Time to pop in with an update:

Only three weeks left until my film noir exam and I’ve got to the point of saturation. As much as I enjoy studying film, I don’t like exams. This is the first exam I’ve had in about 15 years … I’m worried my writing hand will seize up! Still, things are on track and coupled with some good assessment, I think I’m ahead of the game.

I have decided to do my thesis part-time over two years. Trying to cram a thesis in one year whilst holding down a full-time job and juggling family commitments does not sound like good idea … it is supposed to be fun after all. I feel happy with this decision and am very much looking forward to starting. I have been in contact with the course co-ordinator and presented some tentative areas I’m interested in working on:

Cinema and the child culture: filmed alienation. Children’s catharsis through films containing dark fantasy (refer to Sendak’s comment that “Disney is bad for children” and Le Guin’s article on the Child and the Shadow). Films concerning children concepts of fantasy, the blurring of reality and its depiction of escapism, trauma, and the use of fantasy as a coping method. Post-modern cinema that explores children’s ‘psychological reality’. Depictions of children’s concept of death, life, and reality.

or the more accessible and contained

The visual methods of creating alienation and paranoia in films by Darren Aronofsky.

Im leaning toward the latter but I’ve yet to be paired with a supervisor and am looking forward to bouncing some ideas off him/her.

I’ll be back to my regular updates and film reviews after my exam. In the meantime, I have seen the following Hunger Games (surprisingly impressed), Hotel Transylvania (ho hum), The Conversation (Fantastic! Best movie I’ve seen in the while), China Town (deserves to be labelled a classic), and a revisit of Memento (great film which is actually better the second time around!)