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Accompanying material:

Metropolis Unbound - David Bordwell
Observations on Film Art
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I'm not too ashamed to admit that I've never seen more than 25 minutes of Metropolis. I've tried, 7 times in total, to sit through it but I always seem to fall asleep at about the same 10 minute mark into the film and wake up at around the same final 1/3rd before calling it a day and taking it back to the Video Ezy at which point the old man with the blue glasses that owns the place would again, laugh at me.

I don't think it's a silent film thing, I've begrudgingly sat through a back to back presentation of Battleship Potemkin and Oktyabr, which would arguably kill most people. Individually of course they're both worthwhile and thrilling and game changing as far as cinema goes (please don't shoot me Felicity!), but a double bill, well that's just a torture device.

And I'd be the first to admit. I've slept through a lot of films at uni. I don't know, once you start watching 4 prerequisite films a week in lecture halls that promote drowsiness it doesn't matter if you're watching Battle of Algiers (which you know is "important"), you will start nodding off (which I did). But that's not it either. I have tried to watch Metropolis in a variety of settings, with a variety of different soundtrack versions, at different times of the day, all to no avail.

Mr. Bordwell's article has ignited a renewed spark. Perhaps with all these gleaming new insights in mind I can give it a final college try.

***

Reading back on what I wrote last night, I must apologise for the lack of focus, structure, or anything really. I was trying to think while maintaining a conversation with my mother and the Quantum of Solace was also competing for my attention in the background. A lot of things, other than my thoughts, were happening.

I guess what I ended up concluding is that, I tend to glorify "real life". Something inside me obviously feels that I would never actually live that life. Man, woman, house, home, children, animal. I'm sure it's somehow Jungian, that it has something to do with the fact that I never grew up having all that. I'm also sure that some overpaid shrink would be able to trace my dramatic aspirations to this "lacking" childhood. It's simpler than that. I like to play house, because I am a child. For a period last year I had a brief go at domesticity. The relationship itself was a bit of a joke, neither one of us gave enough of ourselves for it to be in any way real but you know what my favourite moment was? That first day I stayed at his apartment for the whole day by myself without him, I made sure I cleaned, and had dinner in the oven by the time he stepped in the door. As he ate what I had prepared for us, he told me that was his favourite meal. That moment, like some stepford wife, was probably the highlight of the entire 8 month period I spent with that boy. The feminist inside me is rearing to have a right thrashing of that version of me.

Last night I was listening to a three week old podcast of LNL with Phil Adams. They were talking about the massacre in Congo and how rape has now turned in a weapon of war. The statistics are not shocking, though alarming. The UN estimates that over 200,000 girls and women has been raped during the extent of the civil war, and growing. With the youngest victims being about 3, and the oldest being 75. A vast majority of these rape cases are perpetrated against teens 12-17 years old, and an even more disturbingly large majority being gang rape of up to 7 armed soldiers on one girl in public. It's actually more shocking how unsurprising these horrific stats are, but the most interesting thing to have come out of these events is this women's movement that's starting to happen. Because of the public nature of these crimes, it's allowed for these victims, these women, to have conversations, march the streets even. It's prompted them to want change, to have women in positions of power. It's kind of exciting, to have a renewed surge in a women's movement, as opposed to the three steps back we're taking in our more developed worlds, and in my own world.

We're going to watch Mao's Last Dancer now, so that'll do for tonight before I get too distracted again.