At long last, It finally arrived! I'd been expecting The Blind Side to come out over here for a while, after my friend went to see it in New York what seems to be lightyears ago. Not being a regular movie buff, she kept raving and raving about it so I knew it had to be at least half decent, and then came the Oscars. Sandra Bullock is one of my fave actresses, I think shes brilliant and deserved an Oscar long before now. However, seeing her performance in The Blind Side, I think it was worth the wait. Its such a lovely film that really reminds you how nice people can really be. To be honest, if it didn't have all this hype about it being a true story and someone told me after watching it, I'd be like Yeah...Right. Because pigs do fly. It seems to have such your typical Hollywood ending, providing a nice reminder that they do exist. Sandra Bullock played such a strong inspiring character and I think she carried it off fantastically, with the odd comic relief thrown in. In general, a great film and a well deserved Oscar.

Supernatural

My latest obsession comes in the form of Supernatural. Three weeks off? Plenty time to squeeze in five series.....I began watching Supernatural with a kind of 'whatever' attitude. I thought it was going to be along the lines of Buffy and Charmed, and trust me, I think my 13 year old self watched enough of that to get remotely excited or scared by anything new. However, I'm loving Supernatural right now...It deals with the type of thing that really scares me, old urban legends such as Bloody Mary, among other 'supernatural' things such as evil spirits and weird stuff like that. Its good that you can dip in and dip out of the series, whilst also following the underlying story throughout. I love guilty pleasures!

Books

Just a quick update on my crazy reading habits of the moment. Last week I went on a crazy reading marathon and successfully read The Boy In The Striped PJ's in one whole evening. Not a hard thing to do, admittedly I did feel a little cringey reading it in public what with the huge text, but overall a great read. I had been eager to read it before I watch the film as I've always had a kind of morbid curiosity for WW2. The more horrifying the better, I'm so sick. I think I just can't seem to get my head around the fact that these are actual facts, true story, no jokes. This book was a lovely little gem of the innocence children are blessed with especially in hard times and I just hope the film lives up to it!
I'm ashamed to say I've put down 'Haunted' by Chuck Pala...... because its simply going to have to wait for a time where I feel like reading the weirdest most freaky things, and that time is not now. I know I will come back to it, but I go through 'moods' when reading, and I'm just not up for hearing about young boys having to chew off their intestine.....
Also, being the multi-tasker that I am, I'm currently reading a nice little chick flick called The Brightest Star In The Sky by Marian Keyes. Slightly similar set up to The Street, a mysterious presence (which my mum spoiled by telling me its an unborn baby) follows the lives of each person living in each flat inside an apartment block. Its a sweet story so far and I'm really enjoying it.
HOWEVER. I'm missing my James Patterson murdery stories. Today I unwillingly headed to Waterstones, the realization that Borders is truly gone sinking in with every step. I find it hard looking for a book when I don't really know what I want. I'm terrible for judging books by covers, but really that's all you have to go on, isn't it? Anyway, I went for an author who was recommended to me called Harlan Coben, the book called The Woods....And I really can't seem to prize myself away from it, theres simply not enough time in one night to get it all read, especially with River City taking up a whole hour.....

Casablanca

Heres lookin' at you, kid! What a great film. Again, I've found myself to enjoy yet another classic. I've always seemed to shy away from films that are considered to be great, such as the Godfather and Casablanca....Now I have no idea why! I absolutely loved Casablanca. It was such a lovely film and not what I expected at all.

The story was wonderfully romantic and even had a nice bitter sweet ending. It had perfect structure and just seemed to flow effortlessly. I never realized quite so many lines came from Casablanca, and who knew it was going to be such a big hit during production. I can't believe what a big influence it seems to have been, discovering later that night that The Usual Suspects with Kevin Spacey's title came from the line in Casablanca 'Round up the usual suspects....'

In general, I think Casablanca was a perfect mistake and a beautiful movie that deserves its place in our everyday chit chat along with film history!

Roll out the red carpet

Thats right, today we visited Dunbartons answer to Hollywood - The set of River City. It was a great experience for us to be able to visit a set, especially in action, of a BBC drama such as River City. Being one of the shows regulars now, I was especially surprised to see how small the sets were. (And some of the actors!!) The cameras really fooled me. I would never have guessed all the 'flats' were inside a huge warehouse, they look nice and real enough to live in!

Its crazy to think how much money and effort goes in to a TV show, I can only imagine what the MGM studios were like if they were almost the size of a small town! It still baffles me to think its like a whole imaginary world built for characters, along the same lines as The Truman Show, freaky! I also got to speak to a few of the cast that I know which was really nice, I felt quite priveledged to be there!

Again, 'Never work with animals or children...' was reinforced upon us today as we saw the character Ruth playing out a scene in which 'her baby' kept screaming and kicking, and then throwing toys around. What a pilavah! It must be really hard to work with kids in serious roles and I guess you got to hand it to the ones who really are fantastic little actors.

Another highlight of my trip was the fact I noticed a serioussss spoiler in the Tall Ship, I think alarm bells chimed a little when I noticed it out loud infront of Kim and the producer! Hehehe.... Don't worry, the only person thats remotely interested is my granny. She won't tell.

I'm sad to see that Kim is no longer teaching us, she was really fab and I thoroughly enjoyed her classes, they taught me a lot about what it means to storyline and script edit, everything about writing for TV in general. She introduced us to some important people and really took a keen interest in involving us within the industry. I really hope to see her back next year to give us some more pearls of wisdom!!

Home

Our first shoot over and done with, and guess what? We all made it out alive. Hurrah!
Things I learned -

• (Firstly, never follow Murray in the car, you will have near death experiences various times throughout the day.)
• Don't forget the main part of the costume.
• If you forget the main part of the costume, its not the end of the world. I managed to fly home to Cambuslang and back in under 50 minutes, meanwhile the rest of the crew filmed scenes where we didn't even need it. PHEW.
• Bring lots and lots of layers, it will be freezing and this will cause bad, bad moods.
  
• Don't drive through KelvinGrove park even with permission from the police, the public will still abuse you....
• Keep referring back to the original idea without dressing it up too much.
  
• Make do with less-than-ideal situations.
• Never come between a hound of dogs and our pizza.
  
• If you drive on the grass, you will fall into a coffin. No joke.
  
• Don't pick seedy lanes to film in, there will, very probably, be dead bodies lying in them.
  
• Always check we have the correct amount of batteries (!!)
  
• Have faith in ourselves.
  
• The wind is absolutely terrible when trying to hang various things from a tree.
  
• AND finally, its only a film. Have fun.
  

The adoring daughter I am, I headed out to the cinema with mon mere today and I successfully managed to convince her to shy away from the rom-coms and come see Shutter Island, and boy is she glad! Shutter Island is to me a fantastic film. Deeply disturbing and uncomfortable to watch, it is wonderfully written with clever twists and has mastered the suspense element perfectly. (This is probably down to the fact it is based on the novel by Dennis LeHane.) DiCaprio gave a great performance alongside Mark Ruffalo in this fantastic thriller, I'm not wanting to say much more because of spoliers but boy did it get me good....

Can anyone believe its almost the end of term, AGAIN?

• We had our first camera assessment as I've mentioned, which went very well as I now feel much more comfortable around the cameras, especially as we are about to start loads of different filming projects,
• Our time with Kim has been great, I've learned so much about what its like to be a writer for TV and just how much work goes in to story-lining only one week! Its really exciting at the same time, to have so much say in what goes in to the show and it must feel great to be able to see your work pan out in episodes. I was surprised to see the way they chose the A stories and B stories etc, putting all the ideas on coloured paper and up on the wall, the stories make much more sense along side each other this way and its all very pretty and colourful.
  
• We've had a few classes with Adam again and it really gets the ideas going when he talks about making content purely for the web. Its exciting to think one of us could crack this in some way or another! I hate to think that cinemas could die out soon however, because I love the cinema! I had no idea it was just a big advert until I thought about it, but I don't think there will ever be any other way for hundreds of strangers to experience a film at the same time, together, especially with timeshifting. Our generation seem so greedy and selfish, we know what we want and we want it now!
• I'm really looking forward to our up and coming shoots, the Into The New shoot should be interesting, It'll be so much fun shooting a live performance in somewhere like The Arches! I was also excited to hear we're going to be filming the musical theatre's Black Cats And Blue Angels because I go every year and it'll be such a different outlook if I'm actually involved with it rather than just wishing I was!
  

Today we had the pleasure of spending time with 'the biggest star in Hollywood', so to speak. I had never seen King Kong original before, and had vague recollections of Peter Jackson's remake. I was impressed by the original, and actually found it quite humorous and probably more grose than the re-make, however, baring in mind this was the 'un-cut' version.....

Considering the film was made back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, literally, I can see what the big hype was about. It really would be considered the Avatar of our time, if not even more outrageous considering the people back then had never witnessed endless gruesome 'Saw' movies.

One thing that can be said for Peter Jackson's remake is that the casting of Naomi Watts as Annie, as she does have a striking resemblance to Fay Wray. I think its safe to say we all enjoyed the way that Kong felt the need to re-check that he had successfully killed the many beasts that attacked him, by pulling on their broken jaw/face (ouch), it was hilarious!

Overall, the human crushing and female sniffing production has proved itself to be a classic film in history and I'm sure it will remain so for a long time. Fay Wray gave a good performance as the blonde bomshell in distress, even if it was a different co-star she had in mind, as Cooper promised her to work beside the 'tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood'......

Home

Since we started thinking about our 'Home' project, my love for Tim Walker and his crazy imagination has grew. His photographs spark off thousands of ideas for films, and in particular, short visual films. His work has always inspired me and gives way to thousands of crazy, quirky ideas - its no surprize he collaborates a lot with Tim Burton. So next time your stumped on ideas for short films, take a look at his photography and you may be inspired.

I'm not going to give off to much information about our Home ideas so far, but its all very exciting and lovely! I'm really looking forward to be filming our first short, its great to be getting out there and getting the creativity juices flowing!