Eight books from around my house...

...that I am reading or hope to read soon.

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami
A Happy Death by Albert Camus
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Stasiland by Anna Funder
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
The Transformation and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Akira Kurosawa - Interviews

4 months

...since I last posted one of these babies. I had a 4 month writer's block, a 4 month drought in the brain lake, maybe. I can't remember what's even happened in that time, oh well who needs to know.

I am currently on holidays, about a month in with two months until I go back to the institution of education, I'm reading two books at the moment, still too early into both to give a proper opinion, but neither are a daunting task. In the last four months I dabbled in singing in a soul/r&b/rock n roll band as well as writing solo music and lyrics, too much energy invested in it all, I'm drained.

As usual, I am constantly planning in my head what comes next, where I'm heading, what I'm leaving behind, but still never coming to a conclusion. It's so hard to say without a second opinion, what I should do with myself, when I keep on looking through these tinted glasses. Boy I wish my video store were better, so many movies I want to see that they don't have there.

Forever writing them, I am yet to finish a script/screenplay but I am hopeful I will have something to show for all of this before I go back to school in February. For those interested in some good films (in my opinion), they should check out my Top 50 list, still rough and not ordered but the content is pretty legit. Here.

That's all I can summon up for now, I'll be back sooner than you think.

Bibliothèque accompanied by Blogotheque

Books.
Books?
Yes, books.

Today, my father, sister and I went to the holy grail of cheap (but usually shit) books.
Dirt Cheap, Collingwood.
A haven of new books, cheap as chups (without fush).
It's a tradition, usually bimonthly (every two months, or more) to scavenge what we can from stacks of books upon books (and occasionally absolutely terrible CDs).
The search lasted about 45 minutes, as I dug my way through endless unofficial Stones and Stalin biographies, self help bibles, Limp Bizkit CDs and True Crime "non fiction" novels.
I finished with this.

The Book of Other People
edited by Zadie Smith

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
Nick Hornby

The Hitchhiker Trilogy
Douglas Adams

The last five came in a box, like a box set, or in this case a 'trilogy' (yes I understand that there are five there, thus not being a trilogy at all, don't ask me, ask Douglas Adams!).

I do own all of them in one book, but being much afraid of large books, this way they seem much more approachable and I'll be able to have a break between each one, regain sanity, rinse and repeat. I am excited, looking forward to reading them, highly recommended by all male family members, seen the movie, etc.
I believe the set was $15 , or three dollars per book.

So, I bought The Book of Other People because (a) the cover design was much nicer than nearly every other book in the store, (b) it was a book of vignettes/short stories (I like this), including some from Nick Hornby (see below) and Daniel Clowes (the fellow who did all of the Ghost World comics) and (c) it has comics in the middle, mmm... $9.95

Last but not least, I bought The Polysyllabic Spree (a mouthful, via keyboard).
I bought Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (read two posts back) and got through about fifty pages until I couldn't stand trying to read an English novel while hearing John Cusack's thick American accent. But I do know that I liked it, Nick Hornby is the kind of author people I know like. People recommend and I obey, most of the time.
This wasn't the only one of his books there, they had a few others (About a Boy, oops saw the movie first, and one about Soccer, isn't that reason enough to leave it be?) and I chose this one, it's a book of book reviews from a column of his, I believe.
I'm through the introduction and when I finish this post I will delve further into the pages and let you know when I'm finished.
I definitely feel that I need to have at least one of his books, right?

(not books)
La Blogotheque.
As far as I know, it's this one (possibly French) guy, Vincent Moon who films bands playing live along the streets of Europe. I mostly like the idea because of the excellent Beirut and Arcade Fire videos (watch the A.F one where they play Neon Bible in an elevator, excellent!).
Youtube channel linkage.

Wise decisions while falling asleep.

From ten pm onwards, this is the time of day that I decide to do something, the time which is so inconvenient to be motivated, here I am trying to get to sleep and then a surge of motivation and energy runs through my brain. There goes my 8 hours.
Just thought I'd share that with you.

Friday night and I haven't got around to posting a blog in a while, haven't had too much to say. I just watched Spaced and had a cigarette, now I'm stuck on making a best of playlist for my 5k of music, so can't be fucked, I got to 70 songs and now I'm at C (in alphabetical artist order, duh). The problem I have is that I try to make a playlist with only one song per artist, but then I only choose the most played song, which then becomes overplayed and annoying to an extent, thus ruining the whole point of the playlist. A stupid fucking cycle.
I do like the idea of having a really good playlist, I guess the only way to do it confidently is to keep a consistent theme like all of the music magazine's free CDs. Makes sense.

Recently I have just been, well, not doing too much, trying to watch a movie I haven't seen every few days. These are some I've seen recently;

The American Friend; directed by Wim Wenders, t'was really good, a few segments with no dialogue add to the thrill (a thriller), intense Dennis Hopper acting, good combo.

The 400 Blows; a classic French film about a schoolboy who goes astray and tries to live like an adult, happy, sad, funny, good, great.

Repulsion; directed by Roman Polanski, a lot worse in my eyes than given credit for. I guess a lot of it was innovative for it's 'time' but a lot of unnecessary effects that ruin some parts of the film, not terrible but not amazing.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico; made by genre slut Robert Rodriguez, so cheesy but so good, a pretty mindless action movie with Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas, you know, entertaining and that.

Nói the Albino; Good, nothing epic, but quite good, very aesthetically pleasing, a lot of really really good scenes (including pots of animal blood), don't know how much I liked the ending, though.

About to watch American Psycho (been hunting this film down for a good year), my video store only has the sequel, which I don't think I'll watch in the near future. I really like black comedy, and this is supposed to be an ace movie in the genre.

A fistful of reviews.

Good evening fellow homosapiens or pets with lingering eyes,

Okay, so last post was six days ago. I see.
News to report?
Recent purchases;

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tender Prey. $8.99

This is a great album, I essentially bought it for The Mercy Seat and Deanna, but I hadn't heard the other tracks, they're excellent! A good mix of happy and sad and joy and misery. I strongly advise the purchase of this album if you can find it as cheap as I did, it's probably my favourite Nick Cave album to play start to finish, I listened to it first while cutting a good chunk out of my Zelda, Twilight Princess game last Wednesday and it was epic.
4.5 thumbs up/5.

The Veils - Nux Vomica. $23.99

Normally I wouldn't pay that much for a CD, I mean I would nearly never pay that much but this is my top played album of the year so far, with about fourty plays on iTunes and a fair few more on my iPod, I felt that I owed it to The Veils and my conscience to pay whatever needed for it. It is an absolutely amazing CD that I wish I owned on vinyl. At least half of the songs are heavily influenced by The Bad Seeds and the other half are pretty upbeat and melodic post punk tunes that make you sing and/or dance. The standout track for me originally was 'Advice For Young Mothers To Be' but after listening for longer I'm currently favouring 'One Night On Earth' and 'Under The Falling Branches'. The singer, Finn Andrews is the son of former XTC keyboard player Barry Andrews.
4.9 thumbs up/5.

I'm currently reading the novel of He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, that was the basis for the film of the same name, I didn't expect that the book would be so different and I'm glad that it is. The book is made up of chapters of short stories about the writer's experiences with share houses and extravagant roomies throughout Australia. I'm only sixty pages in so far but it's easy to say that it's going to use the same formula the whole way through, but there's no doubts that it is a fucking good book, hilarious and easy to read. The film adapted parts of the short stories and mixed them up to make the plot they used, which is a very good thing, seeing as I still can't bring myself to read another fifty pages of the English novel High Fidelity after seeing John Cusack narrate the American film adaptation.*
So far, it's excellente and I'll post again when I'm finished.

Other than that I have nothing to report, I have to get back to doing homework...or just, start.

*By the by, I love that film.

Camberwell Market pt 1 - 'Pop culture 1977-1981'

So it was one of those times, I woke up early on Sunday morning and headed down to the Sunday Camberwell Market, a few dollars in hand, looking for a good deal. Did I find one? I think so, bwahaha.

Okay so here I have (all original) 'Rumours' - Fleetwood Mac [$3], an Atari 2600 Pacman cartridge [$3] and one Atari 2600 Space Invaders cartridge (probably broken) [$3].

I spent about an hour having a gander hither and thither and I found nothing that I urgently needed/wanted, then I came across this album that I've never heard, but I'd heard about it being a cornerstone in pop culture (in the neutral sense, equally good/bad) so I spared my coffee money for it. I got a few scoffs and giggles when I was walking around with it tucked under my arm, yes! Good sign...



The Atari games were a last minute impulse buy that I'm glad I found, the space invaders cartridge looks to be broken but I mean come on, these are the original two video games, the original two video games, and I don't own an Atari or plan on buying one soon, but I felt it was a wise choice that even Merlin would have made. (I had a look at ebay value for these guys but in much better condition they only go for about fifteen dollars.)



When I got home, I put Rumours on to give it a listen but...uh...it's a little warped.
And by that I mean a lot warped, still plays (mostly) until it gets to the point were the highs are low and the lows are high, if you get me. The first side of it (which I have a feeling is the better side) works fine with a little pitch change, but I can hear the classics, I can hear the classics.



So like, nine dollars all up, and uhh...I REGRET NUSSINK.

I'd rather finish what I've started...

But I never do, damn the man!

Firstly I'd like to say, I feel stupid about a lot of things I post on this blog, I'm not much of a writer but I can string a few words and do my own spell check but I must come off like a wanker, I mean, I know no one reads this but some of this stuff I just have to delete just in case someone clicks the link from my myspace profile and stumbles upon this blog.

I created this blog with best intentions, hopefully to write something that at least I was happy for people to read and that eventually I would show some people and you know, they might check it once in a while, and I'm not quitting just yet, but I guess I still haven't really figured out any sort of consistency with the writing, some of it is opinionated, some of it is having a whinge, none of it is factual and barely any of it is possible for me to read myself without squirming.

I have a lot of things I'd like to say, but it takes me three or four rewrites of each sentence to get it out.

I guess I'll keep going on about what I buy, do, don't, see, hear, love, hate, want, don't want, and so on and so forth, because I wouldn't have it any other way.
I have no clue whether any one reads this but I wanted to get a little head start before I start telling people about it (other than my myspace link) and I wanted to develop a little consistency to my posting so this wouldn't be full of completely erratic posts.

Back on the topic of the title, I never finish what I start, but oh how I love it when I do. I have aspirations, I'm sure most people do too, but mine build up and clog up my brain. Wouldn't it be nice to do something you love and get paid to do it? I think it would.
In year eight I wanted to be in a signed band, tour and live a "rock 'n' roll" lifestyle, the closest I got to that was recording an EP in a punk band who broke up as soon as we were booked for our first gig, I hate that fucking idea now.
In year nine, I was heavily into the idea of being an artist (drawing, painting etc), so I created a DeviantArt account and got to work, I tried my hand at painting and got frustrated and quit, I am still drawing sketches and doodles and I'm taking VCE art classes at school but I'm pretty over that idea, too. In year ten, I was trying to pursue (or planning to pursue) both of those ideas at once, I was playing in a band with my good friend Kris called Haus of Cards and trying my hand at painting again, both of those things pretty much went to shit.

I guess I'm pretty on and off with arty things, sometimes all I will do is draw and draw or play guitar until my fingers are raw as fuck and sometimes just the idea of being creative will piss me off. And for this reason alone, I wouldn't want to rely on feeling inspired to feed myself and pay my rent, but I can say that having a consistent flow of being happy with my finished work keeps me inspired, so I inspire myself, don't I?

And right now, I'm on the idea of filmmaking, an equally interesting concept but the idea is still fresh and I'm sure it'll turn sour any time now, I guess I've been a little poisoned by my parents' hatred for failure, actually, it's not as bad as it sounds.

Things I'd like to do while still a teenager?

• Complete, finish and clock more great video games (such as the Final Fantasys, the Zeldas and SNES greats).
• Collect a fairly decent collection of vinyl records in case I'm still keen on starting a 2nd hand record store, yep.
• Write, direct and shoot at least one short film that I'm not embarrassed to show to my friends, one that I'm happy with, at least.
• Broaden my horizons with music, maybe fill another 20gb of my iPod with new music.
• Properly stop smoking, because if I'm still smoking when I'm twenty, then I'll never quit.
  
• Pass school with a decent enter score, as not to rule out tertiary education, we'll see.

But hey, that shouldn't be too hard, I do have three and a half more years.

Monday morning mixtapes

I present to you (from utter boredom) my personal ultimate top five list.

I'll try not to go into any hefty reviews, don't worry.

Starting with music;

SONGS
5. Winterlong - Neil Young
4. Father to a Sister of Thought - Pavement
3. Sound Check/Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
2. Ashes to Ashes/Oh! You Pretty Things - David Bowie
1. Golden Brown - The Stranglers

This is the opening song for my all time favourite film (pictured below) and that's where I first heard it, I think it's absolutely fucking brilliant, the lyrics and melody go so well together that it never occurred to me that it was about heroin.

ALBUMS
5. Funeral - Arcade Fire
4. Nux Vomica - The Veils
3. Crocodiles - Echo & The Bunnymen
2. Gorillaz - Gorillaz
1. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie



BANDS/ARTISTS
5. Blonde Redhead
4. Neil Young/Lou Reed/Nick Cave
3. Iggy Pop/The Stooges
2. Gorillaz
1. David Bowie


FILMS
5. Oldboy - dir. Chan-wook Park
4. Mystery Train - dir. Jim Jarmusch
3. The Royal Tenenbaums - dir. Wes Anderson
2. Seven Samurai - dir. Akira Kurosawa
1. He Died with a Felafel in his Hand - dir. Richard Lowenstein

Some people will do anything to get out of paying the rent;

Maybe it's just satisfying to find a really good Australian film (after sorting through all of the outbacks, war films, Irwins and Rabbit Proof Fences) or maybe this film would stand out for me even if it was from America but that's irrelevant (not really) and this film is excellent! It's adapted from the book of the same title and it's an argument as to which is better blah blah etc. I haven't read the whole book but what I read was good, but I don't think it delivered as much as the film, The characters in He Died With a Felafel in his Hand (hefty title to type) make it, Danny especially, the soundtrack is really really good with a couple of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds songs, a little Moby (when appropriate) and the oh-so-wonderful Golden Brown (see above). I have been trying to find a copy of this film for at least a year and a half because it's easy to watch over and over, although I do know that this film may not be for everyone.
I don't like it when people say that only the British 'get' British comedy or only the Japanese really 'get' Seven Samurai, but studies show (no they don't) that not only Australians watch Neighbours! Although this movie is nothing like the infamous soap opera, I'd like to think that the 6.9 rating on IMDb is because only Australians 'get' this, see it for yourself if you can find a copy.

ACTORS
5. Jack Nicholson
4. Bill Murray
3. Simon Pegg
2. Toshiro Mifune
1. Steve Buscemi

DIRECTORS
5. Coen Brothers
for;
3. No Country for Old Men (8/10)
2. The Big Lebowski (8/10)
1. The Man Who Wasn't There (9/10)
4. Hayao Miyazaki
for;
3. Howl's Moving Castle (8/10)
2. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (8.5/10)
1. Spirited Away (9.5/10)
3. Akira Kurosawa
for;
3. High and Low (9/10)
2. Rashômon (9/10)
1. Seven Samurai (9.5/10)
2. Jim Jarmusch
for;
3. Coffee & Cigarettes (7.5/10)
2. Down By Law (8/10)
1. Mystery Train (9/10)
1. Wes Anderson
for;
5. Bottle Rocket (8/10)
4. Life Aquatic (8/10)
3. Darjeeling Limited (8.5/10)
2. Rushmore (9/10)
1. The Royal Tenenbaums (9.5/10)

The reason I chose Wes Anderson as my favourite director is because of his consistency to make entertaining films, although dubbed utterly pretentious (which I can see), they're all funny, in an awkward kind of way. The colours in his films are vibrant and easy on the eyes and sets and settings are sort of a parody of their real world counterparts. Most of his films focus on assholes with money, which might be a little old after his last four films but he's supposedly in production of doing a remake of Roald Dahl's kids book 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox', and it's good to see some variation.
I think that all round Akira Kurosawa was the 'best' director on the list, the one who did the most for film, broke boundaries etc. But I only started watching his films a few months, and having seen only five or six (out of thirty or so) of his films, I find it hard to judge. Whereas with Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch I've seen every one.
Jim Jarmusch was my second choice because well, I just love his films, my favourite Jarmusch film varies between Mystery Train and Down By Law and my favourite after them varies between Coffee and Cigarettes and Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, for different reasons because they are two totally different films. Coffee and Cigarettes is a series of short segments of famous and semi-famous people talking about coffee and cigarettes, it's as simple as that, (my favourites are Strange to Meet You, Twins and Somewhere in California).

TV SHOWS
5. Monty Python's Flying Circus
4. The IT Crowd
3. Arrested Development
2. Futurama
1. Black Books

CAREERS/JOBS
Despite my endless list of aspirations and to-dos, I can't think of anything other than these three, I mean there's things that seem interesting or fun at first glance, but nothing I'd go out of my way to pursue off the top of my head.

3. Corporate art whore

I sort of just made up that term, I think. What I mean by Corporate art whore is being an artist/designer for things that get reproduced, replicated and sold en masse without having to worry about how much I'll be able to sell one painting for, doing things like designing t-shirts or doing illustrations for books or albums.

2. Own a record store

This is pretty much on par with numero uno when I weigh out the goods and bads of the career, I would love to just own a big second hand store for music (vinyl/CDs), books, films (dvd/VHS) and old video games.

1. Film; writer/director

I guess the fact that I spend a lot of time watching films and browsing IMDB for things to see gave me this urge to want to make my own, I've shot a short on super 8, written a few short scripts and I own a nice Sony Handycam but that's as far as I've gone with this concept, there's much time in the future for that.

Well well well...

I haef a present!

(and I found the one I had years ago today, shiyat.)

(I also found Arrested Development disc 2 for season 3, yayezzzzzeezzz!!11)

PS; aren't I sexayyyy?

DON'T TAZE ME BRO! (rap remix)

Still no job and little money.

Film review:

STATE'S EVIDENCE:

Plot: 5 teenage American kids all decide to kill themself (they're bored, punx, gangstaz, philosophers, hopeless romantics and not to mention cliche and annoying) all together on video, the film splits up sort of into each person or group and tells a little tale of the day before etc. The cast is B or C-grade, the older sister from Spy Kids (gross), some guy from one of those ABC kids TV shows, that guy from Not Another Teen Movie and someone from NCIS? The acting talent is terrible and so is the whole movie, I would not recommend this to anyone with half a brain, the story is cliche and so is every single character, I hope that they were method actors.

American Pie + A guidebook for primary school philosophy + a touch of Columbine - Anything good/interesting or talented = State's Evidence (minus over 9000 out of 10).

Job = Necessity.

I need a job asap, what can I say, I'm a material girl.
Recent purchases;

and the original Jade Cocoon game (from Ebay (read previous post)).

I need to finish writing a script for a short film, I really do,
it'd be preferable to film it in the next two weeks, fucking holidaze.

Out.

Nostalgiac

So there I was trying to get to sleep last night a little tipsy from some red red wine with the Cowboy Bebop Movie playing and I suddenly remembered this Playstation game I loved years ago, Jade Cocoon was the name and I vaguely remember what it was about but I just remember it being really good!
The characters were designed by a guy who did some stuff for Hayao Miyazaki's films.


Since the PS game there has been a sequel which I know nothing about for PS2, I'm considering buying the sequel for 25 bucks from ebay and hopefully I can find the disc for the first one around the place.



I have such an urge to play it right now!

We also watched a really good film called Tekkonkinkreet;




It was crazy cool.
I still really want to play Jade Cocoon, I'm going to go and look for it now.
That's all for now!

Japan, the best place I've never been to.

I'm gonna pawn my shit and buy a one way ticket...

Sushi, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Murakami, Toshiro Mifune, Hayao Miyazaki, Sake, Karaoke, electronic toilets, video games, Super Famicon, manga, anime, samurai etc.

b10g?

I deleted all my previous posts because lame factor was high.
So I'm stealing most of Oli's top 5 idea, here 'tis.

Records (High Rotation)

1. Axeman's Jazz by Beasts of Bourbon
2. Lesser Matters by The Radio Dept
3. Family Music by YMCK (for the 8bit amazement)
4. Zuma by Neil Young
5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Films (Recently Watched)

1. Seven Samurai
2. Oldboy
3. Taxi Driver
4. High and Low
5. Be Kind Rewin

Directors (At the mo')

1. Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai/Rashomon)
2. Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums/Rushmore)
3. Jim Jarmusch (Mystery Train/Down By Law)
4. Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away/Nausicaa)
5. Coen Brothers (The Man Who Wasn't There/Lebowski)
5. Chanwook Park (Oldboy/Lady Vengeance)

Songs (New love)

1. Golden Brown by The Stranglers (not recent, but so good)
2. Strange Things Will Happen by The Radio Dept.
3. Top Ranking by Blonde Redhead
4. Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era by Pavement
5. Nantes by Beirut

And I leave you with a lovely artwork;

by