Saturday, March 19, 2011

...And Then Midterms Bellowed with Laughter

You know how last month I was all like, "Oh hey, awesome idea guys!  I'm going to start every month with the list of movies I watched during the last one to track my progress because I'm TOTALLY going to watch movies all the time like a decent human being who does stuff other than grad school??!"

Remember that?

Here's the list of movies I watched in February:


........ :(

That's right, I watched NOTHING.  For shameeeeeeee.

What's even worse?  The title of this post is completely misleading.  That's right: I suck at watching movies AND I'm a misleading title-writer.  Midterms are not to blame for my lack of adherence to my movie-watching agenda.  Midterm hysteria didn't start until two weeks ago, solidly in March.  I do have a series of alternative explanations for my dereliction of duty, though:

1. It was really cold and sometimes rainy.
This makes going outside to see movies properly, like at a theater, very aversive.  Also movie tickets are annoyingly expensive in my Fair City.

2. I made the mistake of bumping a potentially intense downer movie to the top of my Netflix queue.
Specifically, Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" (2008).  I like Aronofsky a lot, but his films are not light fare.  Not only do people get seriously emotionally f'ed the hell up in his movies, but tons of yucky semi-gory things happen to them too.  There's a scene in "Black Swan" (2010) that still makes me cringe every time it pops into my head, always with an awful icky clarity with which few filmmakers are capable of imprinting onto the brains of their viewers.  Kudos to Darren, I guess?  Anyway, when we finally watched "The Wrestler" a week or two ago, my anxieties about more icky brain imprintings were affirmed.  Also it was very depressing.  While I am definitely not one to avoid challenging films, sometimes you're just not up for it, you know?

3. The movies I did watch and review were movies I had already seen.
As I mentioned, I saw "For Colored Girls" (2010) when it was in theaters months ago, I watched "The White Ribbon" (2009) in January, and I saw "Jurassic Park" (1993) for the first time when I was like 10.

4. I had shit to do, okay??
I finished up externship interviews at the beginning of the month.  Then we had friends visit for a weekend.  Then I picked up two new testing clients, who I at times saw multiple times a week, making for late nights at the clinic almost every weekday by the end of the month.  While that work has been immensely enjoyable--I continue to be surprised at how much I like testing--it definitely made for little movie-watching time. 

So... yeah.  I'm pleased to say that, in spite of midterms, I *have* watched some new movies this month, so at least I'll have something to say at the beginning of April... and hopefully I'll *actually* say it at the *beginning* of April.

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day, by the way.

I seriously need to start working on my thesis data presentation now, since I have to give it on Wednesday.  I'm not 100% screwed, but... God help me.

Enjoy your weekend darlings!

<3