Ariellalphabet’s Week- Screenwriting, Sully and Stanley Kubrick

This week has seen my highly anticipated return to university, as my course has finally started up again. Since I have no exams to do, I get a longer break over Christmas and close to the end of the second semester. After the first two weeks or so I didn’t mind all the time off, but I got sick of it pretty quickly! However, on Monday I finally started again, and had my first Screenwriting seminar! It was great fun coming up with random script ideas with the people in my class and discussing how we came up with ideas (a lot of mine are based on the weird dreams I have. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll probably notice me talking about them from time to time!) and we discussed assignments and a variety of other things. After my seminar, I met up with my friend Eleanor for a catch-up and to discuss plans for the following year, as she’ll be moving in with us/joining the madness. Either way, we’re both pretty excited! When I got back from uni on Monday, I spent most of my afternoon/evening watching more of the HBO series Girls (I’m almost caught up now. It’s getting good!) and stitching up a dress. Aside from that, I didn’t get much else done on Monday. I tweeted about ideas for comics since it was a pretty slow comics week and got some brilliant feedback. My followers are awesome! 

On Tuesday I went out with one of my friends to see Monsters Inc in 3D! It’s funny, the last time I saw it was in cinema with Robin and my Dad when it first came out! It looks so great in 3D, and it’s just as funny as I remember. Sully was always my favourite!  I had another chance to check out the Blue Cross sale in HMV and came out with a treasure trove of horror films. I (finally) bought Halloween, The Nightmare On Elm Street and a boxset with three of the four Scream films and a whole load of special features. I’m so excited to watch them all! I ended up watching (or half-watching, as the case was) The Nightmare On Elm Street with Daryl on Tuesday night as neither of us had seen it… However,  we ended up talking and discussing an idea I’d had for a script and so we missed most of it, apart from a young Johnny Depp being eaten by his bed in an explosion of gore and blood in quite possibly the worst way to die. 

Wednesday saw me back at uni again on the Film Narrative segment of my course, where I watched (and managed to stay awake!) an Alfred Hitchcock film called The 39 Steps, which was pretty good and very enjoyable. After uni I headed over to the comic shop, and despite the incredibly slow week it had been for comics, I came out with Glory #32, which I bought mostly for the Emi Lenox contribution. Having read Emitown over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten absolutely hooked on her adorable artwork and cute storytelling. Wednesday saw the return of House Game Night, where me, my housemates and Eleanor get together and play a variety of board games, most of which we’ve come across through Geek and Sundry’s brilliant Tabletop series. However, this week was a little different: instead of playing Munchkin Quest like we usually do, Eleanor brought Coppit and the ‘updated’ version of Monopoly. We played Coppit pretty quickly, but in typical Monopoly style, our game lasted for roughly four hours with no sight to end! The only reason we packed up was because Eleanor had to get the last bus back to her house. Throughout the game, Robin and Daryl dominated, building hotels as far as the eye could see, whereas I bought Soho and became Queen Of The Hipsters. It was, as always a fun night! 

Zombies!!! Board game

Thursday was my second day off during the week, so as usual, I spent the day relaxing, and did some shopping. I headed into town and picked up Adventure Time #12 from the comic shop which I forgot to buy the day before, got talked into buying the last volume of Scott Pilgrim, finally bought a new purse, and picked up a new board game to add to the roster for House Game Night. I also picked up two of my assignments that I handed in shortly before Christmas, and despite being super nervous about them (as I am about all of my academic work) I did pretty well! When I got back from town, Robin, Daryl and I had a prelim game of Zombies!!! The game I’d picked up in town earlier that day, and it was pretty fun! It’ll definitely be a fun addition to house games night. 



I was back at uni on Friday, and started the Performance and The Big Screen part of this semester. The introductory lecture was pretty fun, and it turns out my lecturer is a big fan of Ryan Gosling, so we’re watching two films with him in, much to the delight of a lot of the girls in my class. I however, have no idea who he is, so I guess I’ll find out! As part of the lecture, we watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (a film that I somehow hadn’t seen before) which was amazing, and I really can’t fault Jack Nicholson’s performance at all. He was incredible in the role of McMurphy. After a quick lunch break, it was back into seminars where we discussed performance and what makes a good actor great and what makes a bad actor terrible- suffice to say, Kristen Stewart’s unmoving face was discussed! When I got back home, I found that Volume 2 of Emitown had been delivered! I spent the rest of the evening reading through it, and it was brilliant. I plan on writing up a full review later next week to talk about it more, as I really can’t do it justice here. Suffice to say it was amazing, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of autobio comics, cutesiness, and fans of comics on the whole! Once I’d read through Emitown, Robin, Daryl and I sat down to watch Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, another film that I had somehow not seen, and it was creepy! Despite having seen it parodied in no end of TV programmes (Spaced and The Simpsons spring to mind!) you really can’t beat the intense creepiness of it. Redrum! 

Cover to Sweet Tooth #1. Art by Jeff Lemire.

Over the weekend, I’ve been relaxing, sleeping, and writing up blogs. I’ve got my next two Spotlight On Indie posts planned, a special post for Valentine’s Day, and I’ve been brainstorming ideas for more blogs, as well as thinking of script ideas for my course. On Saturday night I watched A Clockwork Orange, (which was pretty darn brutal, but a very good watch) and finally got round to reading Jeff Lemire’s excellent Sweet Tooth series. It’s typical, every time I start reading a comic or start liking a character, the comic ends or something terrible happens to the character! All bad timing aside, I thoroughly enjoyed Sweet Tooth, and come summer, I’ll be wearing my red checked shirt with pride. 

Also, good news! I am going to be on two podcasts at some point in the future, which I'm very excited for. As soon as they're recorded and uploaded, I'll post links.

Thanks for reading! 

This week’s posts:

Spotlight On Plastic Farm

Follow me on Twitter- @Ariellalphabet