What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Ack]

Holy crap, that place sells beefalo.

Headache like a son of gun. Not a migraine or anything, but it's killing me, and I already hit the limit on painkillers. Hate when this happens.

Also looks like I might have to drop my Italian Cinema class. I'm currently waiting to see how my grade on this last test turns out, but considering the amount of time I have to devote to it in comparison to how important the class is to my degree, it's probably better if I drop it so I can focus more heavily on my other classes. Plus, due to a last minute change at the beginning of the semester, it only counts as a Cultural Diversity credit, not a Cultural Diversity and Art credit like it normally does. Taking it all in, it probably will have to go.

You sure you're not dehydrated? When I get a headache like that and painkillers aren't helping, that's typically what that means.

Also that sucks about your Italian cinema class. My experience with Italian film is mostly on the crap side, so I wish I could have helped you, but if your other classes are more important, and the class isn't giving you the credit you thought it would...well, might not be a bad idea. It's your call.

[KalessinDB]

Accepted an offer on my house today
It's a bit lower than what I was hoping for
Still basically making out what I've put into it (base purchase price + major upgrades I've done) so I'll take it
Now I can really start looking for a place to buy and hopefully get my stuff unpacked again soon! I've already got one place that I really like from the half-assed looking I've been doing this past month, and it's got a basement that's not quite perfect but damn nice for an arcade setup. If I don't see anything better in the next week or two, I think I'm gonna put an offer in on that. It's even empty right now, so making the closing work with the closing on my house should in theory be doable.

[MrPopo]

Smile - Won a Big Green Egg
Ticked - It was delivered to my parents house, so I cant get it until Thanksgiving.

Awesome! I love my Egg.

I knew someone here had one, I just could not remember who. Do you have an auto damper, or any of the 3rd party tools?

I just found a local butcher who has great prices last week:
http://www.candfmeat.com/
Bought some large turkey legs for camping this weekend.

No, I'm still running pretty stock on it. I mostly do burgers and steaks, did a leg of lamb once, and a few times I've done some baking putting down the stones to get the indirect heat.

[Forlorn Drifter]

You sure you're not dehydrated? When I get a headache like that and painkillers aren't helping, that's typically what that means.

Also that sucks about your Italian cinema class. My experience with Italian film is mostly on the crap side, so I wish I could have helped you, but if your other classes are more important, and the class isn't giving you the credit you thought it would...well, might not be a bad idea. It's your call.

I might be dehydrated, but I think it came from the fact that all I've eaten today was junk food. That gives me a headache I can't get rid of sometimes, my body is weird.

The film class I'm not too upset about honestly, I'm more upset I'll be out the money for a class this semester. I just didn't realize how intensive it would be, and Meat Class/Accounting/Livestock Marketing and Grading don't slouch either. History is a walk in the park though. According to the Film majors in my class, this is also not like the other film classes at the school, and takes a different route. I'd love to get into the class they occasionally have about DIY, low budget, and general B movies, but that has pre-reqs.

[Ack]

You sure you're not dehydrated? When I get a headache like that and painkillers aren't helping, that's typically what that means.

Also that sucks about your Italian cinema class. My experience with Italian film is mostly on the crap side, so I wish I could have helped you, but if your other classes are more important, and the class isn't giving you the credit you thought it would...well, might not be a bad idea. It's your call.

I might be dehydrated, but I think it came from the fact that all I've eaten today was junk food. That gives me a headache I can't get rid of sometimes, my body is weird.

The film class I'm not too upset about honestly, I'm more upset I'll be out the money for a class this semester. I just didn't realize how intensive it would be, and Meat Class/Accounting/Livestock Marketing and Grading don't slouch either. History is a walk in the park though. According to the Film majors in my class, this is also not like the other film classes at the school, and takes a different route. I'd love to get into the class they occasionally have about DIY, low budget, and general B movies, but that has pre-reqs.

What does the class catalog look like for film? You might consider a minor or something in it if you have enough electives while going for your major. I remember when Fastbilly was taking all those meat classes and how intense they are, so I understand just how rough and time consuming all of that gets.

[Forlorn Drifter]

What does the class catalog look like for film? You might consider a minor or something in it if you have enough electives while going for your major. I remember when Fastbilly was taking all those meat classes and how intense they are, so I understand just how rough and time consuming all of that gets.

The minor is all analysis based, and after a basic and intermediate analysis course, you take 3 electives. The electives are all based on either writing about film in a critical/analysis mindset, or looking into film from specific cultures.(Sadly, nothing covering Asian film, it's all European. Can't even get anything covering Australian film) There's some interest in that for me, but unless I shoved it all in senior year it'd be hard to balance with my other classes as I continue on. I might throw one or two in for elective credits during lax semesters, but from what I can tell its much more high-art and classical stuff, which doesn't do much for me. If I can't enjoy the movies, it'll just ruin the class. That's part of my problem currently, besides Open City and La Dolce Vita, the movies have either been terribly boring or have that 50s/60s early artistic film feel, where they just aren't entertaining unless you go in with the proper mindset.

We aren't exactly a great college for Film studies though. I've always had a problem with art academia in that it never deals with art I understand well enough, or if it does, it pulls a totally different view of the piece than I do. I'm sure that while I can get a lot more meaning, symbolism, and personal reflection out of something like Raising Arizona, or Clay Pigeons, or a Tarantino movie, they'll see it as shallow in many cases.

My sister argues it's the cut between folk based art and classical art, similar to how folk based music and classical music split. We're more folk based, so we can't run with the classical people.

[Ack]

In my opinion, the real winners are the folks that can understand and cross that line with ease. There is no folk or classical, there is only film and how different people approach it. I know guys that are just as comfortable talking Wild Strawberries as they are Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. Hell, don't forget, Steven Spielberg started with the likes of Duel! Ultimately what you need to worry about learning is how to examine the merits and the faults of a movie, no matter its quality or genre, with an open mind. Believe me, I've suffered through some highly regarded films I found hideously boring for classes before.

And don't worry about region. There are subsections of film from even the European guys that you could analyze and champion if you want to stick to the fringe, the exploitative, and the B-reel. If they give you a somewhat free hand within the confines of a culture, you could try studying giallo, poliziotteschi, French crime film, German gore, Italian post-apocalyptic scifi, sexploitation... Hell, you could write an analysis of all of the Italian cannibal movies that appear on the British list of Video Nastys and then contrast how the British and Italians responded to them. If you get any leeway in what you write about, you've got some awesome options.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I just honestly have no idea if you are allowed to analyze like that in the other classes, since Italian cinema doesn't let you. If they did, I'd be interested, since schlocky crap, exploitation, and that kind of stuff that's somewhere between a simple entertainment movie and a movie with deep meaning (say, No Country for Old Men) are my kind of stuff. I only mentioned the folk/classical thing as something I've had suggested to me, I just don't like most classical stuff. Red Desert does the job well in presenting it's themes, but by putting so much of the important bits in the shots, use of color, etc, the entertainment and the storytelling of the movie become so bland that the viewer's mind checks out and ignores all the important bits.

For example, if I had the knowledge and possibly a guiding hand, I'd love to do a write up about Carsploitation, and how most of the movies that fit into it rode on the coattails of their other elements to stay relevant. If it was simply about the car action itself, [img]Eat%20my%20Dust![/img] would be considered more often by the Carsploitation people. There's other stuff I'd love to dig into, like movies that thrive on gore, revenge movies, Sam Peckinpah's movies and how they reflect his life, modern westerns, etc, etc.

I'd also love to actually film movies, but the chances of that are about nilch unless I happen across Tarantino or Rodriguez at a bar/restaurant in Austin and I get a job with them or something.

[Ack]

What are all the movies you're looking at for this class? Maybe there are some you haven't gotten to yet that you'll find wonderful.

Also...there is an unfortunate saying in the library world, that new MLS or MLIS graduates have to "pay their dues." In the library context, it means they have to work for shit pay for years before getting anywhere, despite already having worked through grad school and likely being in debt. Film is unfortunately gonna be the same way; you are gonna end up watching a lot of stuff that does nothing for you until you can begin forging your own path. I hope to God I never have to watch Sherman's March ever again, but I had to do it several times as an undergrad. I've ripped Citizen Kane to pieces numerous times, edited and re-edited The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad so much that at one point I could quote the whole movie verbatim, and suffered through the pain that is Capturing the Friedmans repeatedly. It's a great documentary, but it makes my skin crawl.

If you really want to do film stuff...well, it takes a lot of hard work to break into, but there are ways to do it, and a lot of it involves seeking out and getting to know people. If there are film-related organizations at your college, seek them out. It's a good place to start.

[MrPopo]

If you really want to do film stuff...well, it takes a lot of hard work to break into, but there are ways to do it, and a lot of it involves seeking out and getting to know people. If there are film-related organizations at your college, seek them out. It's a good place to start.

Or you could move to New York City.