b r a v e c r e a t u r e s

OK, so name me a world leader with a partner that you could describe as hot.

Laura Bush? Too Stepford.

Cherie Blair? Too Lex Luthor

Janette Howard? Um…who?

Camilla Parker Bowles? Oh HELL no!!

Rosalynn Carter, Barbara Bush, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton? Sweet, but simple; Crazy as a loon, Put the bottle down Betty, that red dress is getting TIRED, Hilary is a maybe, but then she is a big of a bloke and so gets my motor running a little.

Kayoko Miyamoto is very pretty, but she divorced Koizumi so I don't think she counts. And Dianna is dead so also out of the running.

Trust not only the faggots but the GERMAN faggots to come up with a candidate for first hot spouse of world leader.

Second term mayor of Berlin, Klaus "Wowie" Wowereit, appears to being groomed (eh hum, like he needs it) to run against Angela Mirkin Merkel for the position of Chancellor of Germany. And his boyfriend, Jorn Kubicki? TOTALLY HOT!! In a very German, whose your daddy kind-o-way.

Of course the international media is totally focusing on him (Klaus') being a flaming Mo. Paraphrasing the press its been all "Like Oh my GOD, he TOTALLY hugged his partner when he won his second term". What do you expect? A firm, manly handshake? If it was any other leader, if they DIDN'T hug their partner it would have been a big deal.

Double standards people.

All of this is of course exacerbated by him causing a storm among more traditional voters last year by endorsing a sex-fetish fair in the capital featuring sado-masochism, bondage and other deviant pursuits. Its GERMANY for gods sake, they pretty much invented "deviant pursuits". Its got to just be in the national interes, hasn't it?

Personally I am having almost endlessly happy day dreams of George Bush sitting down at the G8 with Wowie, no neck rubs there I suspect.

I have no idea about his politics, and since I don't vote in Germany my opinion doesn't matter†, but I am all for him.

Meanwhile in other international-leaders-who-could-be-gay news - the Exclusive Brethren, the true love of conspiracy theorists world wide, have "apparently" been trying to frame the kind-of-hot-herself Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clarkes, husband Peter Davis, for being gay.

You would think the right wing nut job god botherers christian lobbyist could come up with a better evil plan legitimate strategy to take over the world influence politics. Really people - some CREATIVITY please, I mean where have all the truly evil masterminds gone?

Its little wonder that I cant I get fricken sharks with fricken lasers in their heads if the demand for them is so low.

†Shocking, I know

This week marked the real end of the school year for me, with the screening of the graduating films at Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) at Federation Square in Melbourne. It was a very celebratory night for just about everyone there with speeches, awards, screenings of about 1/4 of the graduating films and a hoochy media party afterwards.

My Directors, Kyle and Tonnette, and I did pretty well with out two films, Serenade and Wally, being nominated for five awards (including best film and best producer) and winning three, Best Cinematography, Best Third Year Director and Best Visual Effects. For only just being out of the gate, I am pretty jazzed to already have some recognition for the films we all worked so hard on this year.

The next steps for the films will be to enter them into festivals including Cannes, Berlin and Oberhausen to name a few. The best thing for us now would be to win an international level festival,and that includes Sydney and Melbourne. The competition is stiff, but the films are good so we will try and see where we get to.

I was very lucky this year with both Kyle and Tonnette. They are both not only talented, but professional, easy to work with and good people. Sometimes you don’t get out of the film making process with friendships, but I think we did ok.

There are three other people who made this year possible for me, Shirley, Marie and James. They all believed in me in their own ways and I hope their faith has been rewarded.

So now its on to 2006, the VCA Masters program and the next step in my film career.  

Its Saturday night, its late and I have been up getting some more of my site up and working, but before I head to bed I thought I would put down my impressions of this weeks movie - Flight Plan with Jodie Foster. The so try goes that after the accidental death of her husband in Berlin, Klye (Jodie Foster), an aircraft engineer, is returning to New York with her 6 year old daughter, Julia (Marlene Lawston).

Three hours into the flight, Julia disappears and Kyle desperately tries to find her while facing increasing skepticism from the crew and the on board air marshall, Carson (Peter Sarsgaard). No one remembers seeing the little girl and she cannot be found, then when word reaches the aircraft from Berlin that both Kyle husband and Julia had been killed in the same accident it appears that Kyle is delusional. Frightened and determined, she uses her knowledge of the aircraft she helped design to carry out a frantic and disrupting search for her daughter.

 I quite enjoyed this movie. I found it suspenseful and I felt that Kyle’s fear, both for her daughter and the her own sanity, were really quite moving. Jodie Fosters performance was good without being great, a little monotonous given the extremes the character was going through.

Like a lot of hollywood features at the moment its well paced, well crafted and extremely high in production values, without necessarily being a fantastic story, so its enjoyable without being life altering. I suspect this is a result of having a budget so big, they need to reach an enormous audience, and its hard to create something extremely moving for a large number of people. Its an exciting story with with suspense of it all being added to by Kyle admitting that she has “seen” her husband since his death. This makes the existence of Julia all the more doubtful, adding to the suspense.

Interestingly enough, my movie partner (hi Richard) commented that the feel of the movie was actually enhanced by seeing it in cinema seating, giving us as audience members a greater feeling that I was actually there (cinema seating being a little like aircraft seating).

All up it was a pretty good film for an easy Saturday night, but don’t feel you have to rush to see in on the big screen.