ANTM Cycle 11

This post contains spoilers on the upcoming cycle of America's Next Top Model, so be careful what you read if you're an avid viewer of ANTM. You wanna be on top? Cycle 11, year 6 for the Top Model series where Ms. Tyra Banks gets to choose another model whose portfolio isn't as strong as her competitor's to win. Tyra, yer getting predictable... And the show too commercial. But whatever, it gives us something to look forward to and bitch about.


Your first picture of the "panel" during casting auditions. Some 30 or so girls will pass through here and they'll show a few interesting ones, some who've "gone through a lot" or "seen every hurt possible". And then some funny girl comes on and starts dancing which intiates a whole sequence where every dance is played in fast forward motion and several girls are shown dancing at once in a multi-screen fashion (last season it was Stacy-Ann). Anyway, enough sarcasm. The casting set looks fantabulous as do Ms. and Mr. Jay. In this case, they are known as the Alpha and Beta Jays. I'm still kind of muddled on who is Alpha and who is Beta though.

Tyra looks good too, in that shot. Ok, so they all look really fab, but how will the girls do? Not so good for some. There was one whom Tyra got really mad at for simply wanting to go on ANTM cause "she sees it on TV and thinks she can do it". You can bet that she's got a big chance of not making it to the next round, whatever that will be (usually top 20 round). I wonder how many girls will get to go into the house this time round. Last cycle there were 14 with the surprise place going to Dominique. Also, last cycle was the first time since cycle 4 that there were 14 in the house.


The international destination this season is *drum roll* Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Tyra wrote a note saying that the pictures you see are not to be believed and that she may be on vacation in this location. She goes on to elaborate that she will be with the Jays, Nigel and Paulina Porizkova on location to film the next cycle of America's Next Top Model. Nice cover up girl. This is apparently during an international go see.



She looks pretty modelesque doesn't she? America's Next Top Model Cycle 11 comes to you on September 3, 2008. Only on the CW and YouTube.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

I know. I'm living under a stone right? I just watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe last night. Like, delay by nearly 3 years Jon? But I was blown away by it. Its just a pity that I never did watch it on the big screen. Hopefully there will be a few more movies and then I can perhaps go for the marathon that they'll have before the final movie.

Before I go into how I liked the movie, here's an update for those who don't know what's coming next. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian came out this year and I think its doing quite well in the cinemas due to the success of the first movie. A third movie will come out summer 2010, which is The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of The Dawn Trader. After that, there should be at least 2 more films - The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking of how epic the films will be.

Now diving into a bit of history.... The order in which the books are now labeled does NOT co-respond to the chronological publishing dates. Two lists for you.

Current book order (Narratively correct):
1. The Magician's Nephew
2. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. Voyage of The Dawn Trader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle

Chronologically published order:
1. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1950)
2. Prince Caspian (1951)
3. Voyage of The Dawn Trader (1952)
4. The Silver Chair (1953)
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
6. The Magician's Nephew (1955)
7. The Last Battle (1956)

I could go on on how each book was related to each other, but I'll save that for another post some time. I've digressed enough as is.

The movie really brought the story alive for me. And I appreciate how the director stayed really true to the original script - like down to Edmund's liking for Turkish Delights. And I think it was done up really well. Even the acting wasn't too bad. Perhaps the only thing that was not realistic for me was the battle scenes and the lack of gore and blood. With such epic fight scenes, one would expect Peter's sword to be a bit more blood-stained than was shown. However, I do know that this was a movie more targeted at children, hence the lack of that sense of realism.

Apart from that, the soundtrack also blew me away. It's quite chilling really. My favourite tracks would be "Only the beginning of an Adventure", "The Battle", "From western woods to Beaversdam". They're all fantastic and the composer did a fantastic job. So did the editors in using the music to make the scenes jump out more at you. Fantastic job you Narnian-make-it-come-alive people. Love the movie.

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Get Smart

Tonight, my brother and I received tickets to go watch a VIP Access movie - Get Smart. VIP Access, if I'm not wrong, is a show on Star World. Many thanks to Aunty Doris for giving us the tickets.

The movie stars big names - Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Oh, I forgot to mention... Masi Oka also stars in this (Hiro Nakamura, from Heroes people?). I will say it is pretty entertaining. But if you're looking for something outstandingly funny, I don't think this one quite makes the cut. Unremarkable, yes, for the logic used in certain areas. But overall, it seemed forced to me instead of coming across naturally. Like as though the production team tried a bit too hard to make it obviously funny.

Acting skills were brilliant though and there were many truely funny moments, but there's a lot that I thought weren't as funny either. But as I said, overall, it was entertaining. There are some shows that make you think deeply about things, others that make you laugh at how attrocious they can be and others purely for entertainment. Get Smart falls into this category.

But hats off to Agent 86 and Agent 99. At some points it was predictable but Get Smart gets a rating of 3.5 out of 5 from me. Cheers!

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Nick D'Arcy doesn't make the Australian Olympic team

CAS rejects D'Arcy's final appeal

Nick D'Arcy's fight to be included in the Australian Olympic team for the Beijing Games is officially over.

The controversial swimmer had his final avenue of appeal rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

An Australian Olympic Committee spokesperson confirmed that the CAS had knocked back D'Arcy's appeal against a decision made last week by the AOC executive board.

That unanimous decision by the 14-member AOC board had backed an earlier decision by its president John Coates to sack him from the team.

Coates stood aside from the decision by the board and did not attend the meeting at which D'Arcy made a personal plea to stay on the Olympic team.

It is the end of a drawn out saga - at least from an Olympic perspective - that started when D'Arcy allegedly assaulted former swimmer Simon Cowley in a Sydney bar incident in the early hours of March 30.

He was subsequently kicked off the team by Coates for bringing himself, his sport and the Olympic team into disrepute.

An initial appeal to CAS found that, while D'Arcy had brought himself into disrepute, in breach of the AOC guidelines, the AOC chief did not have the authority alone to remove the swimmer from the team.

It was then referred back to the AOC executive board who concurred with Coates' view that D'Arcy should not be allowed to compete in Beijing.

D'Arcy immediately appealed that decision.

But he was again unsuccessful after a five-hour CAS hearing in Sydney on Monday.

The CAS has not yet revealed its reasons.

D'Arcy's lawyer Jack Leitner said it was "the end of the line" as far as appeals go.

He said his client was probably torn about what had transpired.

"I can't really comment too much on how he feels but there's probably some mixed emotions - bitter disappointment but perhaps relief it has been resolved," Leitner said.

He was hopeful that D'Arcy, who he described as having "guts and determination" would continue in the sport.

Leitner revealed D'Arcy has already returned with his father Justin to Queensland and would not be present in court on Tuesday for a second hearing over his charge of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm to Cowley, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years' jail.

"His focus has now been turned to criminal proceedings," Leitner said.

"But no, he won't be in court tomorrow."

Reading that article made me somewhat satisfied that the relevant councils saw the gravity of the situation and, in my opinion, took the right actions. However, I can't help but feel slightly pitiful for Nick either. But I think it is important to also know that what you do can affect you in a big way and that he probably should have accounted for his own actions as well. Who knows where his career will be headed now?

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Photographs

During my trip to Australia my mom got the laptop cleaned out without telling me. So I didn't know and I didn't think much of it. Till I came back. Fine, I got over the initial surprise that most of my files were no longer around (resumes, some videos, some music). And a month or so later, I bring out my hard drive to check my photos. And who'd know, they're no where to be found. I thought I had backed them up to one of my hard drives. Apparently not. So that meant that all my India photos not posted online are now gone. So came a whole new sense of dissapointment and feelings of upset. It happens, sure. But that one just hit me suddenly cause the India trip was something you'd do once in your life. Either that or it was the only time I'd be doing it with my classmates.

And that got me onto the topic that years ago we used to wait for our photographs to be developed before we knew what they looked like. Nowdays, with digital cameras, you instantly see the photo taken 5 seconds ago. And if it's not nice, you can delete and take it again. There's also the danger that if your card runs out of memory space, you might risk deleting a nice picture instead accidentally. But the point was that I felt it was more fun to send the photos to be developed and wait to see how they turned out. These days since everything is electronic, its almost instantaneous. No more photo developing, no more waiting to see how it turned out. When was the last time you developed a photo? I recall mine being the last week of school when I was rushing to finish my final NCT CA so I could get on with the photos for DMC05 to take home on the last day.

But that's not the real thing, the real thing being taking pictures with a camera with a roll of film inserted inside and not knowing whether they came out blurry or overexposed (when you pulled the film out). That seems eons ago. So long ago that I can't seem to remember the last time I did that. Probably 2003? That's when we got our video camera that came with a still picture function. And in 2005 we got our current 5.1 megapixel SLR-look-alike. So about 5 years ago? Whoosh. What a long time that is! I really think those were fun days though, where your skill could really show perhaps? Regina, one day we need to hang out and use your polaroid camera to take pictures and put them in a montage like the picture at the top and take a digital photo of that.

Polaroids seem really classic somehow. If I'm not wrong, they are no longer produced? I hope that film roll-based cameras never stop being produced. In Zhili's words, "I sound old" when I think that one day those types of cameras will become part of museum exhibits on photography. And that day won't be too far away.

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Answer to previous entry

Monday June 2, 06:25 PM
Artist to exhibit nude photos in protest
By AAP

A Melbourne artist will exhibit a series of nude photographs of 11-year-old children to protest against the recent censorship of the work of photographer Bill Henson.

Thirty to 40 images of two boys, now aged 17, will be projected onto a screen during the exhibition, provocatively titled: "I am not a photographer nor a pedophile but an artist".

The exhibition will take place at The Loop bar in Melbourne's city centre on Tuesday night.

Artist Victoria Larielle, who gave her age as "20-something", said she took the photographs in three separate shoots throughout 2001 but only decided last Monday to exhibit the images publicly.

She was inspired to do so following the furore surrounding Henson's now notorious exhibition from which NSW police last month seized 20 photographs of a naked adolescent girl and boy.

"I felt really upset that Bill has been persecuted so much by the government and Australian people that don't understand art, perhaps," she told AAP.

Larielle said the exhibition was designed as support for Henson and to protest against censorship.

"There are still charges pending on Bill Henson, and I've got a lot of friends in the art world who feel the same way so I'm putting on this exhibition, basically, as a support type of thing," she said.

Larielle said she was not afraid of becoming embroiled in a similar controversy as Henson because "I completely know where my intent is for my art and my images".

She said her intent through her photographs was to show vulnerability and fragility, not just of young people, but of everyone.

"It's like the vulnerable side of everybody, the fragility of us all, we all grow. And I think it's beautiful," she said.

Larielle said her models and their parents had given permission for the images to be used in the exhibition.

She emphasised the photographs were not for sale.

I had to ask and I got my reply. Apparently, a whole lot more perverse than I thought. Don't they get that the main issue is that its not paedeophilia but of the age issue? I think it's somewhat different from taking photos of nude babies. Here, the person has the right to a certain standard of dignity. And their body has matured much more than that of a newborn. And what logic this "protest" has, I'm not sure of. Would lowering the age of the subject really help the cause? If I think how the majority will react, it would make it even worse. I hope the reaction will be worse.

Probably these "artists" feel that the more the public (and authorities) object to the subject, the more they will be enraged by more such "artwork" appearing on the scene. Seriously, if this is the level of maturity these artists have.... I have no idea what else they are capable of producing. I believe in a thing called art within the limits and boundaries. Not some tasteless retort to something of the same nature that was removed prior to being exhibited publically. Sorry artists, you need to practice some degree of self-censorship. There has to be a limit and there need to be boundaries. Some things are just not meant to be looked at in such an angle and do not call me conservative.

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