24 Frames Per Second

"Oh for goodness sake, get down off that crucifix.  Someone needs the wood."
- Felicia, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (Stephan Elliot, 1994)

Yep, that's right - it's Thursday night screening time!

And that was our film... in all honesty, I came to this screening having no ungodly idea what the film was about; my advisor told me that the musical lover portion of the grad group was presenting Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and I was like, "Oh, cool.  It's probably a musical."  I look it up and all I pay attention to is the part that says it's a musical and I just ignored the rest and came to the screening with only that knowledge.  ... Yeah, um, nobody told me it was about dragqueens. XD  It was a fun film, though, quite hilarious.  But prepare yourselves for it, 'cause I've already almost made Merle's head explode by mentioning this... so I'll try to give this slowly.

Hugo Weaving.

Is in it.

...



As a dragqueen.

...



I'm going to give you some time to take that in.







... You ready yet?
Well if you need more time, just minimise this 'cause I'm moving on.

We also watched a bunch of Busby Berkeley musical numbers, which was mygod freaky.  Not 'cause it was avant-garde or abstract or anything, but... if you don't know what his stuff's like, there's a lot of freaky imagery in it such as human fountains, human caterpillars, human rowboats, human flowers, etc. etc. etc., and when you know it's all humans that's where the freaky comes in.  Very cool nonetheless.

Well the rest of my week has been insanely, insanely busy.  Not in the essay-writing or assignment-doing kind of way (I finished the Haneke essay last Saturday), but in the all-this-stuff-I'm-doing-in-the-week kind of way.  Monday marked the return of the European Cinema screenings (yay!) and what we watched was for our exploration of the "Kitchen Sink" Realism movement, which was Saturday Night and Sunday Morning starring  none other than Albert Finney.  Admittedly the only real exposure I've had to the guy is... Scrooge, so seeing him in his debut role ten years prior to a film where he was made up to look like a 70-year-old man was definitely out of the ordinary for me.  But I very much liked the film, Finney did a marvelous job and it had that usual lighthearted Britishness that makes British films so enjoyable.  Not to mention that the story was well put together and the aesthetics were interesting etc., but this is European Cinema, we're exposed to nothing but the good stuff, those comments were a given XP

That same day I had a Canadian Cinema screening where we watched Double Happiness starring Sandra Oh.  I've only seen her in Last Night besides this, so it was nice to get more exposure of her... and I really liked this movie!  Yet another "multicultural family in Canada" situation, but far less confusing and starring a dynamic female character with lots of witty humour and awkward romance that's unconventional yet realistic.  ... It was awesome!  That's all I can really say about it.  Go and see it if you can!  You might have to be in Canada to do so but go and see it!

Wednesday reintroduced me to my Film Directors/Auteurs class where we have finally left the not-so-wonderful world of Michael Haneke and have now entered the noticeably-closer-to-wonderful world of Michael Winterbottom.  Though we weren't watching one of his best films as a start, it (Welcome to Sarajevo) was aesthetically more conventional, had a strange contrast of manslaughter and happy pop music, and had much more relatable characters.  It wasn't a perfect film by any means, but it was by far more pleasant to watch than Haneke's stuff, even if Haneke is probably a much better filmmaker skillwise.

Now Tuesday.  Ohhhh my god Tuesday.  To make a long story containing quite a few personal details short, I was casually invited to a Vinyl Night at a pub - which admittedly is an environment I'm almost completely alien to - which at first seemed to go nowhere 'cause my inviter hadn't showed up, but the moment I decide I'd been waiting long enough and just left the place... who shows up by my inviter XD  And we both head back and the rest of the night is full of lovely records, gigantic beer glasses (not drunk by either of us mind you), and insane arguments/complaints/jokes/discussions.  The walking back home part was probably the least pleasant of the evening (or night rather - that was about midnight or so) 'cause the buses were no longer running so the journey was considerably longer than normal and my legs sure as hell noticed, but still one of the highlights of my university life.

Besides that, my week has been full of tests.  That's not near as interesting to talk about.

I'm heading to T.O. this weekend to see a long-running friend of mine with Ry which will involve a trip to the ROM and dressing up for dinner and taking the subway and taking the streetcar.  I'm way, way too excited about the transit.  In my eyes subways pwn buses any day XD

So that's my news for this week.  Probably won't be saying anything else till at least this Sunday.  I'm off to giant-city-land now.  Take care everybody!