Screen flashes on and goes dark after opening, must restart

Hi.
So I have a MacBook circa 2007, running Lion (10.7.3). Over the past day or so it has develeoped a problem where upon opening it, the screen will come on for a moment, then go dark. Nothing will respond - it's unclear whether it's completely off or it's like the brightness is turned all the way down and I can't turn it back up. I have to force shut down with the power button, then turn it back on again. Typically once I log in nothing will load, so I have to force shutdown and start up again, at which point I'll get a dialog saying "You shut down your computer because of a problem. Would you like to reopen applications," or something to that effect. I choose no, and everything is back to normal (at least until I take a chance with closing it and opening it back up again).
Thoughts? I'm out of AppleCare, so I'd prefer to not have to bring it in to the store. I'd love for this little guy to last me one more year until I graduate from law school and can justify buying a new computer.
Thanks in advance.

Do you have the Nvida 8600m gt GPU? If so, you can join the many thousands of laptops heading to the graveyard!
Apple...YOU SUCK!

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