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edenfalling1. I am a creature of serial enthusiasms (and/or obsessions). I always have been. My most recent one is Inception, and following tangentially from that, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose filmography I am slowly piecing my way through. Thus far, I have watched Brick (which is perhaps best described as a high-school AU of the entire film noir genre -- and also awesome, so don't let the description put you off), and, as of last night, Mysterious Skin.
Which broke me. Completely and utterly. I thought I was doing fairly well at... remembering that it was a story, maybe? Keeping a bit of emotional breathing space? And then the last scene and Neil McCormick's final voiceover monologue just ripped away that illusion and I could not stop crying.
Mysterious Skin is a beautifully written, directed, and acted film. It is deeply empathetic toward its characters. It is as restrained and tasteful as I think it is possible to be, given the subject matter.
But, you see, it's the story of two boys who are sexually abused by their Little League coach, and how the repercussions of that play out in their lives over the next ten years... and it also includes teenage prostitution and a fairly graphic rape scene later on.
There is no way on earth for it not to be upsetting.
I think I am going to watch 10 Things I Hate About You next. I need something cheerful and relatively mindless to balance me out.
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2. Today was the last day of regular RE classes untill fall. As such, we had no lesson plan and were provided with apple juice and popcorn in order to hold a class party. Also, when I was doing the teacher scheduling last fall, I wrote all four of us in for today, since I figured it would be nice to get everyone together at the end of the year.
Since a party is a somewhat dangerously unstructured way of filling an hour, we opened in the usual fashion -- chalice lighting, pass the squeeze, joys & sorrows, gems of goodness, chalice extinguishing -- and then handed out food and drink. We then spent five to ten minutes prompting the kids to reminisce about stuff we've done this year, after which I stepped up to tell a story.
My go-to book in these situations is (and probably always will be) Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, because they are a joy to read aloud and also reliably entertaining for kids ranging in age from five to ten. Today I read "The Beginning of Armadillos," with occasional pauses for interactivity and also a brief interruption when the DRE came by to hand out decorative buttons to the teachers. (Which was a nice thought, but rather awkward timing.)
All in all, it has been a good year. But next year I'd like to get back to teaching first grade instead of second or third.
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3. Having cut my hair, it occurred to me that I have always harbored a vague urge to dye it some ridiculous color, just for the hell of it. And since I figure that that sort of temporary insanity is best done before one turns thirty (if you are dyeing your hair on a regular basis, age limits of course cease to apply, but I am classing this impulse as "youthful folly" and working from there), I had better hurry and get it done before next February. (Also, since my hair is now very, very short, the dyed bits will grow out in a couple months so I will not be saddled with the color very long should I end up hating the results.)
MS has offered to look into hair dye options for me. \o/
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ETA: WARNING for discussion of potentially triggery subjects in the comments on the LJ version of this post.
Which broke me. Completely and utterly. I thought I was doing fairly well at... remembering that it was a story, maybe? Keeping a bit of emotional breathing space? And then the last scene and Neil McCormick's final voiceover monologue just ripped away that illusion and I could not stop crying.
Mysterious Skin is a beautifully written, directed, and acted film. It is deeply empathetic toward its characters. It is as restrained and tasteful as I think it is possible to be, given the subject matter.
But, you see, it's the story of two boys who are sexually abused by their Little League coach, and how the repercussions of that play out in their lives over the next ten years... and it also includes teenage prostitution and a fairly graphic rape scene later on.
There is no way on earth for it not to be upsetting.
I think I am going to watch 10 Things I Hate About You next. I need something cheerful and relatively mindless to balance me out.
---------------
2. Today was the last day of regular RE classes untill fall. As such, we had no lesson plan and were provided with apple juice and popcorn in order to hold a class party. Also, when I was doing the teacher scheduling last fall, I wrote all four of us in for today, since I figured it would be nice to get everyone together at the end of the year.
Since a party is a somewhat dangerously unstructured way of filling an hour, we opened in the usual fashion -- chalice lighting, pass the squeeze, joys & sorrows, gems of goodness, chalice extinguishing -- and then handed out food and drink. We then spent five to ten minutes prompting the kids to reminisce about stuff we've done this year, after which I stepped up to tell a story.
My go-to book in these situations is (and probably always will be) Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, because they are a joy to read aloud and also reliably entertaining for kids ranging in age from five to ten. Today I read "The Beginning of Armadillos," with occasional pauses for interactivity and also a brief interruption when the DRE came by to hand out decorative buttons to the teachers. (Which was a nice thought, but rather awkward timing.)
All in all, it has been a good year. But next year I'd like to get back to teaching first grade instead of second or third.
---------------
3. Having cut my hair, it occurred to me that I have always harbored a vague urge to dye it some ridiculous color, just for the hell of it. And since I figure that that sort of temporary insanity is best done before one turns thirty (if you are dyeing your hair on a regular basis, age limits of course cease to apply, but I am classing this impulse as "youthful folly" and working from there), I had better hurry and get it done before next February. (Also, since my hair is now very, very short, the dyed bits will grow out in a couple months so I will not be saddled with the color very long should I end up hating the results.)
MS has offered to look into hair dye options for me. \o/
---------------
ETA: WARNING for discussion of potentially triggery subjects in the comments on the LJ version of this post.
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Date: 2011-05-31 01:44 am (UTC)YES. And I think this is why I got the sense that this one would work much more as a movie; because it is such a difficult process to leave things unverbalized in a book - because, y'know, book - and there's kind of a limit, but in a movie with the right actors and the right production - which this had - there's a lot more freedom to get a point across without saying it. Especially since in the movie it doesn't feel like he actually articulates the fact that he's wrong, even to himself, until the end, and it would take an incredibly deft hand to manage that in a book (especially first-person).
And I didn't realize that other characters got to narrate in the book. I'm kind of torn about the general idea, to be honest, because it does sound like it would kind of splinter the focus and dull the impact - especially if some of it's from people who have no idea - so taking them out of the main story sounds like it would be write, but the same part of my brain that likes fanfic is going "Wendy gets to talk? Eric gets to talk? His sister gets to talk? GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEWANT.
It also sounds like they didn't explore whether a dysfunctional but supportive group of friends is better than isolation in a fairly normal family, which is something that looks like it could be set up pretty easily in there.