spatz: sparrow perched on a branch (Sundown)
spatz ([personal profile] spatz) wrote2007-10-02 02:41 am
Entry tags:

Books

Oh, dear. I made the mistake of reading the first few pages of Luck in the Shadows on Amazon, and ended up ordering the whole Nightrunner trilogy by Lynn Flewelling. Considering the number of recommendations I've had for it and my own appreciation of the opening, I suspect that I'm safe, but I wish I hadn't already ordered Empire of Ivory - it would have saved extra trips to the mail. As it was, I was forced to add Martha Wells' Entanglement to get free shipping: such a sad fate is mine.

Now the question is: when the hell am I gonna find the time to read them? Last weekend was literally the first time since school started that I haven't had to a) shoot a film or b) drive to New Haven to buy apartment crap at IKEA (also an excuse to visit my roommate's adorable brother at Yale, with whom I always end up arguing the merits of film vs theatre).

I'm having a fantastic semester: three film classes and West African dance. Heaven! So I've watched over 20 movies since school started, and that's not including all the one-reel silent films from my Action and Adventure class. Higgins does love his silents, but he provides hilarious commentary, so we love them, too.

A lot of them are for my Race and Film class, though, and therefore heavy on the offensive/bad end of the spectrum. I watched Birth of a Nation on fast-forward (the benefit of it being silent and me being fast at reading intertitles).

Additional trivia:
--Isabella Rossellini donated money and some of her mother's collection to our film center, a fact learned while snacking outside the editing room.
--My production prof used to teach at UT/work in Austin, so we bonded over missing Tex-Mex the first day of class. Also, he make ninja filmmaker jokes.
--I have three radically different types of dance this semester: West African, rapper sword dancing, and swing.
--I haven't watched a single TV premiere or pilot :(
--All my classes are within 100 feet of each other.
--Rudy Valentino was a damn attractive man, but don't watch The Sheik. Skip straight to the sequel, Son of the Sheik, in which Rudy has some great scenes with himself.

[identity profile] sobsister.livejournal.com 2007-10-03 09:39 am (UTC)(link)
Sounds like a great semester..but I have to ask, what is "rapper sword dancing?" It sounds interesting, to say the least.

[identity profile] thespatz.livejournal.com 2007-10-04 03:54 am (UTC)(link)
Um, it's hard to explain! Rapper is a type of English folk dancing that I started learning in the spring. You have five people with "swords" - flexible strips of metal with handles on each end. Everybody is holding the end of the swords next to them in a large circle, essentially. From there you make various pretzel-y figures and movements while stepping rhythmically.

Try this video: Instant Gratification (http://youtube.com/watch?v=kdQXbo8xB5g&mode=related&search=folk%20dance%20rapper). I actually know all the moves in this one, and can do them with middling success.

[identity profile] sobsister.livejournal.com 2007-10-04 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Bendy swords, neat. Sort of hard to visualize, so that video's dead useful. V. cool, and now I've learned something! I was reading 'rapper' as music style, which brings to mind very different images.

[identity profile] thespatz.livejournal.com 2007-10-05 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, we get that a lot ;)