thompsound blog: Busy...

...busy, busy.

'twas a weekend of film watching.

I've seen a few films at the Darling Harbour IMAX (billed as the largest screen in the world), and I've gotta say, it's a little hit and miss to be honest.

Beowulf 3D (thumbs down), Dark Knight (big thumbs up for the IMAX sections), Inception (thumbs down for the opening sequence, too shaky to make any sense of), and Hubble 3D (meh)

The screen is shockingly big (I know, that's the whole point) - but their 3D system is absolutely atrocious. for some reason (perhaps the massive screen that encompasses your entire periphery, mixed in with a circular polarized system)

there's a whole lot of ghosting, and it can get very distracting. The glasses are cheap warped plastic deals, that are designed to sit against your forehead. it's a little underwhelming, especially as their regular IMAX presentations are so good.

as for the Hubble film - it's pretty standard IMAX fare, and the intercutting of "real" footage, with up-rezzed video that was shot by the astronauts in space, was a nice touch.

So much of it was animated (while pretending to be actual hubble footage) that I was a little thrown... of course, they'd then cut to "the" shot (camera attached to the payload bay window) and i was completely able to forgive all the short comings. WOW.

other things I got up to this weekend

- I voted (*which, as an interstate voter was an interesting exercise in waiting...)

- I tried on some hiking boots (for the trip in december)

- I also tried on some "five fingers" "shoes" (if you're curious, google them) - discovering that I have toes of an odd length...

- I took a bunch of photos, and walked around a fair bit in the city

- I caught a bus and a train (which is exactly 200% more public transport than I've caught in the last 5 years)

- I bought a few more douglas adams books (the Dirk Gently series, which I've somehow never managed to read)

- I saw SALT; which is completely preposterous, yet strangely satisfying as a blockbusting action flick.

- I printed out a few photos from the last few weeks (cheap printing at harvey norman, just remember to format your USB stick before filling it with the images you ACTUALLY want to print - otherwise it'll try to load ALL of your photos from when you swapped over from a PC to a mac)

- I watched a few DVDs - that michael moore "doco" on capitalism (what a crappy film maker, certainly slipped since the 9/11 film), Baraka; plus a retrospective doco on the making of the groundbreaking 1992 film, Team America World Police, and about 10 episodes of Scrubs season 3.

- (this past week) I watched Breaker Morant, Notting Hill, Season 2 of Scrubs, and a film from the 50s? called Harvey, about a guy who sees a 6ft rabbit.

- I did the laundry (which sadly at the moment, means dropping it off at a laundromat)

- I read a script, for what could end up being my next project.

- I typed out a bunch of words, and added a few photos to this blog.

so, yup - pretty busy.

Photo time - then bed so I can wake up and do it all again.

week 3 (or 8, depending on your point of view) coming up.

Ian

nice couple walking along darling harbour

what happens when I TRY to get a nice flare

As opposed to the shot at the head of this post, which was completely accidental (you know, when you're walking down the street, and you casually shoot off a few frames from the hip, hoping that it might be an interesting shot - then you're rewarded with absolute magic - well that is how I got the photo at the beginning of this post, and since it was early on in my travels, it put me in a super-good mood for the rest of the day)