It's been a while.

I've got finals right now. A little stress, too, but I got an extension on a final paper, which helps a lot. Now, it all can just be waited out/ground through.

The final paper that I got this extension on is a film paper, conveniently enough. I'm writing on Godard's Alphaville and Ridley Scott's Bladerunner (Director's Cut). It's about science fiction and film noir (and the intersection thereof, as pertains to these films), and hopefully also about how these films address (or mostly just raise) questions about what it means to be human, and how the two themes relate. I've got: hardboiled detectives, existentialism, interrogation, words, dictionaries/bibles, poetry and poetic and/or ambiguous language and figurative speech, the understanding (interpretation) of such things, love, grief, [fear of] death, memory... It's going to be huge. Hopefully in a good way. Anyways, I'll be home for Christmas. Probably, working on this silly paper.

Since I probably won't post again any time soon, Happy Holidays! I shall see you when I see you, and be happy for it, I'm sure.

But for now, I've an exam to study for.

I've been watching a fair number of things. Lots of Film Noir, because I'm taking a Film Noir class. Off the top of my head, I've seen, for that class, Detour, T-Men, Out of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle, The Maltese Falcon, Gilda, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat. They've been pretty great for the most part. I've realized to a greater extent how great Sunset Boulevard is.

I also saw Dogville recently, and was pretty intrigued by the use of transparency there.

Uh. Yeah. Things are going along. Naturally, I'm busier than I'd like. I'm being more social than I've ever been before, I think. Or I'm more socially comfortable, or something. We have an orchestra concert on Friday, and it's homecoming weekend. I have to decide between an orchestra seniors/alumni wine and cheese party after the orchestra concert and a concert thrown by my friends that's combined with a funk party thrown by the school radio station, and I don't want to. (Oh, woe is me!)

The sun is around today, for the first extended period in a good long while, and even though it's cold out, I'm happy about it. It's going to rain all weekend though. Oh well.

I saw Swimming Pool today. It was interesting, and I thought it was good, but hardly remarkable. If it's actually great, not just good, I certainly didn't get it.

I also saw The Aristocrats (if you don't know about it, I suggest taking a look at a trailer or synopsis). It's incredibly gross, but also pretty interesting and, in it's way, hilarious.

Oh, I also saw Swingers a while back (for the first time). I had to stop right near the end, and came away not really liking it at all, but the ending improved it somewhat. My opinion of it is similar to my opinion of Swimming Pool. Sure, it was good, but not amazing. I can still understand loving it though, it's like me having a soft spot for Blink 182, only not as bad.

I watched A Mighty Wind recently. I was thoroughly amused. The fake documentary thing is an interesting concept.

I teach my last cello lesson, at least for the summer, in about an hour. I have two days of work at "camp," and probably one more night of work down at Stanford. I go back to school in 9 days. Yikes.

So I just saw Charade and Wait Until Dark at the Stanford Theatre (http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/). Both were fantastic, and I wish Amherst had an equivalent to the Stanford Thatre. Charade had a brilliant build-up of suspense, and Wait Until Dark was pretty good in that regard, too. The most frightening/startling moment in Wait Until Dark was actually only particularly jarrign for me because everybody screamed. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been a big deal at all if I had been watching it alone. This, as well as just plain seeing Audrey Hepburn so large made me think a bit about the difference between seeing these classic films on a big screen and on my own or in a small group on a television. The professor in my film class last year insisted that there was a big difference, that we had to go to the class screenings instead of relying on our memory or on the library and our own computer because of this. I only now am starting to think that there really might be a large difference.

Also, Audrey Hepburn does a fairly impressive blind woman in Wait Until Dark. I loved Charade though. I think my biggest recommendation though would have to be for the Stanford Theatre.

Saw Horse Feathers, The Gold Rush, and Sunset Boulevard. Was very, pretty, and slightly disappointed respectively. I had high expectations. Horse Feathers seemed way too gimmicky. The Gold Rush had a audio narrative which threw me off, not to mention Buster Keaton is much cooler than Charlie Chaplin. Sunset Boulevard was very well done. It was fantastic. This is the film that I had expectations that were far too high, I think. The character of Norma made me uncomfortable later in the film, and I chalked it up to overacting, but maybe it was just that well done.

In other news, holy smokes! Summer, it's ending!

Forgot to add that I saw Sideways and enjoyed it quite a bit. At first I thought it might be targeted towards too old an audience, and, well, it is targeted towards an older audience than I, I think, but it's still pretty good.

Been out and about a lot lately, mostly because of my birthday, but also because my sophomore year roommate is in Santa Cruz and we finally met up. So in the past few days: San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, plus I just got back from salmon fishing in the pacific, mostly off the coast of Pacifica.

Saw Requiem for a Dream the other day. Really, really well done. My comments don't go much deeper than that right now. But from what little I know the depictions of the drugs and their effects from an external point of view were fairly realistic (though particularly drastic in the cases in the movie).

My new Powerbook is being shipped from China. And according the the FedEx tracker, it went from Shanghai to Indianapolis, probably passing right by me.

Car is finally back. So that's good for getting back to work and such.

Watched Baraka, My Life to Live/Vivre sa vie, and A Woman is a Woman/Une femme est une femme.

Baraka is an entirely visual (plus music) "documentary." It's probably the most ambitious "silent" film I've ever watched, though it's entirely implicit in it's ambitions because of it's entirely visual nature. It's very difficult to describe. For some reason I suspect that you, Ramya, might enjoy it.

Vivre sa vie and Une femme est une femme, by Godard, were interesting. I found Une femme est une femme to be much more accessible, and familiar with the other Godard I've watched (A Bout de Souffle/Breathless). Probably because it has Belmondo in it, it's self-conscious in the same way as Breathless, and it's not in an unusual format, the way Vivre sa vie is. The way Godard uses sound was particularly interesting, but in general it was just fun, and that's what I liked about it.

Watched Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Boy, was it long. But it was quite good, despite my being completely unfamiliar with the style/genre.

Also saw Land of the Dead recently, which was fun; about as entertaining as one might expect, and in the ways one might expect from a zombie flick.

Oh, and I watched Innerspace. It's this sci-fi film that involves this guy in a being miniaturized (in a little pod designed for such purposes) and then accidentally injected into a person (instead of a lab rabbit). It ended up in my Netflix queue because it was one of those films that I watched a lot as a kid because we happened to have it on VHS.

Lastly, my car's broken, and it's going to cost a ridiculous fraction of it's value to get it fixed. And it's also taking forever, which is really annoying and bad for my work, etc.

I saw Batman Begins the other day. It was entertaining enough, though it had it's patches of awkwardness. One of the most common things I found to be awkward was whenever Batman spoke.

Also saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Fairly silly movie. Predicatble, gimmicky, and not all that substantial, but still lots of fun. And worth half the price of a matinee movie ticket, I guess (which is effectively what I paid to see it).

And today I watched Pi: Faith in Chaos. A pretty intriguing film, one that probably takes multiple viewings to really get to like. I found the cinematography in this one to be really cool. Lots of harsh black and whites, which played off some of the thematic content very well, I thought. The set(s) of the main charater's room were awesome. And the message, if I got the general idea right, was an interesting one which I think I ultimately found agreeable. (Does that make any sense?)

Buster Keaton's Seven Chances, and Godard's Breathless are up next, and both are rather exciting. Someone who is familiar with Godard should recommend more films by him.

Incidentally, this friends feature on Netflix intrigues me. If you have netflix, you should add me. See next (protected) post for my school email address, which is what I use for netflix.

Buster Keaton is my hero.

I saw Les Miserables yesterday. I know precious little about musical theatre, really, so I won't say too much, but I quite enjoyed it. I wasn't too sure about the performance of young Cosette, but what can you do? The rest of it was good enough that I didn't notice any flaws. The rotating stage at the Curran was interesting.

Good Morning, Vietnam! is a nice, fairly funny, touching movie. It makes me wonder about movies about Iraq. Will they be made? How will the whole thing be looked at in 10, 20 years from now, what will the movies be like? Obviously this depends on what the future holds, who writes the history and how, etc. etc.

Buster Keaton is on the way. This is very exciting.

Anita, a friend from SEA, is coming to San Fancisco for a few days soon. This weekend, I get to have dinner and then see Les Mis with her family and then hit the town with her, and it's exciting.

Also, I eagerly await the arrival of The Goonies and Good Morning, Vietnam!

I would sell my soul to be able to play a musical instrument like one of the Haas sisters, or maybe that guy who plays cello in the Republic of Strings (band Brittany is in), 'cause he's crazy.

Clue is hilarious. I can't count the number of times I wanted to pause/back up the DVD and replay something in order to write it down. So much wordplay. One of my new favorites. Not sure why I didn't like it so much the first time I saw it (a few years ago), but this time I'm pretty sure I want to re-watch immediately.


Col. Mustard: Is this place for you? [referring to a place setting]
Wadsworth: Oh, indeed no, sir. I am merely a humble butler.
Mustard: What exactly do you do?
Wadsworth: I butle, sir.

(http://www.garnersclassics.com/qclue.htm)

So I'm not sure whether to be worried or excited about the fact that Nicole Kidman is working with Will Ferrell (in Bewitched). I'm certainly confused and surprised. Also, I want to watch a Gene Kelly movie now (thanks to A Clockwork Orange). Any reccomendations (besides Singin' in the Rain)?

Just finished watching A Clockwork Orange. A fascinating film. As usual Kubrick makes very strange films, very well. I want to watch it again, but I probably won't get around to doing so any time soon. I was intrigued by the role music plays, among other things.

Flight of the Navigator was pretty funny. I enjoyed it all, particularly the line "I was checking out some daisies!" Also, they referenced E.T. ("He just wanted to phone home."). It's interesting to watch these childhood favorites after all these years, you get some things that you didn't before. I don't remember well enough what exactly I liked about it, if it was just scene to scene entertainment or the bigger picture that I enjoyed, but before watching it all I could remember were snippets of scenes, and not the whole story, really.

Evil Dead is pretty impressive. I'm not one for horror films, but this was pretty damn good, especially as a low-budget film. It was very well made. Impressive is certainly the word that comes to mind the most. Not quite what I was expecting, but that's because my expectations were based entirely on Army of Darkness, which is a classic in it's own right, but not as good as Evil Dead in my opinion. It accomplishes something different though. Evil Dead could be called a real and serious horror film, whereas Army of Darkness is simply amusing most of the time.

A Clockwork Orange is next, with Clue, Good Morning Vietnam and The Goonies (Lis might flip her shit when she reads this) on the way.

I've been recruited at the last minute (I play tonight, got a copy of the part yesterday) to play cello for this guy at Stanford's composition (I assume it's for a class or something). He has a interesting name, and an even more interesting nickname. I won't post it here, but it is kind of interesting and you can ask me about it if you like.