(no subject)
Most of last week was pretty good, comparatively speaking. Which is why I didn't post- I'm usually only motivated to write something here when I'm down. I had an interesting discussion with my most beloved prof about Titus on Wednesday. I was originally only going to spend a few minutes talking to her, but we must have talked for about an hour. I'm not writing my paper on Titus by any means, as once on that carousel of crazy was enough for me, but it does provide a lot of fodder for thought, and after the readings which concentrated to an alarming degree on violence to and done by women (Tamora as the phallic mother, Lavinia as bearer of the lack) in a movie where the violence against men and the death toll of men is so great, I ended up being unsettled enough to go over it with my prof. Lovely lady. School was going fairly well, Chomsky was being righteously ignored, and so on- the demons of my neuroses were kept nicely smothered. I know I didn't write anything about The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but I ended up liking it a lot- and too much to fully analyze it. I think that is my greatest concern and difficulty with academics; cutting open the things I like in order to fully understand them. Academic inquiry is not a bad thing, and I usually encourage it fully, but in doing it you so often lose the spontaneous love you may have felt for something in the first place, and while new ways of seeing the thing may present themselves to you, and you may understand how and why you loved it to begin with, the innocent quality it may have had at first is pretty much lost. You know, I support autopsies but I wouldn't want to do one on somebody I loved. And so on. That's why I couldn't ever be a prof, putting aside my intellectual incapability. So, hope that I watch a movie from that list I hate soon, or else I'll never write anything.
I don't think I wrote anything here about Casino Royale, which I saw with my mom when she was up. And what an experience that was, too, if you'll allow me a little anecdote here. In my Shakespeare on Film conference there is a girl, let's call her Bobbie, who I dislike intensely for no real reason. The only thing I can come up with is her "thinking face". Every time someone says anything in the conference, on goes the "thinking face". It's as if she's acting the process of thinking on the stage for the benefit of an audience. That would be us, I suppose. She's perfectly harmless, and I'm sure she's quite nice, but I cannot get past the thinking face. She also has many choir practices, something she will remind the class at large of frequently, and I look forward to seeing her special singing face. So, the conference before last, I was picking up something from my prof, and she was there, waiting to ask a question or something. She turns to me and says, out of the blue, when I'm not even sure she knows my name, "I'm sooo busy with practices! I have another one tonight!” To which I, unthinkingly, replied, "I have my mother up. That's like having ten practices... a minute." I don't think she said anything to that. And I feel kind of bad, as much as my coal black heart can feel, because I think she was genuinely trying to be friendly. And now she thinks I'm a weirdo. I tell this anecdote only because that is a fairly accurate representation of how my time with my mom was. Good times, bad times, but overall fairly tiring. I do want her to come back up, however, when we have a week that I don't have classes or work to do, and when she's less... well, whatever she was. Oy. Casino Royale, however, was quite good. It was better than I expected, although I must admit that my standards were pretty low going in. It strips to gadgets down a lot, which was a smart move, and makes James Bond a little less polished and superhuman. The fight scenes are well done and intense, and the chase scene that's post-credits is a fabulous piece of action. I do have some problems though. The ladies are both very beautiful and fit in with the James Bond style in a way that, say, Denise Richards did not but the romance plot feels a little overheated and forced. Near the end there are moments when you can't believe that James would be so... stupid so soon after falling in love. The ending does go on much too long, and my poor roommate Katie was completely overwhelmed with collapsing buildings, suicides, and nail gun fights going on at the same time. I also wasn't a big fan of the credits. I like that they tried something different, but it felt more like an Urban Outfitters commercial than James Bond. But overall, worth the admission.
I don't think I wrote anything here about Casino Royale, which I saw with my mom when she was up. And what an experience that was, too, if you'll allow me a little anecdote here. In my Shakespeare on Film conference there is a girl, let's call her Bobbie, who I dislike intensely for no real reason. The only thing I can come up with is her "thinking face". Every time someone says anything in the conference, on goes the "thinking face". It's as if she's acting the process of thinking on the stage for the benefit of an audience. That would be us, I suppose. She's perfectly harmless, and I'm sure she's quite nice, but I cannot get past the thinking face. She also has many choir practices, something she will remind the class at large of frequently, and I look forward to seeing her special singing face. So, the conference before last, I was picking up something from my prof, and she was there, waiting to ask a question or something. She turns to me and says, out of the blue, when I'm not even sure she knows my name, "I'm sooo busy with practices! I have another one tonight!” To which I, unthinkingly, replied, "I have my mother up. That's like having ten practices... a minute." I don't think she said anything to that. And I feel kind of bad, as much as my coal black heart can feel, because I think she was genuinely trying to be friendly. And now she thinks I'm a weirdo. I tell this anecdote only because that is a fairly accurate representation of how my time with my mom was. Good times, bad times, but overall fairly tiring. I do want her to come back up, however, when we have a week that I don't have classes or work to do, and when she's less... well, whatever she was. Oy. Casino Royale, however, was quite good. It was better than I expected, although I must admit that my standards were pretty low going in. It strips to gadgets down a lot, which was a smart move, and makes James Bond a little less polished and superhuman. The fight scenes are well done and intense, and the chase scene that's post-credits is a fabulous piece of action. I do have some problems though. The ladies are both very beautiful and fit in with the James Bond style in a way that, say, Denise Richards did not but the romance plot feels a little overheated and forced. Near the end there are moments when you can't believe that James would be so... stupid so soon after falling in love. The ending does go on much too long, and my poor roommate Katie was completely overwhelmed with collapsing buildings, suicides, and nail gun fights going on at the same time. I also wasn't a big fan of the credits. I like that they tried something different, but it felt more like an Urban Outfitters commercial than James Bond. But overall, worth the admission.