A bit of a funk and WHAT'S IN STORE.

I'm in a bit of a funk today. The weather is dismally gray, my ladyfriend returned to San Francisco, and the looming list of "things I have to do" before my giant move at the end of next month is growing steadily more urgent. Thus my head is sort of wrapped in an even more distracted haze of thoughts, heightened by a fitful night of lonesome sleeping. Don't fret though readers, this gloomy haze will disperse and my cynical self will once again reemerge.

For now, I'm going to preview the next five or so films in the Criterion Collection and gauge my level of excitement for these upcoming flicks.

WHAT'S IN STORE:

Film: Rushmore (65)
Director: Wes Anderson

This was the second Criterion film I owned and one of the films I credit with turning me in to a film junkie early in my high school career. I've watched this and every other Wes Anderson film on repeat time and time and time again, and I've nothing but love and more love and than a healthy dollop of dirty love to shower upon it. I'm actually a little bit drooly right now just thinking about writing about Rushmore (65). Yeah that's right, thinking about movies makes my mouth salivate like a Pavlovian dog, you got a problem?

Film(s): The Orphic Trilogy (66-68)
Director: Jean Cocteau

Phew, here's hoping that the excitement lingering over from Rushmore (65) will have enough oomph to get me through these next three films by famed Frenchie Jean Cocteau. The descriptions of the films talks about the strained line between "artist and their creations" and pictures half-naked men in cemetaries talking to statues. Pretensious, I believe is the word. But, hey, lets be honest, last time I poo-pooed any sort of old French film, I fell in live with The Passion of Joan of Arc (62) so I'll pre-shit on this one with much trepidation.

Film: The Last Temptation of Christ (70)
Director: Martin Scorsese

I never know exactly what to do with this film in Scorsese's ouerve. I'm a dedicated Scorsese fan but my previous attempt at powering through this one found me curled up in to a fetal position, half-awake. It's a long, dense film about Jesus, surely a light chaser after three French films about art. It's Scorsese though, and I'm a little more growed up than I was when I first viewed it, so, hey, maybe it'll blow my mind. Maybe.

Film: The Magic Flute (71)
Director: Ingmar Bergman

Holy Jesus, three French films, a three hour film about religion and now another Ingmar Bergman flick? Somebody at old Criterion must've had the pretensious setting on the air-conditioning set to "high". Luckily this film doesn't have a boring sounding premise at all: a Swedish retelling of a Mozart composition ... oh, shit, I lied, that sounds terribly boring.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Whoa, if I can finish this onslaught of artsiness in the next two months, let alone by the end of the year, I'll be shocked, baffled even. But hell, I'm trying to complete a quest here, and this is the part in the quest where I have to fight a fire-breathing dragon wearing nothing but a loincloth. Color me not amused.