At the moment, everything is very Future in my life. Jobs, university, not starving to death at university (it'll be fine, I can cook pasta and soup. I'll alternate...). Hopefully, my future will look something like this. On the face of it, the unbelieveable combination of Classical Studies with Film Studies sounds like the pansiest of pansy options available. It's not. Golf Management is the pansiest of pansy options available. I'm not going to uni for a piece of paper to allow me to work - I have always wanted it to be three years of in-depth study into a subject I am passionate about. What better than a course that combines my two key interests, even if they make an odd pair?
Plus, I've started enjoying the reaction I get from those around me. The more unguarded wince, because it sounds like a "soft option" - the intelligent tend to quip "what, three years of studying Spartacus?". Do I care what they think? Some of them, yes very, but the mass not at all. I suppose I only got away with applying for it because everybody (secretly) knew I was going to get into Cambridge, for the slightly less outlandish Classics...
The first year has two introductory film modules - "forms" and "contexts". I expect this to be a rehash of the AS course I took last year, learning cinematic terms and how to talk about cinema.
The second year allows you two modules - at the moment, the choice is between: Topics in European Cinema, Topics in World Cinema, Film Forms, Asian Popular Cinemas, Stardom & Performance, Cinema & Spectatorship, Film Authorship.
None especially appeal to me now, except maybe Spectatorship (please give me something on censorship!) Asian Popular Cinema could also be fun. I was so close to applying for Brunel, just because they are home to the Cult Film Archive. They do a whole load of postgrady stuff, so don't be too suprised to see me there in four years time if you're still reading. The Archive runs http://www.cine-excess.co.uk, a cult movie conferance, which I'll definitely attend sometime...
The third year, which again allows for two modules, will be a bit of a wrench for choice, for the opposite reason: American Underground Cinema, American Independant Cinema, Film and Trans-nationalism, Film Noir, The European Crime Film, Movie Music, Fathers in Film, Third Cinema and Beyond, Film Genre, Style and Ideology, Representation and Identity in Film
Representation and Identity isn't too hard to ignore - feminist movies et al, ugh - but picking between European Crime, Film Noir and Movie Music will be tough. And I'd love to know what Third Cinema actually is...
The other film course I applied to was Southampton, which has slightly better choices (partic "
Utopian and Dystopian science fiction film"), but is just film. If I had to give up one of the two, I'd keep Classics - Latin would be hard to keep up in my spare time, Cinecism itself proves I can write competantly about film without a lecturer breathing down my neck - which means my next choice is probably Exeter. I always intended to make the choice intellectually - for example, I went for Cambridge over Oxford, because Oxford played home to two of my literary heroes + Brideshead Revisited, and I never wanted to feel I was there for those three reasons alone. It didn't quite turn out that way, and here I am again picking Exeter because it is green and pretty, over Southampton because it is gray and cold.
In celebration of these discoveries of something so obvious, here's two classification links:
Recently found on IMDB top links, the classification board in Ireland:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3493053.ece
It is something I have long noticed (what with Region 2 DVDs listing both English and Irish ratings) that the Irish ones are invariably far higher. They made Constantine an 18!
And Helen O'Hara of Empire rephrases almost exactly my words, but with far more coherency and in far less room, concerning the now thankfully junked government bill about tightning up censorship rules:
http://www.empireonline.com/empireblog/Post.asp?id=114
She even used the same post title as me (more or less)!
And some good, good, good, bad, good news. My school has extended Film Studies to a full A-level. This is bad news for me - they ignored my request flat when I was doing AS film, but it's nice to see they took it on board for future generations.
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