Film Binge

I joined Netflix yesterday because of Arrested Development Season 4, and it's caused twenty-four hours of unadulterated streaming bliss. And that was on top of two DVDs I'd already watched yesterday too. So, since yesterday morning I have watched the following movies, which seem to become increasingly low-brow as time goes on!:

1.Otto Preminger's Advise & Consent (1962)

2. Douglas Sirk's Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)

3. The Dictator (2012) - This is the beginning of the Netflix mania last night...

4. Bachelorette (2012) Very late now!

5. Adventureland (2009) - This was this morning, 'warming up' to lecture writing today...

Plus I watched some Arrested Development (hmmm),90s SNL and Portlandia as well. So I've caught up on a lot of the recent 'guilty pleasures' and also I've got a good-looking queue for the future. I wish Netflix had more mid 20th century classics though and a better way of searching through available films, though. It's a bit trial and error at the moment.

Lamington at Il Primosole

Il Primosole is one of the neglected wonders of East Brunswick, it is a diner with cheap food and coffee (I guess it means 'first sun'?), if it was in America it would probably be really popular but for some reason this place is never really that crowded. So, it is the perfect place to be able to just hang, read, do nothing. I imagine that this would be a great place to write an entire PhD or a novel. Because I am probably leaving this hood soon for warmer climes, I feel sad that this place is not going to be my local cafe any more. I am missing it already! So I am going to come here as much as I can before I leave. It is right at my tram stop, I dropped by after work tonight because I was really hungry:

Look how wonderful the interior space is! Look at the lights! And the plants!

It was nice to see a couple of people hanging out here this evening. There were three people in the cafe when I went it - a veritable crowd at this time of night. This was one guy who just wanted to stand, eat and go, Italian style...

Rosemary's Baby

Watching this week's episode of Mad Men directly inspired me to download the Kindle edition of Rosemary's Baby  to read for the first time (Sally Draper was reading it in bed before 'Grandma Ida' turned up). I've seen the film already, of course!

Healesville Sanctuary Sunday

Irit and Chris, who I recently discovered are also recently anointed zoo members (so good!), invited me to go with them to Healesville Sanctuary on sunday. For both of them it was their zoo trifecta, but I still have to get out to Werribee Open Range Zoo before I've seen all three. Healesville is a very peaceful and happy feeling zoo, there is a lot of open space and freedom to move around (for the people and the animals), and I think the animals seem a lot more at ease here, being native and all. I don't have a picture here, but I got to pat a slinky giant snake! It was coiling around and trying to get into my bag! These are some of the other guys we met on sunday....

Irit's haughty new associate!

Suddenly not looking so haughty...

Spring Breakers

In retrospect I have to say that this movie blew my mind. I'm thinking about seeing it again on cheap mondays at Nova if I've got time this week. At first I resisted the premise and got angry at the crap characterization and semi-narrative, and then I got pulled in to its style and it held me from (amazing) Britney Spears ballad to Miami Vice speedboat. I love the film's tonal shifts from serious to comic and back again. It is the first film in a long time that makes me feel 'I am watching a poem'.

Douglas Sirk Film

I don't know which one yet.

*Update: It ended up being Imitation of Life - wow!

 

Melbourne Zoo: Loose Seals

I know that this is going to get repetitive, but if it aint broke don't fix it I guess. Today I visited the zoo after my morning class and uni work, I spent a couple of hours over lunch seeing a few of the places I hadn't had a chance to go to yet (and back to the butterfly house). Today was a pretty cold, wet, unpleasant kind of day, I felt very sorry for the poor lions in their enclosure, in fact I feel sorry for all of the equatorial or warmer climate creatures having to go through winter in Parkville... shouldn't there be an artificially created environment for these poor things?

The underwater seal world was mesmerizing, I spent ages here today and used all sorts of photo apps to try and capture a good shot (they move so quickly!). I like using Luminancer to try and capture their movement through light and colour too.

It started to bucket down with water at the seal display. I tried to get to the Butterfly House quickly to warm up again, but by then all the pathways had flooded and then I had to wait it out a while inside... which was fine with me. This giant butterfly below was really attracted to this one guy's particular umbrella...

A view of pouring rain from the SE-Asian elephant hut. The rest of the photos are just other lovely creatures and things I saw today!