Posts tagged with "movies"

Passing Grades, Movies Alone And With Friends

I found out that I unof­fi­cial­ly passed all my cours­es. I won’t believe it until I get the offi­cial tran­script.

I just came back from watch­ing Gangs of New York. I don’t think I’ll be going to a the­atre again any­time soon. I paid thir­teen fuck­ing fifty for a tick­et, when I could wait for it to come out on DVD and rent it for a third of the price. There was­n’t any­thing in the direct­ing of the movie that made me think, “Oh, that’s Scorsese”, which was slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing. Day-Lewis’s pres­ence on the screen, on the oth­er hand, was amaz­ing. His elo­cu­tion was just per­fect. I walked home after­wards in the thin, but dense, falling snow. It felt good.

I also watched a movie called The Center of the World yes­ter­day, with the delec­table Molly Parker as a lithe red­head. It was­n’t very good all around; act­ing was bland, sto­ry was bland and exag­ger­at­ed, cam­er­a­work was shod­dy (even though it was meant to be), but the sex was good.

I think I’m shmit­ten. Bad.

Dolly is get­ting spayed next week, so I’ll have to find a way to get her to the hos­pi­tal one day, and back the next day. I might have to take a taxi for the four trips, if I can’t find some­one to give me a ride.

I have a fair­ly easy term, since I only have three class­es and a final project to com­plete. There’s also the fact that I’m not work­ing, so that’s anoth­er dozen or so hours I’ve saved. I tried to take a course at Carleton instead, but it turns out that there’s no equiv­a­lence. It’s such a pity; my sec­ond attempt at gal­va­niz­ing some of the stag­nan­cy in my life has failed mis­er­ably, much like the first. I’ll need to look for a per­ma­nent job this term, hope­ful­ly com­put­er relat­ed.

Sometimes I'm So Tired That I Pass Out

Somehow, I did man­age to fall asleep in class today, and it was great. I felt much bet­ter the rest of the day.

I’ve been rack­ing my brain over a ques­tion on one of my assign­ments. I haven’t worked this hard on one ques­tion the whole term, but I did man­age to solve the prob­lem. I even­tu­al­ly had to e‑mail my prof to get some help, and she was extreme­ly help­ful.

I final­ly watched through the end of Safe. Parts of it made me very angry. Parts of it made me feel very sick. There was a great lack of emo­tion in the film. I felt as if it was sup­posed to come from the audi­ence. When some char­ac­ters did become emo­tion­al, it was very inter­est­ing. It’s not real­ly my choice of sub­ject mat­ter, but I found it to be a movie which was well put togeth­er.

I’m pleased with the way my sto­ry came out on Sunday. I feel that it por­trays the sit­u­a­tion in a prop­er man­ner, which is the most sig­nif­i­cant part. It always seems as if my best work is acci­den­tal, and that I don’t actu­al­ly have any tal­ent, just some good luck.

Full-Time And Miyazaki's Films

My sched­ule has­n’t been too hec­tic late­ly (in fact, it’s been fair­ly relax­ing), but that will change with­in the week. I have two assign­ments due in six days time, which I haven’t start­ed yet. I should prob­a­bly start study­ing for exams, but that most like­ly won’t hap­pen any­time soon.

My work has expressed inter­est in hir­ing me for a full-time posi­tion once I grad­u­ate. Most peo­ple would be hired for a CS-01 posi­tion, but since I’ve been work­ing there already, and I would have a uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma by then, I would most like­ly be hired as a CS-02. There’s great dif­fer­ence in annu­al pay between the two, and a CS-02 has a pay range that’s sim­ply amaz­ing for a new grad­u­ate. It’s very close to my goal in terms of salary, some­thing that I believed that I would have to work a few decades to achieve. This makes me hap­py.

On the oth­er hand, Aaron’s con­tract won’t be renewed, which sucks because we’ll hard­ly have any time to see each oth­er oth­er­wise. He just seems to be too busy to do any­thing with. He’s the type of friend who would want me to tell him about any prob­lems between us, but I’m afraid that this isn’t real­ly his prob­lem. I don’t feel that I have the right to demand so much of his time, since I know that he’s a busy per­son, with impor­tant things to do.

I saw two more of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, called Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, and Princess Mononoke. I felt that both of them weren’t quite as good as Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but still reflect­ed Miyazaki’s amaz­ing writ­ing and direct­ing abil­i­ty. Somehow his ani­ma­tions are able to make me feel hap­py with­out feel­ing cheap. Both of the movies fea­ture the music of Joe Hisaishi, whom I feel is a ter­ri­bly good com­pos­er. He tru­ly cre­ates beau­ti­ful music which com­ple­ments both mood and vision.

The Sky Sets My Mood

I stepped out­side today, on the dry, white, lone­ly con­crete. Every morn­ing I go out­side, I open the steel door and the sky sets my mood.

I man­aged to pass my DNA and Quantum Computing mid-term with a 67% (some­how), but I failed my Networking and Communications mid-term with a 51%, where 55% is need­ed to pass. There’s only one mid-term left that I haven’t got­ten back yet, but I don’t think it looks good.

I watched the first half of Safe, and it’s an inter­est­ing movie so far, con­cern­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues. Julianne Moore plays the tro­phy wife of a high class Babbitt who starts to be over­come by health effects. It’s not real­ly my pre­ferred type of sub­ject mat­ter, but I’ll still fin­ish the movie. Julianne get­ting her hair permed is rea­son enough for me.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to my met­al mix this entire week, and I sus­pect that I might lis­ten to it for a lit­tle while longer.