Red Space Rocket

For all I know, you have all seen this already. I hadn’t, but I am gobsmacked by the sheer scale and ambition of this. This is team work.

Everything Is A Remix: KILL BILL from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

Sometimes we happen to stray into discussions about films in class. It happened today.

Given that some of you seem to have a keen interest in film, I thought you might be interested in the Slate Spoiler Specials. These podcast, typically between twenty and thirty minutes long, provide a lively and interesting discussion about recent films. The twist is that they spoil everything, so they are mostly intended for people who have already seen the film.

Having said all of that, some of you might enjoy these. I know I do.

This starts off seeming quite annoying, but stick with it to the end. The ideas might be thin but the writing in this is very clever indeed. There is not a word out of place.

A quick version of how we do any analysis of the constructed meaning of a film poster. In this case, we are looking at the poster for a movie called The Men Who Stare at Goats.

This film is the prompt to our fifteen-minute writing today. Well, this clip and the phrase “The walking cliché.”

We start in Q02 today and then move to the computer room for this task. Firstly, read by sample analysis of the Shutter Island poster. It’s not perfect by any means, but it should refresh your memory about how to write an analysis of this kind.

Secondly, choice one of the posters below. I have pasted them into a Microsoft Word document so you can just download this and get straight to writing your own analysis. Move quickly, you only have the double session today to do this.

Alice in Wonderland Poster
French Avatar Poster
Green Zone Poster
Men Who Stare at Goats Poster
Valentine’s Day Poster

If you are interested here is the original script for Good Will Hunting.

Good Will Hunting Script at IMSDb.

This is the review we wrote in class.

Crackerjack, by Paul Maloney and written by Richard and Mick Malloy, is a comedy about the sport of lawn bowls. Mick Malloy stars as Jack Simpson, a slacker who gets forced to play bowls and finds himself fighting for Bayside, a Melbourne club. Funny and friendly minor characters are played by Bill Hunter and John Clarke. This film is classic Australian humour, inspired many to play this sport, and would appeal to young and old.

Good Will Hunting by Yt_grrrl’s

What year was the director of Good Will Hunting born?

Please leave your answer as a comment here on the blog.

Today we started watching our final text which is the film Good Will Hunting. I have put up a small number of resources and we should be adding to them soon.

Good Will Hunting – Red Space Rocket Wiki

I saw this and thought it was so important (to me) that I had to share.

Grammar Girl :: Yoda Grammar

Here are the instructions for creating your own quiz.

The twelve – Red Space Rocket Wiki

In class today we were talking very briefly about the “real” Macbeth movie.

Wikipedia lists fifteen movies of Macbeth ranging from cartoons to Japanese warriors. The first was made in 1908 and the most recent, film in Melbourne of all places, in 2006. The list is worth reading just to get a sense of the many ways this story can work. They also list a further seven versions created for television (including the Shakespeare Retold version we are working with at the moment). To this list you can add the ten musical adaptations.

A simple search on the Internet Movie Database for Macbeth shows 48 filmed works called Macbeth.

You might hope that the text itself was the one true Macbeth. Unfortunately there is widespread belief that some of the currently published play was not written by Shakespeare himself.

I guess my point is that the search for the “real” Macbeth is not as easy as it looks.