Friday, June 3, 2011

Day 3: Oh yeah!



30-DAY FILM CHALLENGE, DAY 3:

A film I watch to feel good...

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)


When I was actually in high school in the 80s, I actually was kind of annoyed by Ferris--I remember sympathizing more with his buddy Cameron. (Come to think of it, I kept rooting for Ducky in Pretty in Pink... there's a trend here, I'm afraid...)


So 25 years later, though I still have never lived in Chicago, and I have to acknowledge the questionable racial politics of John Hughes (here and elsewhere--Long Duck Dong anyone?), I will always pull up a seat if this one appears on cable.


It's innocent and playful in a way that I seem to not have appreciated at the time...

Thursday, June 2, 2011

The 30-day film challenge!

Before undergoing a successful medical procedure (woo woo!), a dear mentor of mine posted responses to a facebook 30-day film challenge in one shot... Seeing as I'm asking my COMM 229 summer class to blog again, I need to get back in the game myself. So...

In an attempt to jump-start some more writing by doing some "warm-ups" here, I'm going to spend June working through this challenge... Maybe July will be an old classmate's music challenge? Ha! One month at a time. Look: I already missed the 1st, so I'm going to double-down here to catch myself up. This month's for you, Joan....

DAY 1: YOUR FAVORITE FILM--Blue (1993, d. K. Kieślowski)

I was a new M.A. student in Austin when the first of the Three Colours trilogy hit the theaters--and I was gobsmacked. I've had numerous conversations with Folks Who Know about which of the trilogy we like the best, whether the trilogy wasn't really a rehash of The Decalogue (1988), and so on. I believe I'd seen a few Kieślowski films before, but Blue in the theater was special. It marks for me the start of my own ability to take film seriously...

There's another way in which Kieślowski was an inspiration to me: to not give up on my doctoral studies. Walking away from my dream school (which had accepted me, but only with potential funding contingent on Year One) seemed at the time like one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. But because I decided to go to Lithuania to regroup / reapply, it really was one of the best things I ever did in my life. In an interview book, Kieślowski relates that it took him THREE TIMES to get into the Polish film school in Łódź--I figured I could live with applying for Ph.D. programs twice...or more.

Using a page from the Jim Naremore school of teaching Intro to Film (Citizen Kane, full stop), I used the trilogy to introduce film form and style to students in Columbus, IN as a Future Faculty Fellow. I used these films whenever I taught my Central European Cinema topics course. And this fall I'm teaching an honors section of a First Year Seminar that centers around the Three Colours. These films are so rich... they lend themselves to reviewing time and again, and seem to work great as a limited set of texts to introduce students to academic film studies...

DAY 2: LEAST FAVORITE FILM: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

With video-on-demand, it's really easy to opt out of bad films--you just leave the window where you're screening the bad Netflix film, and try again. But a bad experience in the theater...and with friends...that's tougher.

I can't say I have any real hard-core grudge with this film, truth told. But seeing as I'm working with my Intro students on the notion of narrative in general, and Todorov's notion of equilibrium in particular, I find myself using this film as my example of narrative frustration. Three hours of great looking film...but film that starts in the middle of things, and ends in the middle of things. No resolution, no nothing.

A lot of Tolkien fans might be more forgiving than I was... and maybe if I go back and watch the trilogy in one shot I'll be less crabby. But.... yikes.

Time will tell if I manage to work the challenge all the way through June--but this is a good way to dust off the proverbial cobwebs. Let me know if you're playing along at home--would love to read other folks' choices on these prompts. Peace!

~bpi