Last Week of School

Why is it that my last week of school is also going to be my hardest? I have to shoot and edit an entire documentary, and also complete a Director's Notebook for it.

So far I've interview Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com, and tomorrow I interview David Poland of MovieCityNews.com. I asked some USC professors, but they declined. I asked Kenneth Turan of the LA Times - no response.

And a ha! I caught myself! I had promised that this blog wouldn't turn into a journal thing, and look what happened?

Well... I'm going to fix that right now by posting a random photo. If you search for "random" on Google Images, the first image that comes up is:









And now the blog has returned to its intended purpose. I can sleep in peace.

Nevermind...

Turns out my 5th film will be a documentary afterall.

I'm doing a doc on the movie box-office slump, and I'm hoping to get some notable film journalists to say a few things for the movie. Fingers crossed.

Natural Dancer

Here's a video of my brother, Mike, doing The Worm at his own wedding.

http://media.putfile.com/Mike-Doing-the-Worm

4th Film

I screened my 4th film, "Stepping Forward," last week.

My teachers thought it was an improvement for me, but my fellow classmates were a bit tougher. Overall, they liked it, but they had some criticisms... oh well.

5th film will be the final one, and I need to go out with a bang. I want to do something completely different from everything else I've done. It would be fun to do a documentary, but it seems like everyone is doing a documentary for their final film... so I'd rather not.

I'll be so happy when this cinema production class is done. It's been fun, but the class just further proved to me that I'd much rather watch and critique a film than actually make one. Making films is HARD, and I have that much more respect for those directors who pull off the great ones.

Almost an Update

Hey...

I'm really tired and am going to hit the sack soon, but quick update.

I was gone in Boston this weekend for my eldest brother's wedding... it was fun, sweet, and all around wonderful. The wedding itself was lovely, and the dinners/parties afterwards were entertaining. And I got to briefly meet up with Papay and Grizzle... it was good to see them. We went to the last quarter of the Harvard football game, and I think there was as much excitement at that entire game as there is for the USC Song Girls.

Last week, Steven Spielberg came to class and answered questions for 2 hours. I asked one, and he answered it, which was cool. The guy is really humble and genuinely enjoyed being there. At the end, he left in a cloud of digital smoke provided by ILM.

And way too many movies are coming out... still need to see Jarhead, Squid and the Whale... Pride & Prejudice is supposed to be great... and we got Harry Potter 4 and Walk the Line coming out this weekend... oh boy, when will I see all these?

To bed. Till we meet again.

A Top 10 List? Who Woulda Thunk It?

By now you know that top 10 lists are what keep me going... so...

Top 10 Albums of 2005 (so far)

1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
2. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
3. Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens
4. Elbow - Leaders of the Free World
5. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
6. Animal Collective - Feels
7. Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs
8. Sigur Ros - Takk
9. Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
10. Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins