little disappointed that it wasn’t literally working through the alphabet, but that’s what you get for basing a film on a true story…
• Which leads me to a curiosity about the ending since in real life they never caught the killer.

The official site is over here –> http://www.alphabetkiller.com/ and it even includes a fantastic “teaser” trailer which shows you all the best bits of the film before you’ve had a chance to see it. Which who knows when that will be because it’s said OCTOBER for at least forever. Maybe it’ll hit the screens around Halloween (Halloween!!!)

Now I need to go shower and do some actual workleton.

Also to note, I disabled comments until such a time as I can find a captcha that works in preventing mass spammage of unsavoury anythings. IP address 195.somethingsomething can go fuck itself.

I know, this still needs updating, the template needs finishing, the front page needs finishing, everything and anything is up in the air. There’s not a lot I can do at the moment I’m afraid – lacking reliable internet and what not. Once I set up EasyPHP and what not on this newly formatted mashup of a PC I might get chance to sort things out.

On a more excitable note, I start my second summer of work at 3-Wise Internet Solutions (who are also my host, <3) tomorrow. On top of that, I have three, maybe four, units still to finish for university due to my illness at the end of the first semester, my dissertation research, self elected research and other general course reading to do. That’s a lot, but that’s ok, because it’s all positive. I also have my own personal photography and internet projects in mind. My head’s a bit full at the moment, I’m sure you can imagine.

I took my Mister to his home for the weekend, gave myself a bit of a break during that time, to play Guitar Hero, spend time with him and generally do not much. It was gooood. It all had to end tonight though, ready for tomorry Oh, and yeah, it was some sort of five day weekend, haha.

My Mister took me to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last week, I’ve always thought the storylines were silly, but the movies are certainly entertaining. Worth the look.

Everyone knows I love terrible horror, but this went beyond terrible. I can’t name another horror film that I’ve wanted to turn off halfway through because I’ve cared so little about the plot. I guess Sarah Michelle Gellar fans might have liked it, but to us it was just a movie comprised of lots of minute long shots of people walking towards things, little tension, and very little to relate to.

I think their efforts to build tension were what damaged it, they gave little away about what was going on, they went too far with this at times I thought. The introduction to characters was also rushed, and didn’t give you an opportunity to relate to them or how they were feeling – resulting in nothing to engage with.

Also, it lacked in people dying. It got near the end, and both of us were asking why no one was dying. The fact that you didn’t know someone had made the first half of the film seem pointless – simply because you didn’t know.

I give it 3/10, just because I think I should give it something for trying.

Yesterday the other half an I went to see 300. He likes Miller and knows about these things, whereas I have no clue about things like graphic novels and was mostly going because I liked the trailer, and I’ve dragged him to every shitty horror flick that’s come out since October. I was surprised, I thought the film was amazing.

It was certainly visually stunning, although I’m not so sure I’d have been so accepting of the obviousness of CG had I not known it was based on a graphic novel. Either way, they really went to town on it. I especially loved this technique that I’ve only just started noticing appearing in movies, where, for example, someone shoots an arrow, the camera pans in on the arrow, time slows down and it moves around the arrow before it speeds up again, drawing you in and making you feel a part of something otherwise quite flat. It’s almost 3D without being 3D.

Gerard Butler was impressive, I’ve only seen him as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, it was very entertaining to see him do something so different, and do it so well.

The story wasn’t that strong, it was mostly about the fighting which is fair enough, but they did manage to put enough of a storyline in to have me crying by the end of it (I felt like I’d been hit with an emotional bus, but I think that may have just been me). There were some very touching moments, some downright scary moments, but mostly, a lot of bloody moments. But even then, they were well engineered bloody moments.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack, the soundtrack, I adored it. Rocky vs classical, always a winner with me. I thought it fit the movie very well. I’d recommend the movie, assuming you can deal with slow motion decapitation… or just generally a lot of slow motion. I read somewhere they filmed most of it at 50-150 frames per second – shows just how much slow motion they did or planned to use!

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I realise now on DA you get a free prints account, so I just messed around with the options to see what would happen, as a result, this photo of the sunset over Southsea is available as a print.

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All else is going alright. Got a lot of work on at uni, but it’s all good things. Thinking of things to write about for a dissertation, working up a design for a competition, running a business focussed on environmentalism (proper website and details available next week), it’s all good.

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Thursday 21st March

Nothing!

Wednesday 20th March

Chocolate chips 0.49
Pizza 1.15
Broccoli 0.46
Butter 0.46
Chips 0.88
Enterprise Investment 30
Car Insurance 476.04 (not including this in percentages as it tips it too much, just included for records)

Totals so far…
£235.35
Necessary £179.96 76.46%
Unnecessary £55.39 23.54%

I had the weirdest dream, whereby I was in a James Dean movie, but I was also a man wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt (JD I guess) and everyone was in colour except James Dean. Something weird went on, where we all ended up in this testing centre with lots of PCs where we just had to do whatever we would normally do on a PC, and I remember desperately trying to think of a way to escape. Dean was there too. I think someone had an afro.

What the hell was that about, and why was I a man?

It was not helped by my cat waking me up at 5am by walking on my head repeatedly until I got up.

Almost 24 hours until the first deadline hits. I like flashing underscores, they’re helpful.

I also got rid of so many videos in the last 24 hours that I’m terrified. My amazon wishlist consists almost entirely of DVDs now, which is most unusual.

My hair is two colours. See my Myspace for more details.

So we saw Black Christmas. I got mostly what I expected, and was pleased to see that the Final Destinationer’s creativity with deaths was not lost (I won’t spoil it, but, ice).

It was pure entertaining rubbish! What else can I say? Like cheesy teen horror with a flimsy plot, bland acting and a woman that looks like a man, go see this film.

Kept me entertained anyway, I love picking apart horror

I’m excited. Why? Because I love cheesy horror. The Final Destination films are on my list of favourites, because they are mostly rubbish. And that’s what makes them so good.

Black Christmas – made by the people who made the FD movies, a *remake*, the cast list is mostly a remash of people from the FD films, and the annoying one from Buffy. And and and, it revolves around Christmas. Magic. I expect laughs. The clip I watched earlier floored me. It seems the producers haven’t got any less inventive with their deaths.

Friday. I’m excited. And yes I am a tad morbid.