Draft 1

Please be aware I am struggling with this paper!! It is DEFINITELY not finished..This is what I have for my first draft. Sorry. I find this movie extremely hard to write about.




Brooke McNulty
Mrs. Evans
English 103
December 2, 2009
Confusion
The movie “2001 A Space Odyssey” directed by Stanley Kubrick is a movie filmed in 1968. The movie starts off showing a group of apes doing various things, such as eating, jumping around, and fight with one another. Further into these scenes with the apes, a black object appears and the apes go crazy. The movie then progressed into actual people interacting. Two men go into space on a mission, and there is also a really advanced computer that speaks to them during the trip and controls everything. The movie contains a lot of music and visuals. Besides the middle of the film where people are involved, this movie had very little dialogue.
After viewing this film, I have to be honest I do not fully understand the meaning behind it. The apes, the black object, and the ending of this film were rather confusing. I am sure there is symbolism behind these random scenes but I just do not see it. The movie is very dragged out; by this I mean some of the scenes that were twenty minutes long could have been cut down to five minutes. “Watching this film demands two qualities that are sadly lacking in all but the most mature and sophisticated audiences: patience and a willingness to ponder the meaning of what's transpiring on screen. 2001 is awe inspiring, but it is most definitely not a "thrill ride." It is art, it is a statement, and it is indisputably a cinematic classic” (Berardinelli). This quote is from a written review of “2001 A Space Odyssey” by James Berardinelli. I could not agree more that patience and willingness to understand is definitely a key component when watching the film. Is it art? I think maybe this is what the director is trying to bring to the film.
The interesting part about the movie is how realistic the special effects were and the ideas the author had thought of that were not relevant during the sixties. The images of space and planets looked very realistic, along with the space units the men traveled in. I thought the special effects looked really good, especially for a time when technology was not very advanced. The idea of video chat and visual security in a few of the scenes in the film were interesting. Webcam chatting was not heard of during this period of time, and I found it odd, but interesting how it was shown in the movie that way.













Work Cited
Berardinelli, James. "Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey." Reelviews Movie Reviews. 2000. Web. 03 Dec.
2009. .

Group Project Blog #2

Our project is going very good. We have met in the library outside of class several times. Our website looks nice so far. I am curious how it will turn out when we publish it. I am having an issue however on how everyone is working equally. I don't feel like one of my partners is doing his fair share. Oh well though. He has done some work. I just feel like I have done a lot more than I should have to.

Group Project Blog #1

So we are doing this group project, fun fun. My group is doing a website on credit card risk, dangers, and debt. It should be pretty interesting, we don't have a lot done yet. We finished the group report and found plenty of websites and a few humorous videos. Thomas started on some of the creation of the website but it is nowhere near done or half way done. We met up outside of class and got to work some more. Hopefully after fall break, we can meet up few more times outside class and get some more done!

Norton Field Guide to Writing ( 453-484)


Starting off reading this section, mostly on pages 253-255, there was some ideas about fonts and headings. It just reminded me for some reason about fonts, and how we are suppose to use them. I remember anytime I wrote a paper middle school through high school, and even now, teachers were strict about fonts. I understand the font size rules. Obviously you do not want a student making there text a large font to reach the length requirements. However, I do not understand why we always use Times New Roman, size 11 or 12 font. What is so special about this size and this style of font. Who picked this font to be standardized? I have always wondered this. I think I might look up on it.

Safety

• (p.243)

I think Andy McDonie has a very good point in his introduction paragraph of "Airport Security: What Price Safety?" He not only has good point, but it is a very good transition into what his topic is. The topic is Airport Safety, and I am guessing the importance of safety in general. There is a good point about all the things we spend money on for safety and that it is obvious it is important to us. His opening paragraph personally drew me in and I might look up the rest of the writing.

Blog #8!!

Cause and Effect is something I never really understood. I would think I finally got it but when I tried to determine the cause and effect, it felt impossible. They did a good job of explaining how it works.

I thought the quote from "The Onion, "All Seven Deadly.." was pretty funny. It was a good quote to put in that section. Classifying and dividing are very similar things. It's basically putting the text in groups or topics in sections. For example with classifying, you could put the certain languages in a group. And with dividing, you are dividing the text into parts or groups. It is sort of the same process.

Strategies

Reading strategies (313-328)

I think this reading was definitely scheduled for September 24 on purpose. It is about reading strategies like "Playing the believing and doubting game", summarizing, analyzing the argument, and considering larger text. With our first drafts due on Tuesday, this could be very helpful. We are writing about someone's paper and arguments. We are analyzing the text and stating the things we disagree and agree with. This reading tells us how to go about this paper and what things to look out for.