My first term, my first half of my Masters teaching period is now over. I have more assignments to do over the break, so I am not exactly 'running free', and as soon as we get back in January, it's full steam ahead until September. And that date looks like a tiny dot on the horizon right now.
For my module of Science Fiction in Film and Television, I had to do a presentation on Jericho, the post-apocalyptic TV show which started in 2006, only lasted a season and a quarter (CBS, or whoever it was, allowed them to finish off the story in 7 episodes). All things considered, it's a good show. The narrative is a bit mental, jumping from extreme terror plots to minor love stories, and at times it feels a bit like a soap, other times like a mild version of The Walking Dead, but all-in-all I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing how a TV show post-9/11 can capture the fear and isolation Americans felt about the stability of their own country and government. The actual plot of the apocalypse is very clever and intricate, and the characters in the town are all likeable, even if the dialogue is a bit questionable, and they gave the lead role to the guy who played Billy, mad boyfriend/murderer alongside Shaggy in Scream 1. (His name is Skeet Ulrich, he's a fucking weird looking guy, once-upon-a-time he looked a bit like Johnny Depp, but it would be hard to say that of him now).
I've also got into 2 Broke Girls recently. I don't really know why. It's likeable, it's comfortable, and unlike The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, it doesn't have this generic formula of how to be funny which it MUST abide by. Like, its not hilarious, but every now and then something will be funny because its totally unexpected, random or just sharp, and it does make you laugh. Speaking of HIMYM and BBT, you can feel in their writing the critics saying 'its not funny anymore'. You can feel them stretching out their characters, trying to milk them dry, exploiting Sheldon and Barney for what were once hilarious characters, which are now very predictable.
I haven't had much time to watch films, apart from Breaking Bad Part 2, which I have to say, is a bit weak, and a bit ridiculous, and really didn't do anything, it was mainly people standing around chatting, and the CGI of the werewolves looked somehow worse in this film, and yet I highly enjoyed the five minute fake-carnage which occurs just before the end. I even thought for half a second that we might see Edward die, and I was SO excited for that possibility, but alas, we did not, and the fake-clip reveals itself to be a flash-forward in Alice/Aro's mind of a possible future in which many people die, so Aro turns around and goes home and they all live happily ever after, the end. I've always disliked this ending; reading the books, which in fairness are not anywhere near as dire as the films, allowed this shoddy ending to resonate even more strongly. But I realised the other day why I hate it so much. We were talking in class about Genre, and what genre is / does. It's main impact is the audience's per-conceived notion of genre ie. if a film has Will Smith and guns in, you know its a hollywood action blockbuster, if there's no guns, its Hitch (or some other rom-com deal). So from the trailers and adverts you know what to expect when you sit down in the cinema, and you know the generic traits of that genre ie. western's have a good guy, a bad guy, a show down and a lot of horses and dust. Romance has a lot of love, tragedy has a bit of death, probably also love, comedy has anything but will hopefully make you laugh, fantasy has this, horror has that, so on and so forth. A film about vampires and werewolves and a human girl stuck in a love triangle with one of each of these gives the impression that there will be a fight. You think at least the two guys will fight over the girl. The vampires will fight the werewolves. The wolves might break into two pacts and fight each other. The vampires might have some really old leaders that live in italy called the Volturi whose sole purpose is to maintain the vampire's secrecy and they keep order in a brutal and bloody way, and when a human becomes a vampire with a little half-vampire baby and a werewolf falls in love with that baby, and the Volturi decide they need to step in and interfere, YOU EXPECT A FIGHT. All these things happen, and yet they never, ever so much as scratch each other. Fucking waste of muscle and teeth.
Also, I'm waiting to here from a certain writing organisation, and I'm getting really impatient. I keep telling myself to not think about it, but every time I remember how long it's been I think to myself 'no news is good news' and then I get hopeful. I don't want to be hopeful, because it's horrible having all of that hope shatter around you in one non-descript letter opening, so I'm very on-edge every time mum brings in the post. One day.... one day I will hear... if it's bad news, I won't post it though. I'll try not to even think about it, if I can.
Also also, I'm not feeling festive yet. Its scaring me, because I normally get ahead of myself completely, but I can't get into the mood yet. Maybe its because I have an essay to do still, maybe its because I haven't done any shopping whatsoever... or maybe I'm finally not a little kid that gets giddy at Christmas anymore.