G for Gradewide

yay we just recently finished our first gradewide assessment for the year =D

and that wasnt too bad now was it =P

at first i was going like super well, finishing my story by like saturday night (except my characters' names...that was the HARDEST thing to write...) despite having worked a 6 hour shift on saturday. and then i printed it off and got various people to read it and it was weird because like half the people understood one part and the other half didnt, and then everyone was like maybe change your ending. and this was on tuesday and i never do things that last minute so i was panicking like crazy, got back home and rewrote 3/4 of my story in like 2+ hours and i was like SO SUPER HAPPY.

i was like insanely high. improvements could be made, but it was just SOOO much better than my first one.

especially because i had to thesaurus.com the living daylights out of that story.


so. whats my story about, you ask?

well it sounds terrible when i explain it (you need to read it) but anyway its about a chef who screws up his signature dish and gets a bad review by a renowned critic. then hes all sad and stuff but at the end it shows how hes like gotten over it and stuff.

and my connection to the human condition was something along the lines of when you make a mistake, just get back up and try again or something like that...or like letting go of your mistakes or coming to terms with your past...?

and my chef's name is Raoul (googling nice male names helps...andddd he's from phantom of the opera so i HAD to stick with it) and my critic's name is Nolan Mendoza (nolan came from a list on google on nice unusual names and mendoza was a popular surname somewhere in...south america?) and my interviewer's name is Mr. Brooks (something i came up with in the two hours on tuesday which i panicked)

so yes, i liked my story. and i like my characters' names. i hate having characters called like bob or freddie or names of people i know...unless its a RELLI nice name.

maybe ill post my story up....but if i do i'll do it later.

F is for Films

i changed my desktop!!


how awesome is that =D


recently i rewatched pocahontas!
sigh...i just love disney. honestly why are all the disney songs sooooooooo good?!?!?!
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE WOLF CRY TO THE BLUE CORN MOOOOOOOOON =]
and its based on a true story too and i totally wanna watch 'the new world' which is a film on pocahontas too and FUNFACT the voice actors for pocahontas and thomas (thomas being christian bale! =O) both acted in the new world. lol what a coinkidink.
anyway, i must finish this rewatching of disney classics! MUST!


i also saw the count of monte cristo. this was pretty fun to watch. its got guy pearce (from memento) and richard harris (professor dumbledore himself) and yeh. its about the story of a man who gets falsely imprisoned in a place for like wat...13 years? after that he escapes, becomes wealthy, makes himself a count and then seeks revenge on the people who sent him to prison.
its pretty awesum and funny and action-y and yeh, go watch it.


the land before time
haha i saw this at the library and was like =O I REMEMBER THIS.
so i decided to borrow it.
when i was watching it i just couldnt remember much at all from when i was young, and i remembered random bits that werent in it, maybe because there are like 13 sequels to it haha
but it was pretty slow moving although all the dinosaurs are so cute in the way they talk =D


rabbit hole for film excursion was okay i guess. it was soooooo sad, i cried so much during their fights and when she was talking to jason at the park...those bits were super sad!
but i dont think i actually like the film, its very slow moving and... i dunno, sort of empty. or like..you just dont know wat direction the film will take...wats going to happen next? why is she doing that? etc, etc.
the acting was really good though, yay for nicole kidman and aaron eckhart. =D

but hmm, its going to be tricky to write a <800 word creating piece based on this...very hard.


personality test...hilariouss

pinky and the brain prove why old cartoons are better

cupcakes a-z
how awesome are the apples, iphone, keyboard cat, moustaches, owls, quilts, (double) rainbows [especially awesome], sushi, underwear, wizard of oz [LOL], and xbox!!
there are some amazing people in this world.

grid iron middle school trick

amazing underwater river in mexico
yeh you got that right...underwater river...

magnetic thinking putty
OMGSH THIS IS AMAZING! I WANT.

E is for Ephemeral

who's feeling like school is going by really shortly?
i certainly am, getting quite bored of it already (as usual), and mr ribbans' comment about how only 72 people will make 4unit relli scared me. =/
hopefully i can make it...gosh wat if i dont...

but yeh, this boredom i guess is only temporary, or if you like...ephemeral (wat a cool word). soon we shall be swamped in assignments just like last year...and itll only get worse from there...*sigh* but oh well, WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS =D

you know wat i realised? after we watch the film at the excursion, we only have 4 days before we can hand in our creative writing piece... thats just great.


btw i dont know if i said this before (i dont think so) but someone stole our michel's patisserie coffee stamp...you know how you buy 7 coffees get 1 free, so we stamp the card when you buy coffees...man, someone stole it, i cant believe it! i have lost all faith in humanity! as if have the guts and morality to do that!
whoever did that should be insanely ashamed of themself!!


glory
this film is based on the true story of the first american-african regiment. it's pretty old but quite a good film. its got morgan freeman and denzel washington, back in their early acting careers and by golly, the storyline is pretty awesum.


1984
at long last i borrowed 1984 from the library!!
read a bit of it already...seems good =D
i love george orwell and his crazy novels...have you guys read animal farm? because thats good too...all about communism and stuff

but yeh this book (if you don't already know) is about this totalitarian world where a political party leaded by Big Brother has cameras and microphones everywhere so he can keep an eye on everyone. there are political parties too that enforce the law and make sure that wat you say, do or even think is what big brother wants.

and you guessed it, this is the book that inspired the reality tv show Big Brother, even getting the slogan BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU from the book. very interesting indeed.


domino day 2010

this is america

10 of the strangest unclaimed airline baggage items ever found

amazing fact generator

little break dancer's got some moves!

20 best red dot product design winners and yanko design

how to grow a rainbow rose naturally
omgsh i NEED TO GET ONE OF THESE ROSES.

I BELIEVE ANOTHER LIFELONG GOAL IS IN THE MAKING:
-make a rainbow rose naturally.

D is for Dreaming

this post is dedicated to movies (and a book).

tangled
oh gosh, how i love disney. and mandy moore. and zachary levi. this is SUCH a good film! its like quite different to the normal disney princess theme since i guess rapunzel isnt really a helpless damsel in distress and flynn isnt realli a knight in shining armour or a prince charming.

i really loved it since it had elements of humour that are relatable not just to little girly 6 year olds but even to adults and males. and there is quite a bit of focus on flynn, so its not like the whole thing is just a princess movie.

honestly, it is SUCH a good film. i'd maybe give it a 9/10.

i ABSOLUTELY LOVE the songs "i see the light" and the healing incantation. love mandy moore (ever since i saw her in 'because i told you so') and who knew zachary levi could sing so well!! so awesome.


the mist
okay this story is based on stephen king's book about a group of local community people who are trapped in a supermarket due to this mysterious mist that brings on blood-thirsty supernatural creatures.

this film is quite good: very intense and i guess i got quite into it. it's a really interesting movie because you can see how people's true personalities come out when something life-threatening occurs. and it's really interesting to note and think: what would i do in that situation?

i think what makes it so memorable is the ending. i can't say anything but yeh... stephen king's original ending was left open ended, but the directors wrote the films ending and stephen king described it as "the ending he wished he would have thought of". i think thats pretty cool. go watch it. i rate it maybe a 8.5/10


the prestige
another christopher nolan movie, with christian bale, hugh jackman, michael caine, scarlett johansson GOSH DOESNT IT SOUND AMAZING ALREADY!?

so if you need more convincing (than the cast and the director) to watching the film, its about two magicians who rival each other as they try to perform the ultimate trick. of course with this determination comes sabatoge, secrets and alot of troublesome business, with which each magician gets too deep into knowing the other's secrets.

i think this film is such a christopher nolan film, bringing the whole epic plotline, genius directing and of course the intense ending that comes with his previous movies, such as memento, batman begins, the dark knight, and of course: inception.

of course, its got that weird directing that christopher nolan does, jumping from scene to scene...so you might be like wait wat? but dw...all is explained (like always)

honestly, this film is so good...its one of those films that you need to rewatch shortly after first seeing it. and i love those sort of films.

the only thing wrong with it is...(maybe it was the version that i saw) it was really hard to listen to everyone say stuff. christian bales accent was thick, sluggish and really weird. michael caines accent is (as usual) painfully english and hugh jackman is sort of deep. maybe it was the version since i never really had problems with them before (except for christian bales deepened batman voice)

id probably give it like a 8.5 or 9/10


the making of: inception
so i recently saw the making of inception...and gosh i have so much more respect for christopher nolan now. all along i thought everything in the movie was CGI or really cool graphics (the hotel scene, gravity shifts at the bar, fortress exploding, the freight train, exploding paris, etc) but noooo christopher nolan was like "i want this to be as real as possible so we are going to make everything happen"

that meant that for the hotel scene: 3 of the hallways was built. one horizontal during normal gravity scenes, one vertical for zero-g simulation (they would drop arthur down by a harness and he had to fully stiffen up so it looked like he was fully relaxed) and one in this massive rotating cylinder with a camera attached to the floor so that even though the room was rotating, it didn't look like it was since the camera was rotating with it. get my gist?

and then in the gravity shifts at the bar: the room was actually built on this massive sort of see saw thing. yes they actually MADE THE ROOM TILT. so to do this they had to get all the extras to audition, and like a third of them couldnt physically do this because even though the room was tilted they had to act as if nothing was going on and keep their balance right. i found this absolutely amazing! like people were like "cant we just put up a green screen and do it in post-production or sumthing" and then they were like "but then obviously christopher nolan said no. he wanted the real thing."

they actually exploded the fortress itself, which isnt shocking seeing as they actually exploded gotham hospital in the dark knight. and then they built a smaller version of the fortress (which was still pretty big) and blew that up twice.

the freight train wasn't photoshopped, it was just this truck that they extended the length, added stuff to the sides and front, painted it and then ran it through the street, they only photoshopped the destruction of the road in (since they didnt want to destroy the actual road obviously)

the scene where paris explodes because ariadne realises she is dreaming was real! the put these huge pressurised air cans behind the stalls and everything and made them explode. CGI just enhanced it, did all the smaller explosions and the explosions of the road and the buildings.

i think mainly everything was quite real except limbo, where they went to a place with the buildings and had to create waves of their own to end halfway through the suburban area, but the crumbling buildings were painstakingly CGI.


we need to talk about kevin
i'll make this a quickie. once again, the storyline: Eva Katchadourian is writing letters to her separated husband about their son Kevin, who killed seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and his English teacher. Eva tells her husband about all the things he was unable to see or realise about his son: his cruelty, cunningness and the loving act he would put on for his dad, and how he always sided Kevin rather than Eva, who would always be able to see right through Kevin's acts.

as i said before, this book is relli hard to get into. the beginning is quite...REALLY boring with how educated Eva writes and all the big words she uses. Yet once it started to talk about Kevin and everything that went on in his childhood, it became super interesting.

and the ending is just...quite shocking and terrifying. i got so into it i actually didnt want to believe the ending of the second last letter in the book. i just was in pure shock...

i highly recommend reading this book. while you go in and out of excitement and boredom, the end result is quite...intriguing and very very deep.


well, this has been an insanely long post but yes. very interesting stuff i have seen/read and i highly recommend you to see/read them too!