University is the Devil

The university year is this close to being over, I can feel it. Just two more essays to hand in and an exam and it's all done. Yesterday I had sixty percent of my film subject due, including but not limited to: a short film script adapted from a short story (I did Chuck Palahniuk's "Obsolete", if you're wondering), this shitty sound design piece, and a group pitch of a short film where a couple of the group members I had complained about a whole bunch made a surprisingly good, if thematically iffy, poster, with a big giant spelling error on it. Fantastic. So many stories about that group assignment, so little time to tell them.

One of the essays is a sociology one, and the question I chose involved choosing a paranormal movie or TV show and explaining what it says about female power. So, I chose Carrie. Because Carrie is fantastic. I've watched the prom scene about five times this week; it's insane and it gets sadder every single time.

So I meet with my tutor about the essay, and I tell her, I'm doing Carrie. So she goes to get out her materials for the Sex and the City question. Easy mistake to make, I guess, considering how much that show has been talked about in this class: far too much. Then it turns out that she hasn't the fuck HEARD of Carrie. My first thought was "who hasn't heard of Carrie?" I know it's not famous like, say, Casablanca or something, but I thought it was on par with maybe The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in terms of recognition. "You know, the one with the girl, and she's got telekinetic powers, and they pour pig's blood on her at the prom...?"

Nothing!

And Carrie is even MENTIONED in one of the readings, and this tutor is supposed to be a feminist, and I can't think of a horror movie a feminist could find more to talk about in! It's effing madness.

Also effing madness is The Core, which I just half-saw half of (while I was essaying away) as it was on TV. I don't understand why this movie isn't way more of a cult comedy. Some scientists travel to the Earth's core in some crazy heat resistant drill-car-thing because the core stopped rotating. So they go to make it rotate. And then (OMG SPOILER!!!!) they get rescued by whales in the end. Really, really fake CG whales. And Aaron Eckhart and Aaron Eckhart's chin overracts a bunch when one of the token ethnics bites it. And yells at Hilary Swank.

So I looked it up, of course, and the DVD has a director's commentary, so now I have to hire it out, because what the fuck can he say about this movie? "Oh, DJ Qualls really owned this scene. Those tears? Those tears are real. Jesus Christ, he does have a big nose, doesn't he? It's bigger on camera, you don't notice it quite so much in real life."

"Oh, on this day we had a little trouble because Swank wouldn't come out of her trailer. Apparently she was in there quietly weeping and stroking her Oscar, saying something about it not being as easy as Halle Berry had told her. But I sent a runner in to remind her about her paycheck and she came out and she fricking gave it her all."

But them the folks at my local Blockbuster might think I'm hiring it for non-ironic purposes. It's a dilemma.

Anyway earlier I mentioned that I wrote an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's "Obsolete" from his novel "Haunted". Here's someone else's try at it, or, as I like to call it, How to Overuse a Narration. Seriously, dude, show, don't tell.

Although I also found a pretty fantastic short called Still Life, so the world of student-made messed up shit is still alive and kicking and it has some skill.