Day 101
WRITE EVERY DAY
FITNESS
READER
Page 143 of The Christmas Carrolls: The Christmas Competition by Mel Taylor-Bessent.
GOOD HABITS
10% of Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg read.
Teeth.
Day 102
FILM CRITIC
05 - AN INDEPENDENT FILM
BAGHEAD
I do watch a fair few independent films, and I found Baghead on Kanopy, which seemed like something I would enjoy.
This film starts out with four friends visiting an independent film viewing, and they want to make a film but without spending too much money. They all go to a cabin in the woods - surely they know that's not a good idea, nothing good ever happens at a cabin in the woods! - in order to come up with ideas for what they should make a film about. The come up with the idea of a character who wears a bag on his head, after one of the characters thinks she has a dream where she sees a scary person with a bag on their head, and this character would become the basis of a horror film. But when Baghead seems to be real rather than just an idea, things start to get scary.
I don't know if this is a necessary part of independent films, an identifier that makes these films different from big-budget Hollywood films, but I can't always get on board with the shaky camera work and bad acting that I've seen. It's almost as though most of the dialogue is unscripted and the actors ad lib their lines around what should be happening in the scene. I do quite like this approach because it makes conversations more 'real'. In real life, there are awkward pauses and muddled up words, so I can understand this approach, but it can also come across as unrehearsed and a bit sloppy. The way the camera judders and moves about jerkily is also something that adds to the raw and 'real' nature of the film (possibly because the cameras are handheld rather than on wheels - I don't know much about film making so the terminology is not my strong point!), but again it can feel sloppy and unpolished.
I liked the idea more than I enjoyed the film. It could have been scarier. It could have been funnier. It didn't quite hit the mark for me.
WRITE EVERY DAY
TV CRITIC
I thought I'd have a look on Netflix to see if I could find a TV programme that I wouldn't normally watch. I tend to watch most things, so I wasn't sure what to go for. I don't tend to watch or read anything historical. I don't know why, because history is an immensely fascinating subject. But I think because there's so much history, I don't always have a point of reference I can relate to.
I didn't think I'd be captured by this programme, but it has me hooked. A ship, the Kerberos, is travelling from London to New York, carrying passengers from all walks of life; rich, poor, different nationalities. The Kerberos began to receive strange messages from another ship, which they believed to be the Prometheus, which had been lost at sea. When the Prometheus was sighted in the distance, the captain of the Kerberos, some members of the crew, a priest, and a female doctor (who was allowed to learn about medicine at that time, but not practise), sailed to the other ship ad boarded. However, they were quick to discover that the ship was abandoned and derelict, with the ship's telegraph machine destroyed, so there was no way this boat could have sent the messages.
Although this is set in 1899, the 'thriller' aspect overrides the historical aspect, so seems like something I would actually enjoy. We have seen snippets of the main characters' lives and know that there is some mystery shrouding each one. Enough was given away for the viewer to be curious, which has certainly led to me wanting to watch more. You can already feel that there's so much more going on that what we see on the surface. Who are these people? Why are they going to America? Where did the message come front? What happened to the passengers of the Prometheus? And what's going to happen next?
ADVANCED CRAFTER
FITNESS
GOOD HABITS
Teeth.
Laundry.
13% of Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg read.
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