Month: October 2007

The Girl in the Cafe – the tour

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With recent sign ups from both Washington and Amsterdam (update: and London and Australia), there doesn’t seem to come an end to the travel of The Girl. She is heading for another US and UK tour soon.

The Girl has also been in New Zealand, visiting Mark, and has just visited Slovenia too.

Mark wrote a fantastic review. He saw the film with 16(!) of his friends and they all loved it.

Do step inside to read his review, it made me jump with joy. And I suddenly got a brilliant idea when I read it, I will tell you more about that soon.

A big Thank You to Mark for writing this.

Have a look at the worldmap here, and if you want to signup, please go here. It’s free, and the rules are easy:
See the film.
Write about it.
Pass i(t) on.

Love can’t change
what’s wrong in the world.
But it’s a start.

Step in and read Mark’s review

Good morning

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Yesterday night I send off 51 pages of my script to my tutor.
I felt great when I send it and I thought:
“Eat this you moth…, you, you, you tutor!”
30 minutes later: “I think it was quite alright”
1 hour later “I hope it was alright”
2 hours later “Oh bloody hell, it’s crap isn’t it”
2.5 hours “Worst script ever”
3 hours later “I am not going to class on Saturday, no way”

So this morning I was late and I was tired and I might even have been a bit grumpy.
I closed the door behind me and started walking to work.

I met an old man.

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Posh Girl part II or me and my shoes

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Yesterday I bought new shoes. I needed new shoes because I bought a suit (which I need for work). When the lady helping me measuring the length of my trousers (that’s standard here in London when you buy a suit, I didn’t know that, but learned something new) asked me if “those were the shoes I was going to wear with this suit”. I was about to say yes, when the look on her face told me that I probably wasn’t. I was wearing my Converse sneakers.

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Not everything is as it seems

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Yesterday someone said to me “Oh I just follow your blog, then I will know how you are”.
Nice thought, but it doesn’t really work that way. I don’t write how I am on my blog, I write what I think might be interesting to read, for some more than for others (hello mum), I write what I would like to remember, and I write too much about Bill because I happen to like him.

But here are things that don’t make my Friday and some that do:

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Shadowlands, Wyndham’s Theatre London – review

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Charles Dance in Shadowlands[rating: 5/5]
I have 7 plays lined up the coming months, but I doubt any of them will come even close to Shadowlands, which I saw yesterday.

Shadowlands tells the story of C.S. Lewis (writer of Narnia), a confirmed bachelor into his fifties, until he meets Joy, a witty, intelligent American woman who has been writing to him because she is a fan of his books. It is an incredibly tender and touching story, which shows that love is unpredictable and powerful.

Charles Dance (Bleak House, Gosford Park and longer ago he played the villain in The Golden Child with Eddy Murphy) plays C.S. “Jack” Lewis and he swept me off my feet. What a fantastic actor and what a performance, he got me hooked from the second he stepped into the light.
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Sneak preview

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Sneak preview

We made a film. It is not finished yet, we need to edit it, but yesterday we were out in the beautiful weather London is offering us at the moment and I found myself directing actors, composing shots and generally feeling more at ease doing all this than I ever thought I would.

The actors couldn’t have been more perfect, they were great and so nice to work with.

We will edit it hopefully this week, and yes, yes, yes we will upload it as soon as it is finished. Overall it was a great experience.

I just got a mail from my film partner, and the rushes seem to look “promising”, which is good!

It is only a 60 seconds film, so nothing major, but it is something I seriously have contributed to. I meet a lot of people who say they want to make short films but never do it. We did it, and however the end result is going to be, I feel good about it.

I took the above picture yesterday. I know there isn’t that much to see, I do have some nice stills from the actors too, but I need to have a talk with them first to ask if it is OK to publish them.

And I can’t wait to make the next one.

love+rock: Everything you said amazed me

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Love+Rock:Everything you said amazed me

[ Send her here ]

Because it’s a beautiful song:

Audio no longer available (Snow Patrol – Warmer Climate)

Because it’s weekend.
Because this is the visual interpretation of voicilicious.
Because he’s back and that’s exactly what he is.

Enjoy your weekend.

you are the cry that turns to laughter,
you’re the hope that ends disaster.

The Meeting with The Actor

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Not That Actor, but the actor who is going to be in our short. It was a joy to meet him as he turns out to be incredibly nice, very relaxed and laid back and very perfect for the role he is going to play (which is a posh distinguished City business man). He has a great voice too (very smooth and voicilicious) and a spot on English accent for this role.

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There are things to say

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Coping Strategies was special and touching and I am happy I saw it. I saw the first of only 2 cinema screenings and the cinema was filled with people who either were connected to Yarrow or had been involved in the making of the film itself. The film (28 minutes) is about Shahid, a young man with learning disabilities, who breaks free from his doting mother for a new life of romance, independence and indulgence. Bill Nighy makes a short guest appearance as his social worker. The film was both funny, touching and surreal.
More about the short shoot and giving a presentation »

Things that make my Friday

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Radiohead

I don’t know if this is going to be a returning post kind of thing. I do know that I try to stop running every now and then, to reflect a bit on life and appreciate the good things, however tiny they are.

  1. We are casting for our short (1 minute) short. Here is some detail from the description:

    “Our ‘City Gent’ is aged 50+, distinguished / greying and MUST be able to raise one eyebrow (Roger Moore style).”

    I bit my tongue to not say that the reference to Roger should be replaced by a reference to the master of eyebrow acting (I am in therapy, can you tell). We already got four responses, and tough job to read emails from actors with photos attached. Now you understand why I want to be a film maker.

    As my Cookie film has a protagonist of about the same specs, I am more than interested to see what responses we get. Dan might be among them! We will shoot this short short next weekend, the 21st of October.

  2. There have been some new sign ups for The Girl In The Cafe on tour and both of them are from the state of New York, one from NYC and one from Ithica. Apparently the project has been spoken about on the university of Ithica, which was the reason Michele signed up. She also told me what her professor has said about the project:

    My professor is teaching a class on the emotional and personal effects technology has on people. We brought up social networks such as geo-cacheing and wheresgeorge.com. Then she added that she had heard somewhere (she couldn’t remember where) about this great film that was being passed around the world. She thought it was neat that it created a new forum for people to discuss movies and world issues. She also said that projects like yours and post-secret are the future of social connections in an increasingly technological world. Basically, though, she thought that the fact that this movie can reach even areas where movies are usually unavailable is one of the few productive and positive effects of the new digital era.

    Things that makes my Friday. Ithica is a nice reference to this, I hope her road is a long one indeed.

  3. Bill Nighy reads Eric Clapton again tonight on BBC4, 9.15pm. Tune in and rock on. Missed it last week? Here you go. Next week the new Charles Paris starts, to celebrate that I found the previous Charles Paris files and fed them to my iPod. What can I say – things that make my Friday
  4. 33 days to New York.
  5. When you get great news, and I mean roaringly great fantastic news, how do you react? Do you grab your iPod and start dancing? I do. I did that yesterday and danced the night away. I know you want to know what that great news is, but I can’t tell you just yet. Also because it is not 100% sure yet, but then, what is a 100% sure in life.
  6. I had a breakfast of Tea with biscuits this morning.
  7. I just downloaded the new Radiohead album. (At last, it was impossible to get through to the website the last few days). The rhythem in “15 Step” plugs directly into my heartbeat. In a good way, I love that song. Go download it, you can set your own price. It is currently being played in our office. (Things that make my Friday)
  8. I have slowly started to look around for a potential new cafe. I was going to visit the Regency Cafe which is literally around the corner where I live, but their opening hours are a bit weird. They are closed between 14.30 and 16.00 and I was there, of course, at 14.35. They are closed on Sundays too.

    In stead I went to the Astral Cafe which is diagonally opposite Regency Cafe. This is not going to be my place either (both Regency and Astral are too close to where I live) but I will return there for food. You can eat things like Spaghetti for £4 and a cup of tea is only 80p.

  9. Al Gore wins the Nobel prize.
  10. It’s nearly weekend and this weekend I will be in screen writing class again. I look forward to get comments on both my Cookie script and my 35 pages of feature film.

And how is your Friday going?

The Castle revisited

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I survived a couple of hours of “assemble IKEA furniture” torture (those are the moments where a man could come in handy I admit) and now I am sitting close to Jonas, and that’s very, ehrm, comfortable. I didn’t know I missed him this much until he got here, now I am sure I won’t ever let him go again.

You already knew how one side of my castle looks like (the large images are gone because of a genius thing I did. Not.) Today Jonas came, and the other side of the castle now looks like this.

When I moved in here my walls were empty and white. The wall you are looking at here is my “good memories” wall. I admit that Dr. Who doesn’t really belong there (but I like David Tennant, and this was the very first thing I hung up, because I didn’t have anything else), but the rest of it is either theatre flyers and some postcards from films. There is a bit (or 2) of Bill, a pic of The Cafe, Kevin is there and John Simm, Tom Hollander and Michael Palin is there somewhere too.
On my desk there is Bob (and inside Bob there is Bill!) and Daniel (Craig) if you look closely.

I can hear you think – that’s not a lot of Bill on the wall now is it? No it isn’t is it. So maybe I am not as crazy as you thought anyway.
What? A picture of the other 2 walls? Can’t do that mate.

Rock ‘n Roll heroes

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Rock 'n Roll heroes

There are several options here.

  • You can wonder why I have just spend a whole evening creating this. But hey, if you don’t know be my now, you will never ever ever know me.
  • You can guess who they are if you don’t have anything better to do.
  • You can click here for a larger version.
  • Or you can play a bit yourself. If you do, please put your link in the comments because we wanna see it!

Sleep tight.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite.

Things I noticed today

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  • When I was standing in the bus this morning listening to my iPod, it suddenly occurred to me that most people I saw walking were walking in pace with my music. I can tell you that that was a very weird experience. The song I played was “Girls and Boys” from Blur. And the avarage pace of Londoners in the morning is, as you now understand, high.
  • I also noticed that listening to music changed my mood from “incredibly annoyed over having to stand in the bus” to “I don’t really care I am happy anyway”.
  • Google has bought Jaiku. I think that is quite interesting. I like Jaiku, having internet access on my phone I often post something while waiting for either bus, train or film. My Jaiku’s get posted to Twitter automatically. Even though Twitter seems more popular, Jaiku is more slick. And Twitter not accepting user names longer than 15 is ridiculous …
    Let me know if you are on one of them.
  • I am tired of waiting for things that might happen but probably won’t.
  • Art lovers fall into Tate’s crack (and that’s on the first day of opening. I better check out this new awesome piece of art before more people fall into it and they fence it off.
  • I was in the church this morning. My believes don’t fit into any of the existing religions but I enjoy(ed) the serene silence in this huge and mysterious building before I throw/threw myself back in the morning madness of getting to Victoria station.
  • You can download Radiohead’s new album for free from their website (or pay what you want to pay). Rumours are that Oasis and Jamiroquay are going down the same road. The reason I can come up with for doing this is: this completely whipes out illegal file sharing, and would make up for the astronomical prizes you have to pay for concert tickets nowadays.

    I don’t consider myself a huge fan, but “Subterranean homesick alien”, “Everything in its right place” are in very high rotation on my iPod, and have been for a long time.

  • Control (official website) is an awesome film. The story about Ian Curtis (who comitted suicide when he was 23) is tragic, the music of Joy Division is pretty depressive. But it is beautifully shot in black & white and the acting is amazing.

    And love, love will tear us apart. Again.

  • I bought a ticket for a very British play (Rock ‘n Roll) that will be performed in a very non British city (New York). I look forward to it, as it features a lot of music and both Bob Dylan and the Stones are represented. Tom Stoppard wrote it. And it’s in 45th Street. Seems like I will end up going there anyway then.

    I love Rock ‘n Roll,
    So come and take your time and dance with me.

    (oh I can feel a postcard coming up already)

Love+Rock: Change the world

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Love+Rock: If I could change the world
(Her legs seem to be growing, she is unconsciously turning into a lanky girl. Nothing wrong with lanky people though, on the contrary)

Blame Bill for reading Eric. And Eric for singing this song.

I saw And when did you last see your father with Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent this weekend. This is one of those movies where not that much happens but it gets to you anyway. Jim Broadbent is playing Colin’s dad, he gets terminally ill and the film is about the last period of his life. About looking back and talking about things that have been left unspoken for a lifetime.

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Dear Britons

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London Sink

You know I love you
I always will
My mind’s made up
By the way that I feel
There’s no beginning
There’ll be no end
But there’s one thing
I don’t understand!

Look at this picture. This picture is taken in the toilet of a cinema in Chelsea, but trust me, I could have taken it lots of other places too. At home for example. Or at work. Or in a cafe.

I feel stupid, because I don’t get it. Here is the issue that has been mindboggling me more or less since I moved here:

Why are there 2 separate taps for hot and cold water?
And why are they so far apart that you have to move your hands from burning hot to freezingly cold?

I accept driving on the wrong side of the road, drinking tea the Milky Way, bangers and mash, I even accept Marmite – but this I don’t get. Please help me out here.