Forgot to mention the second Hamilton screening of It Came From the Swamp was on last night. There will be an Auckland screening tonight at the Wine Cellar, so if anyone isn’t up to anything and in the area up there, head on over and check out some quality films.

Alternatively you can check out this new Microsoft Zune ad. We don’t have Zunes in New Zealand and its pretty doubtful we ever will, but that doesn’t matter. Just watch this video and be amazed… hehehe.

Kick off screening of It Came From the Swamp went very down very well last night with tickets being sold out and a second screening planned for next week to accommodate futher viewers.

I got there late myself and forgot to grab a copy of the DVD, something I’ll probably have to pay for, but from what I hear, apart from being on sale during the tour, the DVD will eventually be available in stores like JB Hifi, which is pretty exciting.

Part of last night was also the first time I had sat down with an audience watching Spit-Takes and though I was nervous to begin with, people started laughing from the first gag and kept laughing in almost all the right places which is great. There are still bits and pieces which I wish I had spent a little more time polishing and shortening to really get the laughs across, but ah well.

Just to note about Spit-Takes: the version that’s touring is actually the ‘clean’ version. Where the one on youtube at the moment is full of dirt and film artifacts, the one thats on the DVD is free of all that due to the fact I couldn’t complete all the effects in time before it had to be in for the DVD mastering. This I don’t mind, I’m still half and half if it should be either clean or dirty, but I must point out that the countdown timer appears to have been cut from the start of the short which is a little miffing as it sets up the whole ‘educational film’ format, but them’s the breaks I suppose.

But anyway, It Came From the Swamp will be playing in Raglan tonight, not that anyone I know from Raglan will be reading this, but I actually wouldn’t mind being there right now as the weather for the last few days have been ridiculously hot and I’ve got a feeling I’m not looking forward to summer this year.

Have been spending the last few days (and nights) tinkering a slightly new web design that utilises CSS which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time and now I know why I’ve been putting it off for so long. Ugly HTML coding is so much easier, but most definitely one ugly bitch. Anyway, be a while before thats fully up and running and also more than enough techno mumbo jumbo bullshit for one post.

Tonight is the Hamilton kick-off of It Came From the Swamp! so if your not up to anything tonight, feel like watching some high caliber short films and want to support the local film making community, come on down to the Victoria Cinemas before 8pm tonight. I’ll the be one drunk out front making rude gestures to old ladies and small children.

Its also been pointed out to me that the collection of Hamilton Short Films festival entitled “It Came From the Swamp: Short Films From the Waikato” starts its tour of New Zealand next week.

As you can tell from the title, it’s a collection of seven locally made films. Among them is Spit-takes, a short film I made (or at least finished) specifically for this festival.

Others included are Betty Banned Sweets which I mentioned earlier today, Meat, which I helped out on, but mostly hung around and smoked cigarettes with the cast and crew. Dawn Tuffery’s Swing which is a pretty damn cool animated short. Retribution and Clean As A Whistle are the only ones that I haven’t seen. Oh and of course Dark Priest which I still hold high as one of the best student short film to have been made in the Waikato.

So yeah, It Came From the Swamp. Playing next Tuesday 8pm at Victoria Cinemas, the dates for the other areas around New Zealand can be found at https://www.eventfinder.co.nz/user/nadinelee or I could post them here… nah… too lazy and have blogged more than enough today I think.

Back. Got to see a model over the weekend crying her eyes out. Was a wonderful mixture of gross tears and model hotness. Awesome.

Also figured out a bill payment I made a week ago went into the wrong account, so this week will be the hunting down of the misplaced money and whining a lot about it. Not so awesome.

The short film I worked on “Betty Banned Sweets” just had a really nice write up on it in this weeks edition of The Listener (page 46). It’s a really nice write up with lots of praise for the director Micelle and for the main actor, my good friend Matt and thats definitely awesome. I haven’t been kept in the loop on the films progress, but according to the article, it’s soon to be playing in the Show Me Shorts festival that’ll be screening up and down the country from Thrusday through till January. The article can be viewed here, but you need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing unfortunately. And more details on the festival can be seen here.

Speaking of other festivals, my friend Fin’s short film “Killing Time” is playing as part of the Manukau film festival this Thursday. So if your in the area and you’ve got nothing to do, go see it and support awesome. His blog is also something that’s become a regular read for me. He does a much better job of updating his and keep up to date with various news and other weird internet stuff he comes across. Bookmark his site here.

And while my friend Dom has recently lost his show on Alt due to management doing what they usually do of fucking up stuff. He’s now once again a member of the dangerous group that is motorists in Auckland and no longer has to ride public transport like the hobo he secretly wishes he could be. Just thought I’d point that out for the hell of it.