CLass of 2011

I WILL MISS EVERYONE!!! CLASS OF 2011!!! HOOAH

The Missing Baby

My Action Adventure Story

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Peer Editing Task List

The following is a copy of the Peer Editing Task List we worked with in class.  Use it to go through your own drafts as well as your peers'.

1.       Reading and Marking. Read through the entire rough draft carefully.  Be sure to go sentence by sentence.  Consider marking on the draft in pencil or lightly in pen and leaving the writer comments from “Good” to “Awk” to “Start new paragraph here,” or anything else you deem relevant and constructive.

2.       Overall thoughts. What are the main strengths and weakness of the draft?  What might be confusing to readers?  What will the readers want to know more about?

  

3.       Fit. How does this draft fit the assignment?  In what areas might the writer struggle to meet the criteria?

  

4.       Potential. What ideas in this draft are worth developing more? 

  

5.       Order. Consider only the parts that are worth keeping.  What sequence do you recommend?  What new sections need to be added?

  

6.       Paragraphs. Which paragraphs are clearest and most interesting?  Which paragraphs need further development, and how might they be improved?

  

7.       Narrative Elements. Complete the Narrative Elements chart below:

Narrative Element	Example from the story	Connection to story’s theme
Internal/External Conflict
Resolution
Setting
Characterization

a.      Narrative Elements (continued). What other narrative element does the writer use successfully?  (Consider motif, figurative language, repetition, symbolism…).  How? Be specific.

  

8.       Suggestions. How can the writer use one of the narrative elements above to enhance his or her story?  Be specific.

Monsters film review

Since Netflix sorts everything by genre I decided to look through the Horror/Thriller section. I decided to watch Monsters because I had heard good things about it.
The movie starts off as one of those hand held camera movies, which I wasn’t crazy about. The camera belongs to someone on a military truck and is cut off when an explosion blows the truck (and camera) up. After that the movie switches between regular filming.
The remainder of the film follows two American’s trying to get back into America to escape an Alien invasion that have taken over most of Mexico. The Aliens reproduce in the trees so the large forest provides the perfect place for them. The main character Andrew is sent to pick up Samantha, the daughter of a wealthy businessman because she is engaged to be married. Even though he is just a photographer he agrees to bring her back. Unfortuantly, the two of them miss the last boat out of Mexico. The two decide to go through the forest with a small group of guides to try and cross into the U.S. by foot. After having several near death encounters with the aliens the two finally make it to the boarder, only to realize that it’s been destroyed and the aliens have moved into the United State. Once in the U.S. they take refuge in a gas station convenient store. By this time a love interest has sparked between the two so they’re sort of forgetting about the whole alien invasion causing them to walk right in between two very large aliens mating. They finally find a phone and call 911 who say they’re sending a military truck. Right afterwards Samantha tells Andrew she doesn’t want to go home to her fiancé and they finally share an over dramatic kiss. Shortly afterwards the army picks them up and the screen fades.
Now I was very disappointed with the ending because I thought they had left me hanging for a sequel. Turns out the opening scene on the military truck is really them with the soldiers that picked them up and that they die along with the rest of the soldiers. So basically the whole movie is just how they came to be with the soldiers and die. If you like being confused and a bit disappointed I would definitely recommend this movie.

Twilight Parody

This is a parody of the book I read, the parody is created by Ryan Higa, one of the most popular YouTubers. Enjoy!

Twilight Book Review

Twilight is a pretty interesting romance book I will say. At first it didn't sound like a romance book at all in the beginning, it was slightly confusing knowing what kind of book it is at first. What makes it not sound like a romance book is that it talks a bit about vampires and werewolves. Which is something an average romance novels wouldn't have.

Twilight started off with Isabella Swan, Bella for short, moving into her father's home in the town of Forks, and she attends a high school there. Her first day wasn't so bad for her as she made a few friends, she also met Edward Cullen, one of the major characters in the book. Edward seems quite mysterious to Bella and she wants to know more about him. Edward and Bella later becomes somewhat friends but Edward warns Bella that they are better off not being friends. Which makes Bella even more confused about him. Later when Bella goes to La Push with many other kids, she meets Jacob Black, another major character in the book, Jacob and Bella heads off somewhere away from the group of kids to talk. Jacob tells Bella some legends about werewolves and vampires. Soon everyone had to leave as it was going to rain, later at home Bella had a dream about Jacob being a werewolf and Edward being a vampire. She then later wakes up from the dream and looks up vampires.

Overall, Twilight is more of a romance fantasy with all those supernatural creatures like werewolves and vampires. It quite interesting how the characters are characterized in a way that it makes the reader very curious about the character, take Edward for example, Edward is characterized as a nice looking guy and is quite mysterious in a way as he doesn't say much about himself. I will say that Twilight is a good book for anyone who likes romance with some fantasy in it.

What makes a good horror story?

http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/scary.html

So I'm starting my senior project and my genre it horror so just for fun I typed "what makes a good horror story" into google, and I found this link pretty helpful (and true according to the things I've read).

The Shining Movie Review

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a great film adaptation of Stephen King's book. Stanley Kubrick sets the mood and tone of the film showing a some what torn house hold. Also Danny has a friend call Toni. Toni shows Danny things that he can't normally see. Jack is a the hotel being interviewed for the caretaker of the overlook hotel. The role of jack is played by Jack Nicholson. he perfectly fits this part because as watching it jus the vibe you got from him along with his facial expressions tell you that he can't be trusted and that he has a hidden past. The way he treats his family tells you that he is a family man but yet at times likes to distance himself from them. Also there is just that rage that jack is suspose to have built up inside that Jack Nicholson is able to portray very well. The hotel setting is done very well and you could tell that the director wanted to put his all into the movie.The hotel has everything from the narrow halls that create that closed in feeling a character can have during a horror story. Also it has the spaced out rooms where it leaves you with a feeling that the character has a chance to escape with out being harmed. It provides the echo feeling that someone is coming after you and you can hear every move made by any person in the hotel.The way Danny begins to speak REDRUM and write it on the door tells you that things are going to get worst. The anger Nicholson portrays in the famous scene "here's johnny" is excellent. He gives you that feeling that nothing is going to stop him and from killing his family and it also gives him that vibe that he is possessed by the spirits of the hotel. The ending photo shows how jack's anger and alcoholism led to him being possessed by the spirits of the hotel due to his weakness to fall into temptation.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I just finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I wanted to conclude that this book was extremely hectic. It was confusing at first because it switched narrator to narrator. It jumped to letters from Oskar Schell's grandma written to him to his grandfather writing letters to Oskar's dad who died in the World Trade Center. The book revolves around Oskar, a nine year old boy, trying to find what relevance a key has to do with his father. He gets closer and closer to finding out and once he does, he finds that the key had absolutely no relevance. He meets his grandfather for the first time since he was born because his grandfather becomes present in their lives. The book talks about the horrid events in Dresden and the lack of love the grandmother felt when she was married. It talks about the different lives of the different characters, especially the protagonist and how he came to be.

I personally did not enjoy the book in the beginning because I was confused as to what was going on. The author has a very different style of writing and sometimes it feels like his writing is all over the place but he explained a lot dramatic events pretty well. I started enjoying it later on because I started understanding what the letters in between were and what the author was trying to explain. All in all, it was an original story about 9/11 which I thought was very different from a lot of the other stories. It did not only talk about one event but how the character dealt with death and fear of losing someone and it talked about other events in history as well.

Action Film: The Mechanic (SPOILER)

The movie "The Mechanic" came out in 2011, a pretty recent film. As traditional action movie there are some unbelievable actions in here. The protagonist in this movie is a hit man name Arthur Bishop. Called himself mechanic instead. He is not just ordinary hit man, but the top one in the organization he is working for. The main conflict begin when he was ordered to kill his contact/ friend who said to betray the organization. So as professional killer, Arthur didn't let his feeling go in the way and kill his teacher. At this point a new character come into the scene, the son of his teacher name Steve Mckenna. Steve don't have a job and after his father died, he give up his life. Arthur push by his personal guilt force himself to help Steve. He train Steve to become a mechanic a professional hit man. During a mission he learned that he was used to kill his friend. At around the same time Steve found a pistol from Arthur's hideout that belong to his father. Leaving his some suspection to his father's death. Arthur and Bishop both fight into the headquarter and kill Dean Sanderson the one who used Arthur. The movie might just ended here, but the second betrayal is coming up. Steve decided to revenge for his father and attempt to kill Arthur. However Arthur noticed this and kill Steve afterward in an explosion. Yes, Arthur kill both the father and the son. I think he might just let Steve go after he think he kill him (Arthur).

Film Review 2 - Phone Booth

The movie that I have watched is Phone Booth. It is a mystery, suspense and a thriller movie. The film is about Stu Shepard, and what at first seems to be a normal day in his life. When the movie starts, he calls his girlfriend from a payphone, and a deliveryman tries to give Stu free pizza, which he declines. After hanging up, while Stu is still in the phone booth, he receives a call from a man. The man doesn’t tell Stu his name, only that he likes to watch him. Stu, thinks the same that I was, this is a prank call and hangs up. Moments later, Stu receives another call from the same man, and tells him not to hang up. He insists that Stu tells his two girlfriends tat he is cheating. Stu now knows that this caller knows about him, and is frightened.

The situation escalates when the man on the phone reveals that he has a sniper rifle, and he shoots a man that was harassing Stu, on Stu’s command. The police are on the scene, and Stu is the suspect for the shooting. The police demand that Stu gets off the phone, but the man tells him he cannot hang up. The police later go up to get the caller, when the caller tells Stu that he will kill him and his girlfriend Kelly now. Stu runs out the booth, with his gun when the cops shoot him, with rubber bullets. The police find the sniper rifle and a body. The body is the pizza deliverer. A man approaches Stu going into the ambulance, and tells him he is the sniper. I did not expect that the sniper will reveal himself. He tells Stu to be honest or he will hear from him again. The movie ends with another call, with a man answering saying “Hello?”

The film to me was packed with a lot of events happening at once. I did enjoy the movie, and it had a unique storyline. I did not think that the sniper would make it to the end of the movie, without being either arrested or killed by police. This movie made me think about payphones, and how I will never answer one that rings near me. I didn’t know you could call payphones until I’ve seen this movie. Also, throughout the whole movie until the end, you didn’t clearly see the caller, which really keeps the audience in suspense, because seeing a person’s face can change your opinion of them. The way that the film set the setting as mostly inside a small phone booth is difficult, using a small space for blocking until the end where the action takes place.

Mulan 2: Film Review

Mulan 2 is the continuation of Mulan, General Shang in the beginning of the film proposes to Mulan, which she accepts. However, before their wedding ceremony can start, they had a task from the emperor to bring his three daughters Mei, Ting-Ting, and Su to another kingdom Qui Dong for arrange marriages with princes there to make an alliance. Mushu, Mulan's guardian is happy for Mulan to get married, but he is told that if Mulan gets married Mushu would lose his job as guardian. Mushu, determined to not lose his job plans to break General Shang and Mulan on their journey to the Kingdom of Qui Dong.
To start their journey, Mulan bring three warriors that were on first film to help her, Yao, Ling and Chien-Po. On the way to the Qui Dong, the princesses and warriors fall in love creating tension between Mulan and General Shang because of their beliefs. On the top of that Mushu had already created tension by tricking Shang by making a show outside of Shang's tent which shows Mulan telling bad things about Shang to the princesses. You have to watch the movie to find out how it goes.
My favorite part of the movie is when Shang sacrifices his life for Mulan even though they were fighting before. Everything at this point seems to go wrong. I thought at one point Shang is gone and Mulan will remain single for the rest of her life.

Titanic

The 1997 film excellence Titanic was an epic action and adventure movie. Throughout the film numerous encounters occurred between "Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater" who began to establish feelings for one another. Both living entirely different life styles knew the tragedy that would occur if Rose's family would discover the secret affairs of her and her lover Jack. This brought forth many complications between the two lovers. It lead to sneaking around all over the ship as well as avoiding at all cost getting seen by one of Roses family's friends. The film's setting is located on a vessel. Throughout these devious meeting's Rose goes on behind her Family and fiances back her and Jack wonder the ship from head to toe making sure they are never in plain sight. This film portraits an outstanding example of a Romantic Adventure. The film contains an incomparable plot, this is what gives the film its distinguishing outlook. This movie contains all sorts of action such as right before the ship sinks Jack is currently in a dilemma as he cant escape from the room he was being held captive in until his beloved Rose appears to rescue him from his decease. Films such as this one are movies of the decades and I highly recommend to take up some time to watch it. In my opinion this movie is an outstanding example for my genre and even if I have seen it a million times I do not mind watching it another million times.

When A Stranger Calls: Film Review

When A Stranger Calls was a scary movie. This movie is about a babysitter. After she put the children to sleep, she got random, anonymous phone calls through out the night. The phone would ring and the person on the other end would say nothing except “Have you checked the children?”. She didn’t think much of the calls at first but she started to get nervous once they continuously came. When she finally checked on them, she found them murdered in the bed room with blood everywhere. The man that kept called murdered the children and haunted her from then on.

I think this film scared me mainly because I babysit a lot. For a while after I saw this movie I was scared to babysit alone. I was scared the events in the movie were actually going to happen to me. If a horror film scares you and stays with you for days after you see it, I think that’s how you know the film did its job.

The scariest part of this movie, along with the majority of the horror movies I’ve seen, was the music. The music was so powerful and aggressive it gave me chills. Before something scary was going to happen the music would intensify and get my heart racing. It would also build slowly making me even more frightened. I would recommend this movie if anyone is looking to get scared, but it wouldn’t be the best idea to watch it if you have to babysit soon after.

Carrie Film Review

I re-watched Carrie as my other horror film. Carrie is a film adaptation of another Stephen King book of the same name. Although I have never read the book, I really love the movie.

Carrie is about a teenager named Carrie who is really sheltered and raised under the guidance of her religious fanatic mother. Carrie has supernatural powers that are tapped in to when she gets mad. She is tortured by her classmates due to her lack of social ability and even her own mother believes she is the devil.

At Carrie's high school prom, a group of kids decides to pull a prank on her. Her date for the prom is one of the "popular" boys in her class. They decided to make the two of them prom king and queen and when they get up on stage to accept their titles, red paint is dropped on her from the ceiling. Carrie's supernatural powers kick in killing everyone there except for one classmate, Sue, who is left to live with the guilt of knowing that everyone she loved was killed because of her.

When Carrie returns home after the prom rampage, her mother is there waiting to perform a sacrifice on her in order to get rid of the devil inside of her. Carrie narrowly escapes but she then kills her mother in order to save herself. Carrie does die in a fire caused by all of the candles lit around her house as part of her mother's sacrifice.

One of the scariest parts of the movie, I read, is coincidentally not part of the book. It is the scene at the end where Sue goes to pay respects to Carrie at her house after it has burned down, and as she kneels down at her grave, Carrie reaches up from the ground and grabs her arm, waking Sue up from her dream.

Lord Of War

The movie i have recently watched on Netflix is "Lord Of War." It is a political Action/war film released in 2005. This film describes how war actually becomes a war. Nicolas Cage stars as the Protagonist; Yuri Orlov, the gun runner. He is an American Gun Runner of a Ukrainian Origin. The movie starts off with him standing in the middle of a sea of spend shell castings. He states that with over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulations, there is about 1 fire arm for ever 12 people, now his question is . . . how to arm the other 11. The movie is based off of a real even that happened from the 1980's to the 21st century. The gun running business has ever so demanded more guns to be sent to over sea country to fuel war. Through out the movie the protagonist travels threw several different places and sells his arms to the fighting Nation. He gets his guns from the break down of the former Soviet Union. Yuri Orlov had to live several different lives and still come back to his family after selling guns that kill. The accuracy of this movie is close to it as it can get. Yuri Orlov is a fictional name composed of 2 names of real gun runners the movie is based on. Yuri Orlov had a partner to sell his arms, his brother Vitaly. The plot is on the illegal arms market and the wars that his arms were used in. During the invation, he sold his weapons to the Taliban that were being helped by the united states. Iraq wars, Cold War and the small proxy wars are where guns were bought by this man who is fictional. The production of this movie actually used real ak-47's. The production team bought 3000 real ak-47 rifles because they were cheaper then prop guns. Also in the scene where Yuri Orlov is in the car driving past the Russian Tanks, those were bought by the production team and then sold after the movie to Libya. Food for thought.

Witness

Another one of Harrison Ford's classics is the famous late 20th century 'Witness' starring Ford along with other famous actors including Danny Glover and James Earl Jones. After a young Amish woman and her son get caught up in the murder of an undercover narcotics agent, there is only one detective they can turn to, John Book. Harrison Ford was the perfect fit for his role because he is the definition of an action/adventure actor. The movie is very unique too because it has scenes that don't involve that much action, even to the point where it can be called a romantic movie. However, the overall plot proves that it is in fact a action/adventure movie. Any Ford fans out there if you haven't already seen this movie, it is definitely one of his bests. From a young Amish boy witnessing a murder, to the extended romanticism included along with all the action in between, this film is a must see.

The Shining Review

After seeing several posts and trailers about the movie "The Shining," I decided to take a look at it.It is considered to be a horror movie, it started out with the usual horror music to introduce the type of story it will be to us. The story starts out with a family of three. In my opinion they all look very strange. So the father lands a job somewhere in a hotel secluded away in the forest and mountainous area outside of Denver, Colorado. He is asked to look after the place for five months while the hotel is closed off to guests during that time. The father, Jack, brings his wife and son along with him. Before starting off the job, Jack and a few others were aware of a particular situation that had occurred years back. A man just like Jack was in the same situation, and went insane from being so secluded for months, he killed his whole family and in the end himself as well.Jack was not concerned about this. However, with time Jack's own mind began to go crazy like a psycho. Eventually you can guess that he's out to kill his family as well. Strangely enough, he does not end up murdering them as you would expect in a horror, instead he ends up dying on his own.

In the movie, the music and sounds made give off the greatest feeling of horror, making you anticipate something. Along with that the film did contain ghosts, some of which turned to become very disgusting, for instance the woman in the bathroom. Eww. Then there was the man running around with the ax trying to kill.

Now would I recommend this movie, I'm not quite sure about that. The movie is over two hours long, and it took over an hour for some horror to appear. So it's a very slow pace movie. There are some scary factors, but at times it seemed to get boring, and the family was just creepy.

The Da Vinci Code

Over the weekend I watched The Da Vinci Code. This movie is based off of the famous best seller by James Brown, and is part of a trilogy (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Lost Symbol). Although this movie was out before the movie Angels and Demons, the book Angels and Demons came before The Da Vinci Code. Because of the connection, many parallels can be drawn between the two plotlines. Some of the parallels that I saw were how a woman was the sidekick in movies, secret society or brotherhood, clues with sculptures, and etc. This movie was almost exactly the same as Angels and Demons, only it has nothing to do with the Church.

The movie begins with the Harvard professor, Robert Langdon, receiving a request to help solve the mystery behind the recent death of the art curator of the Louvre. Upon accepting this request, he learns of the involvement of the Priory of Sion and their secret. The Priory of Sion is an ancient brotherhood created for the purpose of protecting the Holy Grail. With this secret hidden within the works of the renowned Leonardo Da Vinci Langdon goes all over Paris finding hints in art, history, and religion.

Some of the mystery tropes that I saw in this movie were the friend did it, hidden in plain sight, confesses in confidence, and saying too much. There’s always that evil character that think they are so smart, that their plan will work out and no one will ever find out but the good guys always win because when the good guys are capture, the evil character will expose all that they have done.

This movie was okay, I liked it better because there weren’t as many deaths compared to Angels and Demons but then again all those deaths was what kept me at the edge of my couch waiting for the next big thing to happen.