Life and death are things you just do when you're bored
2010-01-17 ~ 8:11 p.m.
It's been mainly films and sleep and not sleeping and back to work and trying not to fall over. I tried to make muffins but couldn't find my sure-fire recipe and used out-of-date baking powder and they didn't rise at all. I did make colourful roast butternut squash with spinach/asparagus/garlic/nutmeg and grated cheese:
Last weekend I went to see Avatar, which is super-technically-brilliant, with amazingly realistic computer graphics and suitably exciting battle scenes. But it's also full of plot holes, ridiculously unscientific stuff, and bits that seem lifted straight from other films or books. A decent cast, at least, with Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and Michelle Rodriguez, plus lesser-known people like Stephen Lang who's the super tough villianous head of the space marines. I don't know if it's true that the plot is exactly the same as that of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest or Dances With Wolves, because I've seen neither, but it's quite possible. It's all about the spectacle, and I guess if there's some subtext about how the USA was formed by genocide, then that's probably not a bad thing, even if the aliens are ridiculously saintly and noble savage-ish, and I much prefer my natives to be violent, savage, and unknowable like in The Proposition or Ulzana's Raid.
I also saw Up In The Air which I really liked. I'm generally a fan of George Clooney, and it's a great role for him, playing the corporate road warrior traveling America as a consultant who's employed by other companies to sack their workers, while on the side repeatedly giving a motivational speech called "How Heavy Is Your Backpack?" about how you should get rid of all your possessions and relationships - Clooney is able to fit his whole life into one piece of carry-on luggage. It's a bit like The Accidental Tourist, which I also really liked.
But there's more focus on the mechanics of travel, with lots of airports. The opening titles are great too, a montage of aeriel photography of American cities, generally looking artificial and semi-geometric. It's a film about the glamour of living in the strange world of luxury hotels and executive lounges and business-class travel, and about the strange beauty of middle America: his travels go across the entire USA, but it's mainly focused in Omaha and northern Wisconsin, plus visits to such unsung cities as Des Moines with their evocative names and absence of history.
It's also about the limits of that lifestyle. There's a nice plot that works around Clooney's relation to two women: a fellow-traveller he meets and arranges occasional sex with when they're in the same city, and a young woman just out of college who's trying to get his company to use teleconferences instead of flying its employees. The plot runs in a slightly wayward direction, refusing to be either a romantic comedy or a tragedy. There are some very funny moments, and some genuinely moving ones (as when Clooney takes a break from his lifestyle to visit his sister's wedding).
It features the clever gimmick of having all the people who Clooney and colleagues fire being played by actual people who were laid off, so you get real reactions not some actor mugging and hamming. It's not really a film about the economic status in America; Clooney doesn't know why the people are being laid off, and the film doesn't explain why. It's more of an anthropological or psychogeographical study of the world up in the air. The only criticism is that the film features a brief cameo from the great Sam Elliott, with typically improbable moustache, but he doesn't do anything much - although you could argue that's the point.
For work I'm mainly reading papers about space travel and watching videos of upcoming video game systems. I'm supposed to be doing a project related to golf.
There's less than 2 weeks left of my creative writing course. There have been some good bits, particularly in the early weeks which featured a wide range of bizarre writing exercises. But lately it's been a bit less exciting. I feel I've not learned very much; a lot of it was explaining topics like the difference between first and third person narration which I already knew from studying literature. The focus is so general (introductory) that there's no exploration of more obscure topics like how to conduct research for your historical novel set in 17th century France, or how to write literary/art/experimental fiction. There's not been much feedback in the forums either, with a lot of people not commenting much, and I'm better than a lot of people who seem to have entirely disappeared but still not brilliant.
I do have a fairly solid idea for my second assessment, which is worth 70% of the course mark. I did well on the first assignment despite twisting the questions to the limits. For the last unmarked tutorial exercise, I've got a totally ridiculous experimental idea involving pornographic photographs and inertial guidance systems (it has to be about either an old photo or the four seasons, and I'm not sure if I could get away with something about Frankie Valli).
I've not got any other courses planned. I couldn't find much else in the Open University that starts January/February, and I'm too late for evening classes.
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