Something makes me feel like on a tangential level this has not been a great summer, in the sense that summer is supposed to be spent occasionally working and being generally careless. I believe summer is around when George W. got his first DUI, for example. The notion that I never have any time is particularly troubling, at least more than a half hour or hour here or there that I can snatch for watching half-of-movies (and finishing the other half the next day).
But it's also been a satisfying summer in other respects, like knowing I'll be a senior in winter because of the ridiculous amounts of classes I'm taking, and that I won't be broke because I'm still working, and that I'm not missing much at the theater because a lot of movies suck. (Although to be fair, Superman Returns was not so terrible, just really long. Also the actually story of Superman really sucks, so that's like a 50 ton weight shackled to the Man of Steel's leg that he can't really get off.) District B13 on the big screen is one of the most thrilling action movies I've seen in a while, so see that. I guess that's it for what I've seen. Oh, and rent Joe Dante's Homecoming when it hits DVD in August. I saw it in a class this summer and although it really shouldn't be that funny when a script lives to call Ann Coulter various different synonyms of "skank," let's face it... it totally is. What a skank.
I told myself I was going to get things done this summer. A few short film ideas I've been kicking around with Jeff, along with a much-anticipated(?) full length CD. I emailed him excitedly about starting a film review website again, for which I wrote moving pieces on Neil Young's Heart of Gold, Dave Chappelle's Block Party and, uh, Underworld: Evolution, but that hasn't been explored any further beyond that. I also got the pieces together to start writing my first book, which will be about critical cinema theory and television studies as applied to the vast, wonderful world of videogames. Hell yes: videogame studies. Written in a conversational tone (bordering on flippant), oodles of footnotes, charts and numerous psychoanalytic approaches to the field should all hopefully make their appearance. Essay collection, that sort of thing. But naturally this would require getting done with schoolwork first, which will never happen before August 4th (when classes end).
So.
I need to return to my final essay on the TV show 24 as irrational social propaganda. As soon as I remember the FTP details for this place, I'll allow everyone to download my crowning achievement of summer writing: "Girls in Trouble: Fantasy, Violence and Reckoning in the Women-in-Prison Film". It's seven pages of NC-17 adventure, including such memorable quotes as, "I'll bite your nipples off!" Discussing filmic phallocentricism was never so fun!