May ends while June begins

It's the final day in May. This time last year, I was in the Philippines soaking up some sun, eating lots of food and being with family. This year in the month of May, what have I done? Finished two drafts of a feature script is what I did. Woo...That's an accomplishment in itself. Usually when I write, it always ends up at being the first draft, then it sits on the shelf for a few days, weeks, months and years. It gathers dust until I eventually remember I wrote the thing. I also keep a copy on my hard drive and back-up drive. I double back-up for all intensive purposes. You can never be too sure on anything. No wonder I always run out of disk space in my computers as well as my external hard drives. Plural on both. I have to organize those one of these days. An overdue spring cleaning.

I'm the type of person who is like a pack rat. I'm not a pack rat, pack rat. I do eventually go through and toss out some questionable things here and there. I just tend to initially have a hard time throwing unnecessary items out. I'm working on it. I just realized as a sit in my room that in the half decade I've lived in my apartment. I've accumulated so much sh*t. A lot of them being magazine rip-outs, boxes, notebooks, books, trinkets and miscellaneous scribble reminders I wrote to myself. Different color post-its adorn my desk. At the moment, it's a neon green. I won't get lost trying to find my desk with all that neon.

So it's been a good, but slow month. Also Lakers being the Western Conference champs!! Heck yeah!!!! And I got to see my favorite artist at the El Rey in Los Angeles this past Friday. *sigh* Butch Walker. I love his music. I've seen him live a few times before. It's always a fun time. He never ceases to amaze me. He's produced music for well-known names in the industry like Pink and Avril Lavigne. Check him out. (Butch Walker Myspace)(Wikipedia) You can definitely find his stuff on itunes, too.

I was happy to learn that they allowed cameras into the venue. I wasn't going to miss that opportunity. We had gotten some good positions near the stage. The only down-side was that I'm short, so there's bound to be 6-foot tall guys in my way. I managed and had a great time. Although, I did accidentally kick a lady in front of me in the calf. Honest mistake really. Even though I had one beer, I wasn't drunk. I thought she was going to walk away, so I prepared to take a step forward, but she backtracked into my foot. Oops. She was still standing, so no harm done. Anyway, my point and shoot camera really isn't the best, but I did walk away with a few decent photo.

One of the neat things is when he jumps down in the audience. Madness ensues!!!! I give him props for doing that especially with all the drunk people in the audience. That's him in the bottom left.

Here's in there somewhere. The guy in the middle with the full arm tattoos.

Fun times!!!

So...the winner of the Palme D'Or in the 62nd Cannes Film Festival was Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Haneke had won the prestigious award once before for The Piano Teacher in 2001, starring Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel, who also won Best Actress and Actor respectively. He also won the Best Director award in 2005 for Caché (Hidden).

I've admired his work for years. They're not the type that has sugar coating written all over it. They're complex in their own right. He's very much an auteur. You can tell the he controls every move, every element you see on the screen. They can be as mysterious and ambiguous or as direct as he wants them and he leaves you intrigued to want more answers, but leaves you with questions. You can see a list of his work on IMDB (here)

Other winners include at the festival include:
Brillante Mendoza - Best Director for Kinatay
Charlotte Gainsboug - Best Actress for Anti-Christ
Christoph Waltz - Best Actor for Inglorious Bastards

To see a full list of winners go here

I'm actually surprised by the best director winner, though. Not because he's Filipino. Hey, pinoy pride all the way!! But because his film was basically panned by most critics and non-critics alike. It's gory and extremely violent (scenes involves mutilation and dismemberment) and, let's just say, from all that I've heard about it, the film sounds like something I wouldn't see more than once or not at all. I can't really comment on the film as I haven't seen it. No word if it will be released in the US. The keyword is IF. As I wrote last week, Cannes juries are known to make odd decisions.

Oh, well. I also noticed that the theme for these year's festival seemed to focus on violent movies. Figures!

I do have my dreams of one day being able to walk down that croisette. Walking down that red carpet and up the grand stairs into the theater. Ah, a girl can dream.