NSI FilmExchange 2

Last night at the FilmExchange, came home early instead of attending parties. I know, I know, I'm lame, but I'm burnt out. This week I attended a lot of festival stuff, entertained my visiting parents, defended my M.A. thesis (successfully, thank you), accepted an offer of admission to a Ph.D. program in English (with some Film thrown in) at the University of Calgary, on top of all the usual things. Haven't been sleeping well, been super busy, super exhausted, and tomorrow have a full day of interviewing filmmakers (Daniel Eskin & Sean Garrity, separately) & writing articles (DVD review, interviews, horoscopes, art show reviews, etc.) so I just need some sleep. Also supposed to attend a punk rock show where Pat's band Under Pressure will be playing (www.underpressure.n3.net). Watched Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire today, along with most of the short films program (in the hotel screening room) & also saw Noam Gonick's Stryker, which struck me as a film that had a lot of interesting ideas and some good comedy in it but suffered from poor acting & a bad script. The story was good but just not realized well enough. I would like to see Gonick go back to short films and hone his talents some more before tackling another feature. I think he has a lot of good, interesting ideas but I just don't think he's a good enough director yet to realize them effectively.