What the adults had told me when I was young turns out to be right: the older you get, the faster the time flies. I will be 29 after about two months, and I can feel that more than ever. Within a minute, I may find myself being 30. They say the average age of the mankind is increasing, but I have lots of regrets about what I failed to do during last 29 years.

As I told you in last year, I have been busy with reconstructing my academic life with what was left with me during this year. Though it was not my idea, I started my research work with based on some idea for my dissertation because there was not much time for me(Don’t worry, the guys providing me an idea have already gotten a diploma and they did not care about that, so they won’t sue me). I made several mistakes during the process, but there have also have been progresses, and the estranged relationship between me and my advisor professor is nearly restored(no, we did not marry), though he is not so sure about what path I will choose after I get a degree.

To be frank with you, I have been blogging in this site while not telling anyone around me about my private activity. I do exactly as the professor tells me in the lab, but I have always managed to find the time for watching movies and writing about some of them which I thought were worthwhile to write about. At least, if I am really busy, I choose to do what I have to do rather than watching movies and writing reviews, and I think that is the improvement for a guy who wrote more than 350 reviews during 2009. Talk about a recovering “movieholic”.

Anyway, I am happy to see that my academic life is restored with some promise and hope. Even when I was enjoying movies in the dark, I was pretty miserable in the light, but the things are getting better now. If I try harder, I will be able to present the proposal for my thesis during the next semester, and then I will submit my dissertation later around next winter. Then maybe I can attend 2013 Ebertfest if the situation is good for me and I can persuade my parents.

2011 is a good year for the moviegoers like as usual, and I enjoyed writing the reviews on the films directed by Danny Boyle, the Coen Brothers, Darren Aronofsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, David O. Russell, Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Werner Herzog, Barbet Schroeder, Abbas Kiarostmai, Joe Dante, Hong Sang-soo, Steven Soderbergh, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Terrence Malick, Brad Bird, Steven Spielberg, and other new exciting films. I have not watched “Hugo”, “Shame”, “Take Shelter”, “The Artist”(it will be released here around February), “The Descendants” (it will also be released here around February), “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, “Carnage”, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, “Kinyarwanda”, “The Guard”(I am going to watch it in this week), “We Need to Talk about Kevin”(I am going to watch it tonight), and the remake version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”(It will be released here around early January). I will probably watch them soon, and I will mention them in the special section reserved for them if I like them.