The Land of the Dead

The Land of the Dead is probably the first real zombie movie I have ever watched, and after finishing it today in class, I thought it was pretty good. I was expecting it to be a lot scarier than it was though. Horror films are not usually my first pick when I go out to the theaters or rent a movie, but it was a good change of pace. I really have no idea what I’m going to write about, especially for eight pages. Since I haven’t really seen too many other horror or zombie films, I’m probably going to stick with this movie and focus on some aspect of it. I’m thinking of maybe writing about the race/gender/sexuality/social class aspect of the film. There were a lot of example of all those throughout the movie. For example, with the main zombie being African American it shows the gender and race stereotypes. Another topic I was thinking of writing about was examining a scene or certain characters. This might be easier because I can focus on a certain part and develop my idea. For either topic I choose, I think the hardest part is going to be making it long enough. I’m going to need to start researching my source soon and hopefully that will help me choose a topic. I just need to pick the topic that I’m most comfortable with and have a lot to write about, so I don’t get point off for the paper being too short! But hopefully once I start writing, it won’t be too hard.

The Namsake

Last weekend, I went to visit my friend in Birmingham and she wanted to go watch the movie The Namesake. I had never heard of the movie and when she told me what it was about, I wasn’t really interested. She finally convinced me to go, and to my surprise it was an awesome movie! The movie was about a family moving from Calcutta, India to New York and adjusting to the completely new lifestyle. It started off in India with the parents, Ashoke and Ashima, getting married. They then moved to a little apartment in New York with little money and no idea what to expect from this foreign land. After a couple years of struggling they moved into a nicer house and had two kids. The story basically focused on their son, Gogol played by Kal Penn. It followed his struggles in trying to live a normal life in America while holding onto his Indian culture. I thought Kal Penn wouldn’t be good in a serious role, but I definitely underestimated him. Kal Penn along with the rest of the cast did an excellent job. I liked this movie a lot because I could relate a lot of aspects of it to my own life. Just like the family in the movie, my parents moved from India and struggled a lot before they ended up where they are today. Sometimes I do find it hard to balance both the Indian and American cultures in my life. However, I think I have it easier than Kal Penn did in the movie because I am exposed to my Indian side a lot by having a lot of family members close by. I have also been back to India a few times with my parents and brother. Overall, I thought the movie was great and it did an outstanding job portraying the life of this Indian family trying to adjust in America.

Reading and Writing About Movies

This week’s readings were about analyzing movies, and taking time to discuss them instead of just watching them for leisure. I liked the part where they talked about movie genres and how people expect certain things from certain movies. For example, you go to comedies prepared to laugh and to horror films prepared to be scared, and if we don’t get those things from the movies we are generally disappointed. The article talked about how even though we pay attention to genre, the critics don’t, and I thought that was interesting. When reviewing a movie, I would think that genre would be a big part of the discussion. But many critics look at the movie as a whole and tend to compare then to such classics like Casablanca. I also like the part about movies being a powerful cultural tool. I definitely believe that many more people today are comparing their lives to what they see in the movies. I agree with the part in the essay that talks about movies guiding our behavior. People these days want to dress and act like many of the movie stars they see on the big screen. Even when it comes to dating, many people are getting ideas from what they see in romantic films. Being a girl, I think it also gives us false hope of the perfect guy entering our lives and courting us away on extravagant dream dates. I think that as the years go by, many more people are using what they see in the movies in their everyday lives. The way they talk, dress, and act are all influenced by what they see, and I don’t know if that’s such a good thing. Depending on the movie, it could cause children to act in ways they shouldn’t be, but I guess that would be the parent’s job to monitor what they are watching.

Grey's Episode 8

Yesterday’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy dealt with secrets. Last episode, we learn that Callie has inherited a lot of money from her parents. George gets upset that she didn’t tell him about the money and they get into a huge fight about it. So George went over to talk to Izzy about it. Let’s just say that they both got extremely drunk and ended up sleeping together. This episode starts off as the next day, and George could not really remember what happened, and Izzy didn’t really bother to bring it up. But once he finally realized that they had slept together, he was furious. Izzy wanted to tell Callie, but George refused. He said that he would rather have the burden of keeping a guilty conscious for the rest of his life instead of telling Callie and breaking her heart. I think that George is being completely selfish. Callie has the right to know what he did with Izzy, even if it will hurt her. Then she should have the right to decide if she wants to be with George despite of what he did. Keeping secrets like that from the people you care about will come back to hurt you in the end. I definitely believe that there are some things that should be left unsaid, but in this case, if I were in Callie’s shoes I would want to know. I think that Callie is going to find out what happened somehow, and it’s going to be really hard for her to forgive George, because he was not honest with her. Being honest is the best thing you can do because the truth will always come out in the end.

October Road

Yesterday a new show called October Road, premiered after Grey’s Anatomy on ABC. I initially started watching it because it starred Bryan Greenberg, who used to be one of my favorite characters on the show One Tree Hill. The show is about Nick Garret, played by Bryan Greenberg, and his return to his hometown after ten long years. He left right after high school for a backpacking trip through Europe, and he promised his friends and his girlfriend that he would be back after six weeks. But after those six weeks, he decided he didn’t want to go home and he wanted to take some time for himself. Within those ten years, Nick wrote a book about his hometown and all the people in it. The booking ended up becoming really popular and it made him famous. He was then asked to return to his hometown to lead a seminar at his local college. When he returned home, he was not welcomed by some of his old friends because he trashed them in his book. At the end of the episode Nick decides to stay longer and maybe get inspiration for his next book. I thought the show was pretty good and it kept me interested. I think it will do pretty well because it’s in the time slot after Grey’s, which a lot of people watch. However, a lot of people also watch Ugly Betty before Grey’s, so I don’t know how many people will stay tuned for three hours of TV. I guess we will just have to wait and see how it does.

Spring Break

My spring break has been going pretty good, even though I’m stuck here in Michigan. My days have consisted of sleeping in, working, hanging out with my friends, and avoiding my homework. I also went bowling, and I can’t even remember the last time I went. My score was 80 and I’m sad to say that my eight-year-old cousin beat me, but it was still lots of fun. The weather was unusually gorgeous on Tuesday with sunny skies, and 70 degrees. I was so excited to go outside in flip-flops and no jacket! But of course on Wednesday night, it snows and we’re back to our normal cold, gross weather. But what do you expect? It’s Michigan, the weather changes every five minutes! Although, the beautiful weather left as quickly as it came, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Now it’s Friday, and I’m wondering where the days have gone! I can’t believe break is almost over and I have to spend my last weekend catching up on homework. I have to study for a chemistry test that’s on Monday. Who puts a test on the day after break? I really think that my professor wants all of us to fail. Overall, my spring break was very relaxing and I’m sad it’s coming to an end. Now I have to get back to reality and start studying if I don’t want to fail!

Reality TV paper

I thought that this paper was a lot harder to write than the last one. I think I mainly had trouble because I do not watch a lot of reality television in the first place. At first, I was going to write about how reality television was unrealistic, but I had a very hard time getting five pages out with the shows that I had chosen. I finally decided to write about how reality television is realistic in the cases of American Idol and Amazing Race. At first, I still had a lot of trouble writing five to six pages on this subject. Finally, I just started describing the shows in detail, and it slowly took off from there. I actually think that most reality television shows are unrealistic, but with American Idol and Amazing Race I found more reasons why they did show reality. With American Idol, I think the show is real because the audition process is similar to regular open casting calls in the real entertainment business. Also, the contestants have be a good singer to make if far in the competition. In Amazing Race, the contestants have to have strength, speed and intelligence to win the race. So I believe that both these shows represent many aspects of reality compared to a lot of other reality shows on television right now. Overall, I thought this paper was kind of difficult, and I definitely had to work a harder lot on this one than the last paper to make good. However, once I started getting my ideas out, it was much easier to bring everything together.

House

This week I'm going to write about the show House because Grey's Anatomy was a rerun, yet again. Dave Mathews guest starred on the show, and I was surprised at how good of an actor he was. He played a person that had gotten into an accident at a very young age, and had suffered sever brain damage. The brain damage caused him to forever be in the state of mind of a five year old, and his father has always taken care of him. He can't speak that well or even button his shirt, but somehow he is amazing at playing the piano. So him and his father created these charity events where he plays the piano to raise money for people that have the same disease as him. During one the charity events, his fingers stop functioning and that's when he is taken to Dr. House. House wants remove the right half of his brain because he thinks it will completely cure him, and the father is left with the decision of letting them perfom the surgery. I don't know what I would do if I had to make that decision. On one hand, the son could be cured, but on the other hand he could die. The father ends up consenting the surgery and of course the son turns out fine. Another big thing that happened on the show is that we learned that Dr. House had brain cancer, or so we thought. The whole episode all the people in his life were hurting at the thought that he was going to die and taking time to be extra nice to House. A few of the doctors decided to test him again to make sure he wasn't misdiagnosed with the cancer. When the results turned up negative for brain cancer, they were so excited to tell him. When they told House the good news, he became furious at them. It turns out that House had faked cancer so he could get the pain drugs injected into his brain. House had a previous addiction to Vikodin and it turns out he isn't over it. I thought it was crazy the lengths he went to, to get the drugs. He tricked everyone that actually cared about him, and in the end pushed them farther away but creating such a lie.

grey's Episode 7

Sadly, this week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was a rerun, but luckily I haven’t written about this episode yet. In this episode all the guys of the show decide to take a camping trip to get some fresh air and space from all the women in their lives. Back at the hospital, Dr. Slone has a completed surgery of turning a man into a woman. The man having the surgery, Daniel, has his wife with him, and Meredith asks her how she is dealing with all this. The women tells Meredith that at first, when her husband told her he wanted to become a women, she couldn’t handled it. She left him and tried to get her mind off of him by dating other men. After dating other men, she realized that she just wanted her best friend, Daniel back regardless if he was a man or a woman. This kind of ties into our discussion this week about homosexuals and how they are not accepted by some people in our society. Like the homosexuals, people like Daniel may not always be accepted in our society, but I believe the people that truly care about them will always be there. I think that people should be able to express themselves in whatever way they want, we shouldn’t hold their sexuality, race, or gender against them. I know that in our society these stereotypes and prejudices will always exist, but hopefully by different shows bringing up these topics, people will slowly begin to accept them.

Society’s Need For a Queer Solution

This reading dealt with issues of homosexuals and the different ways they are being portrayed on television. It talked about how television portrays homosexuals only through comedies like Friends and Will and Grace. I think that Will and Grace has a good example of how being gay doesn’t have to fit into one type of person. With Jack we see the “typical” flamboyant, gay guy that flaunts the fact that he’s gay and is proud of it. With Will we see a completely different guy who is career oriented and not only identified by his sexuality. I like that it shows both guys and that you don’t have to fit into one type of person just because of your sexuality. I think that people should be able to have any sort of identity they want and leave their sexuality out of it. From the clip of Dawson’s Creek, we see that Jack is struggling to find his place. He feels that he can’t be the jock and gay at the same time. Dawson’s Creek is not a comedy and it addressed the fact that he was gay and trying to fit in with the other kids in high school. I think that kids can watch shows like this and be able to feel more comfortable with their sexuality and know that they are not the only one going through it. I think many television shows now are less afraid to have homosexuals as main characters on their shows. One show that I just recently started watching called Brothers and Sisters, has a gay guy on it. He is one of the main characters and from the outside and the way he acts you could never tell he was gay. Like Will’s character from Will and Grace, he is a well accomplished lawyer and he doesn’t flaunt the fact that he’s gay, but he’s definitely not hiding it either. I think as the years go on many more shows will start addressing homosexuality and hopefully it will be less of an issue.