eurydicebound

So my one sort of elective this semester (my other two classes, Research Methods and Rhetoric and the Teaching of Writing, were mandatory) is Intro to Film, taught by Professor Robert Spadoni. I looked over the list of things I could take, and this was one of the few in the department that a) interested me, b) didn't conflict with another class, and c) had the prospect of being actively useful to me, as I haven't had a good basic film theory/criticsm class, and it's a good thing to know going forward. You never know what kind of texts you'll teach, after all. I find my presence here kind of amusing, if only in the respect of "how often do I watch movies of my own accord again, really?" Truth is, though, that I actually do like movies. I just don't like watching them on my own, so I didn't.

Thus far the only film we've watched (and which I missed, so I have to see on my own) is La Jetee. I'm missing an accent mark there, but such is life. It's apparently a classic and the film that 12 Monkeys is based on. It's also available streaming over Netflix, so if anyone wants to join me in my film watching journey, I recommend it.

Tuesday night is Groundhog Day, working into the section on Film Narrative. I've seen Groundhog Day, but never with an eye to critically viewing it. I would ordinarily hem and haw at the idea of critically viewing it, but if quality isn't really an obstacle to critically viewing a text, it certainly won't be to a movie. I may make a post about it next week. We shall see.

The other one I need to see soonish is The Third Man. See, we get to write a paper on some aspect of a given film of our choice for this class; for grad students, it's a research essay of 15 pages, which is fine. My problem is choosing a movie I want to work with. When your choices are "anything you want," it's sort of hard to cut it down. That said, I really do love The Third Man, Matt hasn't seen it, and there's got to be something in there that I can work with. It's worth seeing again in any case. Others on the shortlist, as it happens, are the new Sherlock Holmes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Quiet Man, The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Shakespeare in Love (or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Glengarry Glen Ross... and a couple of others I'm not thinking of right now.

So that's my class! Until next time, the balcony is closed. :)