My Blade Runner Book and Movie Paper

    I don’t really know what it was about this paper but I definitely did not like writing it at all.  I thought it was much harder than the last paper I wrote and I enjoyed the last paper much more.  Typing the content was not actually hard.  Once I knew what I was going to write about I could easily start writing.  The only problem was that I had a very hard time figuring out what I should write.  I’m not sure if I just did not get the concept of what we were suppose to do or what but I had a very difficult time knowing what I should do.  I worked on this essay every day and for at least an hour a day I would sit in front of my computer and have nothing to show for it.  I spent hours brainstorming but I could not think of anything to put on paper.  As soon as I would start writing one thing, my words would somehow develop themselves into a different idea and I would have to start all over again.  This was very frustrating considering I spent a lot of time reading the book and I feel like my overall knowledge of the book was not expressed at all in this essay.
    As for strengths and weaknesses, I’m not quite sure what mine are.  Everything I thought I was good at was questioned with this paper.  I thought I was good with things like structure and thesis statements but now I’m not so sure.  I had a lot of trouble coming up with a thesis for this paper and I also do not know if my structure is right or not. I do believe that the peer reviews were somewhat helpful with this because it gives an opportunity for someone else to look at my paper rather than just me. Sometimes others see things that I do not so I am glad there was someone else reading my paper as I was writing it.  I’m not really sure about weaknesses either but I feel like this entire paper was just one big weakness.  I hope to develop my ideas a lot sooner/easier for the next assignment.

Objectified

I thought that the whole movie itself was pretty interesting. There were a few things in this documentary that really stood out to me because I had never thought of them before.  The first thing was the fact that everything is designed.  It is obvious that certain complex objects had to be designed but I never really put much thought into the smaller simpler objects.  The movie uses the potato peeler as an example of a simple object that needed to be designed.  I never looked at a potato peeler and appreciated the hard work and long process that others took in order to design it.  Another interesting point was if we are in an advanced age of technology, why do we still rely on ancient designs for every day objects such as a chair?  The designer raised a very good point that we do not go from a laptop to go ride in a horse carriage use a laptop and sit in a chair that is not designed any differently than it was a hundred years ago?  Another good point was that we use materials that are meant to last a lifetime for an object that is only meant to last a few months?  I believe this is a very good point and we need to start designing objects that can easily be disposed of.

Farenheit 451

    This week at the Athena, I chose to watch Farenheit 451.  I chose this movie out of the three because the trailer for it looked the most interesting.  After watching this movie I am very glad that I chose this one over the other two.  Despite the few downsides such as poor special effects and some questionable acting (both of these due to the fact that it is a much older movie), the overall story and message of the movie was pretty good.
    The movie takes place in a futuristic setting in which firemen no longer put out fires.  Instead, they create them.  Books are now illegal and it is the firemen’s job to find any remaining books and burn them.  The books are illegal because they are believed to only cause trouble and make people unhappy.  Instead of reading books, everyone watches TV instead and refer to the television as part of the family.  The TV announcers are known as cousins.  Anyone caught with a book is arrested and in many cases, their house is burned down.  Despite these consequences, there are a still people who try to keep and hide books.
    The character of whom this entire movie is about is a fireman named Montag.  He starts off the movie believing that books are no good and they must be burned.  It is not until one of the girls in his neighborhood starts talking to him that he starts to question whether or not he is doing the right thing by burning books.  As the story progresses, Montag is found stealing books that he is told to burn and reading them on his own.  The firemen find out and Montag is about to be arrested when he kills his superior and runs.  He flees for his life and finds a hidden society of people who devote their lives to memorizing a book so they may one day do good with the information they have.  Montag finds that the girl in his neighborhood (the one that made him question himself) is also part of this society and he too decides to devote his life to a book.  The movie ends peacefully with Montag walking through the forrest working on memorizing on of the books he stole rather than burned.

The end of Blade Runner

The worst part in the movie Blade Runner would definitely have to be the end.  It was very confusing and kind of went against everything that had already happened in the movie.  Roy is evil throughout the whole movie and then at the end, after going completely crazy, he turns good?  And where did Gaff come from? Was he just standing around the whole time watching Deckard fight or did he just conveniently show up after all the action was over?  From my point of view, the end was very confusing and all the weird freaky scenes at the end only made the confusion worse.  A good movie should leave the audience awed and amazed , not leave the audience confused and wondering what the heck just happened.

My Latest Video Creation

Just finished making this parody horror trailer of the youtube clip Charlie Bit My Finger.

Charlie Bit My Finger... and My Soul