The Port Elizabeth Premiere of Tunnel Rats

I finally watched, Tunnel Rats! My friends and I organized a mini-premiere last night as part of my birthday.

I spoke to Darryn earlier in the day and asked if we could use his place to screen my movie debut. He has a pretty sweet projector and sound set-up that would really simulate a theoretical experience. He agreed to have it at his house. So everything was set.

I didn’t know about their plan, but as a joke I arrived with a little black bow tie as an addition to my very casual dress. My friends however, surprised me by arriving in full formal wear, which enhanced the authenticity of our premiere night. Bryan even organized a fine bottle of bubbly for the occasion.

I was blown away. It’s not every night that there is a black tie event in ol’ PE, so it was quite a change to see the guys and girls all dolled up.

The movie is best described as a war horror, filled with gore and depicts the futility of war. The action scenes were great and in my opinion, there was some good character development, given the relatively short duration in which the film maker had to do it in.

It was a strange experience for me to relive some of the scenes and recount the performances from some of the actors, especially due to the different angles (that I experienced) in addition to the accompaniment of mood music and scores.

The entire experience was very special and one which I think I will always remember fondly. I could not have asked for a better ending to my birthday.

Why So Serious?

I was sceptical at first and with murmurings of an Academy Award for Best Actor on the horizon, I thought that perhaps the critics were just trying to stir some sympathy for the tragic death of Heath Ledger.

After watching the aptly titled, The Dark Knight, the darkest of the Batman franchise thus far, all signs of scepticism disappeared as Heath delivered in my opinion the performance of a life time. Playing the crazed, villainous Joker it was sometimes difficult to tell whether he was acting or actually living the part of the psychotic clown.

Seeing as how Heath is a method actor (method acting is a technique of living the character which you play), and seeing as how I have an above avergae fear for clowns (probably because of that damn, clown movie, IT; I can’t imagine that he was the most pleasant person to be around during the shooting of the film.

Whatever the case, Heath’s passing is a massive loss to the film and entertainment industry. I reckon he definitely has the Golden Statue in the bag, and will perhaps be only the second person in history, other than Peter Finch to be awarded a posthumus Oscar.

Sole Food

Well it looks like I’ve disproved the “Mind, Over, Matter” saying! I had all the will-power and mindset to carry out the strenuous workouts, heavy grafting, late night studying and blogging…but have found that the lack of sleep and the constant beating of my body has taken its toll and has completely depleted my immune systems reserves; and for the second time in a month I’ve caught the flu! You win this time, stupid flu!

The worst thing about getting the flu for me, worse than the nausea and feeling-like-I’m-going-to-die sensation is losing my sense of taste. Perhaps you might have noticed from my previous posts, but man, do I love eating…

I suffered in particular today at Beluga, where a few of us, Joe, myself, Karisa and Anna (my doctor friend), decided to make use of the 2pm-7pm weekend half-price sushi special. Normally one likes to savour the taste of the fresh fish, but today I might as well have been eating a bowl of rice, because my taste buds were not functioning! In fact I had to dunk the sushi in a copious amount of wasabi and soy sauce to have my taste buds fire off messages to the sense receptors in my brain…Anna please don’t criticize my lack of accuracy or medical terminology in that previous statement…remember I’m a techno geek not a med student!

So while I could not enjoy the taste of my meal to it’s full extent, I had more focus on the social aspects of lunching. Sure, sure…there is always conversation when you have a meal with friends, but I find that concentrating on someone talking while I’m trying to stuff my face with tasty foods is more difficult…. I’m male and apparently lack the chromosome to multi task. So to compensate for the lack of taste receptors, I was able to focus more on what was being said around the table.

One thing that struck me as amusing and came up as a brief topic of conversation is: how going to the cinema is a very social event, even though the experience itself isn’t a very social one. I mean you can’t really have a full blown conversation in the middle of a movie can you? I know I would be irritated as hell if someone next to me was having a fat chat. Yet not many people attend movies by themselves…