Musings of an Idiot

Intrepid

I am feeling dizzy – not mentally but physically – must be something I ate today. It has been a few extremely busy and eventful days – I would say almost 17 hour days for the past 4 days and it feels great even though I am a bit tired. I might take the day off from everything tomorrow – just to chill out.

I caught up with David M. and his family on Sunday afternoon for lunch. The homemade bread was an awesome treat as it was so yummy. It was nice catching up with them after a long time and having a good yarn.

Sunday night was weird in a manner of speaking – I was coming back from work around 12.00 at night and about 200 meters before the house I saw a girl walking in the middle of the road – asking for a lift. I pulled over but then another guy walked up and started talking to the girl and she looked like she knew him and the guy was giving out really aggressive body vibes. I rolled down my window and asked if everything was OK. The girl said 'Yes' but was giving a really weird body vibe as well – like she wasn't comfortable with the guy but had no option but to say 'Yes'. I said 'Fine' and drove away but as I was pulling up to park – something with the whole situation just didn't sit right with me. So I got home and asked Benji to come along with me for a drive - there was no way I could do this on my own - I definitely needed support if things got out of hand. I quickly explained the situation to him and asked him if he minded if we drove around to just make sure that nothing bad happens to the girl. We drove around a bit but didn't find anyone but just as we came close to the house we realized that we hadn't checked out one road close by and drove back up that road. And surprisingly the girl was there – asking for a lift and she seemed really scared. We asked her if we could drop her off somewhere and she said she wanted to be dropped off in the city. She must have been on serious drugs or something because she was extremely paranoid (she thought we were going the wrong way) and had massive blackouts while we were trying to ask her where exactly she wanted to be dropped off and just wouldn't respond for ages. She was giving out a really weird vibe and I think both Benji and me were happy when we finally dropped her off in the city before coming back home. It took a good half an hour to shake off that vibe. I don't get it – why do people do drugs? Whats the fun in that – especially if you can't stay responsible for yourself anymore.

On Monday I got to watch 2 episodes of the new series of 'Intrepid Journeys' (one of my favorite TV series) and it was awesome – the first one was a journey through China and Pakistan with John Tamihere – which screened on TV and the second was a journey through Iran with Mary Lambie – which I got to watch while doing a dub for that program. I think I enjoyed the episode with Mary Lambie more because of her energy and infectious charm. Sometime over the past week or so (I can't remember when) I finally managed to watch 'Hustle and Flow' – which was a movie really well thought out and well executed. So it kind of raises my hopes for 'Black Snake Moan' since it is by the same director. The movie really kicks ass because of the acting – especially from Terrence Howard as well as the supporting cast.

Sometime last week I was talking to John Davies – the man behind Arkles Entertainment (who picked up NZ/Australia rights to 'Memories') and he said that he would like to see the assemble edit of the movie this Tuesday (i.e yesterday), so he can decide if he wants to pick up the movie or not. Ever since then I was frantically working away on leveling up the audio as much as possible – since it gives a bad impression [even at an assembly stage viewing] if the audio is uneven (or not even audible). Benji helped out with that on Saturday and Sunday evening and carried on working on the audio while I was away working at TVNZ. So when I did finally encode the version for viewing – it wasn't too bad at all. I caught up with John yesterday morning and watched the cut with him. I got heaps of creative feedback from him and all of it makes sense, so I am going to implement those changes and I think that will definitely lift the movie up heaps. The other good thing that also came out of it was that John will be picking up the movie's DVD rights for NZ/Australia. So it is definitely exciting news and at the same time there is heaps more to do before it even gets to the stage where we can share it with the rest of the world. One of the other primary aims is to try and meet the deadline for Auckland International Film Festival. So yeah – lots more work to do on the movie over the next couple of months. The current cut now stands at 81.5 minutes and once I implement some of the suggestions I picked up today I think the length will go down to 75 minutes odd before adding the other elements which will then beef up the duration to 80-85 minutes. Better to have a tight cut, interesting movie rather than a loose cut movie.

'The Fountain' finally gets released here in NZ from Feb 15th and it is going to be a painful few days before I can get the time to watch it. So on that note – I will take leave for now. And yeah – Happy Valentine's Day – in all it's commercial craziness and artificiality.

Adios,
Amit

Labels: Five, Random, TV Series

posted by Amit @ 12:16 AM