burnburn's Xanga

MetalGearSolid-ColdBlooded

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:07:17 GMT

While going through the usual gaming vids on www.gametrailers.com I found a pretty cool fan film:

Metal Gear Solid: Cold Blooded from TheDuoGroup on Vimeo.

Though, I think that only fans would really understand the full feeling of the short. Done pretty well nevertheless.

Tragic Tales

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:47:13 GMT

Two lovers separated by oceans apart.
They finally embrace and hold each other...
but then a month passes, the other has to leave.
Once again, they are separated by oceans apart.

I miss my hunni.

I hope she returns to my arms soon. I count each day that passes by.

Missing for a Month

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:05:45 GMT

If anyone didn't realise, I've been missing for a month.
No, I was not kidnapped or was on flight Oceanic 815....

I have been back in Sydney!

Not many knew I came back. Actually, only 3 friends knew the exact day I was coming back home. Everyone else, I'd be telling that I'd be back in a few months.... that I had to make a short film in HK first.
Then walla, a month ago, I hoped on a plane, took a taxi and scared the buddha out of my grandma when I rang the doorbell and spoke in a menacing tone: "Open the door!"

I surprised my Mother as well as my girl.

Nothing much has really happened since the month I've came home.
I've gotten my old job back at Council, which is great, since I love the flexibility they give me there. They know that being a filmmaker is my fulltime job. I've also gotten a new car, at a price which is good, considering the brand and amount it has driven.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten about my films either. I've been meeting up with Charlie, and working on pre-production of our short films. Mine as about eternal love, titled, Eighteenth Emotion at the moment. Whereas his short is entitled, Sixty third time, which is about a break up.

Ah.... and to make things more exciting, the Telstra Bigpond ClickHere has organised a competition to conincide with the Sydney Film Festival. Film makers are required to shoot a 1 minute short film entirely on mobile phones, but able to edit on a computer. The competition's theme is: "My Town".

Check out two of my films on their website so far:

"Scrab'd"

"Whatever you want to call it".

Hopefully one of them will be picked as the 6 short listed films. And fingers crossed, I can get people to vote for me as audience favourite, or even better, the Judge's Award, which is a trip to the Toronto Film Festival!

Kung Fu Flunk

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:58:27 GMT

With a mixture of great actors and novices, this film was a bit over the place. The initial concept of the film wasn't bad, an abandoned child is taken into a martial arts school whom later gets discovered and exploited to be a basketball player. The reason that a basketball team would take up such a person isn't too bad either.

But then that's it. The rest of the film falls downhill from then on. With not much rivalry or things at stake for our protagonist, Fong Sai Git, played by Jay Chou, his character development from start to finish remained the same. They barely showed him wooing his love interest either. They could've developed his character much much more, as I thought his role was quite charming. A naive yet cocky guy that knows martial arts. The director could've done so much more with it.

The team mates were written to be much deep characters, each with their own flaws in life and haunted from their past. But this too wasn't shown well either. You would also expect them to give Jay a hard time for being the new guy. They sort of did in the first scene, then suddenly, he's part of the group.

The villains of the film are very one dimensional also. There wasn't a need to develop them, but the way they acted made the film loss it's credibility. As this film at times wants to be serious and other times to be slap stick fudge.

The special effects of the film wasn't too bad for a Hong Kong film. Since rendering a basketball isn't too hard, shots from downtown looked believable.

Overall, this film just felt all over the place. It seemed the director was trying too hard to put everything into the film and lost it's main goal, to tell a story about a basketball player searching for his parents. The final conclusion of the film also seemed to be too far fetched and probably added in so that they can include certain actors into the film.

This film didn't have to be Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu level. But what it could've had was some heart... which is it's main flaw.

1/5

Writing in 3rd Person

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:07:32 GMT

Just wanted to write myself an artist profile on www.alivenotdead.com. An online community targeted at networking artists in the creative field.

Oh, and btw, I'm in Hong Kong now. No more New York for a while.

-----

Unlike many directors, Bernard did not grow up with a Super 8mm in the basement and filming cheesy C-grade horror flicks at the backyard with his younger brothers. Instead, he grew up holding inanimate objects and pretend to be in fantasy worlds in the living room as his parents thought he had Attention Deficit.

But once during the running of the Original Star Wars trilogy on TV in celebration of the 20th Anniversary, this young Chinese boy realized that he wanted to make movies.

It was not until high school that he got a taste of what acting would be in drama class. And it was not until he chose videography as his Drama major that he wrote and filmed his first short. Shooting in miniDV and editing on two SuperVHS decks... linear editing! The film was about a homeless man and the tragic loss of his best friend.

Time went by and Bernard lay his dreams of becoming a filmmaker to pursue a more stable career in computing. Though, once he finished his Computer Science degree and told himself he didn't want to see numbers and parameters for a job, he opted to enroll at the Sydney College of the Arts with their Masters of Film and Digital Image course. After graduation, he worked at several Sydney production companies as editor or technical analyst.

Still lacking the taste of film creativeness, it was not until a chance encounter with Hong Kong director, Ronny Yu, that he was pushed once again into the dreams he so thought of walking since that night in his parent's room, seeing Luke Skywalker with his trusty saber.

He enrolled himself into the New York Film Academy to spruce up his writing. Currently, he's traveling the world, writing and by the end of 2008, he will have several self written and directed short films to showcase his talents.

-----

Damn, I wrote quite a bit...

Final day in New York...

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:01:17 GMT

And what do I do?
Sit at NYFA burning DVDs... hahaha.

And being annoyed by my land lady/housemate about opening a mailbox.
She's at work and expecting a cheque to come in the mail. She asked me to check the mail so that she can come back to cash the cheque and pay me back my deposit tonight before I leave.

I called her and told her that I tried every single key that's in the set and only one would fit. But it wouldn't turn. She tells me that even a 3yrold can open it.... right... Later, a mum and child comes into the building, I asked them if they can turn the key. As it might just be my bad luck that's unable to open it, but she too couldn't turn that mailbox from hell.

I call her again, and explain I can't open it... she complains a bit, then drops out right after she tells me that her battery is running low. The call drops and I'm not able to call her back, so I SMS her and Email her that I can't open it.

An hour later, she writes this:

"I asked you to do me a simple favor. That's the easiest box to open. It takes less than a minute. All mail boxes are easy to open. I don't know which key you're using. You should not ask the neighbors to open my box. I asked you in trust, just to check before leaving home --so I know how to schedule my time. I told you it was urgent to get to the bank today so I can settle with you tonight. You haven't even bothered to call me back. I've been calling and mesging you numerous times. Maybe you turned off your phone. I'm wondering what you were doing in the apt all morning til way after 1pm??? You told me you were going out for lunch near 12pm. You could easily have called me to tell me you were having problems with the box instead of emailing me. I told you to take the 3 keys on the bunch. I've been msging you to leave the keys home and can't get thru to you. Did you lv the keys home? I don't usually bring my laptop with me, but just by chance I brought it today to do some work and just saw this msg 2.52PM now.. I thought I could trust you to do this little favor.

So there's no need for me to leave my work and rush to Manhattan"

She's as dumb as this guy

Right... my phone's been on all day and I have not received her calls or SMS's.
And what the hell does this have to do with TRUST?!
Why am I the one running around trying to help her get her money to pay my deposit back when she should've organised this a long time ago. She knows I'm leaving New York tomorrow since a month ago.

Sheriously....

Yes, I am Ironman

Wed, 07 May 2008 01:26:50 GMT

A bit late of a review for the most costly produced 2008 Summer blockbuster, but at least it didn’t disappoint. So let’s get the most important question, is it good? Yes. Yes it does. It’s not on the realistic level of Batman Begins so I would put it in between Spiderman and Fantastic Four. I placed it there because although the film deals with realistic issues of war and terrorism, it also has a lot of gags and jokes in the film. (I especially thought the visual metaphor of fisting to be very very cheeky)

The film would most closely resemble Spiderman 1. As the film starts off pretty quickly with our hero, Tony Stark, in a situation that grants his power. In this case, he is mortally injured and must create a device which sustains his life… evolving into the Ironman suit.

Audience is then taken on a journey of Stark learning his abilities and using it for good. In the end, using it to defeat an adversary. Though, I am yet to see a superhero film with an actual hard villian to defeat. When are we going to see a Sephiroth?

The casting was well chosen with Robert Downey Jr. fitting the part of a wise cracking jerk billionaire turned physical philanthropist truthfully. The whole film was essentially on his shoulders. I felt that the other actors didn’t do too bad, but Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard’s characters needed much more development. I felt that they only had dialogue to give RDJ something to work with.

Terrence Howard actually looked like he was going to be in tears in every scene of his. Maybe he was sick? Oh, and wait for extra footage after the entire credits, “That’s so gangsta!” was the response of this dude that commented throughout the whole film. And for Jeff Bridges? Well, as I said, I’m yet to see a villain that is deep. Maybe The Prince of Clowns will fulfill that missing narrative in The Dark Knight.

I was a bit confused with two locations in the film. For someone that has no idea how the Airforce works, I did not know where the air traffic monitoring scene was set in. Also, a scene where Pepper Pott had to access computer files, it wasn’t clear who’s office she went to. That scene was meant to be suspenseful, but after seeing the screensaver of a hot rod, I was thinking how is it scary to go to Tony Stark’s office?

The action in the film was top notch. Ironman dodging F22 Raptors and fighting militias were cool, but not as on the seat action as Superman Returns were (saving a falling plane is just crazy.. just Super). The CGI in Ironman was flawless. I guess that’s the advantage of modeling inorganic objects.

Overall, the film was a good watch and I would say is just under Batman Begins and Spiderman. It would’ve surpassed those films if the writers chose to put Tony Stark in harder situations and have more to lose than just his family’s honor. But I guess Ironman is just too smart to get into sticky situations. As Christopher Nolan, director of Batman Begins said, “The turning point for Bruce is when he realises that he’s not immortal, that even as Batman, he will still fail. So we made him fall off a building in flames.”

4/5

Jacky and Eason

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:28:08 GMT

Harold and Kumar Escapes from Randomness

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:41:38 GMT

When I watched the first Harold and Kumar, I thought the film was hilarious. Two Asian dudes that goes on a crazy adventure just to get themselves some burgers. Memorable scenes were, Freakshow, Bobby Lee as the student, EEXXXTRRREEEEMMME, the Black guy in jail scenes and beating the Bag of Weed wife.

Unlike the first film, I don't think there were such memorable or funny scenes. But does that make the sequel bad? No. Why? Because this time, we have a plot! The quest is not just one linear goal now. The first film had Harold believing in himself and not doing other people's work, whereas Kumar had accepted that he is good at medicine. This second time around, their emotional goal is to grow up and find love.

Having hilarious flashbacks, EMO HAROLD, the writers "plant the seeds" for what happens later on in the film. And it works effectively. It gives the film a full circle appeal and much more touching than the first film. Neil Patrick Harris cameos in this film again, but I don't think his scenes were that funny. Not as funny as how he humps Harold's driver's seat in the first film.

Again, this film really is just a series of gags and racial commentary from start to finish and this time with more boobage. The love story is the icing on the cake which made me enjoy this film more than the first. Not all the scenes were good though, I didn't really find the George Bush scene that funny, but I guess it was written as a device to get keep the story going.

So the writers and directors, Hurwitz and Schlossberg, have definitely matured form the first film. At least in their writing, mimicking the Apatow group, ie, 40 yr old virgin, Superbad and Knocked Up, has given the characters more depth instead of just randomness.

This film, I would say, has grown from Family Guy to South Park quality. Harold and Kumar are will probably be memorable characters in film history. Wether or not they will make a third movie remains to be seen. The ending closes up nicely, but seeing that they made over $14Mill in their first weekend might say otherwise...

3.5/5

Clive Owen or Ironman

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:21:59 GMT

Tonight, I had the chance to either go to the Apple Soho store presenting Clive Owen or to an Advance screening of Ironman at the Regal Stadium on 42nd St. Both free events and both most likely will draw a crowd.

What did I choose?

Seeing a good actor live in person than some CGI dude flying around of course. In fact, I'd prefer to go to this Clive Owen session alone than watch a movie alone.

Answering questions that Director, Marry Harron, whom directed American Psycho, the film that would've brought Christian Bale to a wider audience before Batman Begins. She asked him questions from his theatre days to getting nominated and Closer. As well as his new films. But most of the interview session was about his love of acting and how even though he started in theatre, Film is still the medium he enjoys most because of the collaboration with many many talented people to do one project.

He also said he was very close to the film Closer, because he was there from day one, six years ago when it first opened to public as a stage play. Though, he acted as Jude Law's character.

Then it was audience's turn to ask him questions. This one is when a woman told him that she loved him in Extra in a comic role. And that if he finds himself choosing action films. He replied that he doesn't see himself as an action star, though, Sideways was a fun action shooter. But mostly, it depends on a good script and good dialogue.

Clive stands after the QnA session as if to pose for the public. Overall, he's a very talkative person and answered every question Mary and the public asked fully.

Questions he answered were who he wanted to work with, he said anyone that has a good vision and script. That he doesn't know much about Sin City 2. And that he's a focused actor at the moment and won't think of Directing or writing yet, unless something really interests him. I should've asked a question, like would he do more BMW films with the new car lineups or if he'd clad a leather outfit too like Christian or Will.

I hope he gets his deserved Oscar. From stage to tv to films, he's a real actor that wants to make good films and enjoy acting, instead of doing it for fame or fortune. Hopefully I'll get to work with him one day. He's worked with Cate Blanchette and Naomi Watts now. Time to work with an Aussie Director?