HSC Results Countdown

13 years of schooling as led up to this. How exciting. 

I've been asked several times whether or not I'm nervous and honestly, I'm not. I've worked this year the hardest I have ever worked in my life and I'm not desperately hoping for a 99.95 ATAR or for all my subjects to be Band 6. Instead, I'm anxious in anticipation. One of my great flaws is my impatience. I can't stand waiting, so I've been occupying my days with:

Work:

I've been working a lot recently, saving up for my future exchange overseas which costs a whopping 26k. While I'm not fond of work, it has kept me sane and has stopped me from going crazy in waiting for my results.

Movies & Television Shows:

Perks was amazing. I loved the book and I was pleasantly surprised to how it translated into film. I did think Emma Watson's performance was weak, but Ezra Miller and Logan Lerman were amazing. The movie fleshed out Patrick's character more and I'm so glad it did because there was a lot of potential within it. I would have liked more background on Charlie (ie. more on his late best friend) but how they portrayed his relationship with Aunt Helen was subtle and chilling.

With Pitch Perfect, Rebel Wilson stole the show. Overall, it was a fun, cute and hilarious movie.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was so lovely and evocative. It made me wonder so much about fate and love and I have so much respect for Jim Carrey (who was in The Truman Show and I Love You Phillip Morris which I both adore) and Kate Winslet.

Skyfall was the first James Bond movie I ever watched and it was exciting. I don't really have much to say about it except that Q is a qt.

Misfits seasons 4 has been a let down so far this season (I'm only up to episode 6) but Rudy is forever wonderful.

I like this season of American Horror Story more than the last one. It's more gritty, shocking and less focused on tenuous relationships I don't care about. Spoiler: highlight to see (holy crap Zachary Quinto is such an amazing actor. The huge twist at the end of I am Anne Frank part 2 was so frightening, god DAMN. I loved how the apartment scene portrayed, that is one freaky lamp.)

Books:
I bought 1Q84 during late 2011 and it was only after the HSC that I have gotten the chance to read it. I might make a separate post for it but I'll just say that it was a really interesting and thought provoking novel. Like a lot of Murakami novels, much is left up to the reader to decipher, but if you want something action packed, more so than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 is for you.

I re-read The Door Into Summer and while I'm usually not a fan of sci-fi novels, this has got to be one of my favourite books. It's hilarious and well paced and is a prime example of where one should not judge a book by its cover.

That's about it from me. I hope all my fellow school leavers receive the marks that they're hoping for and good luck to the current year 12s.

6 days of freedom in Kiama.

Between the 22nd and 28th of November, 6 friends and I stayed for almost a week down south in Kiama and let me tell you, it was one of the most liberating, relaxing experiences of my life.

The house contained 3 bedrooms (2 double beds and 2 bunk beds) and was four minutes from the beach.

The sunset was well worth waking up at 5am for. I don't think I have ever properly watched the sun rise in my life, certainly not during my time in Sydney, so it was quite a surreal experience. A perfect time to be inundated with existential questions and dilemmas of what is life and how different the world can be a few hours from a major city.


Whenever asked about what I did in Kiama, the truth of 'going to the beach' and 'cooking' never sounds interesting. However, the fact that I was there with the people that I loved made the whole trip exciting enough for me.

We made a blanket and pillow fort and played cards, watched V for Vendetta and ate ice cream inside it.

We also took plenty of walks, one time which we came across a group of elderly ladies with several dogs. They were so cute and the large white one was so friendly, it wouldn't leave us ;~;. Additionally, we climbed over a lot of rocks to get near the edge of a cliff. Frightening stuff, especially when it began to rain.

The move list: (underlined are the ones I slept through partially or wholly)

The Descent 2 (horrible, terrible, etc.)

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Rosemary's Baby (i really wish i didn't fall asleep, it seemed like my kind of movie)

Treasure Planet

Finding Nemo

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Zombieland

Kill Bill 1, Kill Bill 2

The Fountain

V for Vendetta

Snatch.

Get Him To The Greek

Overall, it was the most fun that I have had in awhile, making the whole ordeal of the HSC beforehand so minuscule. But never mind that, HSC results come out in a week. The relaxation within my life will soon be gone. Oh well, there's always Kiama.

MUSIC - Coldplay Concert (i.e. the greatest night ever)

My friends Jenny and Cecilia and I bought the tickets early in the year and after several months of waiting, the night was finally here. We arrived at Allianz Stadium about 2pm and there was already 200+ people waiting. We joined the queue and spent the next three and a half hours in the scorching sun. After several attempts of entertainment, from charades to eating, our patience was rewarded with an amazing spot near the stage:

and xylobands!

First up were The Pierces who were really good live. They played We Are Stars, Secret, You'll Be Mine and some other songs but not 3 Wishes which is my favourite song from them. Jenny hated them though ("WHY ARE THEY EVEN CALLED THE PIERCES?") but I thought they were pretty good. Except one of the guitar players was :| for the whole time. That was really distracting.

Next were the Temper Trap and they were great as well. I love love love love love Rabbit Hole and I'm so glad I got to hear it live, I can never get tired of that song.

Finally Coldplay came on and god damn they were amazing.

this being their first song last night, you can imagine how the rest of the show was like

I felt like a spoilt child at Christmas, so much happened during their performances.

In the first couple of songs, these crepe paper butterflies started shooting out and filled the whole stadium. For a few magical moments, the only thing you could see was this:

It was so beautiful, you cannot fathom how surprised I was when they first came out. The moshpit is seriously the best place to be.

Later on, these colourful giant balloon balls were released and bounced on top of the crowds. I managed to whack one towards the stage hehe.

The security guards had to pop them later though :(

There were so many lasers and fireworks and flashing lights. Honestly, I felt disappointed afterwards, not because of the concert itself, but because I had to get back my less vibrant reality. My favourite performances of the night would have to be Charlie Brown, Viva La Vida, Paradise, Fix You and Hurts Like Heaven.

This is definitely not my last Coldplay show. In the future, if you ever get the chance to go, don't hesitate. And get there early.

MUSIC - My HSC Playlist

Frank Ocean: (quite a lot of him actually)
Missing You So

Lost


Novacane


Swim Good


Calvin Harris ft. Example:
We’ll Be Coming Back


Psy:
Right Now


Florence and the Machine:
Howl

and now to actually get studying.

MOVIE - Les Amours Imaginaires (2010)

Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats) is a French movie that I had been wanting to watch for the past year and finally had the pleasure of doing so after my exams. Directed, written, edited by Xavier Dolan, he plays the protagonist Francais, a young man that falls for the new guy in town, Nick, at the same time that his good friend Mary does.

That's pretty much it, plot-wise. However, the movie does not depict the conventional love triangle and some scenes were uncomfortable to watch. No, not because of the acting (I quite enjoyed the performances of Dolan and Monia Chokri who plays Mary), but how much the movie reminds you the embarrassment that almost comes hand in hand with infatuation.

The competition between Mary and Francis is never explicitly said, but the undercurrent sensations of jealousy and lust are prevalent and the fact that the protagonists are unaware of all this, of how all their emotions are blanketed across their faces for the world to see allows us to reflect on our past infatuations. The movie illustrates how such lust can consume us, influencing how we act, how we perceive the world and the relationships present in our lives.

Les Amours Imaginaires is gorgeous, of which can easily be mistaken as the stylized preteniousness of any conventional French film and I must admit that thought did cross my mind. However, Dolan in this interview, raises an interesting point:

"The film is about the way we magnify people when we’re in love -- walking down the street feeling like we’re floating, hence the slow motion, the music, the costumes, the colors. A lot of people said it was a case of style over substance, but being in love is often a case of style over substance."

I feel that this movie and its stylistic devices felt less awkward than it did for Dolan's first film J'ai tué ma mère and Les Amours Imaginaires was more fluid in general, however I found more depth within J'ai tué ma mère and thus was able to connect to it more. Nevertheless, both films are fantastic and I look forward to eventually watching Laurence Anyways.

(x)

MOVIE - Scene Stealing Speeches

When I like a movie, there's usually one exceptional scene or speech that stands out, as if the whole movie was just built up to that particular moment. Here are some examples:


"Say a bomb goes off in a marketplace, you know, detonated by some suicidal zealot who hates I dont know - you know, fruit or vegetables or local handicrafts - viscera and gobbets of flesh and wet hanks of hair and teeth and splinters of bone are just shooting through airborne sprays of blood like on those soft drink commercials where the lemon splices splash through the arc of soda in some slow-motion orgasm of what it means to be refreshing. And every time it happens, it gets less tragic, not more.... 

I mean, we're just.. we're just fucked beyond all measure."

• The New Tenants (2009)

“If you really want to do this with your life you have to believe that you’re necessary. And you are. People want to live like this in their cars and their big fucking houses that they can’t even pay for? Then you’re necessary. The only reason they all get to continue living like kings is because we’ve got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and the whole world gets really fucking fair really fucking quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don’t. They want what we have to give them, but they also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. That’s more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow. Fuck them. Fuck normal people.”

• Margin Call (2011) [here]

"It wasn't just the baby that died that day. Something inside Sick Boy was lost and never returned. It seemed that he had no theory with which to explain a moment like this... nor did I. Our only response was to keep on going and 'fuck everything'. pile misery upon misery, heap it up on a spoon and dissolve it with a drop of bile, then squirt it into a stinking, puerile vein and do it all over again. Keep on going, getting up, going out, robbing, stealing, fucking people over. Propelling ourselves with longing towards the day that it would all go wrong, because no matter how much you stash, or how much you steal you never have enough. No matter how often you go out and rob and fuck people over, you always need to get up and do it all over again. "

• Trainspotting (1996)

"I ask this... If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out - - If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door... And that's all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power... it's about the "us's" out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's. Without hope, the us's give up - I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you... You gotta give em' hope... you gotta give em' hope."

• Milk (2008)

Reading these makes me want to re-watch the movies again, but I don't have enough time to :(
I think what makes these excerpts so great is that they depict the real essence of the movie and by reading these, you're transported back into the movie without actually watching it. Movies can go by so quickly and so much within it can go unappreciated, so I suppose this blog post is a way for me to remember them.

Cannes Film Festival 2012

is happening at the moment! Oh how I wish to be watching a film now, but the HSC awaits me. Nevertheless, I've been watching some of the film trailers and I'm looking to forward to watching these one day:

Un certain regard

Laurence Anyways (no surprise there lol) - trailer

• I skimmed through this review, it's pretty mixed but I loved J'ai tué ma mère so I'm still going to check this out.

Antiviral - trailer

Mystery - trailer

I haven't had a chance to see the trailers of the ones in the competition yet, but hopefully I will soon. Also, Ewan McGregor is part of the jury this year! I'm looking forward to reading the results later on.

MUSIC - Movie Soundtrack Recommendations

Samskeyti - Sigur Rós (Mysterious Skin)

In context, this song is heartbreaking. Every time I listen to this, I remember exactly how I felt during the last scene of the movie. I don't listen to this much because I want to retain that feeling, I don't want it to diminish.

Johanna - Jamie Campbell Bower (Sweeney Todd)

Easily my favourite song from my favourite Tim Burton movie.

Born Slippy - Underworld (Trainspotting)

The tone this song sets in the final scene of Trainspotting is one of the main reasons why I really liked the movie so much. The film itself was great, but the ending was what stuck out to me at most. ("So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers - all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person. But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change.")

Man Or Muppet (The Muppets)

I had no idea that Jim Parsons was in The Muppets so this gave me a huge surprise. Needless to say, I was grinning the whole way through this song.

Hope you're having a good weekend!

MOVIE - Howl (2010)

Howl is an experimental film that combines both animation and cinema, portraying the life of poet Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco) and the 1957 obscenity trial of his poem 'Howl'. I've had the film's IMDB page bookmarked for over a month and finding myself with time today, I decided to watch it.

Admittedly, I don't know much about Allen Ginsberg or his poems but subsequent to this film, I have a desire to enlighten myself and read Howl (of which a good portion of it was read and analysed in the movie). I think that my lack of understanding or knowledge about the Beat Generation impeded on my experience of watching Howl, a movie I enjoyed but have no intention of watching again.

There are a couple things that I especially liked, one of them being when Allen talks about prophecy:

“At the moment of composition you don’t necessarily know what it means; it comes to mean something later. After a year or two, the meaning becomes clear ... which takes time like a photograph developing slowly. What prophecy actually is, is not knowing whether the bomb will fall in 1942, it’s knowing and feeling something which someone knows and feels in a hundred years, and maybe articulating it in a hint that they will pick up on in a hundred years.”

And while he says this, he's looking at a painting and experiencing this while we, the audience, are viewing the film itself. So here, this idea of prophecy, that an emotion can transcend through different mediums and times, is displayed on various levels, not only with the character in a film, but with the actual audience of the film itself.

The courtroom scenes stand out to me, particularly Jon Hamm's character as a lawyer defending the literary validity of the poem.This to me was the most memorable part of the movie.

"The battle of censorship will not be finally settled by your honor’s decision, but you will either add to liberal-educated thinking, or by your decision you will add fuel to the fire of ignorance. Let there be light. Let there be honesty. Let there be no running from non-existent destroyers of morals. Let there be honest understanding."

With that, I'll end this blog post with the trailer for Howl, of which I watched after the movie.

MUSIC - Quick Song Recommendations

Sóley - Smashed Birds

Exactly what the song title entails. The lyrics are quite.. strange to say the least. But it's such a lovely song.

I took all of your birds 

And I smashed them in my pocket

Oh 

And then I got the feathers off and I made myself a beautiful dress

Sky Ferreira - Obsession

I found this really catchy. I heard of her in passing but never really made the effort to listen to her stuff until now. I also really like her song Animal.

Ain't nothing wrong with OCD 

Long as it's for me, long as it's for me 

M83 - Too Late

If my dreams had a soundtrack, this would probably be in it.

Like a wall of stars

We are ripe to fall

Hope you're having a good weekend!

NOVEL - Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey)

This book caught my eye at Kinokuniya one day in 2011 as the guy on the cover reminded me of Lip from Shameless US (ie: Jeremy Allen White) and that was purely the reason why I wanted to read the book.

Then I read the blurb then looked at the price tag of the book and thought 'okay..no," and put the book back down.

To be honest, it didn't sound that interesting. A bunch of kids in an Australian regional outback town. Okay, no thanks.

(interesting fact: the blurb of this book was in the 2010 School Certificate Paper)

Fast forward to one year later and things have changed greatly. The novel isn't extremely long, but it was able to make me laugh, cry and make my heart ache. It deals with prejudice, racism, death and love in a way that isn't too overwhelming and the lessons to be learned from the book aren't shoved down your throat, they subtlety seep into your mind.

It makes you wonder how a book which appears to be another typical teen book can contain so much meaning. I finished the 300+ pages in well under a week and I would gladly read it again. Books like these deserve to be read more than once. There are moments in which you suddenly burst out laughing and with that, I want to acknowledge the flawlessness of the character Jeffrey Lu. Much of my laughter was due to him.

• “He couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.”

Jasper Jones also contains many good, insightful quotes, and I'll end this post with one of them.

• “Life might be easier if you give in a little, but it’s better if you hold onto something so hard you can’t give it up.”

NOVEL - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)

This is my related text for Ext 1 English. I don't have much to say about the actual plot of this book.

When I finish a book, I look it up on Wikipedia it to see what it has to say about it. Expecting a long synopsis of the book, this is what I get:

"The novel is about a low-key unemployed man, Toru Okada, whose cat runs away. A chain of events follow that prove that his seemingly mundane life is much more complicated than it appears."

When two sentences is all Wikipedia has to say about something, you know the topic at hand either has no substance or is too elaborate for anyone to actually be bothered to write a proper summary of it. In this case, it's the latter.

Nearly everything in this book is a motif. Cats, baseball bats, water, flows, music, clothing, darkness, wells. Everything is symbolic for something and the book not only depicts the life of Toru Okada, it goes into so much detail with the lives of the other characters, you begin to wonder if the book is actually about Toru and his missing cat. With 600+ pages, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is so dense, I had to take breaks now and then because it became too much.

I really liked Lieutenant Mamiya's army storyline. Usually I don't care much when books integrate actual historical events because sometimes it just feels like a history lesson, but what Lieutenant recounted to Toru was so fascinating and graphic, that it ended up being one of my favourite parts of the book.

I also adored Toru and May Kasahara's platonic relationship, slightly similar Toru Watanabe and Midori Kobayashi from Murakimi's earlier novel Norwegian Wood. The irony is that despite her quirky personality and her 'interesting' way of expressing herself (“When I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like I’m looking at some strange dog leaving a twisty piece of poop”), May ends up being the most realistic, normal (in a non-supernatural way) character. Her and Toru's constant rumination over death and human life provides much needed fodder for my Textual Dynamics essay.

One more thing I want to mention is the character Noboru Wataya, of which Toru absolutely despises. An academic and later a politician with much power at his finger tips, he intrigues me, reminding me of Patrick Bateman of American Psycho or John Tuld from Margin Call. When most people stop, he keeps going and what scares you about those types of people is not just what they're capable of, but how much it takes to stop them.

The ending is satisfying and despite not every issue being 100% resolved (eg: the mysterious woman on the phone), this leaves room for you to think about the actual novel and the ideas that it raises. This is the second book that I have read by Murakami and so far, I am far from being disappointed. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is definitely worth a read.

MOVIE - Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho (2010)

Saw this film on recommended tumblr, thought I'd give it ago. It's a Portuguese short film about a blind boy and his friendship with a girl and their new classmate. That's about all I can say plot-wise, anything else will spoil the  movie.

Some of the comments on youtube suggest that a sequel should be made, but I disagree. What makes the film so great is its simplicity in dealing with contemporary issues. It talks about something that's so controversial in such a tranquil way and it makes you think 'why are we making such a big deal today about something that is, and should be considered, normal'. This is why I think a sequel is unnecessary, a continuation is unneeded when so much is already conveyed in the 17 minutes.

Overall, this is such a lovely, heart-warming film. The acting was great and the length of it was perfect, not too short or long. This is a film I'm glad I've watched and hope to watch again sometime in the future.

MOVIE - Laurence Anyways (2012) Film Trailer

It seems kind of pointless to have a blog post about a trailer for a film but nevertheless, I'm so excited for this! I absolutely loved 'J'ai tué ma mère' by Xavier Dolan, so I have high hopes for Laurence Always.

Slightly related, a few months ago I watched the television drama 'Worried About The Boy' with Douglas Booth. To be honest, that was one of the only films I've watched that centred around transvestism. Of course that is different to Laurence Anyways, of which is about a man and his transgender transitioning process, but nevertheless, both the movies are really not types of things I usually watch. It's a good thing read/watch/listen to forms of entertainment you don't normally engage with, as so much can be overlooked and you can really miss out.

I'm really looking forward to this movie coming out. From the trailer, the soundtrack sounds amazing, the characters are intriguing and I'm genuinely curious to what is going to happen. May 2012 is too far away for me :(

NOVEL - We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver)

This novel truly depicts every mother's worst nightmare. We Need To Talk About Kevin contains a series of letters from Eva Khatchadourian to her husband Franklin, reflecting on her life prior and subsequent to the high school massacre, known as Thursday, committed by her son Kevin.

Since his birth, Eva notices that Kevin's characteristics and actions are almost sociopathic as the two form a loathsome relationship while Kevin appears to be much closer to his father. Although Eva voices her concern for and of Kevin, Franklin disregards this by "rounding up" these warnings as minor incidents which reinforces the notion that 'boys will be boys', thus pushing Eva and Franklin further apart.

In terms of the storyline, we know the gist of what happens at the start, middle and end but what is a surprise to us is the emotional development. As little is known about Kevin's true motives and thoughts, some surprising discoveries are made. In this book, you see various relationships strain, breakdown and flourish as it examines ideas associated with parental responsibility and unconditional love.

One would assume that a book structured through letters is tenuous to read but We Need To Talk About Kevin is beautifully written and effectively builds up suspense. There are several intricate nuances (as my English teacher would say) within the book which requires multiple readings or a very attentive mind to notice, such as Kevin's response to an interviewer paralleling Eva's ideas prior to Thursday on American accountability. The book mainly explores the complicated relationship between Kevin and Eva of which many can unfortunately relate to.

This is as much as I can discuss about the novel before spoiling it, however I whole heartedly recommend you read it as well as watch the film adaptation with Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly. I watched the film first then read the novel and I found that while the film is amazing on its own, the novel adds further depth, of which helped to me understand and appreciate the film even more.

MOVIE - Shame (2011)

As always, I had very little knowledge of Steve McQueen's film Shame prior to watching it, only that it was about sex, a given considering its R18+ rating. Yes, the film is centred around a man's sexual addiction but there's so much more beyond that.

"In New York City, Brandon's carefully cultivated private life -- which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction -- is disrupted when his sister Sissy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay."
- IMDB

The storyline is not complicated or elaborate. There are not sudden plot twists or curve balls, what you see on screen is simply what you get.

That is why the film is simultaneously simple and sophisticated. The film purely displays the destructive combination of Brandon's addiction and Sissy's impulsive lifestyle. Easily put, the siblings cannot function together, but beyond that are dark themes not just about sex, but façades, strained relationships and self destruction portrayed not only in Brandon but in Sissy as well.

The 'explicit sex scenes' didn't disturb me at all. About 3/4 through, I was even wondering what the point of the movie was. But the last 20 minutes of the film really hit hard. The movie is built up and executed well and the ending (and by extension the opening) scene was perfect. Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan are excellent and have such good chemistry which is why the movie works so well.

Brandon draw parallels with Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, nonetheless the character stands on his own and I'm conflicted in whether to reprimand or pity him.

Overall, despite my original doubts, this is a very engaging, intriguing, intense film. A seemingly straightforward plot gives you much to think about and more than one viewing is required to comprehend the film.

ART - Picasso exhibition & others (Art Gallery of NSW)

Finally having spare time after exams, Jess, Mon and I decided to see the Picasso Exhibit at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Honestly, I initially didn't have much interest in actually seeing the artworks, as I was only entranced by the fact that is was Pablo freaking Picasso and I would regret a once in a life time opportunity if I decided not to go. There were 10 large rooms of his work, each room illustrating a particular period of his life such as 'A return to classicism 1916-1924' and 'The joy of life 1952-1960'. I obviously could not take any photos, but here are some of my favourite works. [note the following are not the real things (of course) but from Google Images]

 The Suppliant (Source)

Man in a Straw Hat with Ice Cream Cone (Source)

Portrait of Dora Maar Seated (Source)

This was absolutely stunning. Looking back on this on a computer screen is nothing compared to the actual one. In real life, it's so vibrant and gorgeous.

Looking back, there were definitely some 'wtf is this even art?' moments, but overall it was such an interesting experience, that these iconic artworks actually exist and have transcended time for others to view today. It's such an odd feeling, that people come and go in life but what they leave can have such an impact on others. 

I also had the pleasure of looking at the other artworks in the gallery.

There were a lot more people looking at the exhibit than I had originally expected and some of the late afternoon sessions were even sold out. The Picasso exhibit ends on the 25th of March after over 4 months in Sydney, so now's the last chance to see it.

MOVIE - Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

I've been wanting to watch this movie for awhile and had the chance yesterday to see it. One thing I like doing is watching a movie with no prior knowledge of it and before watching this movie, all I knew about it was self-explanatory from its title, that this one kid really just wanted a day off. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.

Before watching the movie, I was aware of its 7.9/10 rating on IMDB and heard good reviews about it but I did not predict how much I would love it.

It has a light-hearted story line of Ferris Bueller and his best friend and girlfriend taking the day off school but touches on issues involving uncertainty after high school, friendship and strained relationships within families in a way which the audience can relate to the movie without dampening the viewing experience.

Ferris is the one kid in the school in which everything goes his way and that you should hate him but find yourself loving him instead and because he's such an engaging and endearing character, you can't help but root for him to make it through the day without getting caught by his school principal.

There is one particular hilarious scene which Solane's (Ferris' girlfriend) father calls the school to get her out of class. The principal, thinking it's Ferris who's impersonating the father insults him, but then Ferris rings up the school to ask that his sister collect his homework. Then the principal realises that the person who he thinks is imitating Solane's father is not Ferris and assumes he's actually been speaking to Solane's father along.

Then it turns out Solane's father is being impersonated by Ferris' best friend Cameron.



One interesting piece of trivia:

Within the movie, the scene with the economics lecture is unscripted. Ben Stein the economics teacher actually graduated with an honour in economics and was supposed to lecture off-screen but this changed and instead was told to improvise the lecture on camera. Stein said that:

"Everybody on the set applauded. I thought they were applauding because they had learned something about supply side economics. But they were applauding because they thought I was boring...It was the best day of my life."

This is a great movie and I especially recommend it if you need a good laugh or your mood to be lifted. To end this, here are some good quotes in the movie (thank you IMBD):

• Sloane: (talking about life after high school) What do you think Ferris is gonna do?
  Cameron: He's gonna be a fry cook on Venus.


• Teacher: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
  Simone: Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
  Teacher: Thank you, Simone.
  Simone: No problem whatsoever.


• Boy in Police Station: You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she's a whore.


• Ferris: Cameron is so uptight, if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.