Late Night Thoughts with Stevee #2

-Yes, I am really bad at prolific bloggery. I do promise that in my spare time I have been slaving away over a The Place Beyond the Pines review, but I keep getting confused at what I'm trying to say about it so I may as well just do incoherent thoughts about life instead.

-Yeah, this was a busy week. Last full week of school ever (whaaaaaaaaaat). There were school dramas or whatever, but a couple of good things happened: a) I got an Excellence in that 1950's essay I was dying over in the holidays, which means I got solid Excellences through all of my English things I've done this year, and I hope to repeat that in the exams and b) this is totally nerdy and up myself, but in assembly the principal remembered what I said in my speech about why I wanted to be a leader at school, and said it would be part of the school's history. I've made my mark.

-Movie wise, I saw a grand total of two films this week. Which is utterly ridiculous. The first was Mud, which I really adored. Matthew McConaughey for all the awards and all that - yes, I'm still in love with him. Then I watched the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. It was actually terrible. Everyone was overacting, particularly Mia Farrow. I get that Daisy has a sing-song voice, but not a bad-audition-on-American-Idol voice. It was rather faithful to the novel, apart from not ending on the best ending lines of all time. Karen Black, who played Myrtle, was really the only person who I enjoyed seeing on screen, since she actually got her character right. Just everything about it was so...ugh. Or maybe that is just my huge aversion to the 1970's.

-So I'm trying to figure out what papers to do next year within my Bachelor of Arts and I have a sneaking feeling I may have made a slightly wrong choice with Canterbury, as they are offering less than I thought they were, film studies wise. However, this doesn't really bother me as I just wanna obtain my BA in what is probably the best city in New Zealand. I keep seeing on the news how all of these new buildings are going ahead and it makes me excited, because it is the only place moving forward. So good vibes all 'round.

-Random thought I had at work: how many of you have seen The Details? The film that has Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Ray Liotta and Kerry Washington? I found it to be rather polarising, so would love to hear your thoughts.

-Just remembered that the blog turns four tomorrow. Or 3 and 1/4, since I stopped blogging for eight months. Will hopefully try and put something celebratory up.

-Oh, I started watching Breaking Bad. Please do not alert me of spoilers, as I know absolutely nothing about it. I'm two episodes in, and I can tell I'll love it. Now, someone find me some more time in the day?

-So the Carrie remake came out. Like, I never really prepared for this to actually happen. Carrie was the first film I ever truly loved, but now Chloe Moretz is Carrie and that just does not sit well with me. Carrie works as a 1970's film (and here I was just talking about my aversion to the 70's movies), not a film in our era right now.

-Mind you, is anyone feeling like 2013 may be one of our best years in films for years? America has 12 Years a Slave and All is Lost out this week, which both have over 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. There's also Gravity and Captain Phillips in the high 90% range. Rush is in the high 80% range, Prisoners is a little bit behind it. And then we have some of the older releases, like Short Term 12, Mud, Before Midnight, Stories We Tell, The Hunt, Blue Jasmine, Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Spectacular Now, Frances Ha and Enough Said all in the 90% range. Sure, there's not hundreds of great movies out yet, but as a cinema lover, this makes me very excited to see a movie open every week with such a high rating. And we have films like American Hustle, The Counselor, (wow, just saw that Jessica Chastain's first film Wilde Salome is coming out next week in America, exciting times), The Wolf of Wall Street (???), Catching Fire, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, The Monuments Men and The Hobbit 2 still to keep us excited. Very good times to be alive and kicking in cinema right now.

-However, we still have our bad films, and Diana seems to be one of the worst of the lot. Which is hilarious because the ads that are going around on TV right now keep saying "See the film that everyone is calling "stunning", "compelling" etc. Oh well, they may as well use any of the good press they can get.

-And that's life in the fast lane right now. I'll try rustle something up in between The Crucible rehearsals and Photoshop and Othello and hominins. I could even write you a whole post on the allegory in The Crucible or how bipedalism increased hominins' cranial capacity. You know you want it.

How has your week been?