'Nuff Said?

I'm officially on break until May 14, when the summer term begins. I have a light course load during the summer, but I'll still post on this blog from time to time. In fact, I'll probably do at least some minimal posting before that. I know I'll have something to say about The Avengers, for instance. Years ago, I worked for Marvel Comics in NY. Stan Lee still came in for meetings in those days. For a while, I shared an office with his younger brother, Larry Lieber.  I could almost do a whole blog about that.

Powerful Combination

Writing About the Movies
Well, I guess that's it. My last class of the semester was earlier this evening. We've always had a lot of fun in this class. The students would kid each other (in good spirits), and I would kid back and forth with them. Tonight, we went around the room and each one talked about his or her final paper. One student said that she wrote about A Mighty Wind and two other improv comedies (Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show) because she loved A Mighty Wind and was a little ticked off that some of the other students didn't like it. "So then you wrote your paper out of spite?" I said. She said she did. I told her spite was a great motivator, and I really believe that it is. But, of course, without her love for the film, there would have been no paper. So, really, it was written out of  love and spite. Powerful combination.

Winding Down

American Film Comedy
At our final meeting on Monday, the evening of the last day of classes before exams, I sensed a certain impatience in some of the students -- at first, anyway. They wanted to get on with studying for those exams, I think, and there they were, stuck talking about movies. But this was a polite group and they warmed up as the evening progressed. (Or maybe they just surrendered to the reality that there was no escape.) In any case, we had a great round-robin discussion about their final papers. Insights into films. Personal insights. Laughs. I will definitely miss this class. Now, about reading those final papers...

Monkey-Wrench

Writing About the Movies
Jane Goodall, the famous primate expert, was speaking on campus on the night of our class, which made parking tough for my students. A couple of them arrived late and one of them messaged me to say that, ultimately, she gave up and went home without getting to class. So there was that plus Fox Day plus the night with the loud music right outside our window. Sometimes, it's been like trying to hold class on a traffic island during rush hour. Yet, we persevered and even managed to figure out a few things about The Purple Rose of Cairo, our final film of the semester. Maybe we should have watched Gorillas in the Mist.

Musical Chairs

Adaptation
This class ended this week, too. For the final session, I moved the students to a room in which it was possible to arrange our chairs in a circle so that we could discuss their final papers Woodstock-style. But it turned out the room that I picked had some sort of special session scheduled not long after we moved there. So then we moved to another room, but we only had about 50 minutes there. So then we had to go back to our original room for the final 20 minutes or so. Kind of a bumpy ride, but at least we all got a little exercise.

Good Times

Cinema Criticism Writing

This week, we had the last session of this class. What was great about this class was that, somehow, it really became a team. The students were willing to share their thoughts, critical and otherwise, with each other. They spoke from the heart about film and writing. Plus, all of them have at least some writing talent, and most of them have more than just some talent. This sort of thing doesn't happen all that often.

Burn After Reading, After Pizza

American Film Comedy
We had our Pizza Party this week. The entertainment was that everyone told jokes. Lots of fun!!! Then we watched Burn After Reading, a hilarious Coen brothers film with a nearly all-star cast (George Clooney, Brad Pitt [sooo funny!], John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, J.K. Simmons [also sooo funny!], Richard Jenkins), that was criminally underrated when it opened, possibly because it came out just after the Coens' Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (which, BTW, I didn't love). The class reaction to Burn was amazing. It started slow, with just the occasional titter, and then built until, by the end, the class was reacting loudly to everything. There are a lot of ways to talk about this film. I'm going to try a character-oriented approach next week and see what happens.