Musings of an Idiot

Hot Dogs

A walk through Queen Street can sometimes throw some pleasant surprises like yesterday I chanced across this hot dog vendor right across Britomart station. I had a hot dog with hungarian sausage and it was fantastic - very nice taste. I went there again with Benji earlier this afternoon but the guys hadn't set up the stall today. I really wanna try some hungarian crepes there. Highly recommended if you are around the city. I personally think that Auckland needs more roadside eating joints like this where you can grab a quick and cheap bite that's also tasty and interesting. The roadside stalls generate an experience and a vibe and add to the atmosphere of the city which money can't buy, so hopefully the Auckland City council recognizes the fact and gives permission to more road side stalls to be setup.

Labels: New Zealand, Random, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 3:49 PM 0 Comments

Bollocks

I am giddy with excitement over the play that I just went and saw 'Bollocks' and it is not because I know the people acting in it but because it turned out to be a fantastic experience. The performances were nuanced and powerful and the moments were very alive and kicking. I would highly recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. It is playing for another 4 nights - if you want to book tickets then you can do it online here.


I still haven't had a chance to play with the new camera. I need to finish some assignments from Monday's business management class; chalk out shooting plan for 'The Moments' and clean up my room - those are the tasks for tomorrow since it is my day off.

Time to crash.
Amit

Labels: Theatre

posted by Amit @ 11:17 PM 0 Comments

D'arranged Marriage

I had a day off everything yesterday and slept through most of it - more so because I was woken up by one of my flatmates returning from a late night party at 2.30 AM and then turning on some music - loud enough to get through the walls {the joys of flatting..sigh!!!}. I tossed and turned and since I couldn't go back to sleep and the noise was still on, I worked on 'The Moments In Between' till 5.00 AM and went back to bed once the music stopped. I did manage to wake up by 8.00 AM again and went about the day - doing household chores and shopping etc.

In between all the chores - I got chatting to Tarun {who I did a scene with recently for the movie} and he invited me to his play 'd'arranged marriage' that was on later that evening. A good sleep and a boxing class later I was at The Pumphouse in Takapuna where the play was being staged and it was a bloody fantastic one hour. Tarun is hilarious in the show and the audience was rolling over laughing throughout the runtime. Pure genius. You should watch it if it ends up playing anywhere near you. It definitely was the highlight of my day.


The night ended with a quick drink at the Speights Alehouse for Brendan Q's birthday party. It was fun and got to meet some new people. Maybe I should socialize more often. :-) Driving in to work this morning was weird because there were so many people stumbling around the roads drunk - trying to get home after a night out drinking and there were an equal number of cabs blocking the roads as they hovered around the night clubs waiting to pick up potential passengers. It felt weird and definitely reminded me why I don't like the drinking culture in NZ - so many problems that come out of it but people would rather be happily ignorant about it than deal with it.

That's me for now,
Amit

Labels: The Moments In Between, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 8:49 AM 0 Comments

The Winter's Tale

I just got back from seeing 'The Winter's Tale' at Aotea Centre - courtesy of Shuzhen. This wIt was an awesome experience as the seats were 2nd row from the front which is one of the best seats you can get in theatre - the farther away from the stage you are the lower the price of the tickets. Add to it the show itself was pretty good.

It's shakespeare so some of the dialogue is hard to catch at times but the performances from most of the cast made up for it. I especially liked the older actors as they brought so much gravitas to their roles and it was amazing looking at them even when they had no dialogue and off the younger actors Ethan Hawke was superb. Rebecca Hall was good but did not carry the same gravitas as the older actors but she is still stunning to look at. The production was awesome and everything done on-stage and behind the stage just enhanced the play. It was definitely one of the most lavish productions I've seen. All in all I was a happy chappy at the end of the play.

So this rounds up a long but exciting week of a world class movie premiere and a world class theatre play.

That's me for now.
Amit

Labels: Theatre

posted by Amit @ 8:42 PM 0 Comments

Long long day

Feeling a tiny bit tired after the long 17 hour day yesterday and it is going to be another long one today. Yesterday - we had the TVNZ Regatta straight after work and it was fun. There were a couple of moments where you actually had to work but overall I did feel a bit useless as all you do is sit on one part of the boat to balance it out. The good thing was we had a relaxed and experienced skipper and first mate and fun team mates, so it was well worth the experience.












Straight after the race - I raced off to watch my good friend and acting classmate- Claire's play 'Dead Meat' which she wrote and directed and it was great. I also got to meet a lot of new people within the acting community. It was put up as part of Smack Bang Theatre which is supporting new and innovative New Zealand theatre and writers. And after the play went to a farewell drinks party for Dave - another acting friend and ex-classmate. And again it was a pleasant surprise catching up with a lot of people including old film school classmates.

So all in all it was a really long day and today is going to be no different - not as much with social commitments but with work.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: New Zealand, Party, Random, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 7:44 AM 0 Comments

The Palm Tree

The post production funding for 'Five' has been declined by SIPF; which didn't come as that much of a surprise as I was expecting it to be rejected. No real reasons for expecting that outcome except for my gut feeling that it would happen even though it was a strong application with a distributor already attached to the movie. I don't think I will ever get funded by NZFC or SIPF - again no rhyme or reason for that thought - just a feeling {I think I might have said it in one of my earlier posts or it is just deja vu}. So the path is clear that I need to keep working on finding ways to make 'no-budget' to 'low budget' movies till I am able to attract funds from private sector or overseas.

Talking of post production - the plan all along was to keep working on it as if we will never get the funding and the approximate date for finishing off atleast the 2.0 mix is 1st week of July - at which point I need to start sending the finished cut to any film festivals that select the movie. After that point - Benji will keep working on a 5.1 mix for the DVD release, probably for another month or so. Sam Good has joined the audio post team as a foley recordist - which is great as that eases off pressure on Benji a bit. I will be starting the colour grade on the movie this week. So work on post is still going ahead full speed.

I watched 'Hushabye Mountain' on saturday along with Brett - one of my acting classmates and it was good play. The acting and production design was brilliant - there were some story threads which didn't tie-up nicely but still it was a great experience watching live theatre. Unlike movies - you don't get second chances while performing. What is done is done and the audience reaction and feedback is immediate - so it definitely is a scary process performing live.


I also caught 'POTC3' and was very disappointed. I didn't go into the movie with any high expectations and was annoyed when the movie just started acting self important with no continuity whatsoever with the previous installment. The only point the movie comes alive is when Johnny Depp is onscreen and that too when he is not talking to himself - otherwise it just felt too self important and pretentious where it was creating a mythology and trying to solve it within the same movie. And one of the major villains of the piece was the blandest one I have ever seen on film. Anyway - I will stop talking about the movie because it was an average experience.


I had a lovely Sunday morning/afternoon having lunch with David and his family. I love the bread that he cooks and D was kind enough to give me half a loaf to take home...yippeeeeeee......

Anyway kind of drained right now after a full days work and the acting lessons in the evening.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Movies, Post Production, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 9:10 PM 0 Comments

The Plug

OK...This post is mainly for 2 things - one is to try and raise some more awareness about Earthrace (and their need for support at this stage) and second is try and convince you to support local theatre instead of spending that amount on some Hollywood blockbuster (you can do that too if you like but who would you rather have your money - some struggling but talented local artists or some moneymakers across the shores)

Earthrace - in it's bid to raise some money to keep the ground crew moving from port to port has started a promotion raffle with some pretty wicked prizes and top the deal off there are only 3000 tickets available, so the chances of winning something increases to 1 in 700. You should check out the SALES PROMOTION RAFFLE DETAILS HERE. And do it quick as they are bound to go quick.

I am planning on checking out a play titled 'Hushabye Mountain' this weekend and I am excited as one of my classmates from the acting class is in it. And again, the play has only 9 shows left {1 show a day}, so I would suggest that if you get a chance and are keen to check out some local theatre - the artists will definitely appreciate your support.

Yesterday was my day off work but it disappeared into encoding the movie into various formats for further work - a quicktime file with dialogue only, a quicktime file with everything, an MPEG file with NTSC encoding, an MPEG file with PAL encoding. Plus uploading the quicktime files so that the music composer can download the files and authoring an NTSC DVD of the movie to send to film festivals for selection purposes. So yeah - long and short of it is that the day off was a day off from nothing at all. It is good to be busy.

A couple of days ago I did manage to watch 'No. 2' - a NZ movie which was adapted from a very successful kiwi play of the same name. It was a mixed bag - there was some stuff which was delightful while there was also a lot of missed opportunities. The movie says that it is a big hearted and exuberant story but somehow the heart is missing in a few places. It makes me sad because it was definitely trying to be different but the warmth and the exuberance just does not come across on-screen. And the other thing which annoyed me was the 'sanitized' shooting to the point where it was driving me nuts - when you go out on the streets - you don't find them empty - you always find it full of cars and people etc and when you remove those elements while filming it just feels artificial and a big setup. I wish NZ dramas didn't do that - I know it is hard and all with permissions and all but where there is a will there is a way.

There was another interesting meeting I had last week that I completely forgot to mention. It was with the director of a 'bollywood' movie that is shooting here in NZ. It stars Celina Jaitley and Ben Mitchell {a local TV star} among other known indian actors. Hmmmm.....i will leave that experience for a later post when I am a bit more fresh.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Cause, Movies, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 9:17 PM 0 Comments

Look both ways

Hard to believe that time has again proved tricky to keep track of. It is thursday evening and another week draws to a close.

I finally put in my citizenship application yesterday after filling out the form and getting signatures and stuff. Now keeping fingers crossed for things to sort themselves out. Also had the first workshop with the actors for 'Five' on Tuesday evening, which proved to be really good and intense. Now just have to accelerate things even more since we are a month away from shoot now.

Watched a couple of movies - a really depressing australian movie titled 'Look Both Ways' [really well shot and directed and acted but still very depressing] and a really bad horror movie titled 'Saw 2'...ooops did I just say that?

Went to the Auckland Art gallery to attend the reading of a theatre play titled 'Mike and Virginia' written by Kathryn Burnett & Nick Ward. It was heaps of fun and overall had lots of stuff going for it. Once a couple of things are smoothed out, I think it would be a fantastic play to watch.


Here is what I was feeling like this afternoon - pretty random but still beautiful.



As a sign off note - there have been lots of newspaper articles this week both locally and internationally which have given increased importance to the warning signs of global warming. Here are some which you might like to read:
"Global warming will threaten millions"
"Alaskan storm cracks iceberg in Antarctica"
"Antarctic ozone hole hits record"
"Get ready for freak weather"
and possibly one of the rare pieces of news where US has done something positive for the enviroment "US offers debt-for-nature swap to Guatemala"

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Global Warming, Movies, Pre-production, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 10:04 PM 0 Comments