Hey Caroline, I need your address. The only one I have in my address book is your original Wilbraham one, so...

(OMG, it is for sooper-sekrit reason.)

I think I forgot to mention that my History of Greece TA is from New Zealand. He keeps apologizing for his accent, and I'm like, "Honey, don't apologize." Although I guess most people didn't watch hours and hours of LOTR behind the scenes docs, so it's probably a hard accent to decipher.

I had a terrifying sleep paralysis incident last night. I woke up, and thought that I'd heard a loud noise, but I didn't know what it was, so I waited to see if I heard it again. And then, I heard my BEDROOM DOOR OPEN. Which, it sticks, so it's a loud, friction-y, squeaky sound. All I can think is, I left my keys in the living room, someone has broken in to the apartment and has unlocked my bedroom door, and now they're INSIDE, and now they're GOING TO KILL ME.

By the time I finally was able to move, I had so much adrenaline that there was no way I was going back to sleep, so I was up at 6:30 this morning. Suffice it to say, that's a lot earlier than I usually get up.

Saw The Queen yesterday, which was very, very good in a kind of deceptive way. I enjoyed it well enough while watching it, but wasn't quite sure if it was BP material. And then I ended up thinking about it the rest of the night, and replaying scenes in my head, and even ended up reading all about Elizabeth II online. (She was a mechanic during WWII! I had no idea! So awesome.) And what I loved about Helen Mirren's performance is how it's not big and showy, but it's still so real and powerful, and you get the sense of the person behind the facade. I have felt lately that winning performances, especially leading performances, have had a lot of histrionics and show to them, so it's nice to see so much acclaim for a performance that goes against that type.

In a bit of a coincidence (OR IS IT?), I watched the first part of Elizabeth I, the miniseries she won her Emmy (and assorted other awards) for, which was actually at the opposite end of the spectrum, performance-wise. Elizabeth is a hard character, because she was so mercurial, and Mirren captured that perfectly. You felt her moods along with her, as she swung from one pole to the next. And the rest of the miniseries--the other performances, the mise-en-scene--was also quite good (the costumes! I was disappointed at the lack of brightly dyed beards, though), so I'm looking forward to part two.

Wow, January went by FAST. One twelfth of 2007 is already gone! I am already a month closer to death! (Maybe that one goes too far.)

I have to take one more random non-film elective, so I'm taking History of Greece, and boy oh boy, am I not enjoying it. There were no prerequisites listed for this course, but the professor is teaching with a lot of assumed knowledge, plus skipping over stuff that was explained in the reading. Like, hello, I DO NOT DO THE READING BEFORE THE LECTURE, BECAUSE I AM NORMAL. I'm annoyed at this stupid undergrad class, and that I have to actually do any work for it (something not true for my previous two random non-film electives), especially when I'm not overburdened with time these days.

Me and UT Laura and Screenwriting Guy went to lunch today, at just a regular pizza joint next to campus, and I kid you not, we waited an hour for our food. AN HOUR. I even went up and was like, "Oh hey, are you assembling the food atom by atom with cosmic tweezers or something?" One wildly hopes for the food to be taken off one's check at this point (which didn't happen), but rightly assumes that one will get an apology (which also didn't happen). So, laters, pizza joint, in the future I will go to places that don't make me forget what the hell I even ordered before they bring it out.

But then we were talking and I was like, I kind of like complaining about things, and it's always better when I have legitimate things to complain about. You know.

Dear Austin: it's 50 degrees outside. There's no reason to set your thermostats to Grandma.

My life has been deeply boring since I've come back to school. The only exciting thing that's happened in the last two weeks is finding out that the Polish professor from last semester (who never read anyone's pages, hated genre stuff, didn't give us a syllabus, etc.) quit. Although unfortunately, I guess since he was no longer an employee of the university he felt he had the right to write this totally unprofessional, rude, mean email to one of the screenwriters telling him how horrible his script was, and how he didn't know anything about the craft. Three pages of that! This guy and me both got A-s in the class, which is crap, and we both challenged him on it, like...why didn't we get As? What the hell is your grading criteria? I guess the other guy hit a nerve that I didn't, because I didn't get a mean e-mail (although I was secretly kind of hoping for one, just to be able to bitch about it). But anyways, the prof. also said in his email that he only gave the other writer an A- because he worked hard in class, and if he'd based it on his script and his knowledge of screenwriting, it would have been "considerably lower."

What the hell kind of thing is that to write to a student? It makes me wonder, after the student evaluations came in, and after a semester of us telling the top dogs in the department what a joke this guy was, if there wasn't some pressure for him to leave. It would certainly explain the totally ridiculous amount of animosity in that email. Like, he told him that his plot was totally confusing and no one could understand it in class (not true), and that his characters were completely one-dimensional and no one in class cared about them (also not true). Like, such hyperbolic nonsense intentionally designed to wound as much as possible; one couldn't possibly take what he wrote as constructive criticism. I hope UT won't give him a recommendation any where else, should he decide to teach again. I hope we broke him, the bastard.

I was kind of hoping for just one spoiler tonight at the SAG awards, and although LMS winning ensemble is another good shot in the arm for its Best Pic chances, it looks like the acting categories are set in stone. And I know, I haven't seen Dreamgirls, there's no reason for me to have so much antipathy for Murphy and Hudson winning...but damn it, I don't want them to win Oscars. And they're going to. I mean, watching the clips for supporting actress, and you have the women from Babel just being heartbreaking and wonderful, and Abigail Breslin just holding her entire film together, and Cate Blanchett being no less magnetic and amazing than you'd expect from her, even in just 15 seconds, Hudson was clearly not as charismatic and filmic and riveting. And I know that the response will be, it was a clip where she wasn't singing; when she's singing, that's when she's great. But...that's not acting. Singing, and communicating emotions while singing, is an entirely different craft. One that's very closely tied to acting, sure, but just having it captured on film doesn't make it film acting.

I don't know. I think that the last few years, with the shorter Oscar season, there's just no room for buzz to build and ebb and wax and wane, and whoever starts the season as the frontrunner just barrels all the way through to the end, and it just ends up being very boring and anticlimactic. I get this sense that people are afraid that if they vote for anyone other than the frontrunner, they'll be wasting their votes; what difference does that make?

Yeah, I just was very bitchy after the show tonight, which is dumb, but there you have it. Thankfully, Battlestar was gorgeous and wonderful and I just want to marry Laura Roslin, so I'm in a better mood heading to bed.