Week # 2 is almost over!

I've been working fulltime for nearly 2 weeks and I am becoming acclimated to the toll it takes on you. I still can't find my keys but I've been walking and riding my bike to work and I feel great! Yes. GREAT.

What a Day

First off, where are my keys? Could the goblin that stole them please return them? Grrr. I couldn't find them this morning, wound up riding my bike to work, and now I'm still not sure where they are. Here's to a much better Tuesday!

Sunnnnnda(e)(y)

I didn't get to bed right last night, so I'm pretty bleary-eyed. Listening to iTunes (Pavement), trying to figure out my plans for today. Reading reading reading, writing.

Gonna watch or listen to some NFL. Watched and listened to some NCAA football yesterday after having a bad migraine most of the day. I need to do laundry and dishes, and try and get this mess cleaned up. I also need to exercise, badly. I'd give Stagecoach about a 7.4/10, but with a lot of potential to grow into a better position. Now I'm watching Du Levande (Roy Andersson's You, The Living), which by title sounds like a reference to Ayn Rand, and I sincerely hope this is not the case. His film Songs From the Second Floor was one of my favorite films from my Nordic Film class, and is generally one of my favorites overall.

Week 1: Finis

Picked up cat food and Palahniuk's Stranger Than Fiction today on lunch. Week is over. Hallllllaluuuujah

One More Day

Listening to Yes on itunes. Tired. G'night

Wednesday night

Still working my way through Stagecoach (keep falling asleep), and more than halfway through week 1. :D

Day 2 of Plan 1

Gotta work at 11. 9 hour day yesterday, and back to 7.5 today, with an hour lunch. I'll be home then to do some work. Cody Doin' Work.

I've got to start...

...Writing these damned posts in the morning, so I can allow the normal creative juices to seep into some well-baked notions. Instead, I usually remember I should write just as the clock strikes midnight. Bad bad bad.

I'm looking forward to being off tomorrow so that I can watch some NFL! Call the dad at half-time, discuss strategy. Man, it looks like it could be the Ducks' year. 189-13, they have outscored their opponents in the first three games. Ridiculous.

A short entry

I finished The Lady From Shanghai but I can't remember how it ended, so I'm going to try and watch that tonight. Currently about halfway through Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, and it is certainly deserving more merit than the 5.4 it gets on imdb, at least so far. Until tomorrow, I bid you adieu!

A compendium

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Ongoing blog

8/31

I am watching Oliver Stone's Wall Street and not impressed. Its sloppy and underwhelming as I've come to expect from this 'master.' Great topic, great potential, inconsistent acting, and poor poor poor payoff.

9/1

Started 'The Spirit,' a film that seems to have been ubiquitously dismissed by critics. Visually it is solid so far.

Ok, been thinking about it for a few, and it is sloppy, disjointed, and I feel if I'd read the comic I'd feel insulted. There is a truism among the cinemati that nothing is put into film that isn't handpicked. In other words, each scene, each cut, each slice of dialogue is MEANT to be there by the director, editor, both, or some combination of those who have the final say in what is printed. If this is true, it is difficult to call something 'sloppy' and yet it is accurate in that scenes and dialogue can be so misplaced /gratuitous/pointless that it is distracting and borderline awful. There are visual scenes like this in The Spirit (5/10). Sure, the dialogue is fragmented, the story wishy-washy, and it is hard to say one way or another if it captures the spirit of The Spirit as it were, but all of that aside there are some visually horrible scenes. There is a scene of black and white with a boot stepping on the floor and then coming back up again, and it has no depth or detail like the general mis-en-scene of the film. As we're nearing the climax there is this sudden, egregious shot that almost turns my stomach.

On a bright note, Wall Street (6/10) wasn't as bad as Midnight Express, but still not great. I'm listening to the director commentary.

9/2

Finished a documentary (Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet 8/10) on the prophet Muhammad last night. All of his violent cavorting was passed off as necessary, naturally, and it was just a bit of a downer, despite the amount of information about his life that I learned.

I'm now watching Jacques Rivette's “Secret Defense.” It's a mystery of sorts, from what I can gather, and it is starting very slowly, very subtly. It's 166min, so I'm expecting great things, as this is my first Rivette.

Work. So stressful. I got Sunday off to see Loren and Angie's Shining-themed wedding at Timberline Lodge, and now I just need to catch a ride up there and all is well. We are cutting hours back to 80 tech hours and a lot of that is going to come from my schedule over the next two weeks. Ken has Maria and I at 39 hours a piece, but we'll see how that works. We have other techs scheduled over the next two weeks. Fun fun.

9/3

Work was decent. Pretty busy for a Friday. Home now, with about an hour left of Secret Defense (7/10). It ended very darkly, and I am excited to read about the film, once I get the internet back :)

9/4

Less than 2 weeks to have internet. Now I'm watching the Hudsucker Proxy now, one of just 3 Coen Brother movies I've not seen. It's pretty rad, like most Coen Brothers movies. Didn't get to see the end because of a scratched disc. Now I'm onto Blood Simple (7/10). Dark, well-acted, gritty. Now onto my last Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man (7/10). Unique, going to require some reading/research.

9/5

It was late last night, and this blog seems more of a terse, oblique summation of random events of my life. Anyway, finished WA's Bullets Over Broadway (7/10), and it was pretty decent.

9/6

Labor Day. Gonna watch some films, do some cleaning. Missed Loren and Angie's wedding because I wasn't feeling too great yesterday. I watched Woody Allen's Casino Royale (5/10) last night, and I say his because it more fits into his writing style than into John Huston's directing style, and What's Up Tiger Lily (6/10). It was alright. Now I'm working my way through his Bananas (6/10). It wasn't terrible, but I was disappointed. Any film that comments on politics doesn't really take much to succeed in my eyes.

9/7

I am writing this blog for myself. I have lost the internet and eve if anyone did read these entries, it won't be for a couple of weeks. 10 days, actually. I'm watching a documentary “La Americana” (6/10) which is about an illegal immigrant to America who is here to raise money for her paralyzed daughter who lives in Bolivia. It's a film I'm reviewing for film threat, and it is starting off pretty interesting.

9/9

WA's Husbands and Wives (8/10). Wow. Spot-on, hilarious mock-up (if you can even call it that with all the proper notes it hits) of marriage. Tomorrow marks 1 week left until I get the internet and my external dvd drive.

Now on to Deconstructing Harry, a film which I watched a good portion of a week or so ago, started to really enjoy, and was forced to back-burner.

9/10

Doing Black Crater tomorrow, which is around the Three Sisters of Oregon. Sounds like it will be a good workout. End of Deconstructing Harry was marred on my disc so I didn't get to finish it. On to Mighty Aphrodite. :D It was skipping a good deal as well and difficult to play. I am ordering an external drive in one week! ONE.WEEK.

9/11

538am. This seems to be the time I wake up as of late, usually just in time to let a very impatient cat out to run around. Watching Stanley Donen's 'Charade.'

9/12

I actually got to the top of Black Crater, which is a 7.4 mile round-trip, with an elevation gain of 2500'. Whew. Intense. I wouldn't have made without Ramona's insistence at the beginning. Now is the time to get into shape. Charade was pretty decent (7/10), definitely having its moments. Started 'Zorba the Greek' last night, so that is next on the agenda. Gonna swing by the library to use the internet and possibly hijack a few albums. A couple of days ago I did that and got some opera, an important genre of music that I know next to nothing about.

Ok ok, didn't get to the library, but Zorba the Greek is intense and wonderful. It's the first movie I've seen in a few months that has blown me away.

Though my migraines continue, I will be working fulltime and will be able to pay rent, phone, internet, etc all by myself. Life is opening up.

Watching the director's commentary now as well. (10/10). This is the first perfect film I've seen since Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon.

9/14

Long day at work last night and I didn't get a blog entry in. It's about 1020am on Tuesday now. Still working my way through Zorba the Greek audio commentary. Very interesting. Cacoyannis is quite the director. I have many film books and few mention him. It's hard to believe.

9/15

I'm still surprised to find that Cacoyannis gets very little mention in any of my numerous books. Zorba the Greek is packed with many many things that I don't know about and would like to find out. It is my second day off here until Sunday. I am currently watching Love & Basketball. It was surprisingly good (8/10). Most of the acting was superb and the story was formulaic but believable. The basketball elements were some of the better that I've seen in a fictional movie. Now I'm onto Robot Stories. His little short was alright, Mouse (6/10), but this is actually pretty decent. It is sort of an anthology about dealing with technology. There were 4 stories. The first is about a woman who is training to be a mother with a robot baby (apparently in the future, this is a test for adoption), and she has never forgiven or confronted her own mother's distance and coldness. The second is about a young man who is paralyzed and his sister and mom come to see him and find out that he is legally dead. The mother deals with her grief by trying to assemble a set of Transformer-like toys that her son loved, before she lets go and lets him go. The third is about a Robot bought by a company which comes to have emotions for another of its kind, despite the petty behaviors of the other coworkers there. And finally, we have a moribund man who, as society has begun to require, must upload his consciousness to stay alive forever, even as his body is dying. It is illegal not to. He decides to go against the grain. Very interesting film (8/10). Now I'm on to Topkapi (8/10), a film by Jules Dassin, suggested to me by my friend Jim.

9/16

Reading an essay on evolutionary psychology and film noir, which mentioned Orson Welles' Lady From Shanghai, so it is natural to watch that next, right? I work at 1130, and it is a three day run here before being off Sunday and then starting a weekly schedule of M-F. Wooooo. Long time coming.