(no subject)

Am feeling very actorly, as my room has become _littered_ with scripts. There's the play I just finished, the play I'm working on now, the sides I need to work on for Monday's audition and Cate's play. It's snazzy. Tomorrow I've got to clean. Tonight it was just nice to have a night at home without too much impending doom to worry about. Also, Carnivale and Deadwood. Deadwood, btw, has gone from a really good gritty show with some amazing acting, to fucking Shakespeare. I was in awe of its use of language tonight.

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/Reviews/The-Hidden-History-of-Homosexual-Australia/2005/03/09/1110316087915.html

Doco on Australian gay history.

askeladden should check it out for the picture of girls in suits. It is otherwise perhaps the most uniformative article I've ever read either about a film or its subject.

(no subject)

Assuming today can remain relatively crisis free, and as such, I am the owner of a working brain when I get home tonight, I'm going to see if I can pound out a travel article on Sydney, and submit it and a couple of the photos I took that are actually spectacular to an online magazine -- it's not a lucrative thing so much as -- people always tell me I should do travel writing, and I want to see if I can step back enough from some of the threads of my trip, pull out the ones that would actually be potentially relevant to others, and make something oa linear tale out of the whole thing. I've been meaning to go through my paper journal when I was there and post some of it here anyway, so perhaps these things will happen concurrently.

Also, reading the SMH today, nothing makes me more of a cranky/insensitive American than listening to Australians whine about the poor state of their poor film industry. Yes, it's fucked up; yes, you don't have massive corporate mechansims for pumping $$ into film. Yes, writers are shafted there, and yes, I know you all never go to see your own films, but foreign dollars won't de-Australianize projects that are actually solid. Grah! Also -- Eucalyptus? I've seens fucking _feet_ of gossip column inches on it, but why hasn't anyone pointed out the absurdity of casting actors (no matter how good, revered and drawing at the box office) who are/were in some cases 20 years too old for the parts. What the hell? I mean really, that seemed enough to make the thing crumble, not the bloody ego drama gossip fest.

The Starlet

I have, for obvious reasons, been avoiding this program. I dislike most reality TV for a number of reasons, and something called this, about girls and acting could only push bad buttons as well.

Flipping channel jsut now I stumbled on it, where the following has transpired:

1. Girls go to an acting class to work on love scenes and how to seduce someone on camera
2. Girls are given a challenge wherein they have to seduce a teddybear (a funny and difficult exercise)
3. Girls then have to do a scene with a guy.
4. Girls then find out that their elimination challenge this week involves a screentest of a lovescene with a another woman. This challenge in announced as more difficult than seducing a teddybear (are you kidding me? i prefer my scene partners sentient) and they are reminded over and over that all sorts of famous successful actressed have had to kiss other women on screen. (really, is Angelina Jolie an example that's going to make uptight straight girls feel better?)

This is all tremendously annoying.

Because romantic and sexy scenes are really hard, period. And honestly, this may be my own pricklyness with the human species but gender has nothing to do with it. It's just difficult, difficult stuff, that's invasive, potentially embarassing etc. No actor likes these things, and no actor likes these things especially when they've been set up especially to cause irritation and stress.

Ugh ugh ugh. *flails about*

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