Up nice and late, and instead of work, watching The Five Obstructions (****). It's a fascinating game in which Lars von Trier challenges his mentor Jorgen Leth to remake a short, esoteric film he made called The Perfect Human. What follows is an ingenious puzzle-solving look at art and its construction. As vonTrier makes more and more challenges to the film of various natures, Leth finds an absurd pleasure in finding ways around them. There's a pure pleasure of watching two directors battle it out. Every resultant film is suprisingly elegant. Sometimes vonTrier is pleased and surprised by the outcome. Once he is angry that the film is not what he specified, and an argument ensues. What a film like this forces you to think about is layers of interpretation, authorship and ownership, and the control we exercise over our art. the final film is penned by vonTrier itself, and loops back to add another layer of understanding to the film we've been seeing. Recommended for those fascinated by filmmaking and all its sly entanglements. After the movie, dinnercooking. We set off the fire alarm. At one point, I noticed that we should turn on the exhaust fan. It wouldn't work. I looked for someone else who could figure it out. Of course, i found no one. However, once the fire alarm goes off, *everybody* shows up suddenly in the kitchen. Well, the meal finished eventually, and then I came here and did French, because that's the kind of fun I lead. Maybe darcy's goodbye party is still going on. I'll go home now.
1/13/05- ***
It's national blame someone else day. Convenient, as I did make a sizeable mistake. I got up and finished my 502 paper more easily than expected. So I dabbled a bit with that until it was time to go to section, where I was quickly reminded that I missed the weekly GSI meeting (new) before lecture, which I obviously could have gotten to and foregone the minor things on my paper. Ah well. We met afterwards, he didn't seem overly upset, and I'll hopefully have this imbedded in my mind now. Then I went and signed for my room for next year (yay!), and got Charlie Chaplin movies out of the library, and finished the Chaplin book. Now I'll actually write the damn paper (maybe). After a pretty crappy dinner, I talked with Kira for a bit, and then got roped into going to the Cavern, a local club, with Jeremy and John. I did French homework for the first hour or so, and then later we wandered, looked at people, and danced some to a pretty good reggae band. Unlike John and Jeremy, I don't need alcohol to dance. Not that it hurts, mind you. The weather was crappy snow/sleet/wind, but it was warm inside, and rather enjoyable, so good work yout wo at talking me into going.
12:02 AM
