Bad News for Camels Everywhere

If you have a camel, don't let it fly with Turkish Airlines: in celebration of the delivery of 100 aircraft, maintenance workers at Turkish Airlines bought a camel and sacrificed it at the Istanbul International Airport. Yikes. BBC News report

The Good Shepherd

Last night (Mon Dec 11) was the world premiere of Robert deNiro's latest film The Good Shepherd, at the Zeigfeld Theater in Manhattan. And guess who was lucky enough to get a ticket...

Leaving work at 5.30 to go home to Brooklyn and change into something nicer than jeans was really pushing the limits of getting back up to 54th Street by 7pm, when the film was supposed to start. I should have known better, though; most people were still outside for all the red-carpet arrivals at 7.00 when I got there, and the screening didn't even begin until after 7.30. In my rush to make sure I found the woman who had my ticket I sort of breezed by all the celebrity excitement, so unfortunately I don't have any photos of that; the only people I saw and recognized were Billy Crudup and the TFF Web Producer (who I see every day anyway). What I did get to see, however, were a couple of short speeches before the screening by Jane Rosenthal and Robert deNiro, who introduced the cast members who were present: John Turturro, Lee Pace, Eddie Redmayne, Billy Crudup, Lars Gerhard, Tammy Blanchard, Angelia Jolie, and Matt Damon (and someone else whose name I can't remember).

And then the film began. It's cool to be able to say that I went to the world premiere, but having seen it now I won't go see it again. The acting is great, the art direction (by Jeannine Oppewall - proud BMC graduate!) and photography are beautiful, but at nearly 3 hours, it was far too long, and it didn't really hold my attention. I'm sure that was partly because I don't know anything about the Bay of Pigs (the incident the film is centered around), but I also didn't know anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis when I saw Thirteen Days, and that one had me on the edge of my seat.

Had I caught up with some coworkers who were also there I might have made it to one of the parties afterward, but I'm one who likes to sit through the credits, and when I finally got out of the theatre the whole place was basically deserted. So I went home and went to sleep. (And found out today that the parties weren't that great anyway, i.e. they were too dry. ;) )

There's a Screen Daily review here...and that's about all the news there is about the film: everything else is reports of Brangelina sightings. My favorite is from sky.com, saying that their appearance together has "finally, publicly, shown they're an item." Because obviously the summer photos of their children aren't proof enough...

Attention. Tonight's movie has been:

Robert Altman, creator of M*A*S*H, Tanner On Tanner, Nashville, Gosford Park, and most recently, A Prairie Home Companion, died on Monday evening in Los Angeles, at 81 years old. Stories from indieWIRE and the LA Times.





Frank Burns: I don't drink.
Hawkeye: Jesus Christ, I think he means it.
Trapper John: I think we've been had, Hawkeye.
Hawkeye: I think you're right, babe.




That is all.

'The Fountain' at Tribeca Cinemas

Darren Aronofsky will be at Tribeca Cinemas this evening for an advance screening of The Fountain, followed by a dinner and Q&A. I think it's a closed event, however, and I don't imagine I'll be able to go, but there it is. At least go check out the website for the film, Aronofsky's pretty proud of it. Apparently it's done by the same guys who did the website for Pi all those years ago, when websites like it were revolutionary... (p.s. Go to the Pi website. Read his diary. Fucking amazing. Admittedly, I know basically nothing about this man, but suddenly I want to be him.)

Mitch Hedberg

Shit. This guy is FUNNY. In such a refreshingly simplistic way:

Ok Go video dancefest!

Here It Goes Again
Recently released, and a hell of a lot better than the Invincible video:



A Million Ways
And of course, there's the classic Ok Go:

World Juggling Federation

My brother sent me this version of FatBoy Slim's That Old Pair of Jeans video, by the World Juggling Federation. Gets a little trippy after a while, doesn't it?

Only in Britain

The SuperLambBanana in Liverpool.

I kind of want one.

BBC America Presents...

On reading through Vanity Fair yesterday, I came across a blurb about a Shakespeare...something...that BBC America is beginning in August, of a series of modernized TV movies. I've seen Much Ado About Nothing, set in a TV studio; not bad, but not great either. Apparently Rufus Sewell and Shirley Henderson are in The Taming of the Shrew, as well. On further investigation on the BBC America website, I found absolutely nothing about this Shakespeare festival, but I found out that they are currently airing both Spaced and Black Books! It would be rapture, if only we had cable at home... Spaced plays at 11pm on Fridays and Mondays, and Black Books at midnight on Saturdays and Tuesdays (as far as I can tell); looks like Green Wing might also air eventually as well. I also found a page on Dylan Moran himself, and if you don't know who he is, you need to go find out. Now.

Here's something to get you started:

Dylan Moran live in 1997

A Night Gone Wrong

It's true. Tuesday night was a complete fiasco.

Last week, I got an email through my mother and one of her coworkers about Al Gore coming to give a presentation at a Quaker school in Philly. Well, cool, thought I, must be the one An Inconvenient Truth is based on, so why not go? I told two friends about it, one of whom took the train downtown with me after work, to meet the other at the venue. We get there, wait in line for a bit, and get inside where everyone is buying a copy of what's basically a companion book to the film and the presentation, because Al's going to be signing after the presentation. We're not particularly interested, so we head into the gym, only to be shown out again, because of we don't buy a book, we can't get in until after everyone who has bought one.

Not only do I find this slightly annoying because it means we have to wait, but I feel like it at least partially goes against the whole message of his presentation/film/etc. After the fact, I understand that it was a book signing event, partially disguised as something more, but practiacally speaking, that's a lot of paper, and many people were, I'm sure, only buying books to a)get in and b)say that they have a book signed by Al Gore...regardless of whether they will ever read it or not. Goodbye to thousands of trees that might help to eliminate said Inconvenient Truth. But I also felt...compromised? I don't know if that's the right word. Maybe it was because it was at a Quaker school, but it's the last place I'd expect to be told an event is free, and then end up having to pay for [ultimately required] preferential treatment...and because it's all purported to be about saving the environment, not helping the former VP to earn more money*.

On top of that, at 6.45pm they closed the doors to the gym and didn't let anyone else in because it was at 'legal capacity'. They were nice enough to open the doors once Al came onstage so that we could catch every fifth word or so; and of course, people with books got to go in once others in front had gotten theirs signed, but the three of us left as soon as the presentation was over.

And that wasn't even half the evening. Erica went home, and Lauren and I had dinner in the train station, slightly discontent with the evening, but happy to be able to take an earlier train home. Until a storm came through, that is, and delayed our train for 30...then 45...then 67...then 77...and finally 88 minutes, after which it sat on the tracks for fifteen more before heading out at what felt like a whopping 10 mph. It must have taken 20 minutes to make what is usually a 7-minute trip to the first station outside the city. It would have been hell if either of us were on our own, but with someone else to talk to, it was ok, especially as Lauren is so entertaining. I finally got the whole story of the April night I missed out on when the rest of my friends hung out with Ok Go after their private show in Philly, and we both fretted a bit over having graduated and not knowing what we want to do or how to do it.

And that was about it. My dad met me at the Bryn Mawr train station so that I wouldn't have to deal with another dozen train stops at a snail's pace, and I got home at 11.45, tired and hot and slightly damp, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Maybe I should have bought the book.





*To be fair, I don't actually know if that's what happens. I'm sure that at least some of the proceeds go to some good cause. The false advertising still bothers me.

Life, technologically

For once in a rather long time, the weather is beautiful today, low on the humidity and hot in the really wonderful way that makes you want to lie around drowsily in the grass.

How poetic.

I'm just getting fed up with being inside on a computer all day, it's making me really sleepy and unsociable. I was just sent a link to this photoblog (go check it out, the photos are amazing. I don't like some of the stuff he's done with color alterations (ex)but it's mostly really beautiful stuff), and between that and a number of simple, gorgeous photos on a friend's facebook album, I want to rush home and get my camera and wander around Philly for a week taking pictures. Or, better yet, Britain.

From what I've been reading from friends on various profiles and websites this week, it surprised me that I'm not the only graduate who seems to be getting fed up with digital technology. My digital camera had come back from the factory a couple weeks ago (after the second round of repairs and tuning from overuse), so I tried to take take some photos for the Class of '06 website I'm working on, and within minutes decided that I've gotten got sick of...well, the 'digitalness' of the images. So I dusted off the Minolta X-570 that my mom used in the 80s, and that I haven't used for over two years, and have been bringing it to work every now and then. Ben, the one with the facebook album I can't get enough of, has also been trying out his 'very old camera' (ah the eloquence of an English student) in Northumbria. Unfortunately, SLR cameras don't fit into a bag the way a digital point-and-shoot does, so carrying it around is taking some getting used to. But hopefully I'll get some really sharp images out of it.

In other news, I did the get-a-free-iPod-with-a-Mac deal; the iPod arrived a week and a half ago, and the laptop over the weekend. My PC is great, but it was time for an upgrade (and a system that supports video editing), painfully apparent after transferring my music from old computer to new, an all-too lengthy process wherein all problems were on the PC end. Mac-to-Mac would have taken five minutes; PC-to-Mac took an hour. C'est la vie.

All in all, technologically, life is improving.

Summer in southestern PA

I was reminded over the weekend that I've been pretty bad at keeping this blog updated, so here's what's happening in southeastern Pennsylvania.

It seems a bit late to bother talking about it, but two weeks ago my dad and I went to a lecture at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute with Garrett Brown, who invented the Steadicam and all sorts of motion-controlled-camera technology since then. It was pretty cool, almost like being back in school, but in more of a production-oriented lesson instead of film studies. He talked about how he developed the equipment and tested it, and even screened reels of ealry demonstrations and promotion from the 60s. He also went through a few scenes from different films to talk about the advantages, and art, of camera motion during a shot, and after the lecture there was a screening of Rocky, the first film to use Steadicam technology.

Over the weekend, I went down to Delaware to help with set-up for week 1 of the Delaware Aerospace Academy, doing my usual set-up task of assembling cadet handbooks. Unlike past years, though, I had some help from two co-pilots (first-year counselors), which made for a very entertaining afternoon. I hit it off with one of them in particular, who, was quite interested in hearing about my study abroad in Scotland; apparently his sister had been to the Edinburgh Tattoo & Fringe Festival the year before, so theatre & film festivals are really the only connection he has to Scotland. Turns out he also had just gotten back from Ireland, and told me about The Wind That Shakes The Barley (which was at Cannes, I think -- regardless, it's everywhere in the film and culture magazines that I've been checking in at the library...), so we had a good time chatting about independent film and Britain and such. It didn't hurt that he looks like a younger, curly-haired Cillian Murphy -- another oddity to go along with the Scotland/film connection, because Cillian stars in Barley. Weird. It's too bad the younger version is far too young, though, by about eight years. Suddenly I feel old...

In other Academy news, for those of you who looked at the website, but mostly for those of you involved with DASEF, you might be relieved to know that I've started redesigning it; I updated the blue & yellow logo last night so it doesn't look like it's from the 80s - I just hope Dr. Wright (who runs the Academy) will be willing to use it. Oh what the hell, I'll post it for kicks:



Other than that, it's just been rainy and humid for the past five days, and I stayed home from work today because it took my mom and me forty minutes to drive about 2 miles in an attempt to get me to the train station before finding out the road we needed to get on was completely blocked due to flooding. I do love living in the boonies. But it gave me the chance to get some web design research done, and through poking around on the CSS Zen Garden (this isn't the homepage, just one of my favorite designs; this one is pretty cool too, and I love the title image here), I found my new favorite website, http://www.sxc.hu/, and I now have about a dozen new photos that I can't wait to get into Photoshop. *sigh* look at me, I've become a web nerd...

Post-graduate stress

After almost two months of changing post-graduation plans about, oh, every two days, I think I've come up with two ideas to choose from. One is to get an internship at a theatre company in Philly, and find work on a film set through the Phila. Film Office; the other is to go back to Scotland through BUNAC for six months and hopefully work in a theatre and look for other film/web/Flash design jobs, either contracting or with a company. I'm much more likely to succeed with the film end of things much sooner if I stay here, but Scotland is...Scotland. Truly a dilemma.

Graduation

The last part of this semester has been unreal. First was the play, then my thesis was due...and then it was Grand May Day (complete with Mummers) and a week of finals before looking for jobs & apartments in New York as a kick-off to Senior Week. Convocation was this afternoon, followed by Garden Party and dinner and late-night fun in the fountain, an appropriately Bryn Mawr way to end my last night here. In a little over twelve hours I'll be a college graduate, and I don't know about other women in my class, but it's finally hit me that I won't be coming back here next year, and it's the first time in about eighteen years that I won't be in school.

And to that, I don't really know what to say.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Directed by yours truly and her other half, Rachel Lavenda. (I photoshopped this! The clouds & stars were extra-fun.)

There's also a show on Sunday April 23 at 2pm. Rain site: Erdman Living Room

Directions
Parking at Benham Gateway and Wyndham.

Campus Map
The Sunken Garden is between Haffner and Benham Gateway.
Erdman is the three-diamond building

Philadelphia Film Festival

Just because indieWIRE doesn't report on it, that doesn't mean the Philly Film Fest is without merit. Rachel and I sure had quite a time of it:



Ever ironic is the fact that out of the three of us, it's the actor who comes out the least photogenic. (For those of you who need some help, the lovely man with us is Joel Edgerton, of Kinky Boots (this was at the screening), King Arthur, Open Window, and Ned Kelly fame. And, apparently, of The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello fame, although he failed to mention that fact, which I discovered on Sunday evening at the animated shorts series. Ah, modesty...)

Kinky Boots is wonderful and you should go see it (it premiered in New York over the weekend), and if you can get your hands on a copy of Jasper Morello, do. Both of them are worth it.

What we saw on our way home from Philly...

Jaimie, Lauren, Leslie, and Therese took me out for dinner in the city on my birthday. The food was good, the beer was good, we had a swell time of it -- but it was getting home that was the most fun:

Jaimie likes to ask this question: would you rather a) be with a man who must do fish impressions during sex, or b) be with a man who could only have sex in public (and the police always catch you at the *most* inopportune moment)? Well, Jaim, I guess you found the perfect ad...(yes, she's doing a fish impression. No comment.)

Apparently buying a townhouse in Brewerytown Square inspires you to become a yuppie and start watching cooking shows. It must be the garage that does it...



And finally, my favorite:



As the Main Line Chamber of Commerce promises: The Best Things in Life Are Here!

What more is there to life than hos and cars?

Green Wing

Season 2 of Green Wing starts on March 31. Series 2 photos.

And a preview of the quickly-advancing neuroses of Sue White:

Martin: I need some help.
Sue White: Yes, I can see that, Martin, I have got eyes. Now, do you know what day it is?
Martin: Ye...er...eh...do I know what day it is? No. What? Ye-- yes. No...no. YES, er...it...ah, no, I don't know.
Sue White: Oh, all right. This is how it works. You pledge money to comic relief, and women will find you attractive.
Martin: Oh, right!




No, I'm not excited. Not excited at all...

Broadening my film background...

For various reasons, I've recently foregone renting new releases and have been expanding my repertoire of classics that I should have seen ages ago. Yes, James, I finally saw sex, lies, and videotape, so now I know what I was missing when I was five years old. :)

Last weekend I rented Saturday Night Fever; Stayin' Alive is on the Madagascar soundtrack that my mom just bought, and when I heard it at home I commented that I had never seen the film that it's from. Of course that got my parents into reminiscing about how they saw it in the theatre when it was released (!) and that it was nothing like what they expected. So of course I had to see it. I'm vaguely annoyed that the famous pose from the poster is actually not in the movie at all (and I looked for it), nor is Stephanie's dress red; it's white. But yeah, it's kind of a disturbing film, the scene in the car as they leave the dance contest was particularly difficult to watch.

And then there's Bonnie and Clyde, which my brother has been trying to get me to see for the past two years. But James had a video on his blog with Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg, and after watching it I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Right now, all I have to say about the film is that when it was over, I thought, 'Holy crap.' and then spent a good five minutes just sitting there trying to get over it's shocking brilliance. Why have I not seen it before?

I also feel I should include the following (also on James' blog...sorry dude) -- I have no idea what this film is or even who Anna Karina is, but I just love it, especially her look right at the end before the fadeout:


I also ordered Vol II of the Journal of Short Film before spring break, and found it in my mailbox on Sunday evening when I got back to school. It's such a cool idea (it's a DVD of (in this case) 11 short films), and I think I might take out a subscription for the rest of the year. There's a cool experimental documentary of two kids walking through the streets of Chicago on a summer day, and a really beautiful kind of puzzle-film (literally...kind of hard to describe) about a little girl and her love of the night. And (all right, yes, this is why I ordered it, and how I found out about it to begin with) The Tourist, by James (this post has turned out to be all about you, hasn't it?) and his brother Jeff; it's about "a woman afraid to leave her Brooklyn apartment...as she struggles with her dreams, memories and the mundane." It has a hint of both Amelie and Run Lola Run to me, in the general style and (quite graceful) use of color vs b&w. It's shot on Super8 film, a look that I've realized is what I liked so much about a lot of the experimental films that I saw in my intro film studies course last spring -- now I have a name for it! Isn't that exciting... (P.S. I started drifting from our discussion of Langston Hughes in class this afternoon and spent a good 45 minutes writing part of a script for a short I've been thinking about since November 2004...if I ever get to shoot this thing, it'll definitely be on Super8 film...)

BMFI celebrates 1 year

Last night I went over to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute for their 1-year anniversary celebration and marquee lighting. The old marquee for the theater had been around since the 70s and was looking pretty bad, and its replacement is the end of Phase 1 of the building restoration -- it was built in 1926 as the Seville Theater, and purchased in 2001 by the Institute campaign. I believe the next step is to restore the atrium skylight and 2nd-story arcade that have been covered by a concrete tile ceiling for the past fifty years.


The new marquee.

The celebration started with the marquee lighting at 6.30, and was followed by the Philadelphia premiere of Game 6 (directed by Michael Hoffman) and a Q&A with the producers afterwards. I don't know if I'd call it a really good film, but I enjoyed it. Read the press release here.

Bodies & Jobs

I just got back from the Body Worlds exhibit at the Franklin Institute. It's pretty crazy. Some of the diseased organs are pretty nasty, like the kidneys covered with cysts, and the dilated aorta, but mostly it's just fascinating. My favorite was the series on the cardiovascular system, where besides going through heart disease and the like, there were limbs and a group of bodies where the whole system had been plasticized -- all the arteries and veins down to the smallest capillaries -- and all the other tissue had been removed, including the skeleton. Just a whole body of what looked like very fine red netting. Crazy. The only thing that really disturbed me were the examples of birth defects...I had no idea things like that happened. A cleft palate can be fixed, but when the chest cavity or the skull don't grow together properly, or at all, there's nothing anyone can do, the baby just can't survive. It's awful.

Anyway, let's not be totally morbid here. It's spring break and I'm still at school. I went home for the weekend and came back on Tuesday to do some video stuff, and I'll go back home tomorrow afternoon. My brother was at Dickinson over the weekend, came back Sunday, and moved out Monday morning to go live at Longwood for the next two years, for the Professional Gardener program. So I haven't seen him at all, really, which is quite sad. Other than that, I'm getting really stressed out about finding a job; I started seriously searching this week, and it's rather overwhelming, I've never had to do a job search like this before. If anyone knows where I can get into something with independent film, preferably where I can write, and definitely where I'm getting paid, let me know!

Spring Break

It's gotten pretty lonely around here within the past 24 hours or so.

Claire left this afternoon for Rome. Rachel left this evening for Rome, Florence, and Venice. Anna left this evening for Virginia; and Jaimie, Lauren, Leslie, Therese, and Anna left for the Bahamas while I was in class. It's been a very quiet evening, with almost no one around.

The plus side is, I'm the only one left on my hall -- I'm on the top floor, all that's below is the dining hall kitchens, and the closest people to me live down the corridor, up five stairs, along another corridor, down five stairs, and around a corner.

I can do

whatever.


the hell.





I want.







(always searching for the bright side...)

Fog of War?

...more like the "fog of bureaucracy." Apparently that's what former FEMA chief Michael Brown said yesterday about why the U.S. government didn't respond properly to multiple warnings about the threats of Hurricane Katrina; warnings that were coming out well in advance of when the storm hit.

The Associated Press got its hands on confidential government video tapes (and made them public on Wednesday) of meetings where the president was told, in very clear terms, about the potential for levees to be breached, the Superdome to go under, and the amount of post-storm rescues that would be needed. And we all know what he turned around and told the nation after the disaster.

Of course, the White Hose and Homeland Security are telling people not to read too much into all this. Fine, maybe we shouldn't read too much into it, but there's no dodging the fact that it's bullshit to say that the "'fog of war' blinded [us] early on to the magnitude of the disaster." Well said, Homeland Security, well said. Let's imagine something for a moment here: a meteor hits Washington, D.C.; you call for help from overseas and the UK says, "Sorry, mate, we saw it coming on our telescopes a couple weeks ago, but some heavy fog blew in from the Scottish highlands and blinded us, and we're still pretty preoccupied with trying to clear it out. You can sort this whole thing yourselves, right?" Doesn't feel so good, eh? (Sorry for the random analogy, but it does work.) Anyway, it's an AP/YahooNews report.

How to Use the English Language

Hilarious ads from PopSecret popcorn. I think Brett Simon's are the best.

Stu goes on my list of heroes for using archaic words in his blog, the kind of words I was reprimanded for using in my creative writing class freshman year -- coruscating, paean, and prurient (well, that's more of an ee cummings word) were of note, and reminded me of my own use of coruscating, as well as lambent, lapidary, and even weald. Looking back on my work, that last one is rather painful to read, but I'm tempted to print out bits of The Reeler and wave it triumphantly in my professor's face and say, 'You told me not to use these in my poetry, and here's a real writer using them for his career!' Cheers to those of you out there who aren't afraid to use the English Language for all it's worth.

And I've now received not one, but two offers to go to the South by SouthWest film festival, which starts on March 10. One from Brian & James way back in January, and the other from Mike & Laura, my supervisors in the computing center. Laura's even got an extra pass that I wouldn't have to pay for, and offered that I could share her hotel room. Unfortunately, it would mean spending another $400 (that I don't have) for a plane ticket, and missing another week of school (for which my professors would likely hunt me down and shoot me). Oh, to have a real job that allows one to do such things...

Weekend Happenings

Lindsay and Rachel have just broadened my 'stupid Flash animation' horizons with a new gem: The Ultimate Showdown. I feel I should probably include one from JSA in Scotland as well, for old times' sake (cheers to Pete for this one). :)

So this weekend was absoluetly crazy. Hell Week is like that. Of course it didn't help that someone (or lots of someones) did a particularly bad job at planning this time of the year -- what moron decided to schedule Plenary for not only the Sunday of Hell Week, but also the weekend before midterms?! I love our Traditions Mistresses and SGA, but my god, was that ever a bad idea. (Apologies to those of you who have no idea why this is significant. It's just more proof that Bryn Mawr is a cult -- we can say this stuff and it means something only to us.)

On the bright side, the Friday of Hell Week, was, as ever, the best day of the year, but for us seniors also the saddest, with the realization that we won't be doing all of this ever again. After a relatively quiet morning, the insanity started after I got off work at 4.30, visited confinement for a couple minutes, and then raced over to Goodhart to get ready for the freshmen performances. As usual, some were cute, some were funny, some were painful, and some just way too long (Radnor girls, we know you just want to uphold the traditional image of you getting drunk and high 24/7. But it's overkill to rap badly about it for ten minutes straight). And then there was the Pimp Strut. New rules this year, though: not only is there one Strut that wins, but there were supposed to be prizes for other categories, too: humor and creativity. One would think that means that there'd be three 'winners'. But while Jeannie, Caitlin, and Courtney won the overall vote for saying, in true smoldering Bryn Mawr style, 'Who Needs A Pimp?', yours truly (as part of an ensemble in true Shakespeare Troupe style) won the rest. I do feel that we shouldn't have won both (because didn't that defeat the point of trying to allow more struts to win?), but it's not every day that Shakespeare and His Tragic Heroines win a Pimp Strut, eh?

Here's Julie as Desdemona being smothered, Erina as Shakespeare (pantaloons, purple tights and all), Holly as the requisite Wench, and me as the dead Juliet (Lady MacBeth and Ophelia, brilliantly played by Maddie and Julia, are, at this point, yet to appear. Thanks to Karyn for taking pictures for me!)

After that, it was back to the dorm, where the seniors read bedtime stories to the frosh, before they ran around the dorm doing calisthenics in preparation for the Duck Pond Run on Saturday morning. It's usually around this point that the seniors start to realize that we really do like Bryn Mawr, and we really will miss it when we're gone, so bedtime stories can be hard to get through, but we did pretty well.

Me and Claire (freshman-year roomies!). Hard to believe that next year, we won't be here for this...

Thanks to Plenary, Hell Week activities have sort of dropped off for now. The only other exciting news of the weekend is that Lauren and I have finally started to discuss concrete ideas for the short film we've been dreaming about for months. Creative projects like that always seem so intimidating, but they're so much fun once you sit down to do serious work on them. God, if I can do this kind of stuff for the rest of my life, I'll be so happy! It won't end up anything like it (we're going for something more fun than risque), but our inspiration came from this short film by Pes.

And now, after all that, now I have to go write a paper for my Renaissance Lyric class, and try to get some sleep. It's not looking hopeful either way, but that's ok, spring break will be here soon...

Neil Gaiman Goodness

If I ever have the funds to have my own house built, I'd just about die to have something like this installed -- videos #4 and #10 especially. Discovery of this site courtesy of Neil Gaiman's blog.

Speaking of Mr. Gaiman, I've just finished reading the copy of Neverwhere that Jaimie pushed into my hands last week, saying 'Meg, you and I have to make a movie of this!' p.s. Jaim, it was a TV series in the UK way back in 1997. But we can still try! It was amazing, and I could just see it unfolding as a film as I read it. Kind of like Christopher Logue's War Music, but then Wolfgang Petersen made Troy, and that particular dream (and screenplay-in-progress) of mine was butchered before my eyes... Anyway, among other things, the last scene is a perfect way to end a film, and Croup & Vandemar are so delightfully morbid. Brilliant stuff.

Typical Monday morning

Yesterday was, well, pleasantly odd, I suppose. I keep in touch with two friends (they're twins) who graduated from Bryn Mawr last spring, both English majors who are interested in film production. Natie lives at home in Tampa and is taking creative writing classes; Jenna is studying film at Full Sail in Winter Park -- and lives two blocks away from the indieWIRE offices! They filled me in on this fact last week after I told them all about Sundance, and I suggested that if she's interested, Jenna should go talk to Brian and J.D. and find out more about the company.

So I got up at 9.30 (not a normal occurrence on days when class is at 2.30) and bummed around online for an hour to try to find more contact info than just the office address (and hit a goldmine in finding about six blogs between the two of them, as well as a series of articles and press releases about the SF360 initiative) before giving in and just calling the office number, being slightly put off by the voicemail-staff-directory, and, finally, getting through to Brian!

And that was the oddest part -- a month after the fact, talking to someone I [sort of] got to know in three days, about a world and a profession I feel I know next to nothing about, and networking with him to expose someone else to that world. I enjoyed our chat, though; I do wish he and J.D. had been able to stay at Sundance for longer than they did, so that we all could have spent more time together. I just started reading more about SF360 last week, which he appreciated, especially when I admitted that I had no idea what the whole thing was about when it was announced at the SFFS/indieWIRE party at Sundance; all I knew was that indieWIRE is doing a website for them, I didn't realize what a big deal it actually is (in short, sf360.org, launching in early March, is a joint venture between the San Fransisco Film Festival and indieWIRE, covering news, photos, etc on Bay Area film & media. And p.s. indieWIRE is "the leading online publication dedicated to American and international film." Maybe I'm just being a star-struck college kid, but this is fucking awesome). Apparently they've just hired some sort of director for the project, who was the editor of the Arts Chronicle of San Francisco for ten years, so that's big news; and of course Brian's nervous about getting the site up and ready on time.

So...what an exhilarating way to start your morning! I emailed a bunch of web pages to Jenna for her to read up on this stuff, and who knows? Maybe there's some way that she can get involved. It's really fun to know someone who's just as interested in this sort of thing as I am, so that I can share all the cool news and information I find and then actually have a meaningful conversation about it...most people just want to hear about meeting celebrities. But by 11.00 I was feeling a great sense of accomplishment, having done probably the first bit of (at least semi-professional) networking on behalf of another person that I've ever done, and getting out of it a chat with someone I'm very fond of...and then I spent the next four hours working on my thesis.

Such is life at Bryn Mawr.

it's gonna be a great day

Despite beginning at 7.30am, my day started out remarkably well. The English department search committee met for the second time this week (we're hiring a new mediaevalist) to discuss the four candidates who visited over the past three weeks in order to decide who to offer the position to. It's been fascinating to be part of the whole thing, and to get to work with my professors outside of class...and to know exactly what's happening in the department when the rest of the English majors probably have no friggin clue. :) But I did realize this morning just how lovely and brilliant these people are; as the Senior Reps, my friend Amy and I are the only students on the search committee, but they give us just as much influence and respect as everyone else on the committee, and they're actually interested in what we have to say. I sure picked the right department to spend four years with... Anyway, we actually did make a decision today (I wouldn't have been surprised if we hadn't, since three of the four candidates were so incredible...I wish we could hire two), and while I'm not really allowed to say anything yet, I do hope she accepts our offer.
[above: English House. Yes, we have our own house. Admit it, you're jealous.]

As of 6.00pm on Tuesday, I've finally caught up on all the work I missed while I was in Utah at Sundance (except my thesis, but that's in a realm of its own), in spite of my total lack of focus, sleep, and general productivity over the past five or six days. It 's been hell, but worth it in exchange for being able to go to Sundance. Although sadly, the notice board in the campus center on Tuesday read, "Have a tolerable Valentine's Day," a message I feel was made woefully moot by the fact that all the sleep I got the previous night happened between 5.30 and 7.30am, I was in a search committee meeting from 8-10am, and then writing a paper for the rest of the day and heavily reprimanded for missing class to finish it. Still, it's an amusing V-Day greeting, one that belongs in the "you know you go to a women's college when..." category...

Other news:
There was a reception/information session today for the Bryn Mawr Summer Multimedia Development Institute, the internship I participated in last summer. I was talking with one of the guys from the career development office (did a video project for him during said internship) about Sundance, and it turns out that he knows the guy who shared the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking (Adam Parrish King, for The Wraith of Cobble Hill; he won with Carter Smith's Bugcrush). Apparently they used to play baseball together. Small world.

And short films are finally being screened to the general public (although, of course, only in select cities): apparently Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International are teaming up to get this year's Oscar-nominated short films out to more people than just film junkies and insiders [it's an indieWIRE story]. It caught my eye because one of the nominees for Best Live Action Short Film is Sean Ellis and Lene Bausager's Cashback, starring Sean Biggerstaff (a.k.a. the oh-so-Scottish Oliver Wood from the Harry Potter films), Emilia Fox (Colin Firth's sister in the A&E Pride & Prejudice), and Shaun Evans (The Boys & Girl From County Clare, Being Julia). Just look at that cast -- how can you not be intrigued?

And one last thing: my brother has a gallery on deviantart, and there are photos here that I've never seen, and they're beautiful. I'd like to know why I didn't find out about it sooner. My favorites are the hand-tinted bags of lime, and the color photo of the reeds at the nature conservancy. The wallpapers are based on a story that his best friend is writing; the characters are based on their group of friends at Dickinson College. It's not bad, really, it needs some re-writes and some shortening and a thesaurus...but it turns out that there's a character based on me, and I beat the crap out of some self-important bastard with my set of brass knuckles...a characterization that I really rather like. Heh...I get brass knuckles...hot damn.

Cordalene's Kissed Awake makes me happy. As does David Gray's new album, Life In Slow Motion. Completely different styles, but I can't stop listening to them.


The English-Scottish Ball last night at Swarthmore College (which I haven't been able to go to since freshman year) was quite fun, despite some of the odd and off-kilter (ha!) folks who tend to show up at these things. Fortunately, there were lots of us Mawrters there, too; the experienced ones of which got to show off our wicked highland skills during the ever-lovely Garry Strathspey. Profuse thanks to Anna for braving terrible driving conditions to get us there and back!

A little amusement for the evening, thanks in part to Marc for showing it in my playwriting class last term, and James for finding it online...

Snowfall: Shaken, not Stirred

It's finally snowing in Pennsylvania!

Christmas lights in Haffner, and Maddie, who loves snow.

[mostly] funkehhh

First of all, HAPPY 22nd TO CLAIRE!

Found out from Rachel a few days ago that the second season of Green Wing starts on March 31. Rachel will be downloading, and then it's party-time with her, Claire, and Lindsay. Funkehhhh.

And Simon Pegg (of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead) is married. Which is not so funkehh.

Oh well. Here's a little StringbergandHelium love for you.

I'm new at this game...

I've been reading enough engaging, credible film blogs since I got back from Sundance that I've been inspired to start my own. Ideally, it would be through a host like sixapart (they do Moveable Type...Hey Aaron... *wink to you indieWIRE folks*) but I figured that depite the tragic template choices, I'd try it out for free to see if I can keep up with it before spending money on it.

*****

I can't seem to come up with the proper words to express just how much I admire and respect Eugene Hernandez. Being the editor-in-chief (and cofounder, no less) of indieWIRE, he was running all over the place at Sundance to screenings, panels, press conferences, and the like, so I didn't get to know him...well, at all. James, who hired me for the festival, keeps sending me links to film sites and random 60s and 70s videos, so I'm quite pleased that I found Eugene's blog through my own searching, and despite its simplicity (or, partly because of it), it just blew me away. It was mostly the photos that did it. This guy is brilliant, truly brilliant.

Of course, James is wonderfully impressive in his own right. He and his (twin!)brother Jeff have their own film company, Back and Forth Films, and have had their work (mostly shorts) screened around the globe; The Tourist (their latest) has been published in Volume 2 of The Journal of Short Film. My only html-nerd criticism is that they need to get rid of the tables in their website source code and start using their CSS properly -- the JSF site is a gorgeous example. But despite that, James (well, all three of these guys) makes me wish I was about ten years older. Jump Cuts (his blog) is here.

I have yet to find any sort of webpage that Brian may have, but if there is one, I'm awfully interested in seeing it. Because frankly, Brian Brooks rocks.