After my doctor's appointment at Yale this morning, I stopped by the Brewery Street post office in New Haven to mail some packages. While I was there I couldn't resist picking up a sheet of the new Frida stamps.

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."

~ Frida Kahlo

Once upon a time, back in the late 1980s, I was taking an undergrad "introduction to film" class. In addition to watching 2 - 3 films during class time each week, we were expected to attend the weekly foreign films at the student center theater. One of the first ones I went to see was Frida, a Mexican film. I had never heard of Frida Kahlo before I saw it. The film was very confusing, but visually stunning.

Since then I have become a lot more familiar with Frida's painting and life story. And now I see they are making another movie about her, starring Salma Hayak. Antonio Banderas is also in the cast. It's slated for release in 2002.

I must have watched over 50 movies during the ten weeks of my film class. Some of the other films I remember seeing that quarter:

• Salaam Bombay!
  
• Badlands
  
• Don't Look Now
  
• Down by Law
  
• Weekend
  
• Au Revoir les Enfants
  
• Something Wild
  
• Five Easy Pieces
  
• The Stunt Man
  
• Nashville
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• West Side Story
  
• Lawrence of Arabia
  
• One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
  
• Touch of Evil
  
• The Graduate (I wrote my term paper on this)

I still remember what it felt like to walk out of that two-hour class at 11:00 in the morning, blinking into the sunlight after watching something like A Clockwork Orange right after breakfast. What a way to start the day.

Sometimes I really miss college.