Field Trip City

I discovered that I'd already completed my Opera readings for the week, so I struck those out of my plans today. I'll have a bunch to do for TOEP as it is, tomorrow.

In that work's stead I watched Gangs of New York, which I hadn't seen in a few years. I do enjoy Scorcese immensely, though I'm not as big a fan of his gangster pictures. Don't get me wrong - I liked Goodfellas, but it's not as good a film as The Aviator. The Departed, though, probably IS my favorite Scorcese. Beginning with Gangs of New York and continuing on through present day, Scorcese's been taking DiCaprio through the ringer. I've always liked DiCaprio as an actor, although he's received so much flack for being pretty. Scorcese saw it too and helped him along immensely. "Gangs" is a good film if you're looking for blood and bravado, and juxtaposes gang warfare with anti-draft mob mentality very well. Daniel Day-Lewis is nightmarishly good (literally, I once had a dream about the character he plays), and even Cameron Diaz doesn't blow her part.

I also watched Alien vs. Predator. It wasn't as bad as it *could* have been, but you know what you're getting yourself into when you sit down to watch a flick called "Alien vs. Predator". Scott did the think-piece Alien flick perfectly, and Cameron did the cocks-out actioner Alien flick perfectly. Obviously, you can't beat those guys with anything modern. Incidentally, Ewen Bremner from Trainspotting has been in a handful of films I've seen recently, including this one and The Rundown. At least I know he's still acting.

I worked a bit more on the grant, and the first draft the writing material is done. Tomorrow I'll work on supplementary materials like pictures, images and whatnot. Hopefully I'll be able to submit it sometime this week and not worry about the next one until the middle of November.