Movie Critics

For a long time, I have wanted to write about something that really bothers me, bad movies. When I say 'bad movies', I typically am referring to movies with bad writing which, to me, will ruin an entire film.

Now, to me, writing can ruin an entire film for many reasons. One being the fact that the writing develops the characters, and you can't have a good movie with shitty characters. And recently I have been noticing an increasing amount of movies with flashy graphics and movies with poor writing. Which has led me to the conclusion that directors are now using 3D graphics to compensate for their 1D characters. One particular movie that bring this to mind is Avatar, which seems to be either loved or hated. I on the other hand am in the middle, but that's another story. Avatar was full of stock characters such as the relateable, rebellious woman and the headstrong, blood-thirsty military Sergent.

Not only do these fancy graphics attempt to add dimension to flat characters, they also try to fill in plot holes. A very good example of this is Tim Burton's recent portrayal of Alice in Wonderland. I, like a lot of people, used to be a big fan of Tim Burton, growing up on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands. But just like most directors these days, Tim Burton has been failing to live up to (his) past movies by creating recent horrors such as his Alice in Wonderland. Alice was plagued by many catastrophes, one after the other, but one that stuck out in particular was its major plot hole. This plot hole consisted of the Queen of Hearts claiming that she would recognize Alice anywhere (and kill her), but when Alice prances into the Queen's court, the Queen conveniently does not recognize Alice at all. Not only that, but the Queen even goes as far as liking Alice and inviting her back into the castle! How could a woman who knows Alice's face very well, not recognize Alice? I am not sure, but apparently the production staff was too busy working on the graphics to notice this non sequitur.

I just don't understand how companies are now investing so much money into movies with bad scripts. I know there are many terrific writers out there looking to get their scripts turned into movies, yet big companies are more concerned with taking a movie, pumping it up, and getting a big name director to be a part of it. Last time I checked people enjoyed good movies whether or not they know the directors name or have to wear 3d glasses to see it. It all boils down to terrible movies getting credit for nothing, which always makes them outshine the really amazing movies such as Up! (2009). Which I would like to say is a brilliant movie that deserves much more credit than it has been given.

But I would like to end on a positive note by saying that there are still amazing movies being released. I guess it's just harder to find them when they aren't popping out at you (hardy-har-har).

Let The Right One In

If you were in my section, you know I chose the novel "Let The Right One In" to nominate for a Pulitzer Prize. I gave a PowerPoint presentation where I expanded upon the commonly known plot and delved into the themes that run throughout the book, a few of which included isolation, cruelty toward children by adults and other children, crime, romance, and, of course, vampirism. I had included a link of the movie's trailer in my presentation, but time ran short and I didn't get to show it to the class. This was honestly one of the best film adaptions of a novel I've ever seen and the bleakness of the book truly translates well onto the screen. The child actors are phenomenal (which, as we know, is a rarity onscreen and even harder to do when the content is serious). Brilliant movie, brilliant book. I'd say it doesn't matter if you choose to watch it or read it first. The book IS more detailed, which is a bonus, and describes more of Eli's background and contains several more scenes that exemplify each of the characters' personalities. However, the film is stark and straightforward. If you haven't read the novel, it's also more shocking. There's pros and cons either way, but I encourage you to check both of them out.

http://www.lettherightoneinmovie.com/

This is the official website for the movie, which came out in 2008, the same time the novel was translated into English. There's already an American remake in the works, which I find disappointing. Why can't we just leave great foreign films alone? Watch them with subtitles. It's not that difficult. There doesn't need to be an "American" version of everything. You're missing half the body of the novel if you take away the setting of Sweden, as the original source includes European child prostitution rings, the "old world" vampire history, European public transit (which is completely absent in the US with the exception of major cities), Cold War worries about Sweden's neighbors, how bloody cold it is in Scandinavian countries, etc, etc....

Death at a Funeral, a British black comedy, was recently re-released as an American comedy and was generally not as well regarded as the original. Why not come out with our own films instead of half-arsed remakes literally TWO or THREE years after the original came out? It makes no sense to me! The director remaking "Let The Right One In" has said that he hopes everyone will give his film a chance and how much he reveres the original, but it leads me to wonder... why not let the world discover how great the original is before slapping an American one on the market? Does this feel like a cultural dominance trend to anyone else? I'd love to hear your opinions, because with the onslaught of Japanese horror remakes, American versions of British comedies, and now, taking about the only thing Americans have heard about from Sweden (with the exception of Moto Boy (swoon!)) has really gotten me going.

Can you think of a remake that ever got your blood boiling?

Looking back on Atonement Last Chapter

After Robbie’s detail account of the war, Ian McEwan switches gears by re-introducing Briony. Instead of being the fantasy obsessed child who misperceives the world around her McEwan introduces Briony in a different light.

After Cecilia breaks her ties to her family and becomes a nurse Briony is left without a sister. Briony becomes a nurse instead of going to Cambridge. She experiences what it is like to be a trainee nurse. Later she comes in to contact with wounded soldiers. Briony meets Luc Cornet a French soldier. She is ordered to sit with him because he only speaks French and even though her school French she comforts him. When he asks her to loosen his bandages she realizes the fatal extent of his injuries (side of his head was missing). In his last moments of living he confuses her for a girl his mom wanted him to marry. He asks Briony if she loves him she hesitated yes because “No other reply was possible. Besides for the moment, she did. He was a lovely boy who was a long way from his family and he was about to die” (292). Briony comes head on with reality of death in the hospital. However, she has not out grown her love for fantasy because “she imagined the unavailable future…her sister –in-laws teasing her about her accent, and Luc Cornet loving her in his eager way”(293).

One day Briony decides to attend the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Now that she is wise and mature she wishes to atone her actions of wrongfully accusing Robbie Turner of raping her cousin Lola. When she arrives at Cecilia’s apartment she is determined to tell her that she knows Robbie is innocent and she will write a letter attesting to that. However, when she shows up to the apartment she does not expect to see Robbie. In the end they both refuse to forgive her. However she promises to begin the legal system.
Briony has written a novel about Cecilia and Robbie. Briony hopes to publish this book during her life time however; this does not seem to be a possibility due to the characters in the story. Briony states that she will only be able to publish the book if she changes the names of the characters which she refuses to do because she wants to stay as close to the truth as possible. This further shows that Briony has developed a conscience and a sense of reality during her younger years. She even states that she wishes she had written factual stories of the War when she was working in the hospital. Even in her twenties when she was a nurse, she changed names and details of her day to add entertainment. She adds that if the Lola and Paul Marshall were to die she would be able to publish the book. The Marshalls due to their fame are unwilling to be associated with the scandal described in Briony’s book. The scandal although true will ruin the Marshalls reputation.

In the end of the novel (set in 1999) Briony is seventy seven years old and she reveals that she wrote the novel. She also informs the reader that apart from Robbie and Cecilia’s thirty minute meeting, they never saw each other again and she never went to Cecilia’s apartment to make amends. Robbie died from septicemia and Cecilia was killed by a bomb. Through this book she wishes to give them the happiness they deserve she changes the ending of the book so that Robbie and Cecilia reunite and live out their lives in her novel. Towards the end she adds “I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, but what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish. As long as there is a single copy, a solitary typescript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love,”(350).

Class Post III 4/29/10 Section G

For me, I think knowing how to play with words and sentences is such an art. I want to reach that level where I can interpret and understand inside and out of the language. It's different from biology or chemistry. There is something more emotional and related to human nature to know how to express and speak exactly how one wants than knowing how a human body works. I always thought about how English teachers are the most creative ones who really know something about life. I don't know why. I guess from what they've seen and read.

To me, English is something that determines everything. Everywhere one needs to read and write so sometimes it discourages me in other areas when I think I can't write or read as well. At the beginning of this year, I had a lot of goals I wanted to reach. Some of them include: bigger vocabulary, more variety in the way I write, and write clearly. Although I may not have reached all of those things, I did find out more about what I can do and how I should approach writing. Writing takes a lot of planning, and practice until one can write decently well in a timed setting, given so many times in my high school. I learned to take time in planning and brainstorming to put down anything I have on the paper. And when I have ideas coming, just writing them down in a train of thoughts will help me find something that'll fit to be a summing idea from all of them. Also, going to the writing center for my weekly appointment helped me learn a little about being more daring in what I want to write. In general, writing more helps lessen my fear of writing, somewhat.

Reflection (G)

Now that the year is over, I suppose it is time to reflect on my experience in this class. I really enjoyed this class, despite the early hour. I feel that I have improved in my writing, especially when it comes to clarity. The goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year were to improve my level of comfort writing conclusion paragraphs and transitions. I do think that I am better at writing transitions. Talking about my first essay one on one was extremely helpful in this area because I hadn't ever really talked in depth about what makes a good transition sentence before. I also found that Nadi's presentation about revisions was very relevant to the clarification of transitions. I admit, I still feel uncomfortable with conclusions. I have never found a formula that I liked to write conclusion paragraphs, and while sometimes I am happy with what I write, more often it feels contrived. It is possible that one simply has to find inspiration to write a good conclusion, but I don't know how to find inspiration on command. Other than my discomfort with conclusions, I felt very comfortable with the pace of this class. I very rarely felt like I was flying blind, and over the course of the semester, I have come to really appreciate our workshops, to which I attribute my feelings of preparedness.
After class on Tuesday, I sat down to look at the four pieces I wrote for this class. I could see, by comparison, the improvements that I have made, and I think that I am aptly prepared for the writing that I will have to do from this point on.

Reflections on Class

Class is ooovveerrr!!! whoo hoo..but the feeling is honestly relieving and stress free because that means no papers until the fall! I would have to agree with everyone else that this class has definitely set my standards up for any text that I will be reading from here on out because of our mad skills in close-reading.

I actually did not think I would enjoy this class as much as I have and it would probably be because I do not like English. I truly despise the thoughts of writing, reading, and analyzing because the process to writing a paper seems to be on-going and it never stops because if you were to leave a piece of your work somewhere and come back to it with a "fresh pair of eyes," the whole process of editing and revising starts yet again. Now, I probably would not say i despise writing papers but maybe dread of it..which sounds a little bit better to me because that just means I would write the paper just for the heck of it and find out that the paper was not so bad after all.

With the help of Professor Crowther and my peers, I am now openly comfortable to let people read some of my work because in high school we would not go through the whole process of editing or revising as much as it was pushed in this class and so I would just write a paper the night before and not have anyone give me feedback. I have learned that critiques can be harsh, but it is okay because that just helps your paper bring forth what you are trying to say and help readers understand the message that you were trying to pull through. I have also found out that writing papers in MLA style is very crucial (so always check your margins!) and doing a works cited page isn't as hard as I thought it was ought to be because that seems to be a problem for a few of us.

Through this course, I can now say that I have happily improved from what I wanted to accomplish by the end of this semester which is to be more comfortable with the way I write, allow others to read my work, definitely take time to start papers early and not procrastinate, and little things like transitioning, putting each paragraph together to make the actual paper, and being able to form well structured thesis statements.

I would like to thank Professor Crowther for all the help that she has given me and for welcoming all of us at her house for a small get together and the amount of work she puts into grading our papers and commenting on all of them. I would also like to thank those who were able to help me on my papers and give me ideas and that everyone has a safe and wonderful summer!

Class Post II 4/28/10 Section G

While I was reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, one story about a woman who drinks vodka in order to rid of stage fright so that she can play the piano in front of a crowd made me think of one thing: getting/being drunk. I don't know what it is like to be drunk. I don't know if I would be able to digest what someone says or tells me when I am drunk. Or how I'd be thinking differently. I can't imagine the feeling of not knowing what is going on around me, or my reality, if I am drunk. But in a way, isn't getting drunk to be away from reality? I guess I'm so protective of what is going on around me, my reality, that I can't let it go. What do you think?

And Olive Kitteridge. I think we have all been Olive Kitteridge during some period of our lives. We feel unappreciated, and we show negativity, but we are all good-hearted in whatever we were trying to express. Through those experiences, we change. We become better and accept more easily. We find mysteries about ourselves and others that we can't figure out and wish we just had answers to. But we learn that not everything has an answer, at least not an answer that is definite. What matters is virtue, spontaneity, love, trust, faith, and so on. We find answers in those things. And we need to believe and fight on.

Review of "Bel Canto"

This past weekend, Theaterworks 2010 had put together three acts in one play and luckily, I was able to attend one of them. I stayed for first act which was, "Bel Canto", which means beautiful singing in Italian.


The scene began with a mother and her daughter, Phyll, in a cellar because there were warnings about a flood happening outside. By looking at the stage, the props and the way things were set up very much portrayed that of a stuffy cellar with nothing that worked but an old record player. The atmosphere of it all seemed a little bit tense and it was soon learned that the father of the family had walked out on them and the mother never takes it easy when the subject is being brought up. As they were about to get into a heated argument, Phyll's sister (can't remember her name) arrives from a night of going out. She comes back home from meeting with a friend and drunk. Their mother does not take this too easily and suddenly has a heart attack. Phyll and her sister had no choice but to leave their mother laying on the ground because no one was able to go out until the next morning because of the flood. As both sisters got the opportunity to talk, they both realize what they can now do with their life and what the problem was as to why everyone began to lash out at each other. Phyll is then told that her sister is pregnant and that she will be moving to Hawaii to do things that she wants to do with her life.

So, how is the title significant to the play? I think that Phyll realized that she is now free to do whatever she wants because it was usually her mother that was holding her back from what she wanted to do and from going out as well. She even cut connections off with a boy she was interested in (which is the same guy that got Phyll's sister pregnant). I think that her realization came from her sister's "beautiful singing" in which she is now capable of doing things that she use to enjoy, including singing opera. Although the way things ended were bittersweet for Phyll, I think it was an eye opener for her which could do tons of good.

First Pick: The Lovely Bones

In “The Lovely Bones”, the protagonist of the story is a normal 14 year old American girl living during the 1970’s. However, the difference from other stories is that Susie Salmon was brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered. The story is of her family and the search for her murderer. She resides up above in heaven where she watches over her family. Meanwhile, her family grieves; she looks after them and her friends. Alice Sebold writes a story in which she draws from her own experience. Her other book, “Lucky” is a memoir in which she discusses her rape and her search for her rapist and the journey taken through the legal system. “Lucky” comes from the fact that she finds herself lucky because a woman was raped, murdered, and dismembered in the small alley that she was raped. Sebold‘s “The Lovely Bones” is about the other woman that was not so lucky.

“The Lovely Bones” begins with “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973” in this sentence the reader realizes that this story will be bluntly narrated (1). Nothing will be held back and details of her life and the lives of others will be revealed. Susie feels as though she was destined to misfortune when her grandmother says that since she saved Buckley’s life (Her younger brother) she is fortuned to live a long and happy life.

The search for Susie’s murderer begins to become interesting when Mr. Salmon suspects Mr. Harvey (who we know from the beginning of the novel is the murderer). Mr. Salmon heads out to the cornfield when he sees a light coming from there. Expecting to see Mr. Harvey he grabs a bat to confront him. Instead he is met by a young girl and her boyfriend. Mr. Salmon is attacked and hit with the bat. The novel introduces suspense in every chapter because after this incident Lindsey (Susie’s younger sister) still being suspicious, breaks into Mr. Harvey’s house and steals a drawing of the underground structure were Susie was murdered. However, Mr. Harvey leaves town. Mr. Harvey is not caught even though later there is evidence that makes him an official suspect.

Sebold’s title comes from a line towards the end of the novel in which she says:

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life (320).”

The lovely bones do not belong to the victim but to the idea that bones are the foundation on which living things are built. This is what gives Susie the strength and understanding to move on in heaven.

The novel introduces suspense and makes the reader develop an emotional attachment with not only Susie but also her entire family. Sebold was able to make her reader’s feel what her characters feel through life and death.

Brief History of The Seminole Tribe of Florida

The Seminole Tribe of Florida is one of the most prosperous and most powerful among Native American tribes. Comprised of nearly four thousand members, The Seminole Tribe has grown in size and reputation. At the beginning of the twentieth century their main mean of income was tourism. Today the tribe has over seventy productive organizations and departments that are geared towards the future and advancement of it's members.   In 1513, when the Spaniards landed in Florida, there were already nearly two-hundred thousand ancestors of the present day Seminole Tribe of Florida living and flourishing there. 1887, one hundred and twenty-one years ago, saw only two-hundred Seminole men, women and children living in the everglades swamps. This was who remained after three Seminole wars and countless attempts on the government's part to enforce the Indian Removal Act of 1830.  This act resulted in what we know as the "Trail of Tears", one of the less honorable events in American history.  For years afterward the Seminole people stayed and made Florida their home. The spirit of Osceola and Abiaka, war leaders who were brave and defiant towards the removal, resonates throughout the years in the attitudes and lifestyles of the Seminole people. This was especially apparent at the conclusion of World War Two when the Seminole Tribe of Florida was threatened with the termination of all governmental services and eviction from their reservations. These were a people, isolated, who rarely left the reservations for reasons other than religion and tourism, faced with the decision that would determine the future of their tribe. The United States of America did not think they could do it. They considered the Seminole people uneducated and incapable of non-traditional decision-making and leadership. If this super power was doubting their future, was there any hope for this small tribe of indians? On August 21, 1957 the Seminole tribe voted to adopt a charter and constitution in order to become a federally recognized tribe. In the beginning the tribe struggled but the tribe's leaders and it's members kept in mind the future of it's people and  it is now one of the most respected tribes in the United States. If the Seminoles had given up in their pursuit of better lives, my life would be different, but today I appreciate what my ancestors, forefathers and foremothers did for my tribe. The story of the Seminole Tribe of Florida is a story of inspiration. One which everyone can look to and gather that there is no excuse why a person or a group of people can't overcome their situations and prosper.

Works Cited

Mitchell, Virgina. Seminole Tribe of Florida: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Signing of Our Constitution and Corporate Charter (Florida: Seminole Communications ©2007) Print. pgs. 5,34, 39, 57, 104-137