Apple: House of Sand and Fog trailer. Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley. Can't get any better than this.

I went to RESFEST 2003 Cinema Electronica last weekend to sample latest visually and musically inspired shorts. And they did not disappoint. I loved bubbly visuals of THE DUMBING DOWN OF LOVE, akin to watching the world through Lava lamps. I was quite taken by Breathe where the flatness of the images conspired a world fuller than normal motion videos. CAPITAL ROCKA was a hilarious spoof of the Exorcist with Rock & Roll twist. MASHIN' ON THE MOTORWAY seems like it was inspired by Grand Theft Auto 3 type games. WE KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW was the funniest spot with these animal custumed people rapping, b-boying, and just representing. The guest appearance at the end of the show was marked by equally hilarious We Want Your Soul where this Asian guy swept onto the California shore, experiences ultra-consumer life before he runs back to the sea, naked. The two directors, Happy, were jovial and humorous as they fielded few questions-"We found him[main actor] from INS."

I walked out the auditorium with the confidence of my choice to work in this field and inspired to do great visual narrative works for tomorrow.

$14 Steady-cam. Yup. You read that correctly.

Slashdot: Matrix Revolutions To Be Released On Imax - I, for one, don't like movies on Imax. "Directors who shoot for IMAX or other large-frame formats know to keep everything really, really wide, so you don't get disoriented. The purpose is to immerse you in a certain place, to eliminate the constant reminder in your peripheral vision that you are looking at a "finite" image. When you shoot it wide and project it big, the focal length ends up back in the league of normal movies, and that's what happens. But when you shoot it close and project it big ... you get the idea." I noted this on my Star Wars viewing as well.

James Ricardo, writer of Hey DJ wrote me an email. Wow, I never knew I had a reader for this blog. (This is kinda vanity thing, writing a blog.) The trailer looks good with a lot of skin and groovy music, my two criteria for judging a flick.

Hey, indie filmmakers! If you got a project you wish me to plug, send me an email asap!

I need to plug in my own project, SOON.

Avid Express Pro is finally out, but you may want to wait few more months before you plunge your hard-earned money upgrading/purchasing it. My post house grabbed a copy from Tekserver on the day they received it and we installed it on brand new Powerbook G4 and HP Xeon machine. Unfortunately, we learned that the software is pre-mature, as usual with other software industry, with some major bugs. I spent few hours troubleshooting it for an editor the other day on Windows XP platform. (I did the usual relaunch the program and it worked. Interesting...) That's why I usually don't stay ahead of the technology curve but stay at least 6 months behind for the technology to become more dependable.

I barely scratched surface of my copy of Avid Express 3.5 and I would probably upgrade to Pro when Avid releases Mojo later.

I still need to get my reels together to put together a demo. Darn it.

So, another internship is coming to close, and no, I'm still unemployeed. I know they won't hire me because they just put up another ad for the internship on mandy. If I learned anything, beside filmmaking skills, is that small enterprise must reign on their budget in order to survive, if not profitable. The owner/CEO must be ruthless is his/her pursuit of getting cost down and maximizing sales as much as possible. In other words, I can't wait to run my own production company.

So, I'm back on prowling for next opportunity which is likely another internship or PA while searching for part-times. Survival is paramount in this dire economic climate, especially in NYC. (Is it 2004 yet?) This winter is likely to be brutally cold like the last.