A week in the dark and a month full of books

Long time no blog...well only a month really but I currently find myself a little lost having come to the library to work on my thesis only to find I left the USB drive on which it dwells at home and it is only saved to my other laptop. Sure my house is only a couple of blocks from the library but I'm a slacker and would rather blog instead. And today my blog turns to what I have been up to over the last few weeks and what I will be up to over the next month.

It will come as little shock to anyone who knows me that if there was such a thing as Cinema Goers Anonymous that I would have to sign up and declare "Hi, my name is Clare and I watch too many movies". On average I go to the cinema at least twice at month and in some months you would push that closer to four or five times. I'm very selective in what I watch. Steering clear of the big budget blockbusters of the most part (the names James Cameron and Steven Spielberg will likely send me running in the opposite direction), I tend towards the oddball films, the indie films, the films by cult directors and the films in foreign languages. Where am I going with this? Well to the Sydney Film Festival. Growing up in Wollongong, I had this image that film festivals were somewhat beyond the reach of the common people. Sure we got the free guide to the festival with the Sydney Morning Herald once a year but still it didn't sink in. When I made the move to Sydney, I finally figured it out that just about anyone could fork over the money and rock up to a film festival (well possibly not in Cannes or Sundance, though I could be wrong about that too). Every year since then I have spent two weeks or more recently a little over one week (the film was shortened a few years ago) sitting in the dark watching films of varying quality in numerous languages. The first two years I attended I saw over 20 films (the first year close to 30 and also spent a day watching short films as part of the short film awards for the festival), then I cut it back to around 15, then last year only 3. This year I was back up at 12 films but I doubt I'll climb over 15 again until I retire- 30 films in two weeks takes a lot out of you especially if you are working full time in a job that has nothing to do with movies. Going to a film at a film festival holds a certain allure that seeing the same film at a regular screening does not and this even holds true of the films for the Sydney festival that are screened not at the gorgeous State Theatre but instead at Greater Union George St or the Dendy in Circular Quay. If you are a film nerd, you are surrounded by fellow film nerds and you get to hear snippets of conversation about the decline in quality of modern cinema from one country, the emergence of another country as a cinematic powerhouse, etc., etc. You get the feeling of power of voting for a film and knowing that your vote (be it good or bad) will come into play as part of the audience awards for the festival- this year two films I voted for quite strongly (Tucker and Dale Vs Evil and Even the Rain) finished in the top 5 for the audience award though neither took top spot. You get to see films that may not wind up getting a cinematic release on the big screen in Australia (a few years ago I saw one of the only big screen showing of Grace is Gone a very touching film which thanks to poor US box office went straight to DVD in Australia, and three years ago I feel in love with the UK film Unmade Beds, which never got a box office release here and which I only located on DVD three months ago) and you'll get to see others long before the general public (I saw the Australian film, Wasted on the Young, almost a full year before it got to the cinema here, and the brilliant US film and bigtime Oscar contender, The Kids Are Alright over three months before it was released here). Finally you might get to see someone famous- I've seen Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Bryan Brown (OK not as famous as the first two but he's just the most Aussie actor ever so I have to include him), Mia Wasikowska and (insert excited scream) Ewan McGregor, and back in 2007 I almost literally ran into Russell Crowe. As I said the films aren't all good (terrible ones included the Portuguese film Eccentricities of a Blond Haired Girl, the German made-for-TV series of films Dreileben (I left before the third of the three films, I was so bored) and several overblown period pieces from all over the place), some are down right strange (David Lynch's Inland Empire was mighty perplexing and even four years on I couldn't tell you if I liked it) and some are disturbing (Redacted is a brilliant film on the Iraq war but you couldn't watch it twice and it kicks you hard in the guts the first time- lots of people walked out at every festival it screened at and its box office was pretty poor when it got general release too). At the same time, it also has introduced me to some of my favourite films in recent years and while some like Once, Sukiyaki Western Django, Death at a Funeral, The Trip500 Days of Summer and The Kids are Alright I probably would have watched at the cinema anyway, I will be eternally thankfully to the Sydney Film Festival for showing me films like Shut Up and Sing (the wonderful doco about the Dixie Chicks), Even the Rain, Beautiful Kate (I may be Australian but Australian cinema especially set in rural climes isn't usually my cup of tea) and You, the Living which I wouldn't necessarily have looked into otherwise (especially the first one), and films like Unmade Beds and the French film, I Always Wanted to be a Gangster which I never would got the chance to see.  So I say to you, film goers of the blog world, if you get the chance get to a film festival....if audience make up during the day time seasons is anything to go by, we'll all end up going to them when we retire in any case.

Sign at the State duing the 2010 Sydney Film Festival

So that was my last few weeks, what of my next month? Back when I was a kid, I LOVED the MS Readathon- for those not in the know, the MS Readathon is an annual fundraiser for the MS Society in Australia (I'm not sure if overseas branches of the society do similar) in which primary school aged children are challenged to read as many book as they can in a month and adults sponsor them an amount per book and the funds raised go towards research into multiple sclerosis and helping individuals who suffer from it. I'm not sure if it was being asked to read for a good cause or that I was committed to raising money to help people suffering from a debilitating illness or, even, that raising particular amounts of money got you some kind of prize. I think it was a combo though shamefully the last one definitely factored in because, as my parents still remind me whenever the MS Readathon is mentioned in their presence and I'm there, I used to "cheat" including not only novels appropriate to my age but also things like Grug and Mr Men books when I was in the upper years of primary school. This week I discovered that the MS Readathon now has an adult section called the Novel Challenge and though the allure of prizes for reading has faded (in fact there aren't any) I've jumped on the band wagon. The Novel Challenge asks adults to read as many novels as possible over a 30 day period in July, August or September and to get people to sponsor them for the same- though not per books as you would a child. They even have a few recommended lists of ten books for people to aim at (I say books not novels as almost all the list they suggest contain works of autobiography or comedy or other forms of non-fiction, and therefore aren't technically novels). If people don't want to read one of their list, they can make their own. I'm doing the latter as the lists which do not contain books I've already read are heavy on the click lit or include Clive Clussler and therefore aren't my cup of tea. I encourage everyone else to join the fun and maybe one of their lists will appeal to you- though I would say steer clear of their classics list which contains both Anna Karenina and Don Quixiote either of which you'd be hard pressed to finish on its own in a month, let alone both of them and several others. My list will be as follows and I do think that there is a strong chance I won't get through all of them in a month and may have to read them over three as the MS Society website suggests is a possibility (I'm still aiming for the month though):

• The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• Maya by Jostein Gaarder
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
• Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship
  by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit (I'm worried this one might get a bit chick lit like but it sounds interesting nonetheless)
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I've read none of them (I know some will be shocked that I haven't read the last one) and I think it is wide spread of genres by a diverse group of authors. If you decide after reading this post to participate in the Novel Challenge you are welcome to steal some or all of my list if you want- though I will say it is a very Clare list. If you don't want to join but would like to back me as I attempt the task of getting through these in a month, you can donate at http://register.thenovelchallenge.org.au/The-Novel-Challenge/clarewoodley . I started yesterday and currently I'm around a third of the way through The Twenty-Seventh City which I'm loving even though it is quite different from what I was expecting after having read The Corrections. I will update on here as I go so blog may become increasingly book focused in the next month.

The pile of books for the MS Novel Challenge- all but the last two books which I only decided on today and one of which I don't have as yet.