All posts by Armand

Film

Sugarhouse opens this week // Vito wins!!

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Two Slingshot movie updates (quick refresher: Slingshot is the movie production house my brother founded and runs):

First, Sugarhouse, its first feature, opens in cinemas around the UK on the 24th of August. It’s a great film – you can try to win tickets and/or see where its showing via the Sugarhouse movie website. Flashalicious. Please go see it… To my friends, I’ll aim to organise some kind of evening out at the cinema to watch it. It’s an urban thriller, set in East London, and revolves around the lives of an accountant, a crackhead, and a killer. More or less in that order.

Trailer!

Exciting!!

Secondly, thank you all for your votes for Vito. HE WON!! There’s a big budget for Slingshot to make the first ever user generated film, and the Sun reported on the auditions… so its all systems go!

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support. Watch the Slingshot blog and the Myspace Movie Mashup site for more updates!

Film

Le cochon arraigné

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I have started doing French lesson’s at work on Pat’s prompting, and the last one (a couple of weeks ago now) was particularly entertaining for our vibrant discussion of recent films we’d seen, including Michael Bay’s Transformers and The Simpsons movies. For reviews of those, check me out on Flixster via Facebook.

But one particularly useful thing we did was translate the Spider-Pig song into French. For anyone wondering, it goes a little something like this.

Le cochon arraigné, le cochon arraigne, il fait quel que chose qu’on cochon arraigné fait… est-ce qu’il peu balancer sur un atoile… non, il ne peu pas balancer sur un atoile, il est un cochon… regard dehors, il est le cochon arraigné…

If you think I’ve gone mad, or don’t know what I’m talking about, check out…:

Corrections to the French welcome! But what a way to learn a language! Can’t be topped.

Internet, Social media, Software

Social Memedia revisited

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Drew B asks if the ‘top 5’ social media tools I listed last year have changed.

In 2006, they were:
WordPress – my blog platform
Wikipedia – everyone’s encyclopedia
RSS – which makes the news go around
Delicious – which keeps my links in check
Skype – connecting people

In 2007, they are:
Facebook – yes, you know I love it.
Google Reader / RSS – not much change there
WordPress – or there
Twitter – Microblogging fun
Delicious – linklove still in there

I’d also add
Pokerstars
Skype – Not today. That’s a big outage.
Google Mail – Ajaxy email goodness

I am fad-tastic. In truth, not a huge shift, but social networks have really come on in the last year, and I’m a big fan of Facebook’s ‘open’ approach. How about you?

Sport

Bellybuster

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I’m loving poker at the moment. The subject line is a term for a certain type of straight draw in poker (when you get five cards in sequence for a hand) — where one card is missing. A risky hand to bet… and a wonderfully silly name for it. It’s also known as a Gutshot, which isn’t quite as dramatic a name…

James and Matt introduced me to the finer points of the game, and Damo’s playing now too… We’re on Pokerstars (I’m div6 if you want to find me)… and you can check my recent form on Sharkscope.com – a bit up and down recently…

I think I enjoy poker for the human element — they say you’re meant to play the people, not the hands you’re dealt. I’m still probably a little too conservative but am getting better and have had a decent couple of weeks of form. Looking forward to another tournament at the Gutshot, a club near Farringdon where I occasionally play live tournaments…

Current affairs, Media & Marketing, Politics

Negarakuku

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The atmosphere in Malaysia is very weird at the moment. There’s a huge build-up to the country’s 50th Independence day celebrations (Merdeka), but at the same time we’re standing in the wake of a considerable amount of racial and religious tension. The deputy Prime Minister, Najib, called Malaysia in Islamic state… and the government issued a gag order to stop the mainstream media from discussing it. You’d think it would be difficult to come up with something more absurd…

…and then this. A Malaysian student studying in Taiwan made a video parodying the Malaysian national anthem is under investigation by the Malaysian government, who are considering confiscating his passport and prosecuting him for sedition. The video raises controversial issues like – accusations of corruption in the Malaysian police force, referring to the morning Muslim prayers as ‘crowing’, and comments about the way the Malaysian Chinese are discriminated against in Malaysia. I’m afraid its in Hokkien and Malay, but you can view it here if you are interested.

It’s all a bit weird. Needless to say, I’m not impressed with the way Malaysia is handling these things. Fortunately, the Malaysian blogosphere is keeping the discussion going.

Personal

The Tangs

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Been in Malaysia the last few days for my cousin’s wedding. Been amazing: lots of my cousins around, all on great form, and one of the first time in years that all my Dad’s siblings (all 7 of them!) were in the same room at the same time. Lots of, erm, singing, and an amazing quantity of quite ludicrous dancing.

My cousin set up the wedding for the morning, allowing people to sleep through the afternoon’s heat before making it to the reception in the evening. Even without my jetlag waylaying me, it was a great concept… Evening was huge fun and videos and photos will be uploaded on my return the UK. Congrats to Geets and Ivan — v. proud.

Television, Update

The randomly popular

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I love that my “Knife Wrench” blog post keeps getting comments, even though it was just a quick reference to a great moment in Scrubs.

Janitor = Genius.

Sorry for continued quiet. Excuses == poker, house move, cousin’s wedding, busy at work, living much of digital life on Facebook and associated plugins (including book/movie reviews etc.). For those of you who follow me here and not on the all-knowing facebook, yes, I have seen Transformers, yes, it is awesome and life-changing, and no, I don’t have a newfound respect for Michael Bay. It wasn’t that good. Also, you lot, get over to FB and add me. What’s wrong with you?

Miscellany, Music

Manic^3

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I’ve been hella tired lately, so this post is not going to make any sense.

It’s been a really busy few weeks – work has been manic, the flat hunt has been, well, manic, and pretty much everything relating to my personal life has been, erm, manic. I’ve not been through a period of this intense busy-ness for a long time, but am someone finding outlets for it all and feeling surprisingly calm about it all.

Tonight, the outlet has been listening to random music, quite loud. Right now it’s Faith no more’s ‘I’m easy.’ Earlier, for no apparent reason, it was ‘Orion’, as performed both by Metallica and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Before that, for even less reason, it was Iron Maiden’s ‘Fear of the Dark.’ Before that, it was some random French music.

Sitting here, letting the music wash over me, I feel a semblance of calm.

Eels’ ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ just came on. I think there’s a danger of slipping from calm to comatose. I hit ‘b’ and Winamp obliges. Powderfinger’s ‘Since you’ve been gone’. Result. A recommendation from Tony.

It’s been a very odd evening. I haven’t sat around and let myself get completely taken by music since I was at school (when I used to do it all the time). It feels good.

Television

Addicted to Entourage

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I watched through most of the second season of Entourage last night. There’s something about it – maybe the sense of family and friendship that the four principals have – that makes it intensely watchable. I’m not sure how good or realistic or representative it is, but I guess that doesn’t really matter (although I have been made curious and am also reading my way through Wikipedia on it!). For those who don’t know what it is, its loosely based around Mark Wahlberg’s life, where one slightly talented and beautiful male actor from Queens moves to Hollywood and his three friends (try to) help him make it.

The same sort of thing applied to Studio 60 (or ‘West Wing Series 8’ as Ben calls it), which, whilst again bears very little resemblance to anything within the realms of my experience, and probably isn’t representative of reality, has a wonderful on-screen relationship dynamic between the principal characters.

It’s almost enough to make you wish your life was more dramatic. Then you look out, watch the news, see the diverted traffic (Al Quaeda is really annoying) and other craziness going on around town and you realise that there’s drama aplenty already…

Film, Internet, Social media

Vote for Vito!

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One of my brother‘s directors is in the running for a prize with MySpace: we’d really appreciate your votes for Vito if you have an active MySpace account. You can vote once a day. In a meta-social-network fest, you can also support the efforts (and read more about it, interact with the producers, etc.,) with this Facebook group.

Here’s a short film from him:

MyMovie MashUp Short Film Entry

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And his pitch:

MyMovie MashUp Director Pitch

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Cast your vote here. Much appreciated!