Sunday, December 17, 2006

Brief Life Update No. 8

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Sorry, readers. It's been a while since I updated this thing, I know. Amazingly, this is probably the longest stretch I've gone this semester without updating "My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second." I would've anticipated more of these long dry spells.

Somehow, though, this spell didn't feel so dry to me---maybe because I've had so much to deal with at school. Nothing bad, mind you: mostly schoolwork and finals and such. I had a project in my Editing and Layout class due this past Thursday---a front page design project---that kept me in one of the College Ave. computer labs for a few hours each of, oh, I'd say, four or five days. I had a final in that same class this past Wednesday, and I have another final---my only other final exam, actually---on Monday. But that design project was a real time-killer. (I think my front page came out all right in the end---at least, I think it did; whether my professor agrees with me is a rather different story.)

And speaking of Editing and Layout, a big thing happened to me this past Thursday...but I'm afraid you'll all have to wait to find out what that big thing is. It's rather late, and tomorrow I have more studying to look forward to, as well as a possible side trip to see Blood Diamond, the new socially-conscious Edward Zwick picture with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. (This year's Constant Gardener, as one of my roommates suggested based on trailers he had seen? I like The Constant Gardener overall, but to enjoy it, you pretty much had to try to ignore the fact that that film basically places real African suffering in the background of a vaguely Casablanca-ish love story, however well acted and resonant. Maybe Blood Diamond is in that same vein---inadvertently glamorizing Third World suffering in the name of popular entertainment?) But rest assured: it's pretty exciting news. At least, I think so.

Also expect my usual end-of-semester retrospective post, as well as possibly my first ever stab at something close to a 10-movies-of-the-year list. It'll be full of blind spots (probably won't get around seeing Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times until next year, for instance), but I'll give it a shot anyway. (Hopefully David Lynch's three-hour magnum opus Inland Empire will come out in a theater near me before the year is out; that's the one I'm really waiting for, especially after the brilliant, surrealist mindfuck of his 2001 Mulholland Drive.)

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