A class with my name on it

For the second semester, we’re required to take two classes outside the journalism school, and I think I’ve found two good ones. Number one: “TV as Dramatic Medium” (which starts tomorrow.) Number two: “Writing Film Criticism.” Woot! I sat in on the film criticism class today, and it was unusual, to say the least. The professor is Andrew Sarris, the film critic for the New York Observer, who’s 78 years old and had previously written for the Village Voice since 1960. He’s rambly and funny and said things like “I’m on my last legs” and “I don’t want to teach this course, but they make me.”

But it seems like it’ll be fun. Every week in class, we just watch whatever movie he’ll be reviewing for the paper, then talk about it and write our own reviews for next week. I’m not sure how much I’ll actually *learn* doing this, but since I pretty much came to Columbia with the intention of one day being a movie critic, I don’t think I can pass that up. Also we get to see movies no one else has seen yet -- today we watched Anthony Minghella’s new film “Breaking and Entering” with Jude Law and Juliette Binoche. It was pretty lame – very simplistic adultery plot adorned with lots of “big ideas” that go nowhere – but I think I’ll be fun to write about. If I stick with the class, I’ll post my reviews on the blog.