To the readers of whatdoeslooking, I wish a very happy holiday and a wonderful New Year.

May everyone receive hope, love and joy into their lives during the coming year and all thoughts and best wishes are with everyone.



















Art: John Kovalic, dorktower.com

Boy, has it been awhile!

Looking over whatdoeslooking, I can see a lot of updates and no reviews. Not even the yearly op-ed piece about the Oscars (and I have to say, the Oscars were a non-event for me this year; I didn’t feel compelled to watch James Franco and Anne Hathaway as the hosts).

Before it’s asked, let me say I still love movies, which is the basis, and focus, of whatdoeslooking. Unfortunately, I’ve had lots of other distractions, taking me away from the cinema and plonking me, very firmly, away from those cushy seats and wide screens!

It’s my personal hope to jump back into things very soon (I got stuff to say about the final Harry Potter film, the latest Narnia movie and find out more about that Monopoly movie I heard about some while ago!) but I cannot promise anything; what’s taken me away from the cinema has been very big, in so many ways, and I don’t know when I can turn my attention back to it.

I’m hoping soon.

Before I go, has anyone else heard the news about Paul Bettany and Hugh Jackman?

At time of writing, it is said by some news services that 600 people have been killed by the floods in Brazil.

helpbrazil2011 has been formed to help – a fandom auction! The community also has new stories of what’s happening in Brazil which are not only floods but landslides.

Check helpbrazil2011 for how you can help whether it’s offering an item for auction or to place a bid yourselves.

For the past several weeks, there’s been rain in Queensland. For the past several days, flood waters have covered an area the size of France and Germany combined (or, as noted in some news articles, an area the size of South Africa). Travel was postponed, lives were lost (casualties are still being found, especially in the Lockyer Valley) and three quarters of the state was declared a natural disaster.

The clean up, which has begun (at least in the state’s capital city of Brisbane), will be of post-war proportions, stated by Anna Bligh – state premier – in a press conference; estimates for reconstruction and clean-up are for billions of dollars.

There are many ways of helping from donating to the Premier’s Flood Appeal to internet banking, donating in person, by mail and by phone (details for different ways of donating can be found here).

Another way of helping is by checking out the qldfloodauction, a multi fandom LiveJournal community that’s been formed for people to band together and help out. Like help_haiti, qldfloodauction is running an auction to help raise funds for the Queensland flood appeals.

What’s for auction?

Fiction (100+ words; various fandoms and original; also, podfics), fanart (icons, wallpapers, banners, drawings, comics, moodthemes), handmade goods (knitted items to earrings to soap to toys, home-made candied items, fannish Christmas ornaments), music mixes (fan or general), beta services, fanvids, poetry, songs, box of Australia/USA (a box filled with Aussie/USA items), BPAL perfumed oils, layouts, fic translation (into different languages).


For more details, click the banner above or check out: qldfloodauction




Banner: accrues

To the readers of whatdoeslooking, I wish a very happy holiday and a wonderful New Year.

May everyone receive hope, love and joy into their lives during the coming year and all thoughts and best wishes are with everyone.



















Art: John Kovalic, dorktower.com

I can’t remember when I last did this but the profile and general look for whatdoeslooking has been given a long overdue overhaul!

It’s a lovely breath of fresh air!

The name David Slade conjures, for many people, 30 Days of Night when it comes to associating his name with vampires and their movies. For those who don’t know, 30 Days of Night detailed the events that occurred when an Alaskan town was plunged into darkness for 30 days. The events?

The town was attacked by a bloodthirsty gang of vampires.

It was a movie filled with horror, gore and vampires acting as ... well. Vampires. So to hear he was signed on for Twilight Saga: Eclipse was an interesting tidbit of news; 30 Days of Night is not an easily forgotten film and if forgotten, the gore is remembered. The blood. The creepiness. The horror.

It was everything the Twilight Saga is not.

( Who's there? )






Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Release Dates
Open Australia, Hungary, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovakia & Ukraine July 1 2010
Starring
Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Billy Burke, Gil Birmingham, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard & Peter Facinelli
Written
Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay); Stephenie Meyer (novel)
Directed
David Slade

Gosh, it feels like quite a while since I’ve posted to whatdoeslooking! And looking at the calendar, apparently it has!

Last year, I stated that I would commit to doing only a few reviews for the year and that I would revisit the decision at the end of that time. The reason for this was that are demands on my time from something else I’m working on, offline. So, being able to commit to a few film reviews, whether DVD or cinema, wasn’t a problem and it’s still not.

However, I’d intended to write reviews from January onward but my plans hit a snag – I was incurred a personal injury and then got caught up in the recovery. However, for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that I could review DVDs! (This is where we insert the heel of the hand to forehead connecting!) I don’t know why it didn’t but that’s what happened!

Here’s hoping that I’ll remember to review some DVDs and get to the cinema very soon!

A doctor has taken 100 people into his home. Aid and provisions of many kinds are being sped to Haiti; officials and aid workers are working as fast as they can to get that aid and those provisions to people as quickly as they can.

How can you help?

help_haiti is a LiveJournal community that’s been formed by people banding together to help those who survived that devastating earthquake that hit Haiti not that long ago. What the community is doing is running an auction to raise funds to help Haiti.

What’s for auction?

Fanvideos, fanfic, icons and other assorted graphics of various fandoms, as well as other items, are being put on the bidding block to raise the much needed funds for Haiti. If you don’t feel you can help by offering something for the auction, there are links to many different organisations where you can put in a donation just to help!

To visit the community, just click on the banner above or visit help_haiti for more details on how you can help.

To the readers of whatdoeslooking, I wish a very happy holiday and a wonderful New Year.

May everyone receive hope, love and joy into their lives during the coming year and all thoughts and best wishes are with everyone.



















Art: John Kovalic, dorktower.com