2001: Well Predicted But Unentertaining

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, set in the year 2001 but made in 1968, follows five astronauts and a robot as they embark on a mission to Jupiter. The robot, Hal, is considered a sixth member of the crew and is made to be infallible. When Hal senses an impending system failure on the ship, two of the astronauts, Dr. Frank Poole and Dr. Dave Bowman, check it out and determine that nothing is wrong with the system. They then decide that Hal is not as reliable as once thought and decide to disable him so that he does not endanger the mission. What they do not know is that Hal can read their lips and therefore is aware of their plan. Hal conspires against them, killing four of the five astronauts including Dr. Poole. Dr. Bowman escapes being murdered by Hal and in a famous scene Frank begins to dissemble Hal as “Hal gradually regresses as his mind is taken apart until he is finally shut down” (IMBD). Dr. Bowman continues the mission to Jupiter where he comes across a monolith which has been seen many times throughout the movie. He goes inside the monolith and is transported through space and time. He ends up finding himself on his deathbed with another monolith at the foot of his bed. He then becomes a star child, a fetus inside an amniotic sac orbiting the earth.

There have been many opinions and theories made about Kubrick’s film. One thing is for sure though; he did a fantastic job predicting the technologies of the future. The technologies used in this film, such as video chatting, were only fantasy in 1968 but have become reality today. Because the movie was made in 1968, Kubrick had to work on the special effects without the help of computer animation. With this said, the special effects of this movie are ahead of its time. Kubrick was the first to show the idea of weightlessness in space and the scenes of the space ship landing on the moon and Jupiter are done without looking hokey as science fiction movies tended to be in the 60’s.

Along with its advanced special effects, the music in 2001: A Space Odyssey has made an indelible mark in history. Kubrick originally hired Alex North to create an original score for the film but he used classical music temporarily while he edited the film. He liked it so much that he decided to keep it. According to Roger Ebert, this was “crucial” because North’s music “attempts to underline the action—give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts” (rogerebert.com). The music was such a good idea that it is used in montages and spoofs today.

While the special effects and music were without question the best of their time, that does not stop the movie from being a major snore fest. Maybe this is because this movie, meant to be watched over and over and contemplated, went over my head. It also bored me because in a 160 minute movie, it contained only 40 minutes of dialogue. I can’t read a book that does not have enough dialogue, let alone watch a movie. This is why the music is so important throughout the movie. Kubrick needed something to take up the dead space left by the lack of dialogue. Since the characters aren’t going to tell the audience when to be sad and when to be mesmerized, the music had to. When I sit down to watch a movie, I want to relax. I snuggle up on the couch and await laughter and tears. I do not want to have to analyze every scene, determining what the characters are thinking and which scenes are important and which are fillers. 2001 is all about symbolism and I don’t have the desire to figure out what everything means. It takes a certain kind of person, intellectual and inquisitive, to be able to sit through this movie and get what Kubrick is trying to say.

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey no doubt displayed innovative thinking through its spectacular special effects and novel use of classical music, but it failed to be entertaining to the average audience. While many people enjoy a film that forces them to reflect upon it as they leave the theater, I do enough of that in school and work. I don’t like movies that make me feel dumb for not understanding their complicated plots and symbolic meanings. I had a hard time staying awake while watching this movie and would not watch it again given the chance.

The Website is Almost Done!

So my very first website is almost finished. In case you don't know, I am making a website about webcams with 3 other people for my English class. It is still going extremely well. I just finished making a page about "The Other Uses" of webcams. I talked about how people use them for security while they are on vacation and how webcams can be uses as beachcams or trafficcams. Our website looks great, so if you ever have any questions about webcams you should visit our site at thetruthaboutwebcams.weebly.com. Its not up and running quite yet, but it should be some time this week.

Our Webcam Website

We are doing a website discussing webcams and the dangers of using them. We have specific tabs geared toward parents and another tab for teens. We then use a different persuasive technique for each audience. When it comes to parents, we talk about the positives of webcams and with teens we show the negatives in order to scare them from doing anything dangerous with their webcams. It is going really well so far when it comes to each person doing their share of the project. The creation of the actual website itself is pretty easy do to the template we are using. Our group gets along well and i am sure that our website will look great as well.

How to Make an Essay Interesting

After reading the Media/Design chapter in Nortan Field Guide I began to think about the many newpaper stories and essays I have read throughout my life. Some have been particularly hard to get through, and I think that's because nothing about them ever popped out to get my attention. Scholarly essays are usually written in the standard Times New Roman font with a 1o pt font. A boring, small font tends to make me zone out while I'm reading, but the large type of newspaper headlines always get my attention. I especially love when the stories include graphs and pictures which pull me toward the story. Although some fonts and pictures aren't appropriate for certain articles, I try to get those attention grabbers in my essays as often as possible.

Intros and Conclusions: The Root of All Evil?

The into and conclusion to every essay I have ever written has been the hardest part of the paper. I have the worst time trying to figure out how the engage the reader in my essay. I have had plenty of pointers on how to start off, such as asking a question, starting off with a quote or an interesting fact. Those have helped me through the many essays I have written in high school, but I can't use those tools in my conclusion.
The conclusion of an essay is the hardest for one major reason, teachers can't seem to make up their mind on what its function is. I was originally taught that the conclusion is supposed to summarize the paper, so with that in mind, that is how I wrote my conclusion. I would restate my thesis go over my main points again. As I have progressed to more advanced English classes though, I have found that I am not allowed to summarize in my conclusion. One teacher actually told me that my conclusion "needs to go out into the world." I don't even know what that means. Figuring out how to end my paper on a powerful and rememberable note is hard enough without everyone telling me a different way to do it.

Not So Far Apart?

The first essay in the textual analyses section, "Parallel Worlds: The Surprising Similarities (and Differences) of Country-and-Western and Rap", really struck me. The author, Denise Noe, really made me think of both of those genres in a different way. I am not a huge fan of rap, there are some songs that I like to dance to though, because of how graphic most of the songs are. There is one Eminem song, "Stan", that graphically depicted a crazed fan tying his girlfriend up and sticking her in the trunk of his car, then drives it off a bridge. After hearing that song for the first time, I swear I heard the girlfriend's screams of terror in my sleep. Rap songs no longer speak the minority blacks and their triumphs despite being born on the streets, like they used to. Now it is all about who has the best car or who can have sex with the most women. But, as Noe pointed out, country can be that way too. The men of country too speak of themselves as superior to women. Although country songs aren't as graphic, there are some songs that don't put women in the best light. On the other hand though, I have never heard a rap song put a woman as high up on a pedestool as almost every country song ever made does. Most country songs involve the woman leaving the man, and it is always the man's fault, and the men aren't afraid to admit that. But let me tell you right now, we women make some mistakes too.

Revising

I have always dreaded peer editing days at school. I am not the best at revising my friends' writing pieces for a couple of reasons. First of all I'm not very good at judging their stuff on an english basis. I always take their work for what it is, without questioning it. Questioning is the basis of good editing though. It is my job to tell them what confused me and what I didn't like about it. I am also the worst when it comes to things like spelling and grammer. The second reason I am bad at peer editing is because I hate telling my friends that there is something I don't like about something they spent all night working on. It feels like I'm critiquing them instead of their paper. That is something that I have gotten over through the years because I love getting my papers edited because my editor is making it better. If I appreciate it, then I know my peers will as well

"Punctuation then quotation. P then Q"

When i was in the fifth grade, my teacher Mrs. Brown, came up with a witty rhyme to help us remember how to punctuate quotations. It went "Punctuation then quotation. P then Q." My whole entire writing life I have followed that rule without fail. After reading the dialogue chapter in the Nortom Field Guide to Writing, I learned that the punctuation actually does not always go inside the quotations. In situations where you are putting a singular word inside quotations, as in "the so-called 'users'," you put the punctuation outside the quotes.

Sally sold sea...uhg!

The connection between all of these stories is obvious. Each story tells the tale of the struggles to learn. They are life changing events that for us, came quite easily, but for these writers it was an obstacle to be overcome. They struggled to learn to read and write and even how to speak the language without mistakes. As i read these stories, I tried to think of times in my life where I struggled to achieve something academically. Of course there were numerous occasions when I was given a task at school and I fell short of this goal. The one story I think best relates to the stories in our book is about how I finally overcame my lisp. When I was younger, my dad used to come up into my room and make me repeat over and over, "Sally sold sea shells by the sea shore." I am lisp free now, and I still say that that phrase is difficult to repeat. I guess I don't remember the specific moment when I stopped replacing my "s's" with the "th" sound, but it used to be so hard for me as a child that even to this day, I give myself a little pat on the back every time I come across a sentence full of s's and it doesn't trip me up.

I've Never Thought About That

The Retorical Situations chapters provoked me to think on different levels when preparing to write a paper. I have never thought about how the genre or the medium could affect my assignment. I have never had to think about my audience though, since my audience has always been my instructor. I know that my writings need to be formal in order to please my instructors.
Reading about the literacy narratives made me think about the upcoming technology narrative we will have to write in class. The narratives in this text book are so detailed. I can't think of a story to write about, let alone be able to drage it out to four pages while still keeping it entertaining for my audience.

First blog for english class

I am sitting in english class, just making sure i know how to use this thing.