“Welcome to the circus of value!”0

So what have I been up to the last week or so in watching movies, gaming, school and more? Well, I’d thought I’d write a small article concerning some of this, and hopefully giving you a few nice insights in movies and games you might want to look into trying out. First of all, I’ve been thinking more about some future updates on the website, which I should be able to work on this Saturday, unless I get some kind of homework overkill from school (which, in a way, wouldn’t be very unusual). Anyway, here are some future ideas for the website (looks at web-guru Johannes):

So I’ve been thinking about the new crew pages I’ve talked about several times here before. I’ve now got the basic design done and are just beginning to make everything run as smooth and fast as possible on the website. There probably won’t be a lot of different people in the crew list, I’m just thinking about featuring the people who have a major influence in my filmmaking, instead of putting all of my friends on there, as I’ve done before. I’m trying to give the website a bit more professional approach in the crew and equipment pages. It’s all pretty old as it is right now, going to categorize everything a bit better, which will hopefully make more sense to everyone coming on the website. More pictures will be featured directly on the site in the Equipment section, as well as some tips to new aspiring filmmakers. The links section in the sidebar will also get a complete overhaul, featuring more links to other friends’ and fellow filmmakers’ websites. Will also try to get some kind of streaming functionality for my films. This would help loads since I would then be able to show people my films without having to post them in multiple parts to YouTube (“16″ style), but just having them load directly on the page or in a pop-up window. I have some other thoughts about the comment system and some minor changes to the design of the website, but nothing that interesting worth writing about here. Well, let’s move on to more…interesting news!

School begun last Tuesday. It was great to meet up with all my friends (most of them had been gone ALL summer) and talk. We got our scheadule in which our teacher had managed to put six math lessons in five days, which is quite an achivement. Two of the subjects I liked the least was removed after the 1st year (one of them being replaced with a course you could choose yourself, and I chose one about movies), which means that so far, things havn’t been as extremely stressful as they could have been some other times, especially towards the end of last term. Not much else has been going on in school really, just the usual stuff with homework and studies. “Malmöfestivalen” (sort of like a thing where a lot of people gather here in Malmö for a week to eat, drink and watch rock concerts) finished last Friday, and since I’m living in the thick of it, I couldn’t be more glad (they had ultra-loud music on until the earlier hours). I’m not saying it isn’t fun, I spent some fun evenings with some great friends just walking around in the city checking out rock concerts and watching weird people. I’ve also been meeting some old friends from my old schools and talking to them quite a bit. Everyone looks and behaves pretty much exactly the same, atlhough everyone seems to be 20cm taller.

I havn’t really been watching a lot of movies the last week, I’ve mostly been thinking about my new film “Derby” (which you can read more about in the previous news post) as well as just playing games, but more on that later. I saw Silence of The Lambs again the other day, and it still holds up after four (or is it five?) viewings. I really like the mood of the film, and it is in my eyes the perfect thriller/horror flick. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve mostly just been re-watching old classics that I havn’t seen in a long time. I saw Shaun of the Dead for what I believe is the seventh or eigth time but I still love it just as much as the first time I saw it, since I notice new things every time I see it, so compliments to Mr. Wright for making such an awesome film. I’ve also started to re-watch “The Office” (the british version, obviously) which I havn’t seen in about 2 or 3 years. I found them in my DVD collection the other day, and I realised I couldn’t remember a single thing from the whole series. So it’s basically just a brand new experience wathcing it all again. Of course I also pick up on some of the jokes I might not have understanded when I was 12 or 13 (which was when I frst saw it). Anyway, it’s a great series, pick up the two seasons if you can find them. As I’ve said, they’ve been out for a while so you should be able to find it in your video store’s variation of the bargain bin. I also saw “Shooter” with Mark Wahlberg about a week ago. It was really a nice surprise. While not being a fantastic film, it certainly was above average. I had imagined it would be the old usual, PG-13 action flick, when it turnes out to be a very violent film (not as violent as the death of Murphy in RoboCop 1, which I still can’t watch without wincing). NOt sure if I’ll go to the lengths of recommending it, but it might be worth a rent if you’re looking for a pretty mindless, high-octane, adrenaline-filled ride. I had my second class in my movie course in school today, and it seems to be a great class that all enjoys the same thing: movies. We actually watched the opening to Silence of the Lambs there as well. Still fantastic, even on VHS and a lousy TV. And just so all of you know, new reviews are coming for films, it’s only that I’ve found it’s pretty impossible for me to write what I think about a film I’ve only seen once if I don’t write it pretty much exactly after I get home from the theatre…Also, I was going to see “Planet Terror” (Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” film) the other day, but appearantly it doesn’t screen anywhere in Malmö! Now what’s up with that?

Two games have been dominating my free gaming time the last weekend. First, I got “Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2″ for the Playstation 3 last friday (I managed to get a used copy, the same day it came out! Yay!). I loved the first one when I bought it early 2006 for my Xbox 360, and so far this game is even better in every way. Better graphics, better missions, better sound, better controls. It really feels great to use the motion control in the PS3 pad to control your character on screen. But again, the abscense of vibration/rumble in the PS3 controller is very noticeable. Get to work, Sony! But bigger than that game, and what influenced this news posts’ title, is “Bioshock”, which I got hold of through Steam just last Sunday. It’s pretty hard to describe this game without giving to much away, but I’m about three or four hours into the game, and so far I think it’s actually just as good as Half-Life 2, which is my favorite game of all time. They say the game is about 15-20 hours long, which will probably mean 30 hours for me, since I die a lot in games. Still, I’ll write a longer piece about this once I’ve actually finished it and can tell you if it lived up to the massive hype that’s been surrounding the release of the game. First impressions is a clear “yes”, but since I’m only about 10% through the game, things could change.

That’s pretty much everything I can think of to write here right now. Make sure to check out the news post below this one for some details on my upcoming filmmaking projects. I’ll speak to all of you again in a couple of days I reckon. But until then, take care everyone!