As Sunday Slips Away...
Not that I exactly deserve one, but I am treating myself to a break because I've been avoiding my blog too much lately. This alone isn't a terrible thing (I arguably invest too much time in this thing) but when it took me a good five minutes to remember what I did on Friday night, I regretted that I haven't been writing things down - if nothing else, this blog is like a retroactive calendar of sorts and it serves to remind me where and when I did things.
I am fearing an all-nighter, but that isn't inspiring any progress on my Classical Film Theory paper (due tomorrow night). This will be followed up by a big old French film paper due on Wednesday. This weekend as a whole saw more work than usual - Friday I was at the library until 8pm, Saturday I was in "the room," and today I spent a large chunk of the day in my window-less office, reportedly "working" but the papers still aren't done, so whatever I did doesn't qualify as enough, per se. Two weeks from now I'll be in California on an official vacation, but the fourteen days between now and then are sure to test me - literally (I have two final exams) and figuratively.
I am glad to report that my gift for crafting artful titles with finesse has returned [this skill had momentarily departed about the time of my Mekas paper]. Granted that these are working titles, but check out these apples: "Ambiguity, Manipulation, and Control: Andre Bazin's conception of naturalized acting posed against Sergei Eisenstein's orchestrated "attractions" // "Open and Blurred Boundaries: A Landscape of Overlapping Intertextuality and Recurring Characters in Jacques Demy's Early Features." Ah yes, the pretension abounds.
I finally finished the final draft of my 10-page screenplay for production class - and now that it's done, I feel like a hypocrite. My script is a semi-autobiographical type of Bridget Jones / Sex and the City story about a strong-willed single protagonist woman with a gay-man sidekick. She strives on the independence that being single affords her and she doesn't want to cave to social pressures to lose any of part of herself by becoming a submissive part of a co-dependent couple. She openly criticizes amorous displays of affection and she hates that her married friends spend so much time mysteriously nesting in their apartments and lose sight of interesting things, including but not limited to, their fabulous single friends. I wrote this script on one of my self-affirming singlehood boughts - but seeing it on paper now, it's hard not to feel like I've sold myself out and might be a mushy sap beneath my tough as nails facade.
This weekend still afforded plenty of "play time" (including watching Jacques Tati's
Playtime) and Demy's
Bay of Angels & Umbrellas of Cherbourg, both with scores by Michel Legrand, the second of which is filmed in brilliant day-glow technicolor and every line is sung, like an Opera. As if things weren't going well enough, Patrick felt the need to impress me and succeeded gloriously with his Saturday night supper which consisted, among other things, of a homemade salas, turkey empenadas, and chicken enchiladas from scratch. I continue to feel happy, lucky, and smitten - and the fact that he likes to hear me talk on and on about my papers and drives me to school and home on Sundays is just a heavenly bonus.
Life is still pretty good, outside of the city limits of coupleville. On Wednesday, I had a fancy, dressed-up, sophistco girls' night out at the Opera with Laura, Jordis, and Kate. We went to see an impressive grad student show of Mozart's
Cosi Fan Tutte. The cast was pretty talented overall, but I think that Opera is Italian for long and boring - weighing in at a long three-hours, I was glad to have a well-made mojito at Magnus afterward and call it a night. Thursday brought a rather interesting Colloquium during which I learned how to illegally copy encoded DVDs and listened to Ben and Patrick talk about making clip tapes on Final Cut Pro and other transfer options using Quicktime, but solid, practical stuff. The decision to become a Mac user continues to have been the right decision. That night we had dinner with Tom and Jordis at the Italian place around the corner and all agreed that going out was much easier than attempting coq au vin, as we had ambitiously planned.
In other news, from that colloquium, I discovered the most wonderful program (freeware) called "Capture Me." I have no idea if this of any relevance to anyone outside of the film world, but it takes pristine screenshots and turns them instantly in jpegs (i.e. great film stills). It works exceptionally well when you set the parameters (super easy) to a DVD image. Bordwell says that it looks as good as slides taken from an original negative. I am inclined to believe him. Just the same, my French paper will be handsomely accompanied by lots of screen shots and I've devised this very informative table to organize my data which looks pristine and scholarly. I've turned into a little narratologist on this one and had fun in the process, watch out Seymour Chatman. After all the lazy complaining I've done, perhaps I am capable of pulling off a half-way decent paper.
The TA strike is over now (it took place on Tuesday and Wednesday). I put enough time in on the picketline to get a healthy-looking sunburn on my nose, but I still don't know what it got us at the bargaining table. Originally, we had kept the option of semester-end "grade strike" in our back pocket, but as a Union, we called that plan off today [collective sigh of relief because this would have been a pragmatic and logistical disaster]. We still haven't really seen the end of things - the strike has become a very divisive issue in our department. People who are really pro-union and active in the strike planning and execution have certainly turned against the people who were too apathetic or unwillingly to support the cause / walk the line. We probably haven't seen the end of things, but it was definitely one of those character-defining moments.
The French Kicks' new album, "The Trial of the Century" comes out on Tuesday... but if you're an eager beaver like me, you can grab it on Acquisition... good stuff all around. Listening to this has almost made a working Sunday not bad.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:37 PM
