Slip-sliding away

It's been some time - well, a little over two months - since I've written a movie review. And for that matter I think I've only seen one movie in that time (a DVD which I ended up not reviewing). I'm a bit disappointed in my lack of movie watching over the past year, and even more so in my subsequent lack of reviewing, but it's just difficult. When I was in college, I could watch movies pretty much whenever; the convenience of Century Theaters, plus its high variety of films, made it easy to wander over after class on as many days as I wanted to and check something out. Plus, I was taking theory courses at the time so writing reviews was practically second nature.

Nowadays it's almost become a chore. I used to get back from quiz bowl tournaments and immediately write up the recaps; now I don't even copy down my tossups. It seems to have gotten that way with movies; I still like watching movies, when I get the chance, but actually sitting down and writing a review - a process which can take several hours - has reached the point where half the time I'm not even motivated enough by the film to write one, and the other half of the time it takes me several days (where, again, I used to bang them out that same day). It's too much like work that I'm not even being paid for, as opposed to the fun hobby it used to be, and the decreasing frequency with which I write reviews is making me feel like my talents (such as they ever were) have backslid.

I don't know if there's a solution here. I want to keep watching movies and I like having opinions about them, and those opinions do often manage to manifest themselves in review form, like this review for Lord of War, which I watched on Tuesday. It's a movie whose placement on my Netflix queue dates to about a year ago, when I was still trying to catch up on the movies of 2005 for an end-of-year list that still hasn't materialized. So now I'm basically two years behind. I guess these things happen. It's not like I'm giving up movies, unlike my forthcoming quiz bowl retirement, but immersing myself in them as I did in college has become far too difficult.

The BigFlax.com 2007 NCAA Tournament Challenge is awaiting participants! So far we have a list of two (myself, Tyler), but I'm sure there are many past entrants out there ready to have another go. Check out the previous entry for more details.