I got out of bed this morning and put the finishing touches on my final project for Touch of Evil before heading to campus. I made an appointment with Dru to record some commentary audio for a track he's putting together. I met him at Innis and a few girls from the class eventually showed as well.

You know, I don't think I've ever mentioned what the movie is about.

Touch of Evil was screenwritten and directed by Orson Welles in 1958. It stars Charlton Heston as a Mexican narcotics officer named Miguel "Mike" Vargas who has just sent a prominent drug lord from the Grandi family to prison on a trafficking rap. Janet Leigh stars as Suzie, Vargas' new wife. The two are on their honeymoon and are passing through the American bordertown of Los Robles when a car coming from the Mexican side of the border explodes just after exiting customs, killing American industrialist tycoon Rudy Linnekar and a stripper from one of the local joints. Vargas involves himself in the murder investigation which is led by American police captain Hank Quinlan, who is played by Welles. Quinlan, obsessed with his own reputation and the death of his wife at the hands of a "half-breed," is racist against Mexicans and plants evidence to frame a Mexican named Sanchez who is romantically involved with Linnekar's daughter. Vargas figures out that Quinlan is crooked and spends the rest of the movie tying to prove it. Meanwhile, Suzie finds herself terrorized by the Grandi family (including Uncle Joe Grandi, played by Akim Tamiroff), who prominently reside and operate businesses in Los Robles, as a means of gaining revenge on her husband.

It's about as complicated as it sounds. Needless to say, it warrants repeat viewings and is pretty ripe for theoretical discourse, especially given the circumstances of its production and release. But I'll spare those details.

I handed in the webpage on CD, recorded the stuff and made arrangements with Dru and Alicia to see Juno at the Varsity later on. After returning some books at Robarts and sending an email to Professor Columpar about possibly continuing work on the project next semester, I walked to the Cumberland Plaza and did some Christmas shopping to kill time before the movie. I picked up some gift certificates at Indigo for Steve and my Aunt, as well as some CD's for Holly and my mom. That covers about half my list.

Juno is an amazing film, one of those rare combinations of witty writing, exceptional acting and a quirky quality that wins your heart. I quite enjoy films that take a skewed look at a very simple topic while leaving the emotional fabric intact. Ellen Page, by the way, is incredible. This was the third film I've seen her in and I'm constantly blown away by her fierce ability to play characters who are confident yet not at all self-aware - she completely drains all traces of irony out of her roles, and that's what makes her amazing. Her character in Juno uses elaborate dialogue yet delivers it youthfully while at no point paying any attention to how intelligent she is. I wish she'd been in every teen movie ever produced.

It was nice to hang out with folks. After the movie I walked home from Keele station and had dinner while watching The Simpsons before heading online and looking over some old pictures of Mod Clubs gone by. Tomorrow is Adam's 30th birthday party, an affair I'm joining halfway through for dinner, some stand-up comedy, and of course, beer.

Nothing like a little Facebook profile trolling to pass the time. I'm trying to grab the rest of Ken Andrews' solo album off the net, as well as some Of Montreal. My computer is still running a little slow and stuttering despite defragging it a couple of times and running virus scanners to knock out malware. Hopefully it will stay the course well enough to get me through my presentation in Touch of Evil next week.

I had that class today. The title of my presentation is going to be "Memo-rizing Touch of Evil: The Execution and Effect of Orson Welles' Intentions." I signed a book of Walter Murch (who was responsible for the re-edit) and Michael Ondaatje (who just pulled off yet another GG win for the amazing Divisadero) interviews out from the Innis library, which bring the total number of libraries to which I owe books to three. Innis isn't really much of a library, though. It's two floor of stacks along a single wall. Really, it barely warrants the staircase leading to its "computer lab" of two terminals. Innis is a strange building.

After class I went for sushi with Eileen and Tony and talked a bit about grad school. I'm starting to think that I should talk with some of my professors about continuing my studies. I think my slipping confidence in academia is influenced by the fact that I'm not really studying anything that echoes the grad proposal I was submitting to universities and organizations a year ago. I thought I'd be knee-deep in positioning Coupland in a natinal canon by now; instead, the closest I'm coming to a Canadian text all year is the story of a young man's role in a Communist war in Ethiopia. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying African-Canadian Literature, but it's only a small fraction of where my research interests lie. The ironic thing is I've got two people who are incredibly renowned for their work in the field of Canadian studies, and one of them is teaching me about European Opera and speaking a language of music that I can't comprehend.

The other, of course, is George Elliott Clarke, who presented on his own work today and read some of the poetry in Execution Poems, which was great to see. Clarke is a great poet, there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure if he's a great professor. I don't feel as though the ideas I brought to the table, when I felt brave enough to bring them, were given the kind of feedback I receive in other classes. Clarke is a great man, a nice guy, and a passionate speaker. I learned a lot from the texts, but I felt that there was so much more to get at in the course. I still don't feel as if I can tie Africadian studies into a more general, overarching Canadian context as effectively as I may have wanted to. I wanted to learn as much about Canada as I did about African-Canadians, and I felt that the course didn't achieve that. But the blame for that rests equally on my shoulders. I've always found that courses are in large part what you make them, and I hung on for the ride too often.

I have the class evaluations sitting on my bed because the drop-off office was closed when I went by. I'll drop them off before I meet with the Opera folks for the table-read tomorrow. After I got home I watched episode four of The War, which detailed the events of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France and coverage of the brutal battles with the Japanese on the Mariana Islands which contained some of the most violent footage in the series so far. Hearing the veterans talk about the war is a really emotional experience that fully enriches the documentary. Keith David also does a great job narrating.