Bad week...

Having not seen a film for half a week (parents addicted to the sort of tear-duct-tugging 9/11 anniversary and poorly children programs which make me dash from the room.), I've instead resorted to attempts to break the world trailer watching endurance record. I'm resisting the urge to watch it for a second time today, having seen it three times over the last two days. It's very very hard.


FOUR HOURS LATER

I'm writing this straight after tea. We all sit to eat together, and I always raise the question - "So...what are we going to do tonight?" which roughly translates as "What film are we going to watch?" or, more recently, "lets watch Reservoir Dogs."

Having been starved of movies since Tuesday (that's a jolly long time, in my book) I felt sure we'd be able to fit one in this evening. Especially as my young sister had already stated her intention to spend it in her room, letting me+parents pick the film. You can see where this is going, right?

Alas, no luck. The choice came down to either Air Force One or the final episode of Edge of Darkness. Or an episode of Lost. Heaven forbid! I'm kinda fond of bits of Lost, but it's utterly tedious to watch in the hope of something interesting happening. It's almost like an Ian Holm fan sitting through Return of the King - it's a jolly long wait!

Edge of Darkness too is good in places, but again so slow. I'd liken it to Heat actually - longer than necessary, obviously very good but I'm just not into it. I'm actually not sure why - it's about a disintigrating guy, who many assert is already mad, dealing through loss in a series of dream sequences with a dead relation and surreal encounters with a random American, and it's very very morally dubious. The acting is great, the minor characters (especially Pendleton) are amusing and when you work out what's going on the end's a killer. It's got me all over it, I just can't relate. Which really hurts. And Air Force One? No thanks. Bad memories of Behind Enemy Lines here...it just sounds somewhat unnapealing.

Finally, the Culture came and there is not a single thing on which I want to watch, with the exception of DOA which looks fab. And is on sky movies. We don't have sky movies.

NEXT DAY

Just more on film studies. Yesterday we watched several more clips from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I still have no intention of seeing in my spare time, and several more from Jane Eyre, which I never would have considered watching in the first place. We were doing mis-en-scene, camera movement and camera shots - stuffed into one lesson, but it was easy stuff. Although we did hit calamity looking at a shot of Godzilla's eye with people next to it. Because technically it was sort of a long shot on the people, yet also a close up on the eye. Jolly confusing stuff. We started looking at Gladiator too - we watched the first 15 minutes, which resulted in a lot of wuvving on my behalf.

And then today we studied editing, although it curiously turned into a tour of the most famous cinema scenes ever - Battleship Potempkin, the beginning of Citizen Kane and, of course, that shower. I must say however, it seemed...very staged. Almost like the way Brian de Palma films always seem to be trying too hard to be director-ly. Mr Hitchcock and I have some issues to work through. We also took a look at a trailer - a trailer which can be watched here. Our challenge: count the number of individual edits.

Well...

I gave up at 16. My friend got lost at 25. Our teacher says its the first time in the history of the course that anyone hasn't bothered. Everyone else came to an agreement it was somewhere between 100 and 130.

Anyway, the highlight of the lesson was him pulling out a box of these and dishing them out. I voluenteered to take a video - I was just happy to have it, personally, after spending so long chasing it at the library.

http://www.theshiznit.co.uk/index.php - I like this site. It's got some really good reviews, they're even nice about Constantine!