Yesterday I had that day that is apparently not uncommon among long-time ABDs -- the day when a new round of committee feedback unearths every doubt and insecurity one has about the project. I spent most of the evening wallowing in self-pity and daydreaming about a new life doing anything other than working on this damn dissertation. The experience was -- how shall I put this? -- unpleasant.
While watching an old episode of The West Wing on Bravo the other night, I was totally creeped out by a "CNBC Entertainment News Break." The top stories were something like: "Harry Potter is champion at the box office," "Microsoft is betting big on the X-Box 360," and "Madonna reinvents herself once again with new album." I guess this is what they call "synergy," right? I don't expect much from cable "news," but I guess I had assumed that it would at least try to disguise its main function: shilling for the parent company's merchandise.
My friend Paul Harrill has started a blog called Self-Reliant Filmmaking:
The purpose of this weblog is to talk about and to encourage the practice of making high-quality films at a low-cost and/or with small-labor systems. A good term for this practice is "Self-Reliant Filmmaking."
I suspect one reason French TV refused to show "The Direction of Actors" in the mid-60s is the same reason it refused to show Out 1 a few years later -- its style and attitude, especially its radical humanism. This film takes the position that anything a good actor says or does is automatically interesting -- the same position that helped create Boudu in 1932 and Out 1 in 1971. Whether or not one agrees with that position, it's a privilege to look through the eyes of someone who does.
If the Internet were on fire, and I could run in and save only one item, it would probably be Slacktivist's Left Behind series. He's reading the book so we don't have to.
I've never been to Las Vegas, but I've always imagined it looking and feeling much liked Ed's description.
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