October 9

Signs: An Underrated Classic

Signs: An Underrated Classic

*SPOILER ALERT*

Believe it or not, I think it is safe to say that I have seen the movie Signs at least 15 times in the past two years. Many people believe the movie is unrealistic and exaggerated, but I think that the acting and emotion is raw.

What is it about?

Graham Hess is a retired reverend that lives with his brother (Merrill) and his two kids (Morgan and Bo) on a farm in Bucks County, PA. Graham’s wife passed away six months ago, making him lose his faith in God. The entire family has little issues of their own; Merrill is an ex-minor league baseball player, Morgan has very bad asthma, and Bo never finishes her water, but leaves her half-full glasses all over the house. One day out in the cornfield, Graham and Merrill go to get the kids and see that massive crop circles have been made on their land so Graham calls the local sheriff to investigate. The sheriff tells him that she does not know what has been going on, but it might be related to the fact that animals all over town have been getting increasingly violent. They hear reports of crop circles appearing all over the world and UFO sightings in Mexico. That night, Graham and Merrill hear noises outside and go outside to find it, but lose it in the corn. Morgan and Bo get invested in the idea of aliens and are obsessed with extraterrestrial life. They hear more noises that night, but Graham becomes more of a believer when he sees a thin, green leg sticking out from the corn. That night, Graham and Merrill discuss their views on miracles. Merrill says that he is a “miracle man”, but Graham reveals that he is not. When they get to the basement due to the attack, Graham remember that the house has a coal shoot in it. Right as he remembers, an alien grabs Morgan but, Merrill saves him. Morgan goes into a nearly fatal asthma attack, but eventually is stable enough to breathe on his own. The next morning, they move back upstairs when everything seems clear. While Graham goes to get the TV for Morgan, an alien grabs Morgan and the family stands there in shock. Throughout the movie, Graham has flashbacks of talking to his wife after her accident. He remembers that her last words were from a random memory telling Merrill to “swing away”. Graham says this to Merrill and he grabs his prize winning baseball bat hanging on the wall and hits the alien as hard as he can. After the first hit, the alien starts injecting poison gas into Morgan’s lungs. With another hit, the alien drops Morgan and Graham picks him up to give him his medicine. The alien falls on the ground and one of Bo’s glasses of water falls on it and burns its skin. Merrill pours water on the alien and it dies. They all walk out to the backyard and Morgan wakes up, breathing fine. The last scene of the movie flashes forward to a month or two after the event and it shows Graham putting his reverend clothing on.

 

Who is in it and when is it from?

Director- M. Night Shyamalan

Graham Hess- Mel Gibson

Merrill- Joaquin Phoenix

Morgan- Rory Culkin

Bo- Abigail Breslin

The film was released in the summer of 2002. It made a whopping 60 million dollars opening weekend and was #1 in the box office for a few weeks.

 

Why do you like it?

I feel that Signs is a very underrated film because of the effort the director had to connect the entire film together. When I watched this movie for the first time, the ending had my mind blown. All the families issues are important to the outcome. Graham stated in the middle of the film that he thought that things just happened for a reason and nothing was a “sign”. The signs are intertwined throughout the film without the audience even knowing. Merrill did not play baseball anymore because he always struck out. He struck out so much because he would swing as hard as he could every time. That is why he was able to exhaust the alien. Morgan had very bad asthma, yet he survived the poison gas. He survived because his lungs were still closed from the asthma attack he had hours earlier. Bo never drank her water, but left her glasses all over the house. Water ended up being the aliens weakness and when it fell over after Merrill’s hit, the water poured all over it. All of these signs throughout the movie connect so well that it captures my interest every time I watch it. At the end of the film it flashes back to all of the signs and Graham realizes that things do happen for a reason and miracles are real. This revelation makes him go back to being a Reverend. I feel that this movie joins all components of film like lighting, camera angles, plot, dialogue, etc. and the outcome is emotional and powerful.

Category: Nonfiction Posts | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 4

I am always sure about the Superhero Movie

Written by Chris Johnson

 

Sometimes in life, you’ll have a crappy day. Maybe someone keys your car, maybe you get to work late, or maybe you get an accidental vasectomy after learning your wife died at Thanksgiving dinner. Regardless of what makes a bad day, there is one movie that can turn your day around. The Superhero Movie, written and directed by Craig Mazin, is a coming of age story about Rick Riker, a teenage boy who lives with his aunt and uncle, Lucille and Albert. As well, his best friend is Trey, who happens to be his confidante. Rick has a crush on Jill Johnson, who is dating the local bully, Lance Landers, nephew of Lou Landers, the local terminally ill businessman.

The story seems to be a spoof on mostly the X-MEN, Batman, and The Fantastic Four, with characters from the respective franchises coming into view. However, the movie plays out as if it were the first Spider-Man from 2002. There are many jokes throughout the movie, but crude humor dominates all. If you’re not a frequent patron of Dick’s Last Resort, you might feel a bit worn out early on. But with Leslie Nielsen in this film, there’s quite a bit of witty, highbrow humor mixed with the crass, lowbrow humor of this film.

I personally would consider this to be Drake Bell’s magnum opus. After years of success, he met one of the largest challenges to his career yet. There are some who say this was a waste of his talent; I would say quite the opposite. Even Disney and Marvel would come to agree with this. This movie portrays very strange foreshadowing, as in recent years, Drake Bell has played Spiderman in television series on the Disney channel.

Even if there is crudeness and what may be mistaken for as lazy writing, this story actually displays some symbolism that I have not seen since I watched the Watchmen movie. Throughout the film, there’s this message of fighting against fate, this message of trying to resist change and fight against the future, which is seen as utterly evil. Everything goes away eventually, and needs to make room for more things, and continue the circle of life. Those who attempt to live past their prime in the film and not accept the reality of the situation tend to show off negative characteristics as early as the character is seen, at least until the scene reverts back to bladder and puberty based jokes. And what makes this more interesting is that it isn’t some “you snooze you lose” type of fairy tale, that makes you want to sleep before it could ever get to the good part. No, this film gets your attention, and keeps you awake. It also teaches you how not to be, in contrast to said fairy tales.

So whenever you have had a bad day, don’t hunker down and stress eat, don’t kick yourself, and don’t lose faith in the world. Instead, watch the Superhero Movie, and sit back and laugh for a while. We don’t live forever.

Category: class writing, Nonfiction Posts | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 2

Creating Student Bloggers in 5 Easy-To-Follow Steps!

It is estimated that 2 million blog posts are written everyday. That is over 10 million per week.

The sheer amount of content makes learning about and teaching this writing task daunting. Nevertheless, my students and I faced this challenge head on as we worked together to craft and publish the first of what will hopefully be many posts. The following is the step-by-step approach we used to get comfortable and confident with blogging.

Step 1: Write!

Before I introduced the blogging writing task, I wanted students to have a wealth of ideas to pull from for their first posts. So, we spent a few class periods writing to gather ideas. First, we curated expert lists. Students had five minutes to list as many topics they considered themselves “experts” on. After we listed and discussed some of our expertise, we returned to the items and brainstormed types of writing we could do on the different topics. For example, one student who considers himself an expert on backpacking realized he could write a how-to guide or keep a journal of his backpacking trips.

Another list we created lamented all our pet peeves. After students furiously scribbled annoyances for five minutes. they had to chance to voice their pet peeves to each other through conversation. I eventually had to cut the diatribes off after several noisy minutes and invited students to unleash their complaints on paper through longer freewrites.

Finally, we spent an entire class period doing writing sprints. For the first round, we sprinted through crafting one minute top five lists of entertainment, attractions, activities, bests, and worsts. We then revisited the quick brainstorms and wrote for longer, five minute bursts in different modes: review, tutorial, guide, travel, and fandom.

Step 2: Notice

Rather than lecture on a solitary approach to crafting a blog post, we spent several class periods reading and noticing. On day one, groups of students focused on one popular type of post (they chose from reviews, tutorials, travel journals, ultimate guides, fandom, and art/photography) and explored as many blogs within this type as possible. While they explored, they created a list of observations and curated a resource of examples. On day two, each group shared their findings and pointed out exemplars to the class.

Step 3: Keep Noticing

Stuck on how to start? Study model hooks! Not sure how to format or develop the post? Look at how others did it! Clueless on how to end? Which blog endings do you enjoy most? We drew inspiration from other writers throughout each part of our writing process.

To get our writing started, I gathered a collection of model hooks to share with students. We discussed and experimented with leads that asked questions, showed enthusiasm, used dialogue, got descriptive, created figurative comparisons, etc.

To continue the flow of our writing, we worked in groups to study and notice how others developed their posts. In groups, students closely studied one sample post and highlighted model sentences, noted structural moves, and listed supporting details. They then moved around and studied their classmates’ observations; noting what might work for their writing.

Finally, to guide our endings we turned to a blog post on this topic – 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post. This blogger encourages writers to summarize, motivate, link, and question readers at the close of their posts.

Step 4: Talk about it

Just like any writing task, I gave my students multiple opportunities to conference about their writing. They worked through their ideas and drafts with a writing mentor and revised and edited with each other. Since our audience reaches beyond the classroom with these posts, the goal is to feel confident and comfortable with the final product before we hit publish. While this step is listed fourth, it really was an ongoing part of our writing process.

 

Step 5: Publish it!

After much trial and error (my school’s firewall blocks many blogging sites), I finally settled on EduBlogs.org as our class blogging platform. The site is relatively user

friendly and includes many key features for an unbeatable price – free! It was a little time-consuming to get each student added as a blogger – I needed to send individual invitations to each student’s email, and then guide them through changing the automatically generated passwords to more user-friendly passwords.  However, the platform does allow the teacher to determine each student’s role in the blog – subscriber, contributor, author, editor, or administrator.  If you want to moderate posts before publication, invite students to take on the role of a contributor. However, since I hope my students will blog on their own and outside of class requirements, I invited them to blog as authors, which enables them to post independently. I still reserve the ability, as the administrator, to edit or delete posts if necessary.

 

Do you blog? If so, what do you do to make your voice stand out among the more than two million who post daily? What advice to you have for me and my students as we continue exploring and contributing to the world of blogging? Please post a comment below!

Category: class writing, Nonfiction Posts | 1 Comment on Creating Student Bloggers in 5 Easy-To-Follow Steps!