Category: film

Lovely Sunday
by Kimliatach

Painted a card for 3 hours. Really struggling to match style and finish work I am satisfied with. It has been so long since I completed one.

Worked on L’s foam costume. Going to continue editing the first build vid once this post is up and if I get it uploading I’ll share it in the morning.

Constructed another new raised garden bed frame using scrap metal and some of the timber salvaged yesterday.

Cooked a homegrown spinach and feta pie.

Watched ‘Finding Dory‘. Which  not as good as the first is of course but is lovely, clever and occasionally funny all the same.

 

 

 

Editing
by Kimliatach

I’ve spent the last two evenings editing together a build vlog for the first piece of foam costume armour I started back on Thursday. It is still ten minutes too long and thus not done. I have a new found respect for people like Casey Neistat, who are producing a video a day. Presumably you very quickly get in the habit of making shots count, otherwise hours will be spent trawling through footage and making cuts. More experience with Premier is doubtless helpful as well. I’d love to post it but I’m taking a break to paint tonight. Going to apply lessons learned in the filming of the next segments.

Huge outdoor day today. We made a trip to the farm, collected new fencing materials and load of hay. Borrowing a ute, we made two trips to the dump and finally rid ourselves of the pile of rotten timber, metal scraps and crap that has been expanding and blocking up the back corner of the garden since we arrived. Also raided the dump and a town skip for a collection of fresh palettes and a massive pile of cardboard boxes.

Politic

Some interesting things are being written in the wake of the Trump election. I am a believer in the long peace. But I acknowledge that the peace is on thin ice both literally and metaphorically. For anyone still struggling to come to terms with the US result I have a couple of recommendations. This surprisingly accurate piece from cracked.com is an excellent start. A breakdown of voter demographics demonstrates that a million less young people voted in this election than in 2012. Pundits will blame many things for this but to me it is obvious; young Americans overwhelmingly backed Sanders. When the DNC screwed him they became disengaged if not outright hostile to Clinton. This was further compounded by pre-polling giving many the impression that Clinton would have an easy win, thus they at least, didn’t have to vote for her.

 

Film

I’m excited. But by golly it better be as good as it looks.

 

Captain Fantastic
by Kimliatach

In the aftermath of the US election result yesterday evening we watched ‘Captain Fantastic‘.

Which I count as easily among the best films of the year so far. At times hilarious, very moving and challenging. Richly developed characters grapple with loss and uncertainty. It was the perfect film for a hard evening and led to some interesting breakfast table discussions about where and how we want to be living long term and what our Cobar exit strategy will be.

Got crafty this afternoon and began foamsmithing together L’s Christmas present by request. I’ve spent the last hour on the phone else I may have made more progress editing together the vlog of the build.

 

 

Before The Flood
by Kimliatach

Daily

For a blessing today a day without a call out, spent productively at home with family. Mostly cleaning and fighting back the tide of disorder and filth that threatens to overrun our house in a tornado of play every day.

Tonight I am watching ‘Before The Flood‘ The Di Caprio climate film.

So far so good. Painting on my primary screen.

 

Found a lovely toy in this thread.

digitaldoily

https://codymoose.github.io/web-applications/DigitalDoily/index.html

Music Teacher for a Day
by Kimliatach

Daily

Thanks to a last minute call in at ten to eight, I spent my first ever day as a Music teacher today. I do not, it should be noted, play an instrument. But I can follow a lesson plan and manage a rotating selection of classes effectively. Today we learned about how music has changed through history. Listened to parts of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony and Beethovens 5th. Played musical statues and beat detective.

We had fun and I found and used this rendition of ‘Tikki Tikki Tembo’ repeatedly with the younger grades, as a good example of musical storytelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZoptfUovt0

I have not made anything creative since coming home other than gigantic bubbles in the back yard for the entertainment of my children and to test the latest batch of my big bubble juice. I neglected to have N photograph me, but I’ll remember next time.

Media

We have watched and listened to many things since I last reported in. Just now we are watching week to week on ‘Westworld’. I am loading up on docos to side watch while painting and I’m just now queuing up the new ‘Black Mirror’s’ which I have been looking forward to. N may take some convincing to begin ‘Black Mirror’ as both seasons so far have had some pretty traumatic episodes. ‘White Christmas’ (no link lest it spoil you) the Christmas special from season two gave me some very special nightmares.

 

zootopia

 

The best thing I watched on the plane home was ‘Zootopia‘ which is an absolute gem. Very clever, very funny and very mature at handling racism and stereotyping at a level appropriate to children. Nothing remains memorable from the flights out in way back in May but that is hardly surprising.

 

 

 

 

Travel Pics
by Kimliatach

Review

Watched the singularly disappointing film ‘The Imitation Game‘ last night. Honestly, what an inaccurate, trite and disappointing film it is. Every major character is misrepresented to greater or lessor degrees. Seemingly every achievement is mis-credited and in many cases poorly explained. How lame the storytelling, so much is told rather than shown. So much is invented rather than telling the true and more thrilling history. Avoid.

Started a new shared audiobook with N today. ‘Three Men in a Boat‘ by Jerome K. Jerome as read by Hugh Laurie. A book so funny it proved hazardous to listen to while driving. It is difficult to see the road through tears of hilarity or hold the wheel whilst struggling to breathe.

Travel Pics

Image upload widget appears to be playing nice again so here are some of our recent explorations.

loch-lomond-sunset

Sunset over Loch Lomond driving North. Passenger photographer.

luca-at-doune

“Where are all the knights?”

I was disappointed there was no way to get onto the battlements. Well I found a way, having seen a head poking out above I investigated and was politely told I didn’t belong by the adolescent staff member Fbooking on the roof during his lunch break. No pics unfortunately.

 

doune-castle

Doune Castle is famously the castle whose interior was used for much of ‘Monty Python & The Holy Grail‘ and more recently for the Game of Thrones Pilot and more recently still for much of ‘Outlander‘.

Extraordinary place, rich with history. It really puts into perspective what a cramped and dismal place a castle would have been to live in, particularly during winter.

 

glencoe

The Three Sisters in Glen Coe are quite breathtaking.

loch-view

View across Loch Creran from a property we visited recently.

 

 

 

 

In Review
by Kimliatach

Daily

One child gets well and the other comes down with it. Nursing a feverish L as I write this post.

ossian

Made the daily visits to the neighbour’s beautiful horse ‘Ossian’ with F and Boris. Caught a Toad.

A spot of computer troubleshooting and a wee bit of art during the day. I have bit the bullet and allowed iTunes back on my machine as there is simply no other way to convince the computer that there is an iPhone connected without it. I really wanted to get my photos off my phone.

I’ve installed the Opera browser on most devices as Chrome is functioning very poorly on such low bandwidth. It cannot load Calendar at all and even IE/Edge is performing better. Opera Turbo is lovely.

I am yet hopeful of getting some painting in once the bairns are full asleep.

NB. Not going to happen 11:30PM and publishing.

In Review

On the flight over I read the ‘Hyperbole & A Half’ book. Many parts of which I have of course read before. I was surprised and delighted by many of the previously unseen entries and as usual was reduced to hysterical tears by posts both old and new.

Allie Brosh is a treasure. It has been a long time between posts but I live in hope.

fight club 2

I also ploughed through the complete set of ‘Fight Club 2’ the comic form sequel to the far superior original book by Palahniuk.

Honestly it was just disappointing. Old characters felt forced in and rather than taking the story to new and interesting places it all felt rather like a bad joke at the expense of the originals fans.

 

Novel the blind assassin cover.jpg

Yesterday N and I finished ‘The Blind Assassin’ by Atwood which has been our together car book for almost two months now. It has a sedate pacing that took some time to hook us. I honestly did not expect to fall in love with Iris the narrator but both N and I were a bit teary at the end. The language throughout is just wonderful, subtle and severe, wicked and sharp. The character Reenie with her homespun idioms is particularly enigmatic. The version we listened to was voiced by Margot Dionne to great effect.

 

Burnt Poster Updated.jpg 

I only watched two films on the flights over, flying with children is challenging that way. ‘Burnt’ and ‘A Perfect Day’.

‘A Perfect Day’ is lovely but depressing and ‘Burnt’ was fun but predictable and more than a little melodramatic.

 

 

Hail, Caesar
by Kimliatach

Such a silly film.

Self indulgent and self referential humour from the communist writers guilds ‘Shut the fuck up donny‘ moments to the momentus and gravitas and build up for the final soliliqy only to of course flippantly blow it off.

Honestly although it was a great visual spectacle it felt more cartoonish that cinematic. Like the Coens are ticking things off a bucket list, ‘Oh a golden age dance number’, ‘A Charlton Heston biblical’ oooh and some ‘Noire’.

I am pleased that the young actor widely tipped to be playing the young Han Solo in a forthcoming one off has some acting chopps. I don’t think he alone will ruin that particular film, but I hold no great expectations. Extraordinary talent on display by all of the cast. Only great actors can so comfortably and convincingly play bad actors. There are some splendid and enigmatic characters but no cohesion. It is as I say all a bit silly.

 

Daily & Creative

Next to nothing creative done today. Taught a 5/6 class, I’ve said before how much I like being relief. I get to show up for a day and be in many ways totally and completely different from the vast majority of other teacher they have ever dealt with. It is great fun, but deeply exhausting.

 

Racing Extinction
by Kimliatach

Watched ‘Racing Extinction‘ this evening.

It is a confronting and heart wrenching film. It is good for all that. Watch it.

Stylistically I had some issues with it, but I honestly don’t think I am the target audience. I’ve studied ecology and I know just how far up the proverbial creek we are if the Phytoplankton food chain collapses. That this threat is a real profound and present danger is something I and millions upon millions of others around the world have been doing our best to ignore for decades. I can’t ignore it anymore.

The pressure is on I am feeling a serious need to alter parts of my lifestyle and even more seriously parts of my pedagogy. I know about meat and methane and I am only now trying to cut our household consumption significantly. I know about flights and transport and as I have mentioned previously I plan to physically offset our adventures by planting and caring for the appropriate quantity of trees. I don’t think I can continue to sugar coat, brush off or play down the seriousness of climate change to school children. I am not saying here that I have in any way ever really sugar coated it. I’ve shown whole grades of year six students significant portions of  ‘There is no tomorrow‘ for goodness sake. Just that I have always been acutely aware that I don’t want to be sending little zealous climate nazis home to hassle their parents saying ‘Mr Lang says climate change is going to end the world’. What I am going to say instead I am putting some thought into because it can’t just be an impassioned rant. I want to communicate some of the urgency just how dangerous the game we have been playing is. But I do not want to give children nightmares or foster powerlessness, apathy and indifference.

 

The election is called and the prime minister didn’t even mention climate in his announcement speech.

Vote Compass is up.

I maintain that Vote compass should be as much a part of the Australian democratic tradition as the sausage sizzle. The latter of which I will miss by voting postal this year. This also marks only 7 days left to register to vote.

 Vote Compass 2016No surprises in my results.

Apathy Antidotes
by Kimliatach

I’ve shown this clip to a number of people lately. A couple of classes too, though I generally skip parts for them. I finally got around to grabbing a copy of the film itself this evening and I’ll follow up once I have had a chance to watch it.

I’ve been feeling a bit angry and powerless about the climate and government situation again this past week and I find this video and others like it are helpful antidotes to apathy.

It also helps that there are politicians who are not only well informed but do actually care.

It also helps that there are exciting, entertaining bloggers and vloggers out there who are capable of putting things into interesting perspectives.

It really helps to have an equally angry and passionate wife who is, even now writing scathing letters to local members.

Creative

In keeping with this post doing some work on my political posters this evening.

Gaming

I have quit Slither.io it sucked too much time the last few evenings. My best score was only 17 thousand+ and 4th on the leader table at the time. If I could see a few upgrades added to this little game, one would be the ability to emote even just two or three simple emotions. Another would be a kill counter tracking active user ID’s activity, who has killed you, who has been killed by you.