because in many ways it doesn't matter so long as it's gorgeous. Same goes for comprehensibility.
I'm talking about films obviously, in TV and books, it's rather more difficult to get away with - though not always.
So yeah, I went with a few friends a short while ago to see Avatar, reportedly the most expensive film ever made. You can see where the money was spent, it is one of the most visually stunning films I've seen, and worth the ticket price. We saw it in 2D, because so many of my friends are students now, and appropriately hard-up, and I can't see any room for the 3D version to increase it's visual impact. It is beautiful.
However, and I'm pretty sure you saw this one coming, it's not a terribly original story. Boy meets girl, who starts off hating him, grows to like him, then hates him again because he's betrayed her family, but is eventually won over by a grand gesture. Only difference being that he's a man in an alien suit. Oh, and the main villain can hold his breath for minutes at a time, so he doesn't suffocate in the planet's toxic atmosphere.
I liked it, overall. The shortcomings (preposterous villains, hideous choice of typeface for the subtitles etc.) are effectively glossed over by the way it looks, and, lets be quite fair, we don't always want to be challenged or forced to think by a film, do we.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Friday, 1 January 2010
look at the shiny!
My main and most expensive Christmas present finally arrived on New Year's day. You might not be able to tell, but I'm using it right now. While watching telly. Without my dad telling me to get off it... yup, they were finally nagged into buying me a laptop. It is extremely shiny, sparkly blue and way, way faster than my desktop. The desktop PC in my bedroom takes about 10 minutes to start up completely, and the Internet moves at the pace of a slug that's just been stoned to death.
You ask it to do something, just a google search, or to update your facebook status, it looks at you, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, then goes 'oh... uh.. yeah? I think so? ... umm... where's the button... uhh, no, I don't think I can do this yet... come back when I've had some tea'. I kid you not, it has the intelligence of an ex-boxer, who wasn't very good at it, or an addict whose brain has been dissolved over the years - think Ozzy Osbourne or Pete Doherty. That stupid.
This new one, in stark contrast, is more like.. well, like my favourite celebrity 'older man' crush. Sleek, beautifully proportioned, strong, and very, very, clever (the subject of that crush? if you have spent any time with me you probably know who he is, and I'm not writing it here)
It's lovely, and I love it. For a while, yes, the Internet access was even worse. For some reason the crappy old router refused to acknowledge it's existence most of the time. Thankfully, as a result of nagging from everyone, dad has bought and set up a new one, which works and can see the laptop.
Tomorrow is the day of my interview for Staffordshire University and I'm appropriately terrified. Obviously the hope is that I will get a place and everything will be sorted, since the Falmouth option is nowhere near as enticing - less interesting and less well recognised course, smaller campus, further from anywhere interesting... oh, and I wouldn't be able to afford the accommodation - Methinks it's not for me. So yeah, wish me luck!
You ask it to do something, just a google search, or to update your facebook status, it looks at you, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, then goes 'oh... uh.. yeah? I think so? ... umm... where's the button... uhh, no, I don't think I can do this yet... come back when I've had some tea'. I kid you not, it has the intelligence of an ex-boxer, who wasn't very good at it, or an addict whose brain has been dissolved over the years - think Ozzy Osbourne or Pete Doherty. That stupid.
This new one, in stark contrast, is more like.. well, like my favourite celebrity 'older man' crush. Sleek, beautifully proportioned, strong, and very, very, clever (the subject of that crush? if you have spent any time with me you probably know who he is, and I'm not writing it here)
It's lovely, and I love it. For a while, yes, the Internet access was even worse. For some reason the crappy old router refused to acknowledge it's existence most of the time. Thankfully, as a result of nagging from everyone, dad has bought and set up a new one, which works and can see the laptop.
Tomorrow is the day of my interview for Staffordshire University and I'm appropriately terrified. Obviously the hope is that I will get a place and everything will be sorted, since the Falmouth option is nowhere near as enticing - less interesting and less well recognised course, smaller campus, further from anywhere interesting... oh, and I wouldn't be able to afford the accommodation - Methinks it's not for me. So yeah, wish me luck!
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Walking in a Winter Wonderland...
I know, I've been neglecting you, I'm very sorry. Let's see, since I saw you last I've had a couple of nights out for birthdays, got a new job at a nearby pub, and welcomed my friends back from uni with Christmas presents.
As you may have spotted (twinkly lights, family films and bloody hundreds of perfume ads being a clue) it was Christmas on Friday. the previous Saturday, me and my mum headed up to the racecourse to acquire a tree from the man who bought and resurrected our old car (known as Phil the bus, because we did).
This would be Phil, all loaded down with trees.
this is one the one we picked...
We manhandled it through the house
and got it standing up. Thus - Tree!
The best part of this trip though, was in between buying the tree and getting it home. To get back from the racecourse, we used the scenic route, over Battledown. on our side of the hill, we found an icicle grotto... I'm going to link to these pictures, because it seems like a better way to show them than to embed them here, where they'll only show up whole if I make them tiny, and then the impact is lost, so. Links:
Photo one
Photo two
Photo three
that big puddle in the first picture is the reason for this; each time the puddle was splashed through by a car, a thin film of water was splashed on the branches and promptly froze. We stopped so I could photograph it, it was that much of a surprise.
Cor!
As you may have spotted (twinkly lights, family films and bloody hundreds of perfume ads being a clue) it was Christmas on Friday. the previous Saturday, me and my mum headed up to the racecourse to acquire a tree from the man who bought and resurrected our old car (known as Phil the bus, because we did).
This would be Phil, all loaded down with trees.
this is one the one we picked...
We manhandled it through the house
and got it standing up. Thus - Tree!
The best part of this trip though, was in between buying the tree and getting it home. To get back from the racecourse, we used the scenic route, over Battledown. on our side of the hill, we found an icicle grotto... I'm going to link to these pictures, because it seems like a better way to show them than to embed them here, where they'll only show up whole if I make them tiny, and then the impact is lost, so. Links:
Photo one
Photo two
Photo three
that big puddle in the first picture is the reason for this; each time the puddle was splashed through by a car, a thin film of water was splashed on the branches and promptly froze. We stopped so I could photograph it, it was that much of a surprise.
Cor!
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
We planned to look at some trees
A few Sundays ago, my friend Hanna and I set off for a local(ish) arboretum, the one at Westonbirt, just over an hour away. The plan was to look at the pretty foliage and take nice pictures of it. For the occasion, dad lent me his Nikon DSLR, telling me not to lose or break it (because people do that on purpose).
We began the journey, heading southwest. It started raining, hard, which gave Hanna the opportunity to discover just how quickly her windscreen wipers could go. When the rain stopped, we were coming into Tetbury, a typical Cotswold town, all local stone and antique shops. We drove through, me taking photos out of the car window, and as we got to the edge of town, the rain began again. Wipers go back on, but... nothing. No movement from them at all. Try again, still nothing. We pulled over and phoned Hanna's mum, whose car it was we'd taken. We let her know what had happened, then phoned the RAC. I ended up talking to them, told them what they needed to know and finally got the message that the man with the van would be there in about an hour and 15 minutes.
So, since we had a while, we set off into Tetbury in search of some coffee and somewhere to sit down. The first place we tried wasn't letting anyone in despite having spare tables, so we found another, where the spare tales were there to be used, not just looked at.
We had our coffee, and a toasted teacake and headed back to the car where we took some photos of the dashboard (we might as well). Our saviour arrived, looked at the wipers, got out an electronic thing, put it back, then he fixed the wiper. By hitting it. With a hammer.
I'm told that's called 'percussive maintenance'. It definitely worked. Unfortunately, the advice was to head back home, so no trees for us. The mechanic followed us back to Cheltenham just in case the wiper motor needed hitting again and so we could fill out a couple of forms.
So, our trip to see the trees was called off, but, instead, we sat in Hanna's living room, had another coffee, and Hanna gave me my belated birthday gift, a photo album put together of all the things that have gone on in the last couple of years - the picnics, birthdays, the snow days.
It wasn't what we planned, but it was a lovely day, and there are worse places to be stranded than Tetbury.
We began the journey, heading southwest. It started raining, hard, which gave Hanna the opportunity to discover just how quickly her windscreen wipers could go. When the rain stopped, we were coming into Tetbury, a typical Cotswold town, all local stone and antique shops. We drove through, me taking photos out of the car window, and as we got to the edge of town, the rain began again. Wipers go back on, but... nothing. No movement from them at all. Try again, still nothing. We pulled over and phoned Hanna's mum, whose car it was we'd taken. We let her know what had happened, then phoned the RAC. I ended up talking to them, told them what they needed to know and finally got the message that the man with the van would be there in about an hour and 15 minutes.
So, since we had a while, we set off into Tetbury in search of some coffee and somewhere to sit down. The first place we tried wasn't letting anyone in despite having spare tables, so we found another, where the spare tales were there to be used, not just looked at.
We had our coffee, and a toasted teacake and headed back to the car where we took some photos of the dashboard (we might as well). Our saviour arrived, looked at the wipers, got out an electronic thing, put it back, then he fixed the wiper. By hitting it. With a hammer.
I'm told that's called 'percussive maintenance'. It definitely worked. Unfortunately, the advice was to head back home, so no trees for us. The mechanic followed us back to Cheltenham just in case the wiper motor needed hitting again and so we could fill out a couple of forms.
So, our trip to see the trees was called off, but, instead, we sat in Hanna's living room, had another coffee, and Hanna gave me my belated birthday gift, a photo album put together of all the things that have gone on in the last couple of years - the picnics, birthdays, the snow days.
It wasn't what we planned, but it was a lovely day, and there are worse places to be stranded than Tetbury.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Leah's Stoke-on-Trent Adventure (The Second University Open Day)
This time, the university of Staffordshire's Stoke Campus.
We were soon aware that this was a better day than Falmouth's, although whether that was because of the better organisation or simply not having my dad grumping around remains to be seen.
We had come up on the train, a relaxing hour and a half direct journey - in stark contrast to the four and a half hour drive down to Cornwall last week - so we weren't already tired when we got there.
Our first views of the city were positive. A lovely Victorian station and, outside more Victorian buildings and (of course) a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The campus was within walking distance and we were there in five minutes. I was pleased to note as we walked toward it, that I could see hills (something I have been used to my whole life here in Cheltenham).
Registration was fast. We were given leaflets about accommodation, writing the personal statement, safety procedures (in case of fire and so on) tickets for a campus tour and an 'Open day visitor' sticker, which entitled us to free hot drinks for the whole day (they didn't run out of beans). We had half an hour before we had to be over on the other half of the campus to hear about the journalism course, so we took advantage of the free drinks and got some coffee.
We headed from the Leek road site around to College road, where the journalism talk and tour was situated in the university's film theatre. We were early, so we wandered around the campus then waited in the foyer with everybody else, peering through into the newsroom and looking at the design students' 'Design loves and hates' which were posted on the wall. The London Underground map and Moulton bicycle got the thumbs up, while foil-lidded yoghurt pots and Phillipe Starck's 'Juicy Salif' lemon juicer were less well liked.
Again, there were differences from last week. Falmouth's representative for journalism was a single lecturer who had only been there for a few months and didn't have all the information we wanted. At Stoke, a third of the faculty (eleven of them) were there to talk to us (apparently the rest were working in the field). They sold it well. Suffice to say, by the time we set off for the tour (having been split up into groups who were thinking of sport, broadcast, print or just plain journalism) I was convinced, and I wanted to do the course there.
We saw the newsroom, its computers, the news desk and the sofa, bought from Pebble Mill, and covered in Midlands news presenters' hot chocolate stains. There were televisions in there, continually showing the BBC news and Sky news, and an open gallery. Students get to have a go at every job on newsdays, from presenting to producing and everything in between (and I think I know which I'll be happiest doing).
Their radio studio has all professional equipment and, we were told, gets phone calls from all sorts of interesting people - since it's common for someone to phone an agent and ask if their client would call back.
It seems from all that was said that this blogging lark is a good plan , and that the years of extracurricular drama have provided some of the confidence, the relaxation techniques and the speech skills which will be important for the course and the profession.
We headed back to Leek Road for our campus tour, and waited with everyone else for our guides to appear at 1:30. We had a chat with someone else who had been there on the journalism tour with us, who we'd discovered to be from Gloucester, just down the road from us.
Again, a contrast with Falmouth. There, we had one student ambassador, who we couldn't hear, and who barely gave us any actual information. At Stoke, we had three Student ambassadors who all knew what they were talking about, showed enthusiasm for the place and the facilities and spoke loudly enough that they were audible, despite the large size of our tour group and the unfavourable acoustics. My favourite part was that one of them was called Leah (my name) and she was a journalism student. She discovered this when mum was asking her about accommodation and was making a comment about me: 'Leah, my Leah...'. I think she was quite pleased since she told the drama student (clearly a friend) who then said; 'She's probably nicer than you'. I'm pretty sure she was joking.
We had more hot drinks and listened to some information about student finance and.. that was the end of the day. We'd seen all we had to see, and so we headed back to the train station.
The pictures don't really fit in to the narrative, so here they are separately:
The Station: nicer than Birmingham New Street (this is not hard)
Lovely and green, rather like home
Student lets with faaabulous period features
'Ember lounge' College road's student union bar (where I will likely be spending lots of time)
The Library (and two of our student ambassadors, who did a good job)
We were soon aware that this was a better day than Falmouth's, although whether that was because of the better organisation or simply not having my dad grumping around remains to be seen.
We had come up on the train, a relaxing hour and a half direct journey - in stark contrast to the four and a half hour drive down to Cornwall last week - so we weren't already tired when we got there.
Our first views of the city were positive. A lovely Victorian station and, outside more Victorian buildings and (of course) a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The campus was within walking distance and we were there in five minutes. I was pleased to note as we walked toward it, that I could see hills (something I have been used to my whole life here in Cheltenham).
Registration was fast. We were given leaflets about accommodation, writing the personal statement, safety procedures (in case of fire and so on) tickets for a campus tour and an 'Open day visitor' sticker, which entitled us to free hot drinks for the whole day (they didn't run out of beans). We had half an hour before we had to be over on the other half of the campus to hear about the journalism course, so we took advantage of the free drinks and got some coffee.
We headed from the Leek road site around to College road, where the journalism talk and tour was situated in the university's film theatre. We were early, so we wandered around the campus then waited in the foyer with everybody else, peering through into the newsroom and looking at the design students' 'Design loves and hates' which were posted on the wall. The London Underground map and Moulton bicycle got the thumbs up, while foil-lidded yoghurt pots and Phillipe Starck's 'Juicy Salif' lemon juicer were less well liked.
Again, there were differences from last week. Falmouth's representative for journalism was a single lecturer who had only been there for a few months and didn't have all the information we wanted. At Stoke, a third of the faculty (eleven of them) were there to talk to us (apparently the rest were working in the field). They sold it well. Suffice to say, by the time we set off for the tour (having been split up into groups who were thinking of sport, broadcast, print or just plain journalism) I was convinced, and I wanted to do the course there.
We saw the newsroom, its computers, the news desk and the sofa, bought from Pebble Mill, and covered in Midlands news presenters' hot chocolate stains. There were televisions in there, continually showing the BBC news and Sky news, and an open gallery. Students get to have a go at every job on newsdays, from presenting to producing and everything in between (and I think I know which I'll be happiest doing).
Their radio studio has all professional equipment and, we were told, gets phone calls from all sorts of interesting people - since it's common for someone to phone an agent and ask if their client would call back.
It seems from all that was said that this blogging lark is a good plan , and that the years of extracurricular drama have provided some of the confidence, the relaxation techniques and the speech skills which will be important for the course and the profession.
We headed back to Leek Road for our campus tour, and waited with everyone else for our guides to appear at 1:30. We had a chat with someone else who had been there on the journalism tour with us, who we'd discovered to be from Gloucester, just down the road from us.
Again, a contrast with Falmouth. There, we had one student ambassador, who we couldn't hear, and who barely gave us any actual information. At Stoke, we had three Student ambassadors who all knew what they were talking about, showed enthusiasm for the place and the facilities and spoke loudly enough that they were audible, despite the large size of our tour group and the unfavourable acoustics. My favourite part was that one of them was called Leah (my name) and she was a journalism student. She discovered this when mum was asking her about accommodation and was making a comment about me: 'Leah, my Leah...'. I think she was quite pleased since she told the drama student (clearly a friend) who then said; 'She's probably nicer than you'. I'm pretty sure she was joking.
We had more hot drinks and listened to some information about student finance and.. that was the end of the day. We'd seen all we had to see, and so we headed back to the train station.
The pictures don't really fit in to the narrative, so here they are separately:
The Station: nicer than Birmingham New Street (this is not hard)
Lovely and green, rather like home
Student lets with faaabulous period features
'Ember lounge' College road's student union bar (where I will likely be spending lots of time)
The Library (and two of our student ambassadors, who did a good job)
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Leah's Big Cornish Adventure
Yesterday was the day that me, my mum and my dad made our way southwest to have a good look at University College Falmouth and its journalism course. We set off about eight o-clock in the car, armed with our information pack (a map and a timetable) and a bagful of water bottles, hoping to make the journey in about four and a half hours.
My first impression of the place was in sunshine, probably a good thing as far as they're concerned for selling the place. The buildings are quite new, as the campus was set up between 1999 and 2001, and therefore very much of their time, with the interesting rendering techniques and timber cladding that are also present on the buildings at my old school which were put up in the same time. We registered and were given vouchers for a coffee machine which, in its own words, was; 'Out of Beans!'.
We set off with one of the campus tours, led by student ambassadors in big yellow hoodies. We were showed around the design studios - mostly irrelevant to me, but interesting to see that actually their workshop equipment is not a million miles away from what we had for GCSE Product Design (we were a technology college so we had all industry standard equipment). Unfortunately, our guide was practically inaudible, and might not have even been visible a lot of the time, had it not been for the big yellow hoodie. We had to cut short our tour - not getting to see either the accommodation or the media building where I would be working - so that we could go to a welcome lecture where a one of the senior management team told us that, essentially, Falmouth is different. In some ways that might be a bad thing, but it was clear that in his opinion it worked better than what he'd seen at other universities where he'd worked.
We were then shown to the journalism seminar by a far more enthusiastic guide, and heard about the course.
It looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. The tutors all have experience of working in the field and have brought their connections with them. there are a variety of guest lecturers throughout the year, from the editors of the local newspapers to people who work at the Independent and the Guardian who make their way from London to talk to the students. The course itself includes modules on the history of journalism, media law, photojournalism, television journalism and so on and so forth - all interesting and useful for what I'd like to do in the future.
So yeah. Falmouth was nice. I'm not totally convinced, but it's Staffordshire University's Open Day next Saturday, so there will be a report on that and maybe I will have made some sort of decision (or maybe it will come down to who'll have me)
My first impression of the place was in sunshine, probably a good thing as far as they're concerned for selling the place. The buildings are quite new, as the campus was set up between 1999 and 2001, and therefore very much of their time, with the interesting rendering techniques and timber cladding that are also present on the buildings at my old school which were put up in the same time. We registered and were given vouchers for a coffee machine which, in its own words, was; 'Out of Beans!'.
We set off with one of the campus tours, led by student ambassadors in big yellow hoodies. We were showed around the design studios - mostly irrelevant to me, but interesting to see that actually their workshop equipment is not a million miles away from what we had for GCSE Product Design (we were a technology college so we had all industry standard equipment). Unfortunately, our guide was practically inaudible, and might not have even been visible a lot of the time, had it not been for the big yellow hoodie. We had to cut short our tour - not getting to see either the accommodation or the media building where I would be working - so that we could go to a welcome lecture where a one of the senior management team told us that, essentially, Falmouth is different. In some ways that might be a bad thing, but it was clear that in his opinion it worked better than what he'd seen at other universities where he'd worked.
We were then shown to the journalism seminar by a far more enthusiastic guide, and heard about the course.
It looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. The tutors all have experience of working in the field and have brought their connections with them. there are a variety of guest lecturers throughout the year, from the editors of the local newspapers to people who work at the Independent and the Guardian who make their way from London to talk to the students. The course itself includes modules on the history of journalism, media law, photojournalism, television journalism and so on and so forth - all interesting and useful for what I'd like to do in the future.
So yeah. Falmouth was nice. I'm not totally convinced, but it's Staffordshire University's Open Day next Saturday, so there will be a report on that and maybe I will have made some sort of decision (or maybe it will come down to who'll have me)
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Halloween!
I love Halloween. Aside from the fact that it tends to be one of those great Autumn days where it's windy and fresh and the foliage has all gone a glorious colour, it gives me a brilliant excuse for dressing up. I really enjoy dressing up.
It's probably part of that 'you can take the student out of the theatre but you can't take the theatre out of the student' thing. I'm like the metaphorical stick of rock with 'luvvie' written all the way through it - pretending to be someone else for a while is damn good fun.
This year, Halloween will be without all those friends who are off at university, but, since there is still a party (one of the remaining friends has the house to herself that weekend) I still get to dress up.
Looking at the 'pictures of me' thing on facebook, it seems I'll don a costume at the slightest provocation, and I do like to think I make the effort with it. Previous halloweens have seen me as bat, witch, werewolf, devil and so on and so on, while other opportunities have produced one of the original Charlie's Angels (raided my mum's old clothes bag), Prince Charming, schoolgirls, princesses...
This year, I was considering going as roadkill - using the furry bits from last years wolf costume, makeup bruises and cuts and a tyretrack across my chest, but I think I'll save that one (because it is a great idea). Instead I'm thinking bad fairy - all fishnet, thorns and wilted petals, like a flower fairy gone wrong. I'll have to make it of course, but I'm pretty sure I can do that.
It should be good fun. I will post pictures as we go along I think.
p.s. a friend has just started a blog for his uni course, go say hi: http://martin-baxter.blogspot.com/
It's probably part of that 'you can take the student out of the theatre but you can't take the theatre out of the student' thing. I'm like the metaphorical stick of rock with 'luvvie' written all the way through it - pretending to be someone else for a while is damn good fun.
This year, Halloween will be without all those friends who are off at university, but, since there is still a party (one of the remaining friends has the house to herself that weekend) I still get to dress up.
Looking at the 'pictures of me' thing on facebook, it seems I'll don a costume at the slightest provocation, and I do like to think I make the effort with it. Previous halloweens have seen me as bat, witch, werewolf, devil and so on and so on, while other opportunities have produced one of the original Charlie's Angels (raided my mum's old clothes bag), Prince Charming, schoolgirls, princesses...
This year, I was considering going as roadkill - using the furry bits from last years wolf costume, makeup bruises and cuts and a tyretrack across my chest, but I think I'll save that one (because it is a great idea). Instead I'm thinking bad fairy - all fishnet, thorns and wilted petals, like a flower fairy gone wrong. I'll have to make it of course, but I'm pretty sure I can do that.
It should be good fun. I will post pictures as we go along I think.
p.s. a friend has just started a blog for his uni course, go say hi: http://martin-baxter.blogspot.com/
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