...2 months later.
It has been a while and I thought I'd jot down a word to say what I have been up to.
I've started my Masters' course. It's pretty full on, even though we've had only one week of classes, but I'm enjoying it.
This weekend has been quiet, and I think the week nights and weekends to come will have to be as well. There is no "own time" when you're a student.
I'd been introduced to the serial "Ugly Betty", to which I believed I was addicted whilst binge-watching the old episodes on You Tube. But now that I've seen them all, and have to watch them at a rate of one-per-week, I don't really find them exciting anymore. Either Season 3 is not as fun as the preceding seasons, or I just am not a watch-in-moderation kind of guy.
Woody Allen on the other hand, is the kind of serial I can go to watch once a year. "Vicky Christina Barcelona" was sufficiently entertaining. Predictably good performance from Scarlett Johansson, but also excellent performances and casting from just about everyone else. You leave the cinema with a smile. See you next year.
Philippe Garrel's "Fontière de l'Aube" however was somewhat disappointing. Or rather, didn't seem to quite "work". Shot again in high-contrast B&W, as in "Les Amants Réguliers", the supernatural part towards the end started taking it's aesthetic inspiration from German expressionism and surrealist cinema. Neither of these have the same impact when mixed with dialogue and when the rest of the film has a different pace and set in different and incompatible cinematic conventions. The effect was an end-of-year film from a fresh cinema student, too eager to try too much.
I also last week saw Brecht's "Sanint-Jeanne des Abattoirs", directed by Bernard Sobel who is quite an interesting metteur en scène and started off with the Berliner Ensemble. The play was good but perhaps too long (3 hours with no entr'acte) given the rather uncomfortable seating (cushions without chairs) people started getting restless for the last half an hour.
to be contd...
I've started my Masters' course. It's pretty full on, even though we've had only one week of classes, but I'm enjoying it.
This weekend has been quiet, and I think the week nights and weekends to come will have to be as well. There is no "own time" when you're a student.
I'd been introduced to the serial "Ugly Betty", to which I believed I was addicted whilst binge-watching the old episodes on You Tube. But now that I've seen them all, and have to watch them at a rate of one-per-week, I don't really find them exciting anymore. Either Season 3 is not as fun as the preceding seasons, or I just am not a watch-in-moderation kind of guy.
Woody Allen on the other hand, is the kind of serial I can go to watch once a year. "Vicky Christina Barcelona" was sufficiently entertaining. Predictably good performance from Scarlett Johansson, but also excellent performances and casting from just about everyone else. You leave the cinema with a smile. See you next year.
Philippe Garrel's "Fontière de l'Aube" however was somewhat disappointing. Or rather, didn't seem to quite "work". Shot again in high-contrast B&W, as in "Les Amants Réguliers", the supernatural part towards the end started taking it's aesthetic inspiration from German expressionism and surrealist cinema. Neither of these have the same impact when mixed with dialogue and when the rest of the film has a different pace and set in different and incompatible cinematic conventions. The effect was an end-of-year film from a fresh cinema student, too eager to try too much.
I also last week saw Brecht's "Sanint-Jeanne des Abattoirs", directed by Bernard Sobel who is quite an interesting metteur en scène and started off with the Berliner Ensemble. The play was good but perhaps too long (3 hours with no entr'acte) given the rather uncomfortable seating (cushions without chairs) people started getting restless for the last half an hour.
to be contd...