Take this Rock N’ Roll refugee… Oooo, Babe, set me free.

Part A exams are done. Watched Donnie Darko.

Today’s the final day of school. Then I’ve got exams, and then I’m free to do whatever I want. That includes hanging out with friends, write the stories I always wanted to write for hours on end, concentration on developing my survival equipment collection. My main problem is that a number of required things are also at Bunker V. A machete, a hatchet. I’ll also need one of those small portable shovels.

I guess I could make do with this metal pipe I’ve got, and this baseball bat… actually, I’ve got better stuff: thick wooden sticks that work just as nicely as bats, except not so streamlined… and faster.

Morning: Wrote my bit on the G-Wall. That’s “Graduation Wall” to you.

First Period: Nothing to do, we watched “The Wizard of Oz.”

I managed to keep my voice down as I hummed and sang The Dark Side of the Mood with it.

Lost sync half-way through when my teacher caught me stealing Timbits. Actually, not really.

Second Period: Watched Slumdog Millionare.

Lunch: Ate lunch.

Third Period: I’ll be honest. I was one of the only ones there. There were two others, and then the teacher arrived and gave us “hint-hints” about “going to play baseball”

In other words, we got to skip. Hilarious.

After School: I hanged out with my friends, tried rum for the first time. Interesting taste, I gotta say. Not as carbonated as I thought. Restaurant in West Edmonton Mall, called “Jungle Jim’s.”

Good restaurant.

Afterward, went home. “J” and I talked while on the bus.

Review: Donnie Darko

About time I got to watching this film eh?

If anything, I’m actually quite a fan of psychological thrillers with themes of insanity thrown in. However, it really depends on the story itself.

I’m generally not a fan of “horror.”

This movie was relatively difficult at-first to watch. I heard about Frank, and I was utterly scared of his first appearance. To solve that, I skipped into random portions to try to find him, and then heard him for the first time when he said “What are you doing in that stupid man suit?”

After that, I went back and watched it through.

To those who are afraid of a shocker, don’t worry. There really isn’t a major shock-type thing that results in gore and shit. There are points that make you flinch elsewhere, where you don’t expect it.

I rather liked it that way. The movie itself was a sheer mind-fuck.

What I ultimately didn’t like was that while a good number of parts all slipped together like a puzzle, there were things that didn’t fit in.

Then again, twenty-eight days was what was spent making the movie, along with a budget of 4.5 million.

4.5 million is just a million-and-a-half more than the average Canadian Film budget.

And yet, this movie has done better in terms of awesomeness and originality as most cookie-cutter stories that blow over a hundred million.

Seriously. Fail on the moviemaker’s part for whoever spends that tenth-of-a-billion.

Want a plot? It’s a mind-fuck, and it’s got strange ideas.

Oh yeah. It’s got interesting characters that managed to have far better character development than, say, a standard hundred-million-budget cookie-cutter pile of fail.

Far better. They were able t0 make characters who were lovable, characters who could be understood, and characters that you could legitimately wish to send a fist into their skull and tell them to “shut up about _____.”

Good movie. Watch it.

-HolyJunkie.

Review: Slumdog Millionare

Heard about it only because it won “Best picture.” After watching it, I could tell that it was a good movie, and there was incredible soul put into it.

That being said, I really don’t see what makes it so outstanding that it can get such an extreme title such as “best picture.”

Then again, maybe I should watch the other movies that SDM went up against at the time.

To me, Slumdog Millionare just seemed a lot like what I thought of The Dark Knight: An ultimately semi-over-hyped movie with irredeemably good performance and stuff.

Actually, it’s just personal taste. I’ll just get past the TL;DR tripe here and get to the point.

Yes, it’s good. Brilliant, actually. Can’t judge on how it earns the “Best Picture” thing until I’ve seen Benjamin Button, or whatever other movies it went up against.

To those who want to know the plot, here it is: A kid born in the slums has basically what can be decided as a shitty, but decent life, and then he somehow gets on the television show “Who Wants to be a Millionare?”

Of course, this is a version in India, so no Meredith. Instead, it’s this guy who has what has to be the most bad-ass hairdo and beard I’ve ever seen.

… No really.

Anyway, this kid just so happens to know the answers. He’s interrogated to figure out how the kid knew.

Thing is: the kid has photographic memory, and apparently remembers to the finest detail his entire life story.

Well, I consider it photographic, because it shows incredibly detailed flashbacks.

I gotta say, though, I expected it to be a relatively repetitive “see question, get asked how he knew, flashback with answer in it, show kid answering question correctly.”

I was wrong, actually. It was put together in an original way that threw me off from cookie-cutter crap. I don’t see this film as a cookie-cutter story. Its strongest point, to me, is the sheer originality of depicting the slums, criminal regimes, and general shit in India. While it certainly made India look like a relatively dirty place (unecessarily emphasized by what has to be awesome lighting and different, more unnecessary filters.)

The movie was actually amazing beyond most measures. My main problem with it was the constant use of the canted angle. I knew something was horribly wrong once it all started, and there was the fade-in text with the question of “How did Jamil know the answers.”

I knew there was something bad that was going to happen… and lots of it… by that point. Canted angles are to imply that there’s something bad going to happen. I already knew by the first flashback.

My second point was that some camera placements should have had less stuff placed so close to the camera that the blurriness cuts out a vast portion of the rest of the camera.

While it tells a story well, some scenes and cuts left me going “What the Eff was the cameraman doing?”

While it makes for original shots… Actually, I shouldn’t complain about some crappy camera angles. Twilight had the worst camerawork I have ever seen in a movie.

Camerawork in Slumdog Millionare: It was good. Great, even. I don’t see it as so-called “Amazing” like the rest of the movie really should be.

I can’t think of any further complaints, to be honest.

However, I recommend watching the credits. There’s a nice reference to Bollywood film, and I rather like the musical portions in Bollywood… usually, anyway.

Worth watching. Not the best film I’ve seen, but that’s Wall-E talking. There are some parts that grossed me out, and were supposed to. There were other parts that just made me grin and chuckle with my lips hidden by a hand.

Very much so.

-HolyJunkie.