The business of the day!
Feb. 5th, 2006 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katekat(phrase gakked from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mishloran - thank you lady)
+ Read The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure by Victor Turner. Create some kind of an oral presentation on said book so I can lead my GRAD class in a three hour discussion. Yes, I am slightly frightened, since I'm volunteered to be the first student presentation.
+ Write my Japanese composition - 400 characters on a famous actor. Yes, I did choose Johnny Depp. I was hoping I'd be inspired to wax rhapsodic and would have an easy time of it. Who knows, it could still happen!
+ More Japanese homework (I haven't really looked at it, but I'm sure there's something... oh, and the Quiz on Monday too, which is probably a grammar quiz, knowing my luck).
+ Goverment reading - how sad is it that we're basically using a highschool text book? I know this class is one 90% of students take their first year, but ... a highschool textbook? UGH. The entire thing drives me nuts. At least next week I'm going to talk to the professor about outside reading, and will probably soon be armed with a copy of the Federalist Papers, to read for the first time, as geeky as that sounds. Because even though I'm a dilligent little monkey, and I do my reading, the whole party line of "this is the government, it's composed of three branches... " crap that comes from the book is just annoying.
Sadly, I should've started on all of this Friday, so I woudln't be stuck trying to accomplish the entire set of stuff in a day. But I am a lazy lazy procrastiinator, and it was way more fun to have Yvette & Joel & Peter come over for movies on Friday night (and discover that our DVD player is just a little touchy with blockbuster DVDs - we probably shouldn't have been renting from blockbuster - it may have a few moral quams about supporting them - we finally had to relent and get a VHS tape out to watch. But it was good to expose more people to Love Is A Gun anyway.) Saturday day was spent puttering, trying to get the house a little ready for Neil's parents to come next week, and Saturday night Ariel came over with fondue and I inflicted Underworld on her (which was fun, gorey, and fun again - I really do just plain *like* that movie). So the weekend was great fun, but a total wash on the homework side.
A brief word on Love is a Gun (and the craptastic reviews it got on IMDB)
First off, I'm going to admit a couple of things:
+ There's some over acting
+ Kelly Preston is pretty, and crazy, and that shows
+ The direction isn't totally ground breaking or anything
Now, with those three disclaimers, I will say that I agree with Neil this is one of the best noir movies out there. But that's because you've got to understand the premise. Jack Hart (Erik Roberts) has what he thinks is a dream, then he wakes up and his life, which, up until this point hasn't been so great, goes completely to shit. The guy is one of those quasi unsympathetic characters that you look at and go "dear god dude, just stop fucking lying and you might have half a chance." His totally shrill girlfriend is so evil you're happy when he cheats on her with Kelly Preston. Even though you know Kelly Preston is a total basket case. You're really not surprised that the guy ends up sitting on his girlfriend's bed, phone in one hand and the other holding a gun to his head because Kelly's been murdered and he, of course, has been framed for it.
Joel couldn't quite get over Erik Roberts' expressions - he thought the guy was completely over acting. But I kind of look at it in another way: what if the character is just that desperate, stupid, and idiotic? Because I think that's what he is. And the same goes for the reviewers who think Kelly Preston is wooden - - the chick is supposed to be fucking psycho! Of course she's going to be wooden sometimes... and strange... and totally over dramatic.
And the best part of this movie, if you watch it enough or if you're that kind of person, that picks up the clues when you're supposed to (which is not me, and why I've had to watch it a number of times): The real mystery is NOT that Jack Hart sees the engagement ring he gave to Kelly Preston on the bureau with his girlfriend's crap. That's easy to understand - she did the killing. No, the REAL mystery is a bunch of little odd ass things - like how Kelly's images got on the blank photo paper he found in his locker at the police precinct, and why his watch stopped, and why his "dream" at the beginning is exactly what happens at the end.
Our answer, which is the one thing these reviewers seem to have missed and the one thing that makes this movie great: The entire movie takes place in the milisecond between Erik Roberts squeezing the trigger and the bullet hitting his head. It's a kind of meditation on purgatory, and on that saying that your entire life flashes before you when you're about to die. And all that mystical shit, all that weird ass happening and strange conversation, that's all HIS brain fucking with him - mixing the real and the unreal into one narrative that seems linear but isn't at all. In some ways, he's giving MEANING to the stupid fucked up events of his life, some of which simply cannot be true.
And that's where the fun is. That's where this quirky little film punches a hole in your gut - because after time begins again, after the watch starts ticking and the gun goes off and people start acting like real people, instead of complete psychopaths... you just never know what *truly* happened, and never will.
mishloran - thank you lady)+ Read The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure by Victor Turner. Create some kind of an oral presentation on said book so I can lead my GRAD class in a three hour discussion. Yes, I am slightly frightened, since I'm volunteered to be the first student presentation.
+ Write my Japanese composition - 400 characters on a famous actor. Yes, I did choose Johnny Depp. I was hoping I'd be inspired to wax rhapsodic and would have an easy time of it. Who knows, it could still happen!
+ More Japanese homework (I haven't really looked at it, but I'm sure there's something... oh, and the Quiz on Monday too, which is probably a grammar quiz, knowing my luck).
+ Goverment reading - how sad is it that we're basically using a highschool text book? I know this class is one 90% of students take their first year, but ... a highschool textbook? UGH. The entire thing drives me nuts. At least next week I'm going to talk to the professor about outside reading, and will probably soon be armed with a copy of the Federalist Papers, to read for the first time, as geeky as that sounds. Because even though I'm a dilligent little monkey, and I do my reading, the whole party line of "this is the government, it's composed of three branches... " crap that comes from the book is just annoying.
Sadly, I should've started on all of this Friday, so I woudln't be stuck trying to accomplish the entire set of stuff in a day. But I am a lazy lazy procrastiinator, and it was way more fun to have Yvette & Joel & Peter come over for movies on Friday night (and discover that our DVD player is just a little touchy with blockbuster DVDs - we probably shouldn't have been renting from blockbuster - it may have a few moral quams about supporting them - we finally had to relent and get a VHS tape out to watch. But it was good to expose more people to Love Is A Gun anyway.) Saturday day was spent puttering, trying to get the house a little ready for Neil's parents to come next week, and Saturday night Ariel came over with fondue and I inflicted Underworld on her (which was fun, gorey, and fun again - I really do just plain *like* that movie). So the weekend was great fun, but a total wash on the homework side.
A brief word on Love is a Gun (and the craptastic reviews it got on IMDB)
First off, I'm going to admit a couple of things:
+ There's some over acting
+ Kelly Preston is pretty, and crazy, and that shows
+ The direction isn't totally ground breaking or anything
Now, with those three disclaimers, I will say that I agree with Neil this is one of the best noir movies out there. But that's because you've got to understand the premise. Jack Hart (Erik Roberts) has what he thinks is a dream, then he wakes up and his life, which, up until this point hasn't been so great, goes completely to shit. The guy is one of those quasi unsympathetic characters that you look at and go "dear god dude, just stop fucking lying and you might have half a chance." His totally shrill girlfriend is so evil you're happy when he cheats on her with Kelly Preston. Even though you know Kelly Preston is a total basket case. You're really not surprised that the guy ends up sitting on his girlfriend's bed, phone in one hand and the other holding a gun to his head because Kelly's been murdered and he, of course, has been framed for it.
Joel couldn't quite get over Erik Roberts' expressions - he thought the guy was completely over acting. But I kind of look at it in another way: what if the character is just that desperate, stupid, and idiotic? Because I think that's what he is. And the same goes for the reviewers who think Kelly Preston is wooden - - the chick is supposed to be fucking psycho! Of course she's going to be wooden sometimes... and strange... and totally over dramatic.
And the best part of this movie, if you watch it enough or if you're that kind of person, that picks up the clues when you're supposed to (which is not me, and why I've had to watch it a number of times): The real mystery is NOT that Jack Hart sees the engagement ring he gave to Kelly Preston on the bureau with his girlfriend's crap. That's easy to understand - she did the killing. No, the REAL mystery is a bunch of little odd ass things - like how Kelly's images got on the blank photo paper he found in his locker at the police precinct, and why his watch stopped, and why his "dream" at the beginning is exactly what happens at the end.
Our answer, which is the one thing these reviewers seem to have missed and the one thing that makes this movie great: The entire movie takes place in the milisecond between Erik Roberts squeezing the trigger and the bullet hitting his head. It's a kind of meditation on purgatory, and on that saying that your entire life flashes before you when you're about to die. And all that mystical shit, all that weird ass happening and strange conversation, that's all HIS brain fucking with him - mixing the real and the unreal into one narrative that seems linear but isn't at all. In some ways, he's giving MEANING to the stupid fucked up events of his life, some of which simply cannot be true.
And that's where the fun is. That's where this quirky little film punches a hole in your gut - because after time begins again, after the watch starts ticking and the gun goes off and people start acting like real people, instead of complete psychopaths... you just never know what *truly* happened, and never will.
