Welcome CAE students

A big hello to any of my fellow CAE Professional Writing & Editing students who may be visiting this site for the first time.

Take a look around the site - if you like what you see, you can subscribe to receive an email whenever I update my blog by clicking here, or by clicking on the Receive Posts Via Email link on the sidebar.

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Links to some of my published articles can be found here.

Check out some of my old posts via the Archives section on the sidebar. Or just browse through the Categories.

And don’t forget to leave a comment if you get the chance.

Photo credit: Macwagen

Wakes & the tramp

Do you reckon Wakes is any good on the trampoline?

The people at the Lakes Entrance mini-golf centre were amazed at her skills on the mat.

(I’d already stitched her up at mini-golf so didn’t want to show her up on the tramp as well. Not.)

Now she’s pestering me to find a trampoline centre in Melbourne

Nothing on at the movies?

Is it just me, or is there a dearth of decent movies showing at the moment?

Wakes & I religiously watch The Movie Show each week - don’t think they’ve featured a single film that either of us has wanted to see for the past month.

Even the usually reliable Cinema Nova playlist failed to inspire.

Of the ones currently doing the rounds, we’ve seen:

• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
• The Black Balloon
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will be Blood
• Juno

Any suggestions?

Anyone know anything Street Kings, opening this week in Melbourne?

The Kite Runner?

(Photo credit: Jessica )

Oh no, you’re not

Pretty funny banner spotted in Melbourne this morning.

(It’s promoting a new movie but had a few people [ahem] fooled for a while)

Blogging for One Year

Believe it or not, today is the one year anniversary of my first blog post. My, how time flies.

It’s been a year full of new experiences and (In my mind at least) a worthwhile effort all round.

Some interesting stats:

• 193 posts (including this one)
• 19,218 page views
• Best Day Ever: 149 page views (the day Clinton Grybas died and people googled to find out more about it and came across my post that mentioned he had quite a large bald spot - I hope the two weren’t related)
• Most popular posts:
  • Amazing tiger photos 1915 views
    
  • My top 5 moments as a sporting spectator 1840 views
    
  • Top 5 comedy movie lines 1325 views
• 530 comments - special thanks to Col, Scott, roaf, Linnet, Karen & Brett for visiting often and contributing to the banter.
• [Edit] Oh yeah, and a special mention to resident heckler Skinful. Of all the people to forget to thank in my original post!

Thanks again to all my readers. Here’s to another 365 days of getting things written.

Photo credit: SantiMB

Short Story - Stranded

Photo credit: LovelyV

One of my subjects this year is Short Story Online.

I was a bit nervous about entering the big, scary world of fiction writing - I reckon the last time I wrote any pure fiction was back in High School. (Obviously this excludes tall stories, sledging of mates, creative accounting and Bledisloe tour profiles).

Anyway, this story was the first exercise we had to submit for assessment this year. We had to write about a situation where three people were thrown together in some way. We had to invent a crisis and show how it affects the characters. Then two of the characters have to get away from the other one, and we had to write about what they do next and how they see the third character. All in 800 words.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think.

Stranded

Movie Review - The Black Balloon

Thomas Mollison (Rhys Wakefield) is a sensitive adolescent, constantly changing schools as his regular Army father Simon (Erik Thompson) moves from base to base. Making life especially difficult for the Mollisons is Thomas’ autistic brother, Charlie, brilliantly played by Luke Ford. Charlie is a handful at the best of times, demanding constant attention and unable to communicate except via grunting and rudimentary signing.

Toni Collette is great (yet again) as the dynamic mother, Maggie Mollison. She displays endless love and patience for Charlie, and an amazing amount of energy, despite being heavily pregnant with a third child. Maggie and Simon are philosophical as to their ‘burden’ - ‘your mother thinks we got Charlie because we’re strong enough to cope’ - however Thomas struggles to deal with the attention that Charlie demands and receives from all in the family.

I enjoyed the scenes of Thomas’ life at his new school - those tight Warrick Capper uniform shorts brought back some embarrassing memories as did the bathers that Thomas is loaned on his first day at the pool. Despite being significantly less cool than the other boys at his school, and having his credibility ruined by having a ’spazzo’ for a brother, Thomas manages to woo the lovely Jackie Masters (Gemma Ward), who provides a nice counterpoint to the insensitive bullying of Thomas’ other classmates.

Director/writer Elissa Down draws on her own personal experiences (she has two autistic brothers), and manages to perfectly capture the humour, love, despair, and challenges of living with an autistic person. There were a couple of particularly powerful scenes - the aftermath of Charles being left on his own; and Thomas’ disastrous 16th birthday party, to name a few - and a few very funny scenes.

The Black Balloon scores 4 stars and some big thumbs up for all of the cast.

Movie Review - Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

The title of the movie is taken from an Irish toast, ‘May you have food and raiment, a soft pillow for your head; may you be 40 years in heaven, before the devil knows you’re dead.’

Directed by 83 year old master, Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon), ‘Devil’ is a gripping and moving cinema experience. Two brothers, Andy and Hank Hanson, need money, and fast. The manipulative Andy comes up with a plan for Hank to rob the jewellery store owned by their elderly parents, however the devil is in the detail, and things quickly go wrong, with disastrous consequences.

Lumet makes great use of chronological jumps backwards and forwards in time, and shows the same scenes from various characters’ points of view, to slowly provide the audience with more and more information about the story. Sort of like Memento, but a bit easier to follow.

The cast are brilliant - Philip Seymour Hoffman seems a strange choice as the bitter and twisted Andy, though he pulls it off well (and gets to enjoy one of his rare on-screen pants-off moments - not a pretty sight); Ethan Hawke is perfect as the bumbling and downtrodden Hank; Marisa Tomei provides a nice balance as Andy’s unsatisfied wife Gina (her pants-off moments make much better viewing); and Albert Finney is convincing as Charles Hanson, the patriarch of the family. The stars feed off each other expertly, and bring newcomer Kelly Masterton’s excellent script to life.

Only a couple of criticisms: I thought a couple of Hoffman’s scenes were a bit overplayed, and the ending was a little unsatisfying, but overall, ‘Devil’ was an entertaining film and earns 4 stars.

The movie was also memorable for the complete stranger who sat next to me and peppered me with movie questions and commentary before and after the film. A strange dude indeed. Wakes thought he had a thing for me. Methinks chemicals played some role in his strangeness…

S.O.Y. Sauce?

Spotted at the Blue Train Cafe, Southbank:

Please, Please, PLEASE Do not FEED ‘The Birds’ Or they will S.O.Y.

(Some grouse punctuation in there, too.)

How many 5 year olds could you take in a fight?

Check out this classic quiz.

I don’t know if I should be proud or embarrassed that I could take 26 of the little buggers.

Wakes could take down 15 if she had to.

In taking the quiz, I would recommend keeping in mind that scene from the movie, Hostel, where a group of marauding kids attack and murder the baddies at the end.