Four months. Has it really been so long?

Apparently so. But in hopes of bringing this blog back on the regular, I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for new writing projects. Back in winter of this year, I gave myself goals for this blog that ended up a little too time intensive and ambitious. The biggest project I had in mind was a long-term series of posts comparing novels to their film adaptations. While I’d still like to bring that idea back at some point, I found myself way over my head trying to organize even my first essay in that series – which happened to be about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a complex beast of a film in its own right and which could hardly be any further from its source material. So I’m setting the bar a little lower for now, with some posts that aren’t necessarily daily, but hopefully a little more frequent than seasonal or annual updates. Here’s what I have planned for the short term:

• Movie impressions/reviews. I’m making my way through a long list of movies that I’ve never seen yet, so I figure I’ll do a bit of writing while I’m at it. I’ll keep it simple: just a couple paragraphs on my thoughts about each movie. That includes elements and themes that stand out to me, my overall impressions on the film and whether I’d be interested in seeing the movie again, plus maybe some trivia and theories I come across while reading more about the film, which I tend to do with movies and other works. I’ll keep all posts in this series spoiler-free in case readers are interested in seeing these movies themselves.
• Finally Watching Anime. The title is a joke, and possibly just a placeholder until I think of something less lame. I currently live in Japan and have been studying the Japanese language for over five years now. I’ll admit that one of the things that got me interesting in learning Japanese when I was younger was video games and some things I had read about translation and localization. But I never got too deep into the anime fandom, even though I’ve had a vague interest in it for some time. I could probably count all the anime series and movies I’ve seen on my fingers. So to get myself more ‘caught up’ on anime about ten years behind many of my friends, I’m planning to watch some anime series and movies and write about them here. Studio Ghibli seems to be a good starting point. The posts will probably be similar in style and length to the other movie reviews, but I might not hesitate so much to give spoilers in anime posts if there are particular things I want to discuss. Posts with spoilers will be marked with a disclaimer at the top just in case.
• Some book analysis/reviews? I’m not so sure about this one, but we’ll see. I usually take meticulous notes when reading difficult texts, so I may write some brief essays or book reviews if I read something particularly interesting. I’ve had a copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow on my shelf for a while now. The novel is quite long, and I hear it’s so complex that undergrad classmates of mine used to vent about having the text assigned in ten-week English courses. Knowing that, I may tackle that novel with a pen and paper in hand and make interpreting that text its own mini-series.

So that’s what I have planned for now. I appreciate anyone who reads these posts, and feedback is always welcome if you want to make me check my emails to approve your non-spam comments. Looking forward to a more productive four months going forward!