Good God, but film class is lame. Today we watched Rio Bravo, a Howard Hawks piece of shit featuring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and stereotypical Mexicans. The idea was to understand the genre of the western.

Before I went to class, I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona, which was amazing. It's the kind of film that could be examined shot for shot for meaning, not just for its excellent expressive photography.

Another film with excellent photography was Orson Welles' The Trial, adapted from the Kafka novel, which I just finished watching. It might be better than Citizen Kane. If not, it's still better than Touch Of Evil and The Magnificent Ambersons. It's a fucking masterpiece.

This weekend I also saw Luis Bunuel's That Obscure Object Of Desire. It was great. All of these are great films, and they're film nerd films, movies to be studied. It's really sad how much greater the syllabus I assign myself is then what I'm assigned. I bet when I go to that film festival, and am watching at least three movies a day (Which I did today, in case you weren't paying close attention) I will still not see as many fucking great, best movies ever that entire week than I would were I to stay home with a carefully chosen Netflix queue.

The thing is, of course, is I have to write a paper about Rio Bravo. Kind of a pain in the ass, as it's a film about which I have nothing to say. I'm just writing down the greatness of the other films here, but honestly, I mean it when I say I could go through Persona shot for shot.

There's more movies for me to watch before the week is done. I've got a paper to write about Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, a western I picked to view for class- it's not on the syllabus, my seminar leader hasn't even seen it because she avoids violent films- and I should watch it again, as my viewing group got bored halfway through and then watched it at at least double speed with subtitles on. There's 2046 and Dazed And Confused, the last entries in my queue. Sullivan's Travels waits on Alex's computer to be burned. Then there's Lost In La Mancha, and there's still more movies arriving on Friday, although that's mostly discs of the first season of The Wire, but I Fidantzi is in there as well.

If I didn't have class at ten, I'd be watching Dazed And Confused right now. The class at ten won't even feature either of my teachers, but a woman from the film festival, along with someone from the program I'm trying to get into for next year. I need to write three essays for that application, all on vague criteria. I will do this tomorrow, in between movies and sleep.

Also: My seminar leader hasn't seen anything directed by Michel Gondry. This feels like some kind of cardinal sin to me. I don't expect her to be familar with The White Stripes Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground video, but that when taken in conjunction with not having seen Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind just makes my neurons pop. And not in the way that, say, the aforementioned Gondry films made my neurons pop. No, this makes my neurons pop with rage.