Work, work, work

Achoo! All work and no play makes Andy a dull/ill/monastically self-disciplined/self-pitying/enviable boy (enviable to other workaholics). I think the self pity comes from a flu-like cough and a cold which I have picked up from University, where I have been working very hard of late. Achoo!  Usually there is a period of 'adjustment' in early October as the terms kicks in, and this year I have more to juggle than usual. Still, can't complain. Achoo!

I have also been working on the score (additional music) for a Discovery channel series which has been a lot of fun. Yesterday and today, I have been able to sit down and do my OWN composing! YES! Cough, cough. A musical which I am excited about. All the work  of late has made me realise that actually what I really want to do with my life is compose, and sometimes the other stuff can be rather distracting.

I am also trying to improve my film knowledge at the moment and am attempting to work through the canon of certain auteurs (I've just worked through about 5 Kurosawa film which I LOVED, and  at the moment its Gilliam - Brothers Grimm last night (really good in places but uneven overall), and Dr Parnassus is out at the moment so I may have a shufti at that). Then some Jeunet, Allen, Herzog.....

I set up a film club at the university, with the mission of showing a film a week where the score is of interest. Last week was Moulin Rouge, one of my favourite films - and a total of three people came. Hah! Weaklings! This weak it is another fave of mine - Steve Kloves' wonderful  The Fabulous Baker Boys (particularly looking at diegesis - Dave Grusins' awesome score is pretty fascinating in its diegetic levels).

What else to report? Um. Cough! Tom and Jerry is now 9th in the all time Film and animation category for the UK on You tube (4.3 million hits). I need to buy some better samples at the moment - a toss up between LASS and the forthcoming East/West strings both of which have fantastic reviews. I'm reading Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamasov, which, like so many nineteenth century classics I found hard to get into, but utterly unputdownable after 200 pages.