Costas Mandylor, Invitations, Teresa Palmer, and Opening Titles

1. Had a sudden feeling/idea that I dreamed about Costas Mandylor last night.

I don't remember much, but I think maybe I watched an interview about him, and I was thinking about Saw.

This happens to me sometimes. I remember my dreams and write them down.Then later I'll remember something else.

Although usually I remember the dream in the morning or in the middle of the night, and I simply forget to write it down.

With the Costas Mandylor dream, I didn't remember anything about it until just now.

2. Thought about how yesterday I looked at an article about horror movies in the 2000's. Saw was mentioned, so that's probably why I dreamed about Mandylor.

3. Looked at Mandylor on IMDb, and saw that he has a LOT of projects in 2016 and one in 2017.

He looks very busy.

4. Saw that Mandylor is going to be in a movie with Jim Hanks, Tom Hanks brother. They look very much alike.

We've been watching Tom Hank's son, Colin, in Fargo. He too has a strong resemblance to his father.

5. Started to watch an episode of Home and Away.

John (Shane Withington) and Marilyn (Emily Symons) are telling Jett (Will McDonald) that they plan to move with him to military school.

Well, they're not going to go to school with him, but they'll live nearby.

I'm wondering how Jett's going to feel about that. Grateful?  Suffocated?

He was sad about leaving them, but maybe that was an act.

Sometimes it's nice to have family nearby, and sometimes it's not.

Although on the days I feel annoyed and suffocated, I do sometimes wonder if being geographically distant would make any different. There'd still be email and texts. There would still be pressure to attend family gatherings, except then it would involve a long drive or an airplane ride.

6. Wondered.

If we did move to Australia back when I wanted to move, how often would we be pressured to return?

In my plans, we'd come back once a year for Thanksgiving and the other winter holidays; and then we'd also come back for big things like Bat Mitzvahs.  But I have a feeling there'd be pressure for us to attend regular birthday parties, extracurricular performances, charity walks, and other small events.
Now to be fair, by pressure, I just mean an invitation. For me, an invitation IS pressure because I don't know how people are secretly feeling or reacting to my no. I don't know if the message behind the invitation is, We'd like you to come, but no hard feelings if you don't. OR is it, You should come. If you opt out, you better have a damn good excuse.  And whether you have an excuse or not, we're going to hold a secret grudge and bitch about you behind your back.

7. Liked that Hannah's (Cassie Howarth) bikini top and bottom don't match.  

I really love outfits like that.

8. Saw that Matt (Alec Snow) is hurt that he wasn't personally invited to Leah (Ada Nicodemou) and Zac's (Charlie Clausen) engagement party.

Here's the problem.

I can relate to those feelings as well.

It's a lose-lose situation.

Being invited to things gives me anxiety but NOT being invited hurts my feelings.

That being said, it's rare that I'm not invited to things.

No, I'm not trying to say I'm super popular. Everyone invites me to EVERYTHING.

I'm just saying that within my family, it is very rare that I hear of a family thing I'd like to attend, but I haven't received an invitation. In fact, I can't remember a time that it's happened.

The only thing I can VAGUELY remember is an incident with Tim and his friend Tabitha. It was something like they made plans in front of me to do something. I think it involved hanging out in the pool.  I think they talked about it with Jack but didn't ask me to come along. Or something like that. As I said, the memories are vague.  I was also hypersensitive at that time in my life, particularly when it came to Tim and Tabitha, so that's probably why I felt hurt when not specifically included.

In situations like that, it's hard to know if it's simply assumed by the others you're going to be included, or if you've been neglected.

On Home and Away, Matt feels neglected, but in reality, it was just assumed he'd be included.

9. Thought of things I've seen where it definitely seems like neglect.

I'll give a fictional example.

Let's say Shelly, Amber, and Wanda are together.  They're all sitting at the pool, dangling their feet in the water. Then Wanda says, Hey Shelly. Let's go inside and play Mario Bros. 

It seems extremely likely that Wanda is either purposely or accidentally neglecting Amber. Either way, it's awful.

10. Thought about how, although I'm not often left out of family events, I am sometimes left out of family news. That's actually kind of happening now.

I'm not really hurt. But I'm left wondering, are they not telling me because they're secretly mad? Or at they not telling me, simply because they assume I'll hear it from someone else....which I did.

OR they could just be busy with the news and not keeping track of who they've told and not told.

11. Saw that a new character is being introduced today—Charlotte (Erika Heynatz).

It's funny, because, very recently, I saw Charlotte mentioned. She's involved in the big spoiler I saw about Denny (Jessica Grace Smith).

12. Thought that Erika Heynatz looks a bit like Natasha Henstridge.

13. Finished watching the episode.

14. Started watching the rest of Kill Me Three Times.

15. Started to dislike this movie less than I expected to.

I don't like it, really. But I also don't feel it's complete crap.

I find it mildly entertaining and interesting.

16. Started to like the movie a little bit.

It's kind of clever.  It's pretty much about people having evil/criminal schemes, and they're interfering with other people's evil/criminal schemes.

17. Saw Teresa Palmer and Simon Pegg in a scene together; then I realized that I've seen both of them in zombie films.

Actually, besides this movie, the only full movies I've watched of them are zombie films.

I saw Pegg in Sean of the Dead, and Palmer in Warm Bodies.

18. Looked at Palmer's filmography and saw that, like Costas Mandylor, her career has been very active lately.

I look at the IMDb app on my phone everyday.  They have the top 100 most popular stars (according to IMDB user interest).  Palmer is one of three Australian women that's on the list. The other two are Alycia Debnam Carey and Margot Robbie.

There might be another one or two that I've forgotten. Well...and also the list changes everyday. Or the list has the POTENTIAL to change everyday. I've been looking at it for the past few weeks, and usually the same people are on the list.

19. Saw that Palmer does not have a Home and Away, Neighbours, or Jonathan-Shiff-teen-show background.

I think that's kind of rare.

20.  Saw that Palmer is one of the stars of Mel Gibson's upcoming World War II movie.  It's called Hacksaw Ridge, and has many Aussie actors—Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Ryan Corr, Firass Dirani, Ben Mingay, and probably others.

21. Saw that I missed Luke Bracey.  He's the one I mentioned the other day—the one from Point Break.

By the way, Teresa Palmer is in Point Break as well.

22. Thought back to when I was a teenager and loved slasher films.

I think a part of that me is still alive, because I'm kind of enjoying all the blood in this movie.

There's lots of it.

The thing is, though, I didn't think I liked the blood and violence of slasher films. I liked the characters and storylines. But maybe that's like the people who say they read Playboy for the articles.

Well, I think YOU can like the storylines and characters of horror films and the articles in Playboy.

23. Didn't think I'm a huge fan of violence.

Well, and it's not like I'm totally loving all the blood in this film. I'm not watching it in some kind of state of ecstasy.

One thing is, it's not very gruesome. There are no organs falling out of people. It's mostly blood gushing everywhere. Lots of blood! It's more Halloween party than than gritty, depressing realism.

24. Finished watching the movie.

I liked it in the end.

It was kind of fun.

25. Went to Random.org to pick my next thing to watch.

It's Felony, starring that guy from The Secret Life of Us.

I forgot his name.

26. Used IMDb to get his name.

Joel Edgerton!

The movie is listed as being American-Australian.

I'm not sure what's American about it.

The director is Matthew Saville. He's Australian, or at least he's done a ton of work in Australia. He's the director of Please Like Me and the miniseries Cloudstreet. He's also directed episodes of The Slap, The Secret Life of Us, Tangle, and other stuff.

Joel Edgerton wrote the screenplay.

27. Googled one of the production companies involved in the film—Benaroya.  It's listed as being in Los Angeles. So that might be why it's considered part American.

The company is owned by Michael Beneroya, who is producing an upcoming adaptation to Stephen King's Cell.

28. Saw that another one of the production companies involved with the film is Goalpost Pictures.  They're involved with the upcoming Aussie science fiction show Cleverman. I saw an article about that yesterday.  It looks pretty exciting.

 29. Started to look at the cast.

The Australian actors that are familar to me: Jai Courtney, John Brumpton, Tracy Mann, Melissa George,  and Vanessa Downing.

I actually don't really know who John Brumpton is. I've seen him at least once in IMDb credits, but when I'm watching the show/movie, I don't know which person is him.

I'm pretty sure he was in the cast list of Killing Time.

30. Saw Brumpton was in many episodes of Killing Time.

I have no idea who he was.

31. Saw that Brumpton was in the first season of Tangle.

I don't remember him in that.

32. Saw that the music for Felony was done by Bryony Marks, the woman who did the music for Tangle.

As I've mentioned before, we recently watched 11:22:63.  The opening credits for that reminded me somewhat of the opening credits for Tangle—both the music and graphics.

33. Saw that someone has uploaded the opening credits of Tangle to YouTube.  

And here's the 11:22:63 one.

I love both of them.

34. Looked at Tangle on IMDb to see if they list the creators of the opening titles.

They do.

It's two people—Andy Canny and Donna McCrum.

Canny is usually an editor. McCrum has done other title designs—The Slap, and the movie Paper Planes.

35. Saw that Canny was an editor for The Slap.

36. Saw that I'm stupid.

I didn't look closely enough.

I looked only at Canny's first IMDb category, which is editing.

I just scrolled down and saw that he HAS done other title-designing stuff.  Like McCrum, he also did the opening titles for The Slap and Paper Planes.

37. Saw that Canny and McCrum wrote and directed a documentary together called Sistagirl.

It's about a transgender community in the Tiwi Islands.

38. Started to read an article about the Sistagirls.

The documentary is about a photographer visiting the Sistagirls.

So documentary filmmakers followed a photographer who followed some transgender people.

Was anyone around documenting/following the filmmakers?

39.  Learned that there are around fifty transgender people living in the Tiwi islands. Or there are fifty women who were originally men.  I'm not sure if there are men who were originally female. Well, I'm sure there are, but I don't think they're part of the Sistagirls.

40. Tried to remember how I got from Felony to McCrum and Canny.

I guess I'll see when I proofread later.

41. Googled Andy Canny and Donna McCrum, and came across a company called Plus Films.

42. Remembered how I got onto the subject of McCrum and Canny.

My mind really jumps around a lot, sometimes.

43. Saw that Plus Films has projects that I didn't see on McCrum's or Canny's filmographies, so I'm guessing they have other people working for them.

But yeah.

There's Offspring, Puberty Blues, Wonderland, and other things.

44. Saw you can watch their work on the site.

I watched some of Offspring's credits.  Like Tangle, it's very creative.

It gave me some Proudman family love-tingles.

45. Watched their Puberty Blues sample.

It's very plane. There's just a wave.  I'm guessing there's more to it?  I don't remember it being so...nothing.

Maybe Plus Films only did the background graphic, so that's all they're displaying.

46. Watched some of the Puberty Blues credits on YouTube.

The only thing missing from the Plus Films sample is the credits/names.

I think it makes a difference.

47.  Started to watch the Wonderland credits.

That might be my all time favorite when it comes to Aussie credits, because I LOVE the song.

48. Watched the opening titles for a film called The Turning.  It has some interesting sand effects.

49. Watched the opening titles for The Slap.

It's impressive.

50. Had a homeschooling idea.

One of the classes we struggle with is art. Jack's not a big art history or art museum person. Neither am I.  I do think it's important that people know at least a little bit about the classics. But I want to push the idea that visual art doesn't have to be all about old paintings and sculptures.  It can be architecture, fashion, graphic design, interior design, animation, book illustrations, etc.

Now I'm thinking movie and TV titles are great examples of art as well.  Maybe we can watch and learn a little bit about that.




 

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts