“I had plans, man,” says the little voice in the back of my head. “I was going to spend the summer nailing down the details of the Neill-Fraser case by scouring and cross-referencing her trial transcripts. Perhaps some interviews. Only I never did receive those transcripts to scour… and, well, one thing led to another and I stopped leaving the house (again) and kept putting off shooting photographs because the light wasn’t perfect.”

That me, the little voice in the back of my head with excuses, is a total bastard to live with, too. You probably have no idea. Or maybe you do. Maybe you’re also a sucker for waking up at 6.30am only to check emails, RSS feeds and scour your Twitter stream. And, hey, I know that in the real world none of this electronic social bullshit matters… but I get sucked into it way too easily.

And I’m a sucker for watching films… so subscribing to a DVD mail service is probably like a junkie picking up a casual ounce of brown heroin. I’m a brown heroin pig with an addiction to film. Foreign cinema. Science fiction. Thriller. Brown stained teeth from drinking good quality coffee from a stovetop espresso maker.

So here I am in my last six weeks of the Christmas holiday. I’m dreading another year at university studying post-graduate journalism. Both cameras sit behind me on a shelf primed for action. Rarely used.

At least, rarely used in the context of my expectation. But then… when you’re shooting with a DSLR I’m not sure 1,000 or 2,000 images in a given day is doing anything more than exploiting the technology. I’m not sure being a Flickr bitch is any more effective than becoming a member of any group or gang – pressure towards consensus and conformity, for example. I’m not sure poking my camera into a stranger’s business is even that challenging.

More recently, I prefer to slow down… I’m thinking about the light a lot more… and it’s not enough for me to grab pretty pictures, clean or otherwise. I’m thinking more about ways to achieve a long-term project.

But there is a seething core in me that knows the truth. I’ve procrastinated away at least two thirds of my Christmas holiday. I haven’t achieved any significant work, I haven’t been taking the cameras out… and I haven’t been in optimal physical or mental condition as a result.

The little voice in my head has spent the Summer hitting me up with excuses. He’d prefer to drink booze and watch movies. The bastard.

I’ve culled this list down to the best thirteen films:

Red Dog

The filming of Red Dog in North-Western Australia was kind of incredible in itself. There is a monument erected by the people up that way of a famous red dog that befriended the miners. It’s a film that will make you laugh and cry… very Australian… very much an experience that will be popular around the world because the story told is about common humour, love and humanity. A great family film.

Griff the Invisible

To be honest, when I ordered Griff the Invisible it was a bit of a punt… but it was another really strong Australian movie. This is a light hearted story about a suburban superhero as much as it becomes a movie about states of mind and the question of shared versus individual realities. If you haven’t seen or heard of Griff the Invisible… another great family film.

Hanna

Kate Blanchett and Eric Bana are a formidable duo in Hanna. This is a non-stop action flick with great acting and an equally impressive script. At the end you sit in your chair and just think WOW, if only I could forget it all and watch it again. This is a classic story about the government breeding a super-killer and then losing it. Beware psychopaths in government… right?

Brighton Rock

Anything with Helen Mirren gets a special star for class but Brighton Rock may well have been the best film I watched for the last few years. If you like 1960s British gangster films with fantastic acting, a bit of the old brutality and some impressive script writing.

The Warrior’s Way

I’m not sure anybody else liked The Warrior’s Way as much as I did but that surreal kung-fu genre certainly rocks my boat. An invincible swordsman hiding from his clan among a misfit bunch of outcasts in the American west. You might be surprised and like it, too.

Paul

I’m not sure why Paul isn’t appearing on people’s top movies of 2011 lists but there are a ton of full belly laughs in this slightly spoofy but totally crazy family film. Yes it was puerile. But so am I. Leave grumpy poos at the door and have some alien fun. Great jokes.

Bridesmaids

Comedies of the year were often a little under-charged but one other exception was Bridesmaids… it was incredibly funny. I thought it would be some lame girly movie because it did so well at the box office but nope… laugh out loud, pull your teary eyes from the back of your cheek cramped face funny. When it wasn’t funny I kept thinking myself saying “The Bitch!”. Watch it and deny those thoughts.

Snowtown

I really wasn’t going to watch this Australian film about the Snowtown serial killers. It’s really the story of how poverty allows evil to enter our homes given enough neglect by wider society. It’s the story of how a vulnerable kid got roped into being a part of one of Australia’s most brutal murder sprees. It follows the tradition of Australian true crime based films like Animal Kingdom.

22 Bullets

Jean Reno is a retired hitman in 22 Bullets and I have a weakness for Jean Reno films where he’s a hitman. There is something so very believable about him as an assassin. This film was a real standout for the year and shows the calibre of foreign films hitting the market.

The Firm

Set in the 1980s when football hooliganism was a British sport in its own right, The Firm is a glimpse into the subculture of violence.

The Sinatra Club

I’m a sucker for a great true life gangster film and The Sinatra Club is that in spades. It’s another Goodfellas and touches on that same era of organised crime when a young John Gotti was poised to take control of the mafia. If you’re a mafia movie buff… there you go, heaven.

Super 8

Billed as a bit of a kid’s movie, I was absolutely taken into the Super 8 world while I watched this film. I kept thinking what a fantastic opportunity I missed as a young man living in an industrial town where nobody suggested a future not working for heavy industry. Wow, I wish that I had discovered film as a teenager instead of getting into trouble. Wow, when you watch the back-story about how these guys who made the film were shooting Super 8 film. A really great family film that happens to be about a group of kids.

Water for Elephants

For pure romantic drama this year it’s difficult to go past Water for Elephants. By the end of the movie you want to grab the circus owner’s stick and beat the living crap out of him… so the ending will make you feel a lot better than watching that bastard be cruel to the elephant. But it was a truely great film.

Other Notable Mentions

As this list can’t go on forever I could recommend several Korean films including I Saw the Devil and The Man from Nowhere. There was also True Grit, The Adjustment Bureau, Friends with Benefits, The Next Three Days and Assassination Games.

Overall, I had a pretty good year for watching films and could have made a longer list given more than my memory. But it was mainly because I was subscribed to an online service for a change. Anyway, you might find something worth watching out of that list. Enjoy.

OK, I’m a few years short of turning 50 years old and getting on towards the half a century. This year I bought all my own birthday presents so that was kind of interesting… the Zenza Bronica medium format camera and a pile of chemicals and gear for processing my film at home. So that will be an adventure. The film holds 15 shots so I’m currently being very cautious and over-thinking where I’m going to point the thing. I need to get those film related skills up and running by the end of the year so that I can pursue a personal project away from home.

So what else am I up to? Well, I’ve got an equivalence of the Graduate Certificate in Journalism, Media and Communications from the University of Tasmania as a part of my Master of Business Administration (Specialisation) degree… so I’ve enrolled part-time in the Master of Journalism, Media and Communications for Semester 2. But I could pick up a research unit and write 8000 words on a journalism special topic (as a pre-thesis exercise) and make that full time study. I’m really not that sure at the moment. It’s a definite maybe… I guess.

I’ve been making a fair amount of mead and ale lately, too. This afternoon I bottled a very nice apple melomel mead (as opposed to a cyser mead made entirely in apple juice) and I’m really looking forward to that maturing in the bottle. I’ve gotten older so ‘slow food’, ‘slow booze’ and now ‘slow photography’ have crept into my philosophy of life.

Other than that I’m doing a little bit of writing and trying to get outside in the sunshine to shoot more photography. That Bronica is loaded for a shoot and I’ve got my DSLR to make nice enough images… and maybe I’ll start harrassing my uni friends for a chance to take their portraits. A lot of my business friends will be graduating their MBAs over the next few weeks and leaving for overseas employment (maybe I’ve missed the boat with those guys). We’ll see, I guess. We’ll see what happens when they lob back into town in August for graduation.

For the next three months I’ll be buckling down for winter in the foothills of this god-awful snowey mountain. Getting older. Growing wiser. Happy birthday to me, then. Happy birthday to me.

A semester to myself was nice but I really enjoy the challenge of doing at least some coursework. There are only so many times you can roll on the floor and look at the ceiling before you start talking to yourself and chasing nose hairs with your partner’s tweezers. And yes, I probably do have far too many qualifications (an MBAS and a BComp) to be doing another Master by Coursework degree… I guess it’s about free choice and the human spirit.

And I’m not really sure how I feel about journalism at the moment either. That makes it all the more intriguing; I’ve always loved to write. However, I don’t see a threat from citizen journalism bubbling without an editorial process… while I do see a worrying alignment in current Australian journalism toward big mining and energy interests (particularly in the global warming and carbon tax debates) as these large corporate behomoths continue to heavily invest in key Australian media infrastructure. If big mining and energy’s interests are not directly impacting the editorial and delivery of Australian journalism there is at least a growing and undeniable perception in the community psyche that those lines of journalistic integrity have blurred.

At the same time, well respected journalists have ventured with egotistical gusto into the social media space. Often without considering the social effect of delivering a staccato mish-mash of journalism and personal opinion. You don’t have to follow social media empowered journalists too long on Twitter before even the best of them transgress from researched utterances of fact into a world of subjective opinion and political bias. Journalism on social media seems more and more driven by the cult of personality as the identities move from reporting the news toward pushing a uberlord egotistical wheelbarrow of everything from gold dust to total cow shit.

So I am not entirely sure that I want to call myself a journalist either at this point in my life or in the future. In some sense this has all led journalism into a position where their authority as deliverers of the truth to the minions – explaining why the highest profile of these uberlords can rarely have an intelligent equal-to-equal discourse online – is undermined by their inability to handle social media adequately. Twitter has just made it too easy for the cult of journalistic celebrity to pump and dump anything that agrees with their current opinions through the wormhole to the waiting minions.

Even the best Australian journalists seem to employ a pump and dump (spray and pray) attitude to delivering content via Twitter. Without due research. With what my friend Bramich used to call “all care and no responsibility” – meaning, if Bramich was wrong then he took no responsibility for the error. And that is exactly where I think journalism and social media need to realign. Without an editorial process there is no journalism… when untruths or bullshit are circulated via the feeds of high profile journalists there are no guarantees the misinformed will ever read a correction. So, in that sense, certain social media journalists with big names on public radio, for example, become no more valid or believable than any other blogger caught in the phenomena of online journo-celebrity. Gold dust to total cow shit; credible journalists to Adriana Huffington.

Nevertheless, journalistic ideals are close to my heart and writing has always been a functional part in my life. The choice is obvious – the conversation circular. It’s back to the slog of pulling on my boots for higher education (again). Knowing, at least, that I’m just another bare bum in the shower of social media but that in social media all opinions are equal. Twitter is not a news service.

So it turns out I won a pack of eight Australian movies for answering the question: What is your favourite Australian movie of all time and explain why? My answer was Ghosts of the Civil Dead for being the most authentic Australian maximum security prison movie of all time.

OK now to the Christmas loot VideoEzy gave me as a prize:

1. South Solitary (2010) starring Miranda Otto and Marton Csokas
2. Blessed (2009) starring Frances O’Connor, Miranda Otto, Deborra-Lee Furness, Victoria Haralabidou, William McInnes and Sophie Lowe
3. The Black Balloon (2008) starring Rhys Wakefield, Luke Ford and Toni Collette
4. Little Fish (2005) starring Cate Blanchett, Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving
5. Oyster Farmer (2004) starring Alex O’Laughlin, Jim Norton and Diana Glenn
6. Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) starring Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Kenneth Branagh
7. Two Hands (1999) starring Heath Ledger, Bryan Brown and David Field
8. Black Robe (1991) starring Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young and Sandrine Holt

Undergraduate Coursework

The point of an undergraduate course is to provide students with the generic graduate attributes within a general discipline – the ability to learn, to research, to write a minimum level of essay and reports. The firm who hires an undergraduate at the end of their course is receiving an empty container…

… a computer graduate is someone who isn’t a trained out-of-the-box programmer but someone ready to embark on a career as an IT professional. The same goes for accounting graduates and marketing graduates. You don’t hire an undergraduate and sit them in an office expecting them to do much at all except be the standardised product of the university system.

Here is an example. In undergraduate business courses there is a heavy emphasis on working through the textbook and learning the models, terminology and underlying theory. The exams and assignments are designed primarily to ensure that base level of understanding is achieved… but rarely will it extend the student.

Postgraduate Coursework

I recently completed a Master of Business Administration (Journalism and Media Studies) that entailed two years of post-graduate coursework at the University of Tasmania. The product of an MBA graduate is completely different than the standard business school undergraduate.

MBA graduates will mostly go overseas to large organisations and perform middle management roles… or become entrepreneurs… the MBA program is globally considered as the training ground, the only real training ground, for middle managers in large organisations. The course assumes 7 years business experience when you walk in the door (as opposed to the blank post-college canvas of an undergraduate).

Here’s the rub. Your lecturer will walk in the door and hold up the textbook and tell you that your coursework will not be focused on regurgitating that theory. The expectation at the Masters level is that you read the book before the course began and you already know the theory. What you have to achieve are outcomes that show in practice that you understood the theory from that book.

If you didn’t study that book as an undergraduate then it’s your responsibility for each and every unit within the MBA program to get yourself up to speed.

It is also expected that having read the book as a starting point your postgraduate work will independently extend through research and practical skills. There is also a high level of failure within certain units of the MBA program – economics and statistics, in particular.

The assignment work given to the undergraduate is also completely different to that provided to post-graduate coursework students. The post-graduate is there to learn to provide real world outcomes… not theoretical ones… so real world problems are solved as they would be within large industries. The pedantic level of perfection in report writing and the depth of research skills far exceed the expectation of an undergraduate.

Comparing Undergraduate to Postgraduate Coursework

The confusion around this is understandable. Different disciplines obviously reign over their own management of coursework curriculum. But there’s also the ignorance that comes from people only knowing the form of university training that they experienced first hand. Just like it’s impossible to explain to a TAFE diploma graduate that university isn’t just TAFE but harder… it’s different.

If someone asked me what a business school research masters student does – and I know several very well – my answer would be vague. How would I know? I was busy doing my own work while they researched and watched television? Maybe the television is a myth, too.

It’s kind of naive to read the University Coursebook in subjects that are unrelated to your own discipline and make assumptions based on the name of courses. But that’s how life goes. Ultimately the test is this: as a postgraduate you should be able to do the stuff… not just regurgitate the theory.

I’m glad that I brought that up… because I’m wondering about that myself. What do you do with professional web skills, an IT degree, a business degree and business skills, a journalism qualification, an interest in photography, an interest in trivia, a driving outrage at the dangers of globalisation and human responsibility, a passion for the environment, and a strong belief in the need for slow food and localisation of resources? The list goes on… I’m a complicated piece of work, to say the least.

It’s been a long path… many times I’ve curled up in a ball in bed and thought the world would collapse and suck me into a paranormal vortex. Or I’d vomit my testicles onto a plate. Or the natives… well, you get my drift. It wasn’t easy.

But I don’t want a PhD or a Doctorate in business at the moment. End of story. However, how do I draw what I consider to be my worth and potential from the world around me without sacrificing to 16 hour days and the eventual tears that come from family breakdown?

So I’m looking for ideas. Ten years ago I was unloading fishing boats in 12-16 hour back-breaking shifts without a break at $2 per tonne across a varying sized crew. Could be $80… could be $130. I’d drive home at 5am mid-winter just in my boxers sitting on garbage bags… pretty tough after most of the day soaking wet in a freezer with no food or drink breaks.

I’m looking for ideas because I don’t want to just do the obvious and the same as everybody else. I don’t want to just make web sites, for example. Too many of you are doing that already and many of you are doing it better than I could anyway – in fact, I’d probably outsource most of the work onto you people anyway if I had the money paid to me up-front.

If I could find a way to incorporate most of those things that I am and do and believe in into one business model… a reasonable livable income… that would be awesome.

Because I just can’t get a regular job and be a muppet without ideas or passion. That’s just the way that I am. So ideas at this point are more than welcome.

P.S. my blood is a quarter Norwegian so somewhere inside there’s a mad bloody Viking wielding an axe and scouring the horizon for nunneries… just sayin’… some things change and some things stay the same.

If you were ever asked to guess which one my father is in this photograph from the 1930s you might want to look at the centre of the shot… at the wild haired child with the dolly. It says a lot about my late father (who died of emphysema in his early 60s). Like many men of his day he left school at the end of Grade 6 and worked to support his growing family… in a culture that failed to recognise potential and intelligence in the poor.

My father was a self-educated man who had an obsessive personality and an untrained curiosity. There are many admirable qualities to the man that I probably failed to acknowledge in his lifetime. And I recognise that it must have been a living hell working over 40 years as a labourer (and later as a foreman) in the aluminum industry.

Until he died you could walk into his backyard shed and find piles of old computer magazines… yes he was an early adopter. In fact I probably owe him a lot for his influence in regards to the future of technological education. When he passed away a decade ago I was unskilled, unemployable and drifting.

I like to put old family photographs online occasionally… they’re interesting… they offer linear connection through the generations.