JamesX

I’ve seen a few movies this weekend which makes a change for me really. I don’t usually find myself having enough spare time to catch many movies. Anyway, here they are:

Big Fish - This one I did find rather interesting. It’s a bizarre tale about a father and son that shows the history of the father’s life in a somewhat fairytale, twisted reality that makes you wonder what the writers were thinking when they came up with the storyline. While it’s not a traditional story, it’s a real interesting one that gets you thinking - it must be my drama brain that can handle it though because everyone else who watched it with me thought I was smoking something at the time (let me assure you I wasn’t!). That’s enough about Big Fish, it’s a great movie that I’d recommend if you don’t want to go down the comedy/action thriller road.

Elephant - Deviating again, Elephant is on a completely different tangent. This movie is more a documentary that looks into the events of the Columbine school shooting in the USA a few years back. The filmography is great as it’s one of those movies that shows the event from the perspective of each person then at the end, puts them all together. The fact that it actually happened was perhaps the scariest part of the whole experience. It’s a movie that I’ve wanted to see for a long time, and I did enjoy it, if only to say that I’d seen it.

The Bourne Supremacy - Just to make sure I’d covered all the bases, I had to see at least one action movie this weekend. The Bourne Supremacy is a great film and it’s one that you can get engrossed in easily. It has all the traits of a good action movie and the storyline works well for a sequel, in fact it’s probably better than the first one. So I guess I’d recommend that one too.

In fact, all three movies were great. It’s quite unusual for me to think that too because I become rather critical of the smallest details so three out of three is quite something.

Having to work tonight, I just finished watching the video of the final eviction - I had the radio and both my phones off on the way home :). I must say it was a much better format than in previous years.

After three months, fifteen evictions and controversies aplenty, Trevor has won Big Brother 2004, taking home the largest cash prize in Australian television history. Responsible for some of the funniest moments of the series - Trevor hid behind corners, slept beneath furniture, interacted with the wildlife. In fact, he pretty much picked up a cool million dollars for just goofing off for three months.

From the moment he entered the house, Trevor was the quiet, funny guy. With the excitement, the drama and just the noise of the first few weeks, Trev was one of the housemates who was quite happy to just sit back and let the craziness of it all wash over him. He slowly emerged as the house prankster: frightening the girls, joking around with the boys and even taking time to chat with the local birdlife.

His hilarious highlights read like a ‘best of BB2004′. He was Ryan’s bathroom attendant, he was the Swedish chef, he battled the kookaburras, he went to extreme effort to jump out and scare the girls at every opportunity. And he was an integral part of the superheroes society as its second-in charge - Super Fro.

There was also a deeper, warmer side to Trevor. Missing his girlfriend on the outside, Trevor would stare at the stars at night to overcome the pain of being away from her. He was even reduced to tears by gifts and messages from her in the final weeks.

The females of BB2004 spoke a lot about Trevor the gentleman. He’d always make sure that the girls were fed before feeding himself and would never dream of taking the last biscuit without ensuring the girls were all sorted. In fact, he was nice to everyone - housemate after housemate said they wanted him to win as they came out of the house.

The audience agreed and tonight rewarded him for ‘being himself’ in the house by making him the first Big Brother millionaire. Congrats T-revor! As if it’s not life-changing enough to win $1 million, Trevor also used the eviction stage to propose to his girlfriend Breea!

The new series of Big Brother has just aired in the US. Now that the Australian series is coming to an end - there’s only just over a week to go - I’ve started watching the US series. The Americans are still continuing with the Survivor style dramatic television that they used in the previous series with houseguests openly forming alliances and ganging up on other houseguests. I have to admit that it does make for interesting television and they have much more extravagant tasks. In the first week there’s already an alliance that has successfully evicted one of the targeted houseguests, two of the housemates are related, one’s a twin that keeps swapping with the other that none of the houseguests know about and BB bribed another one with $10,000 to give up the house’s food for a week - leaving them on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

It’s so much more interesting that the UK series 5 which I gave up watching after a few episodes. It’s just so boring. The Australian producers could pick up a few things from the American counterparts, but overall I still think our version is the best. You actually get to know the housemates here, the US is all about back stabbing pure entertainment. Each to their own I suppose.

As if this year’s series of Big Brother wasn’t having enough problems, last night they managed to evict the wrong housemate!! Human error was to blame but Channel 10 weren’t being very clear on what actually happened. Following the incident with Merlin earlier in the series, the Big Brother producers have a lot of lessons to learn from this season. Bring back Peter Abbott!

The following is the full press release from Network Ten and Endemol Southern Star:

Human error by Legion Interactive - administrators of the voting on Big Brother - resulted in Bree being incorrectly evicted from the Big Brother house last night.

Legion advised the error upon completion of its regular post eviction audit of voting. They have accepted full responsibility, and have undertaken to ensure something like this cannot occur again.

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Very funny and very clever, Shrek 2 is awesome! I love movies that pull little bits from heaps of other movies and Shrek 2 is no exception. It is so cleverly done and it moves along so quickly that it keeps anyone entertained. I’m going to have to get a copy of this one because I’m sure if I watch it again, I’ll discover a heap of little side jokes that I missed the first time. It’s a pity the weather was so terrible for the hour long drive back, lucky Tom who only lives around the corner. Ah well, that’s all for now. Back to Big Brother Up Late.

Anyone watching the live Big Brother Eviction Show last night would have seen Merlin get evicted from the house. What we weren’t expecting to see was Merlin starting his own little protest about major political issues. Merlin’s decision to walk down to the eviction stage holding a sign “FREE TH REFUGEES” (yes, he can’t spell) and gaffing his mouth shut has caused quite an uproar around the country today. Poor Gretel was left on the stage trying desperately to recover the live show. She did a remarkable job in what would be trying circumstances for the best live television hosts. With a roaring crowd and a huge audience at home, producers were forced to show live streaming from the house and an extended ad break while they went into damage control. After the break, we returned to Gretel who intervied the housemates for the remainder of the show. Gretel’s closing remarks were something of a cover your arse for channel ten while at the same time putting Merlin in an awkward position with what to do with his car.

“Dispite our encouragement, he was silent. His sign said free the refugees. This is a sensitive political issue that the nation should be aware of. Personally I found it, a little confrontational. I would have loved to discuss this with him, unfortunately we haven’t had that opportunity. I haven’t had the time to give him his Mitsibishi Lancer X. I guess he can give it to charity. Merlin may or may not be joining us tomorrow night, Miriam will be. A big thankyou to our audience. This is Big Brother, where surprisingly, we are constantly surprised”.

For someone who isn’t an Australian citizen to take such a strong view on an Australian political issue is somewhat ironic and is one that was echoed on radio 2UE this morning. The interview can be downloaded below. It makes for great listening and Merlin is suitably “owned” by the show’s host, as they say.

AUDIO:
Merlin’s 2UE interview (903KB WMA)
(Thanks to Behind Big Brother Australia)