ASAM sketching session 1

So we successfully held our first ASAM sketching/photography event.

Turn-up was good, those who woke up early on a sunny Sunday morning reaped benefits in the form of colourful pictures (to add to their collection).

Picture credits go to Christina Seow, Charlene Chen, Tom Kitchen, Ratna Wu, Sue-Anne Lim. For beautiful old-school camera pictures, you can follow Charlene at http://plasticstory.tumblr.com/

Some more pictures of...

Pity Poetry #1

We try something new this week: Pity Poetry.

This the chance for all the ASAM (otherwise known as Aku Sepi Aku Merana) fans out there, to share their emo-ness to the world.

Don't limit your unhappiness to status messages and constricting tweets, put them here for all cyberspace to see for eternity.

As Shrek would say, 'better out than in!'

As no proper poet managed to send their pieces in time, as the editor I thought I'd get the ball rolling with 2 cringingly amateur, but definitely emo, poems of mine.

If you think you can spare me further embarrassment in the future, send your works to asam.melbourne@gmail.com - Ltf

Soul-baring begins after the jump

Best of October's ASAMevent 2010

Videos after the jump

3rd ASAMevent and counting

I always been in love with live acts where spontaneity rules. Sure, there are hiccups, but a person is only a mere human being. This is the philosophy of ASAMevent.

So what is this ASAMevent? ASAMevent is a platform for people to share their stuff with others. To express their feelings and thoughts to the audience rather than keeping it to their self. Better yet they do it by expressing those sentiments through their songs, poems, movies, and etc.

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Local boys Fear of A Brown Planet bring up the heat at Allah Made Me Funny's Melbourne gig

A group of people walked out of the audience after a joke about ANZAC Day.  ‘It’s not funny!’ a lady shouted to the comic before walking out with the rest of the group. The comic, Amer Rahman, coolly replied, ‘Then why is everyone else laughing?’

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Joaquin Phoenix doesn't want to be famous?

We will never know if Casey Affleck made a mistake when he let slip that 'I'm Still Here' is a work of fiction early in the film's release. The announcement, planned or otherwise, colours how a viewer views this mockumentary.



 For a long time, the many stunts, appearance and media buzz that sprung from Joaquin Pheonix career change allowed the project to be question mark in the public's mind: is this actually happening?
The number of views, column inches and airtime that the Letterman appearance alone generated showed how valuable this confusion was to the makers of the movie.

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Short Flicks 2010: good stories shine through anyway

I guess it’s natural to be dismissive of home movies. We generally like our entertainment to be shiny and smooth-looking, qualities generally absent from the grainy outputs of our wannabe auteur friends.

For the technical purist, La Trobe Student Film and Theatre’s Short Flicks, would have been an unmitigated disaster. In the time it took to watch the 9 shorts, you would have learned a lot about how not to shoot a film.



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Not being a friend’s home screening, slipping out for a drink midway wasn’t an option. Sitting through it was the only polite thing to do, besides being the only option. Slinking out unnoticed from the middle row of a cinema is actually very hard to do.

By now, I would’ve made a fair number of new enemies with the above review, but wait seething friends, there’s more!

Films are more than just dollies and good lighting and good, levelled sound, it’s also about the story.

Technique has to come paired Tale. We end up with Avatar otherwise.

The short films screened at Short Flicks offered many different stories to the viewers. The coordinators selected very well, and judging by the audience’s reaction, their efforts were much appreciated.

The beauty of the short film format is the flexibility to experiment and really be out there, without having to really worry about trivial matters like continuity, plausibility and the like.

The shorts on show demonstrated this. The final selection covered a wide range of genres, from bro-coms to surrealist love stories. There were few dull moments in the program.


WHAT WE LIKED:

Blended

Built around the simple premise of being slusheed by a masked stalker, George Lingard’s  beautifully shot tale of suspense plays on the paralysing dread we feel when facing predictably bad days.

In the dark

Is there a term for human-furniture romance? This short film follows the budding romance between a girl and a desk lamp. A surreal love story set in the suburbs, we see how everything just wants to be loved.


Eulogy

Almost like a stoner movie of two bros writing each other’s eulogies. Almost.