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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Movie and Book Intro's


The most crucial part of a movie or book is it's introduction. A movie or book can either become a hit or a disaster for the viewer or reader solely based on their introductions. The strength of an intro is what is supposed to hook the reader or viewer, in order to keep them interested and willing to keep reading. One example of this is in the movie I am Legend. I am Legend is about a man living in post-apocalyptic New York City named Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith). Throughout the movie, Dr. Neville attempts to survive alone after a deadly virus wipes out nearly all of humanity, and turns almost every survivor into a flesh-eating, nocturnal, monster. The movie began with a video clip of a television interview between two reporters and a female scientist that says that she created a "miracle drug" that can cure cancer among other diseases. This is rather ironic because it leads the viewer to believe that something good may come out of this movie. Then the movie goes through an intense sequence of flashbacks where the plot unfolds. The first flashback has Dr. Neville running into his house yelling to his wife and daughter to pack their bags and come with him, because a deadly virus had just been released upon the city of New York. The next few scenes show Dr. Neville and his family attempting to maneuver through a panicking city full of people bleeding to death from a virus that had evolved from the "miracle drug" that had been mentioned in the interview. Then as Dr. Neville and his family reach the area that will lead him to safety you can see a missile being shot from a helicopter, and blowing up the G.W. Bridge so no infected people can get out of the city. This intensity surrounding the main characters in these intro scenes really helps build up later events and hook the viewer. These events definitely kept me excited throughout the intro and made me want to watch the rest of the movie. The book Macbeth definitely had a very interesting introduction; not quite as exciting as the beginning of I am Legend, but still it was very interesting and it kept me wanting to read more. Normally, I'm not really a fan of Shakespeare's plays but I get the feeling that this one will definitely keep my attention. After reading the first four scenes I can definitely expect certain things to continue to occur during the play. For one thing, I'm sure that Macbeth will take the thrown of his country even though it does mean murder, and two, the three "weird sisters" or witches will definitely play a large role as the play progresses. This leads me to believe that two recurring themes will be; death, and killing will play a large role in the events that will unfold, and the witches will have more of an influence as the story progresses, and in my opinion I feel that aside from Macbeth himself, these "weird sisters" will turn out to be the most important characters in Macbeth. This may actually turn out to be a very good play, and I hope it does too, so that way if I have to read something in class at 8 a.m., at least it will be something good.

Monday, March 24, 2008

10 things I hate about TV


I love television, and I think that its possibly the greatest invention of all time. Its a great way for people to be able to get info, be entertained, or even sometimes learn something. Unfortunately, because of all the corporations and rights to free enterprise in this country lead to there being some things on tv that we as viewers can really do without. There are about 1,000,000 things on tv that annoy me and I'm sure the rest of the country as well. Ten of these things are;

10. Reality tv (honestly, who needs to see people acting "real" tv, if you want to see drama and action, just look around your school or town, there is plenty of unnecessary drama going on there)
9. Exercise commercials (these are one of the more annoying things, where they sell products that really don't do anything, but they have a bunch of happy, thin, people using them; which brings me to my next thing I hate)
8. People on exercise commercials (the people on these commercials clearly don't actually use any of the things that they advertise, cause you don't get ripped using these rip off things, especially with "one weekly 30 second workout," and you can tell it's fake because otherwise everyone would have one)
7. Commercials w/ retired actors/athletes (these are actually kind of funny when you have someone trying to advertise for something that they clearly know nothing about)
6. Made-for-tv movies (honestly, if a movie was put straight on tv, than you can pretty much guarantee that it sucks, because who has ever seen a good made-for-tv movie)
5. Anything on Disney Channel (one of the most worthless channels on television, every single non-cartoon show has exactly the same plot line, its all about some kid or teen who gets into trouble by doing something, than gets out of it and learns something, I have no trouble with that idea of learning morals, but when its on show after show for 24 hours its gets frustrating and annoying)
4. Daytime Comedy Central (at night after 8 then comedy central becomes a comedy network, but before that its just old Mad TV episodes, made-for-tv movies, or politically correct shows)
3.Movies on tv with a one star rating (if a movie isn't a classic and has less than two stars it shouldn't be on tv, they're worse than made-for-tv movies)
2. Weight loss drug commercials (how fat is America that the tv networks have to provide weight loss drug commercials, its annoying how it is even legal for tv to advertise a commercial that sells a pill that causes its users to starve themselves)

And the #1 thing that I hate about tv is......

1. Censorship (everything that is on tv doesn't need to be censored, I absolutely hate the fact how whenever I try to watch any comedy movie I have to hear beeps or replaced words that don't go along with anything else. I completely disagree with this politically correct society that we live in. I'm not saying that I think we shouldn't act positively towards one another, but then again this idea that it is necessary to be ridiculously careful about offending people is not really that good or helpful to anything at all)