dreaming of film

current music: An American in Paris, George Gershwin

hm i realized i fell behind a little this weekend, on blogging, cutting weight, advancing my way through life. i did come out ahead in a few ways, but whatever. first, i really enjoy reading other peoples' blog updates, and i think most people put much more genuine effort into them that me. my sad posts about mario mashups are looking quite lazy compared to rene's about music videos. that's why i'm going to squeeze out a few thoughts tonight before i start the weekly grind again tomorrow morning.

today, at rene and jordan's, we watched Paprika today over ribs and handmade pizza, and tsingtao beer. it was an interesting mix of western bbq and foods, and asian alcohol and culture. the whole time i thought the animation style and character design looked alot like the Hobbit from 1977. as a movie, Paprika caused me to start thinking about the link between dreams and filmmaking, a pairing that has more commonalities than you think. in the course of the movie, i realized that a sleeping person is almost a director and actor in the movie of his own dreams. but beyond that simple idea, there wasn't too much exposition about dreams and film; the rest of the anime was strange and disturbing, a vivid expression of japanese beliefs in the supernatural.

the one part i really liked in the film was the moment when detective kogawa explains about the camera line to paprika. that made me remember the lessons on camera and film technique from when i took the film experience, and i realized that i had really enjoyed the film classes we took. maybe it was just a response of an engineering mind to an artistic medium. i am drawn to film because it is something so visual and emotional that can still have such a structured discipline behind it. then, thinking back on it, i took a lot of film classes (4) in order to get my film concentration. maybe i have some experience and background in this field, and should pursue it more.

i guess, looking back on my MIT experience, i actually did take a lot of different classes in the 5 years i was here. i have a minor in BME, meaning i must have taken enough bio/chemistry classes to have actually gained some knowledge as a biomedical engineering student. i took two semesters of chinese and learned enough to write a letter home; i took one semester of japanese, just enough to stand up and shout nonsense in japanese. and as for the rest of my course 6 experience, it's all lead me on one glorious road to my current career path, which i feel is like having done turning kicks for the past three years, and maybe now i realize that i should be working on some other kicks. and in the end, you can always condense my life down to taekwondo.