My story addiction flipped my sleeping rhythm completely upside down for at least a day. Last night after lectures I felt that I needed to relax by watching something nice and fun. After finishing a short anime series I had been rewatching the day before (Hakushaku to Yousei aka Earl and Fairy, Artland 2008), I ended up rewatchig another series.
Itazura na Kiss (TMS Entertainment, 2008) is a romantic comedy about a clumbsy, intellectually dumb (at times emotionally surprisingly clever and sensitive) girl/young woman who has a crush on - and then really falls in love with - the smartest guy in school who is also abit of a snob and quit cold at the beginning. Things happen and they get closer, go through a multitude of silly mistakes and misunderstanding as well as some quite threatening jealousy and trust issues, and finally start a family (which of course brings with it a new set of joys and problems).
Anyhow, the series is 25 episodes long, each episode running for about 24 minutes. When I began watching the first episode at around 12.30am, I was planning on watching half of the series (12 episodes) at the most before getting to sleep. Obviously, things didn't go quite as planned and I, even though I had watched Itazura na Kiss before, I got hooked and couldn't stop watching even when my eyes kept trying to shut. I ended up getting to sleep at 10 in the morning, with the last episode (which is a filler and not that important to the storyline!!!) still unwatched...
Of course I ended up sleeping for most of the day and after I got up at 4pm I've been feeling a bit unfocused. Concerning Uni work, all I got done today was going through the contents and index pages of a new book I just got for the IS. There are three articles from different writers in there that I should be able to use as academic background material for my dissertation. Besides that all the progress I can report about anything is related to the 250-project. Like I said last night - before getting completely submerged within the world of Itazura na Kiss - I did watch a 250 film today.
I had seen The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) [currently 173 on the list] in October when it was released in the cinemas. That time I thought it was a good film but nothing especially spectacular. It didn't manage to make me awed or draw me completely into the story. After the film got a vast multitude of really good reviews, grabbed most of the attention at most of the critics' awards and started generating intensive pre-Award season hype, I started to think that maybe I missed something. I figured there must be something in the film that I didn't see or pay enough attention to on the first time.
So I decided to watch it again before the Oscars and look at the film a bit more critically, in a way picking it apart in my mind while still enjoying the experience of watching it. The story is intriguing (based on the true story behind the scenes of facebook.com) but more importantly, the script really is good. Jumping back and forth in time between legal hearings and the "actual events" and also glueing separate scenes together might easily become confusing and disorienting, but Aaron Sorkin's script manages to keep things clear and connects the scenes together well with good dialogue.
Fincher has also done a great job directing the film. I read an Academy member's thoughts on voting for the Oscar winners this year on Deadline.com, and he mentioned that the rhythms that Fincher captured in The Social Network work brilliantly. I have to say I agree now that I've watched the film again after reading the Academy voter's thoughts. The combination of pictures, dialogue and music works really well throughout the film - especially in the beginning, during the jumping around with the legal hearings and with the short excursion to the Royal Henley Regatta and the rowing race. During the Regatta scene, I was also impressed by the sound editing which gave the sequence an uttely different feel from the rest of the film. It felt like a completely different world for a little while.
The Social Network still isn't my favourite from last year's films (or this year's Award nominees), but I have to admit that I do appreciate the film more now than I did when I first saw it. And considering how my opinion of it has somewhat changed with the second viewing, it is very well possible that it might change even more with time.
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