It has come, October 22nd, 2pm, and gone. And the examiners, they have feasted intellectually, and they have left with a pleasant taste in their mouths, thankfully. I am grateful that my dues have been paid, and that, for now, there is time for a trip to Tassie.



Dinner with each supervisor has been a relaxed affair. I have never laughed so much with them in the hourly span of our fortnightly meetings - much less look them in the eye and feel, oddly, this agreeable sense of friendliness four hours straight. But the one nagging thought I had was, if I'd failed, would everything have changed? The world hasn't changed, this I know. But how was this new wisdom suddenly acquired?

Thanks, y'all, for the well-wishes. And thanks again, s, for the green tea pantyliners - they oozed happy thoughts and good karma even as they made their way over.

Memes. The perfect pastime for de-stressing online. Offline, that would be squeezing pimples. Meh. I need a life, but it's being put on hold at the moment. But! What fun! Consider yourself tagged if you want to play.

[01] — Look up TEN of your favorite movies on IMDB.
[02] — Click the "trivia" link in the sidebar.
[03] — Post a fun and random bit of trivia from each film.
[04] — Tag five people everyone!

Little Miss Sunshine
Steve Carell, at the time he was cast for Little Miss Sunshine (2006), was a relative unknown in Hollywood. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, the producers of the film worried that he wasn't a big enough star and didn't have much acting experience. However, between the time the film was shot in the summer of 2005 and its release in the summer of 2006, Carell became a huge success as the star of the high-grossing film The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) in August 2005 and the leading character of the popular NBC Emmy-winning television series "The Office" (2005), which premiered in March 2005 and for which Carell won a Golden Globe in 2006 for best lead actor in a comedy television series. In the span of just one year, Carell had become such a star that the producers had gone from protesting his casting to tapping him to do prominent promotion for the film.

Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit for the part of Olive.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
The Brecht poem that Wiesler reads is called "Erinnerung an die Marie A.".

(That bit of trivia was lovely, but rather removed from my usual notion of fun. So here's my favourite line in the show.
Buchverkäufer: 29.80. Would you like it gift wrapped?
Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: No. It's for me. )

The Nightmare before Christmas
Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.

Saving Face
Director Cameo: The woman eating an apple on the bus is Alice Wu.

Sin City
The signature white blood proved hard to achieve on screen. Regular movie blood couldn't provide the stark look. The crew had to use fluorescent red liquid and bathe it in black light. In post-production, the liquid was turned white.

Taxi Driver
Travis Bickle's famous "You talkin' to me?" scene may have been inspired by De Niro's training under Stella Adler, who (as an exercise) had her students practice different interpretations of a similar phrase. The legendary acting teacher was surprised to see one of her former students use "You talkin' to me?" as a psychotic mantra. Martin Scorsese was encouraging De Niro just below the camera while shooting the scene, which lead to the rest of the "dialogue" Bickle has with his mirror.

Spirited Away
The flexible light thing that jumps around and leads to the house is a reference to Pixar's mascot, Luxo Jr. Miyazaki is a big fan of Pixar and wanted to show his admiration.

MirrorMask
There were 70 masks within the film.
Total number of digital fish in the film: 42.

Kill Bill Vol. I & II
Uma Thurman was offered the script to Kill Bill, and her role as "The Bride", as a 30th Birthday present from Quentin Tarantino.

Dogville
Nicole Kidman is said to have communicated very little with the rest of the team, apart from practical issues. However, she did invite the team for champagne and caviar and flew in Mexican chefs to cook for everyone.

American History X
Seth wears a shirt during the basketball game featuring the number 88. This is a naziskin code for HH, or "Heil Hitler," H being the 8th letter of the alphabet. It also refers to a set of 88 precepts written by the neo-nazi leader David Lane. The 88 precepts are rules and concepts that all White Supremacists lived by.

This film uses the word "fuck" 205 times.

- -

[OK. That was ELEVEN favourites. But what the hell, right?]

For the whole of the next week, I will be incarcerated.
By my own anal perfectionist tendencies.
A nervous wreck.
Setting up in the gallery and forcing the words to flow eloquently.

But in exactly a week and a day, I will be a free person.
Free of an alarm clock, allowed to breathe, to sleep in, and to eat food other than chocolate.
A worthwhile trade for stabbing myself in my own foot all the time?
I hope so.

Melbourne's stock of Cadbury's fruit and nut chocolate have been slowly and steadily diminishing.
Depleted. By me.
150g by 150g per day.
I can't find any in BigW's, Coles Central nor Safeway's.
All they've got are the plain milk chocolate, hazelnut and mint ones.

What'm i going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside my trunk?
I'ma wonder about that when all this is over.
Alanis Morissette's arrangement of this song is making me sad.
And this video is really bringing back memories it shouldn't.