End of the semester, end of the year.
All right boys and girls, I'm finally updating, and man is it ever a big one. First off I'd like to talk about the new Lord of the Rings movie somewhat. Watching the various trailers has had me totally hyped up to see this one, and I can definetly say I was not let down.
When I was in line to get my ticket at theatre, one of the TV news guys was a few feet away setting up his camcorder and microphone to do some interviews with the movie-goers. If I wanted to, I could've been on TV, but I'm camera-shy enough as is, seeing myself talking on TV would just kill me. Incidentally, after I got back to my room I watched the news to see if I was even in the picture at all, but I wasn't. Probably just as well. Anyhow, the movie wasn't going to start for about another hour, so I killed some time playing Soul Calibur. When I was finally about to walk into the screen room, I got stopped by this idiot Chinese guy who said I couldn't take my backpack in with me (I had it with me from the exam I'd taken a couple hours before). When I asked why, he said "saftey reasons", whatever the hell that means. I even offered to open it up to show him that I didn't have anything illegal inside, but he didn't care. Well, I hadn't come all the way there just to turn back now, so I went to the back of the theatre and buried my backpack under a snowbank. I figured it was pretty safe there, and even if it got nabbed it was expendable as I had nothing valuable inside. But anyhow, I made it back inside and finally sat down and started watching. Impressions below (no spoilers):
Holy shit. Holy holy shit. I was totally blown away by the whole experience. Incredible doesn't begin to describe it. Finally, for the first time, we have a fantasy-based movie that is not only good, but downright stellar. During the various battle scenes (and there are quite a few) my mouth was agape with awe at some of the sequences that took place. That's not to say I didn't care about the rest of the movie either; on the contrary, I found the story elements and characters masterfully executed, and having completed the first book just a few hours before, found them nearly identical. That is, nearly, but not completely. Now normally I'm a purist in that sense; the closer the movie is to the book, the better it is. There were quite a few things that got altered in the movie. A couple of characters in the book didn't show up at all in the movie, one character got a lot more screen time than she does in the book, a few important scenes from the book are either altered or cut out completely, and the end of the movie seems to go through to the beginning of the second book. However, this time I'm willing to forgive the director for most of this. For one thing, the movie is 3 hours long, which is probably the longest anyone can be expected to sit through a film. For another, not all the stuff that got cut out was worth keeping. There's a lot of parts in the book where the characters just burst into song and dance, among other useless stuff, and while that might add to the atmosphere of the book, it would just waste time in a movie. Overall, this gets my vote for Movie of the Year. If I'd seen it without reading the book first, I'd still think it was great and I'd probably end up getting the trilogy right afterwards.
Now that I've said enough about that, I'll go to exams. This week I had 4 final exams, and overall I'm quite confident on how I did on each of them. On a couple of them I was finsihed in half an hour or less, and any time that happens it's a sure bet that I did really well. The last one I had was this morning, and damn was it ever brutal. The first part was worth 40% and all T/F questions. The thing was, you couldn't just guess randomly if you weren't sure, because if you got it wrong, in addition to not getting any points for it, you'd get 2 taken off for putting down the wrong answer. I was able to answer about half of it. The rest of the questions were various proofs, mostly. I didn't know any of them for sure, but I took a really good stab at it, which is about all I could really do. Usually when taking a test like that, I'd be really worried, but I'm not, for 2 reasons. First, the teacher is very generous in his grading and curves like mad (a 28% will get a C), and also I haven't known him to fail people on exams. Second, I turned the exam in about 10 minutes before time was up, and a lot of people were still working on it. That's a very good sign, because it means they're not having the best time of it either, and I imagine that's going to be taken into account when the grades are tallied.
So in any case, this is my last day here in Fairbanks for a while. Tomorrow morning I'll be off on my way down to Homer. As to how I'm going to get there, it's going to be one of 2 ways, and I don't know which one it's going to be yet. The first, which is what I had originally planned on doing, was to fly down with Fronteir Flying Service (somewhat cheaper than Alaska Airlines) to Anchorage early in the morning, and then catch the next plane to Homer (I scrapped the train idea because I wanted to get back ASAP, and train fare was only $15 cheaper)). The other option is something I only started thinking about last night. When I got back from LotR I had a message on my answering machine from someone saying I could get a ride down to Anchorage in the next couple days. Well, I called back half an hour ago, and she said that she may or may not be able to drive down tomorrow, depending on whether or not she can skip work due to the temperature outside, and that I should call back tonight at 9 to find out if it's a go or not. If it is, I'll be happy because I'll have saved $100 on airfare. The only downside is I'll have to call ERA and change my reservation, which costs $25. I've already had to do that once, and I didn't like it. But even doing it a second time, I'll still have saved $50.
Anyhow, this will probably be my last big update for a while. If while I'm down there I find a computer and enouigh time to post an entry, I might do so, but I'm not guranteeing anything. Until then, Happy Holidays everyone.
When I was in line to get my ticket at theatre, one of the TV news guys was a few feet away setting up his camcorder and microphone to do some interviews with the movie-goers. If I wanted to, I could've been on TV, but I'm camera-shy enough as is, seeing myself talking on TV would just kill me. Incidentally, after I got back to my room I watched the news to see if I was even in the picture at all, but I wasn't. Probably just as well. Anyhow, the movie wasn't going to start for about another hour, so I killed some time playing Soul Calibur. When I was finally about to walk into the screen room, I got stopped by this idiot Chinese guy who said I couldn't take my backpack in with me (I had it with me from the exam I'd taken a couple hours before). When I asked why, he said "saftey reasons", whatever the hell that means. I even offered to open it up to show him that I didn't have anything illegal inside, but he didn't care. Well, I hadn't come all the way there just to turn back now, so I went to the back of the theatre and buried my backpack under a snowbank. I figured it was pretty safe there, and even if it got nabbed it was expendable as I had nothing valuable inside. But anyhow, I made it back inside and finally sat down and started watching. Impressions below (no spoilers):
Holy shit. Holy holy shit. I was totally blown away by the whole experience. Incredible doesn't begin to describe it. Finally, for the first time, we have a fantasy-based movie that is not only good, but downright stellar. During the various battle scenes (and there are quite a few) my mouth was agape with awe at some of the sequences that took place. That's not to say I didn't care about the rest of the movie either; on the contrary, I found the story elements and characters masterfully executed, and having completed the first book just a few hours before, found them nearly identical. That is, nearly, but not completely. Now normally I'm a purist in that sense; the closer the movie is to the book, the better it is. There were quite a few things that got altered in the movie. A couple of characters in the book didn't show up at all in the movie, one character got a lot more screen time than she does in the book, a few important scenes from the book are either altered or cut out completely, and the end of the movie seems to go through to the beginning of the second book. However, this time I'm willing to forgive the director for most of this. For one thing, the movie is 3 hours long, which is probably the longest anyone can be expected to sit through a film. For another, not all the stuff that got cut out was worth keeping. There's a lot of parts in the book where the characters just burst into song and dance, among other useless stuff, and while that might add to the atmosphere of the book, it would just waste time in a movie. Overall, this gets my vote for Movie of the Year. If I'd seen it without reading the book first, I'd still think it was great and I'd probably end up getting the trilogy right afterwards.
Now that I've said enough about that, I'll go to exams. This week I had 4 final exams, and overall I'm quite confident on how I did on each of them. On a couple of them I was finsihed in half an hour or less, and any time that happens it's a sure bet that I did really well. The last one I had was this morning, and damn was it ever brutal. The first part was worth 40% and all T/F questions. The thing was, you couldn't just guess randomly if you weren't sure, because if you got it wrong, in addition to not getting any points for it, you'd get 2 taken off for putting down the wrong answer. I was able to answer about half of it. The rest of the questions were various proofs, mostly. I didn't know any of them for sure, but I took a really good stab at it, which is about all I could really do. Usually when taking a test like that, I'd be really worried, but I'm not, for 2 reasons. First, the teacher is very generous in his grading and curves like mad (a 28% will get a C), and also I haven't known him to fail people on exams. Second, I turned the exam in about 10 minutes before time was up, and a lot of people were still working on it. That's a very good sign, because it means they're not having the best time of it either, and I imagine that's going to be taken into account when the grades are tallied.
So in any case, this is my last day here in Fairbanks for a while. Tomorrow morning I'll be off on my way down to Homer. As to how I'm going to get there, it's going to be one of 2 ways, and I don't know which one it's going to be yet. The first, which is what I had originally planned on doing, was to fly down with Fronteir Flying Service (somewhat cheaper than Alaska Airlines) to Anchorage early in the morning, and then catch the next plane to Homer (I scrapped the train idea because I wanted to get back ASAP, and train fare was only $15 cheaper)). The other option is something I only started thinking about last night. When I got back from LotR I had a message on my answering machine from someone saying I could get a ride down to Anchorage in the next couple days. Well, I called back half an hour ago, and she said that she may or may not be able to drive down tomorrow, depending on whether or not she can skip work due to the temperature outside, and that I should call back tonight at 9 to find out if it's a go or not. If it is, I'll be happy because I'll have saved $100 on airfare. The only downside is I'll have to call ERA and change my reservation, which costs $25. I've already had to do that once, and I didn't like it. But even doing it a second time, I'll still have saved $50.
Anyhow, this will probably be my last big update for a while. If while I'm down there I find a computer and enouigh time to post an entry, I might do so, but I'm not guranteeing anything. Until then, Happy Holidays everyone.