Evaluation Of Module Blog

Overall I enjoyed my Online Blog project...for the most part. The Blogger software has really tried my patience with all the random "I didn't tell you to do that!!" paragraph making, font changing, pictures not resizing issues, which meant I spent far too much time reviewing and editing pretty much every post I did just so it looked readable. 

But in terms of the actual project I really do feel like I've learnt something about the online sector of journalism, which I had never really explored before. I learnt all about RSS feeds, Twitter and Google Reader, some useful tools that I had never heard of before this module and I had never kept a blog before, despite their obvious usefulness to journalism students. 

I enjoyed being able to write about literally anything I wanted for pretty much the first time in the course. In the feature I could write about a subject which I have a great interest in, and ideally would like to specialise in after I graduate. It also gave me a chance to practice all different kinds of journalism, for example for my feature I had a mix of reviews, lists and other stories.

In the blog I could talk about anything I wanted, no matter how random or seemingly irrelevant. It felt like a more personal kind of journalism, which I felt really made the lecture enjoyable, as well as informative.  

Connor Cruise debuts in Seven Pounds, but where are Mum and Dad?!

I saw a trailer while waiting for that god awful movie Four Christmases (Vince Vaughn being Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon being Reese Witherspoon really should work, right?) for a new film with Will Smith called Seven Pounds. It was a good one, big, bold and so so serious. Blatent Oscar baiting, but I can overlook that because it did actually look quite good, even though I’m not entirely sure what the damn thing is about. Here’s the trailer, the very same one I saw, for you to make up your mind. 

So where am I going with this? Well the film marks the screen debut of one Connor Cruise, adopted son of Hollywood's former golden couple, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Here he is, smiling away:

I never knew the lad existed, let alone that he is apparently a skilled actor. The problem is that when I, and most other people I'm guessing, think about Cruise/Kidman sprogs we only really think about Suri, Tom's baby with Katie Holmes, and Sunday Rose, Nicole's "miracle baby" with Keith Urban and forget about poor old Connor. I mean, how can he possible compete with a miracle baby??!!

Even though we, the stupid public, forget about Connor, you'd think that Kidman and Cruise would still have a place in their heart for their little boy, right? Apparently not, as both were absent from the LA premiere of Seven Pounds on Wednesday. Now if your son had landed a main part in a film, you'd go along to the premiere, right?  Consider as well that this is their son's first ever film, that Tom lives in the same city as the premiere and that both Tom and Nicole have gone to god knows how many of these things over the years, it's not like they were too intimidated to go along or anything like that. 

I agree with The Inquisitr, not bothering to turn up to your child's premiere is poor form and clearly shows favouritism amongst your children. Do you think a wrinkled Old Tom and Nicole would shun a premiere starring Suri or Sunday Rose? No way!

So why did they not bother turning up? Babble can't work it out, but I think I know the reason. I reckon they took a look at Seven Pounds' page on Rotten Tomatoes and read the reviews. Perhaps we shouldn't be so harsh on Tom and Nicole after seeing that!  

Video Courtesy of youtube.com

Photo Courtesy of huffingtonpost.com

I Feel Like Hating on Christmas Films...'Tis the Season

Only 6 days til Christmas folks! Yep, that's all. Funny how it sneaks up you isn't it. But alas, I'm not really feeling all that Christmassy at the moment. I wish I was, I really do, but I've got too much other stuff to worry about, like work and buying presents before it's too late. So when I wandered onto Merry Christmas On The Net and spied their cheery graphics and their list of 3 Christmas Movies Everyone Loves, It's A Wonderful Life, The Grinch and A Christmas Carol, for some reason I'm not quite sure of, I felt determined to ruin their good time. So in response, I'm going to point out the reasons NOT to love these movies. Bah Humbug! 

A Christmas Carol

I feel kind of bad about ripping into such a classic and beloved tale. I mean, it's Dickens!! But still, I'll give it a shot. First of all, it's been done too many times. Way too many. Oh yeah, there's the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tiny Tim, yeah, yeah, bla bla...whatever! We've all been forced to star in/sit through far too many school plays, why do we want to see a film of it as well. And second of all...it's not really that good a story is it? Yes it's Dickens, but it's rubbish Dickens. Really, there are so many other great books that need to be adapted and tons of brilliant screenplays out there to be made. Why do they keep making films out of a story from the Victorian age with ghosts and a smart businessman who gets guilt tripped out of his hard earned money? 

  

The Grinch

I hate Jim Carrey. He's not that funny. His "wackiness" just annoys me. That alone is enough reason to give this movie a miss, but quite a few people do actually like Jimmy so I guess I'll have to say some more stuff. 

The main reason you should avoid The Grinch is because it is extremely boring. I'm not talking about the original Dr Seuss book here, because that's brilliant. But it's also short. The movie tried to turn the book's 32 pages into a full length film and in doing so failed spectacularly. As a result, the film feels stretched and drags along desperately. The kids will be bored senseless and of course the adults weren't even interested in the first place! 

It's A Wonderful Life

Is it? Is it really? Some people may consider this film a classic, but I just consider it old and cheesy. I mean just look at that DVD cover up there, all smiles and the like. The whole plot of the film, an angel coming down to tell a suicidal man just how much rubbish things would have been if he had never existed, is ridiculous. In Wonderful Life, James Stewart sees that had he not been born, his neighborhood would become a slum, his girlfriend would be a spinster, his uncle would go nuts and his younger brother would have died. That's all well and good, but let's be truthful here...nobody really has that big an impact on the world. Sure we'd be missed by our friends and family, but would everything really go so crazy and weird if we were not around. Why this is seen as an inspirational movie? If anything it just makes you more depressed when you realise that, unlike Life's protagonist, in reality you meant nothing to the world...Merry Christmas!

Photos Courtesy of murderofravens.org, dannysdesktop.themesunlimited.com and teachwithmovies.org

I'm a friend first and a boss second...probably an entertainer third

My housemate handed in his last essay of the semester. He's now done! All he has to worry about now is whether he'll be able to make it through the chocolates, dinners and puddings on the 25th without throwing up. The only thing he has to write now is a Christmas list. Even as I write this, he's packing up to head off home. And how is he choosing to spend his last day in Harrow? With a hearty Pizza Hut buffet (four hours ago, and we all still feel stuffed) and a marathon of Ricky Gervais' hugely popular TV show, The Office.

Yup, 7 hours 20 minutes of back to back David Brent. It doesn't matter that he can quote the whole thing off the top of his head anyway, he wants to celebrate the end of all that work with one of the most loved comedy shows ever. It's also lovely background noise for a student trying to finish off his module blog.

Whether or not it's a good way to spend your last full day in Harrow is a matter of opinion, but the true genius of The Office cannot be denied. Take a look at some of the show's best moments...

Video Courtesy of: youtube (user rob1969in)

De Niro's Faux Pas

While scanning the BBC News website, I came across an article about a poster for the film Righteous Kill starring Hollywood greats Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

These posters have been splashed all over the Underground but until this article pointed it out, I've never really put much thought into the tag line: 

"There's nothing wrong with a little shooting as long as the right people get shot"

Now, that's a pretty stupid thing to have printed on sheets of paper all around a city where gun crime is on the rise and 26 teenagers have been murdered in just one year.

But it's even stupider to hang this poster proudly on the platform at Stockwell Tube Station, where Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by police in 2005, after being mistaken for a suicide bomber. 

Silly, Silly People! 

Photo Courtesy of flickr.com (user coconinoco)

Reviewing ALL of my DVDs

That picture above is every film that I have on DVD up here in Old Harrow town. Alas, most of my collection had to stay at home when I came to Uni due to space issues, and some more of them mysteriously disappeared without a trace. So there they all are...and I'm going to review them all in just a few words:

Top Row, Left-Right:

Spiderman 3: I actually liked it, even though everyone ripped it to shreds. Too many bad guys though. And what's with all the singing and dancing?

Airplane: The oldies are the best. Cheap gags, yes but they come so thick and fast that I don't really care. One of the funniest films ever. Don't call me Shirley.

Dodgeball: Average. There's only so many "ball" gags you can fit into one film.

Anchorman: "You're a smelly pirate hooker!" and other fabulous quotes make this one of the best and most talked about comedies around.

Cloverfield: I was on Facebook the whole way through this movie so I can't remember much. But I remember that I liked the amateur cameraman style though.

The Dark Knight: I think we've covered that one enough. Love it.

Sin City: Dark and horrible, my kind of film. Good for when you're feeling depressed. Or when you want to see Jessica Alba as a cowboy stripper.

City Of God: One of my favourite films. The whole thing looks so stylish and fantastic the whole way through. Bit too heavy to handle sometimes though.

Borat: I laugh the whole way through this film every single time, without fail. Brilliant.

Zoolander: Great parody of the fashion industry and it always makes me feel a little bit smarter afterwards.

Bottom Row, Left-Right:

The Bourne Ultimatum: The best of the trilogy. Hard and gritty, but elegant at the same time. Bond looks rubbish now.

Meet The Fockers: Light on the smut, but heavy on the cheese. It's alright.

Kill Bill: Vol 1: Beautiful violence and the dictionary definition of rewatchable. But two is better.

Kill Bill: Vol 2: A better story makes this better than number one. Controversial eh...

Napoleon Dynamite: Randomly fun and slightly tragic, but it doesn't stand up well to repeat viewings.

The 40 Year Old Virgin: I must have been the last person in the world to have seen this film. It's only OK.

Superbad: Unfortunately, I can relate to the protagonists of this film. That, and of course, the legendary McLovin, really make this film.

Juno: This film has a really great script (an academy award winning script, in fact) and although it's not laugh out loud funny, the kooky lead character makes it worth a watch.

Knocked Up: Sweet and funny in equal measures with likeable leads. The real life humour puts it a cut above most of the other comedies about.

So there it is, my DVDs all nicely summed up. Done.

And While We're On The Subject...

...and I'm not planning on filling up all five of these posts with Batman related rubbish like some delusional fanboy, but I've got to say...all these Batman 3 rumours are really, really annoying!!

Following the "exclusive" in The Sun newspaper, Aint It Cool News went off on a rant and pretty much summed up my feelings on the subject, and probarbly those of all the people with even a faint interest in the next film, who get all excited whenever some website, blog or newspaper comes up with "exclusive" Batman development.

If you listen to all those made up rumours disguised as facts, then so far the next film, entitled The Caped Crusader or Gotham will see Batman face off against Catwoman, played by Angelina Jolie, Cher and Rachel Weisz, The Riddler, played by Johnny Depp and Eddie Murphy and The Penguin played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Oh and Shia LaBeouf is gonna turn up as Robin...

See, it's all rubbish. Nothing has been confirmed yet. Absolutely nothing. So Aint It Cool challenged all its readers to make up their own Batman rumours...and Total Film rose to the challenge. Click here to check out their latest lot of "Batman news".

So for now, I'll leave you with this exclusive, completley real photo taken on the set. Enjoy!

Why So Serious? My Love of The Dark Knight

I'm a little confused as to why I love The Dark Knight so much. I mean, I've always been a film fan. Some of my earliest memories are of me at the cinema. I remember sneaking into the 12 rated Titanic, when I was only 8, and sobbing like a baby at the end and I remember going to see Flipper for my friend's 6th birthday party and rolling in front of the stage, throwing popcorn like all the other unruly kids there in the same cinema that 10 years later gave me my first job.

Films are such a huge part of my life, but despite all that there's never been one that I have been completely obsessed by. That was until this summer, when I went along with my cinema coworkers to a private midnight screening of The Dark Knight.

I wasn't really that excited when I went in because the last Batman film I saw, Batman and Robin, was...well...rubbish. But I loved how perfect everything about it was, the story was faultless, the music grand and haunting and Heath Ledger was so deliciously terrifying as The Joker. Every time he came on screen I found myself suddenly feeling so tense and nervous, goosebumps bubbling up on my arms, because I knew that this sadistic serpentine man was so dangerous that he could do absolutley anything. He simply has to get that Oscar!

And I wasn't the only one captivated by this film. TDK has a 94% positive rating on review website Rotten Tomatoes, is ranked the 4th best film ever on IMDb, became only the second film ever to make over $500 million at the worldwide box office and set a record in North America for the most DVDs sold in one day (3 Million). Basically, a lot of people like it...

But perhaps the reason I am so obsessed by this film is because it turned out to be so much more than the big bangs and bad dialouge of the average summer blockbuster I was expecting. It was a real morality tale, so dark and bleak that it bordered on depressing, a drama that tackled the real word issues of terrorism and corruption, where good, innocent people suffer and die and the villains rule supreme. And to think, just two years earlier a typical Batman film consisted of Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed up as an Ice-Man spouting out terrible one liners.

My favourite scene? It would have to be the interrogation scene between Batman and The Joker in what will be a pivotal point in the movie. Here the seemingly unbreakable Joker responds to Batman's vicious pummeling with psychotic laughter and pushes the dark knight, screaming, to his breaking point:

Video Courtesy of youtube.com (user chriscargill)

Photos Courtesy of goldstars.wordpress.com and heathledgerjoker.co.uk

Blog Feature Rationale

This week, my job is to write a series of five different posts on a specific, "featured" topic.

When it came to choosing a topic to write about, it really didn't take much time for me to decide. It was always going to be about film. I used to go to the cinema all the time, and now I work there, my DVD collection is large and varied and I have an A Level in Film Studies, so I think it's fair to say I am interested in the subject.
I also read film magazines all the time and I always click straight on the entertainment section of the BBC News website, so I feel like I have a knack for that kind of writing. I have always pictured myself becoming an entertainment journalist and I would ideally like to work on a film magazine, website or write in the film section of a newspaper after I have finished studying.

Over these five posts I will be writing reviews, exploring some of my personal favourite films and writing other random bits and bobs about all things movie related.

Critical Evaluation of My Group Blog

I was excited to start my group blog project, as I was extremely interested in the topic of the blog, comedy, because comedy TV shows and movies are pretty much the only things I watch.

I felt like I knew enough to talk about the subject in depth and therefore would be able to contribute easily to the blog.

The idea of our blog was simply to write about everything to do with comedy. We wanted to talk about comedy from all decades, all genres, on the internet, on the TV and at the cinema. We found that we came up with different ideas for the blog very quickly, in fact by the end of our first lecture we had pretty much figured out what we would be writing, who would be writing it and when it would be posted.
We decided that, as well as writing about different types of comedy, we would write different kinds of posts, for example on a day when one person posted a review, another blogger in our group would post a profile piece on a comedian, so the detail on the blog was always varied.
Our blog was different because it truly was unique! honestly! We searched all over the internet for comedy blogs and what we found were blogs that were funny, but not any blogs that actually covered comedic TV shows or film or shows or anything.
We also realised that we didn't really have a target audience, considering that comedy appeals to all demographics. Initially we thought this would be a good thing, because it meant that we appealed to everyone, giving us a large potential audience.
However, we found out later on when we were doing our presentation that in fact the best blogs succeed because they have a niche market of devoted readers. If anything, our random scattering of topics was going to put everyone off.
When it came to writing my first blog post, I soon realised that it turned out much harder than I thought it would be. I thought it would be easy to talk at length about this subject and that I could knock out a small and interesting post very quickly. However, the whole post took me the entire night to write and I had to research quite a lot of the information that I thought I already knew about.
From then on I tried to keep every subsequent post I did short and punchy, but with every post I felt myself writing much more than I had intended just to cover everything I wanted to in the post. Any posts which I had deliberately cut short, such as my final post at "...completely different" felt somewhat unsatisfactory.

I also had problem with the Blogger software. After posting pictures and videos, random white gaps would start showing up that I could not get rid of, and every time I pressed enter for a new paragraph in the post, it would skip down two lines instead of one. I also initially had problems with the timestamp on each post, as I was unaware that the time given when each blog post is published is the time when the draft was first saved. That meant I was extremely confused when my first two posts turned up on the blog with completely different times and dates than I had actually published them. However I soon worked out how to change this, thankfully.
Overall I think our blog turned out pretty well. I personally liked the fact that we covered a wide range of comedy, but if the professional didn't agree than of course we would have to change this in order to make the blog marketable. If I was to redo the blog again, I would probably pick a target audience and write about the kind of comedy that they specifically enjoy.


Pictures Courtesy of: leeth.org and bradford.library.on.ca

What The Marketing Lady Said...

Unfortunately I missed my group's presentation of our comedy blog to Kathryn Corrick, of leading London advertising company, McCann Erickson, so I can't really comment on how it went...basically though, we weren't the best in terms of marketing ability. Boo! That honour went to the Top 10 For Dummies Blog (congrats and that).

What I did learn though is that our blog was a little too general. The best blogs out there are on niche little subjects, with a small, but devoted fanbase. While we may argue that our blog can appeal to all kinds of ages and fans of all kinds of comedy, the users searching our blog may get quite frustrated pretty quickly at being unable to find the exact type of post or content they are looking for. 

So all in all, our blog was not bad but not the most marketable. Fair does. It was still fun though. 

Introduction To Group Blog

In our lecture this week, we have been divided up into 5 different group blogs, which will run “live”, with all of us posting regular content daily for five days starting from Monday.

I have joined the group working on a “comedy blog” entitled “And Now for Something Completely Different”, a reference to that famous line from Monty Python…which I’ve never watched. But despite my lack of Python knowledge, I feel I am more than capable of writing about comedy, considering it’s pretty much all I watch on the box, and the rest of my group, Amy, Jenny and Sonja, assure me that’s the case with them as well.

We will be talking about all kinds of different comedy through a mix of reviews, top 5 lists, profile pieces and lots of other good stuff too. Hopefully it all goes well!

You're No One If You're Not On Twitter

I've never really used Twitter. In fact I've never heard of Twitter before. But I love Facebook though and I love updating my status to let everyone know what I'm doing right now, to let people know how I'm feeling, what I'm up to or just to put something totally random, an in-joke spread around the entirety of the Facebook network. And that's the whole idea of Twitter. It's a social networking site where users post little nuggets of information ("tweets") about anything and everything, little updates of where they're going, what they're thinking etc etc.

It sounds like a great journalistic tool and an extremely easy way of keeping in touch with contacts and finding leads for new stories. For example, Paul Bradshaw writes in this blogpost just how useful Twitter can really be.

And if you're still not convinced by Twitter, just remember...you're no one if you're not on Twitter.

Video Courtesy of youtube.com (user ihatemorningsdotcom)

"Titanic 2" trailer!

This little gem was on the IMDb hitlist today, and for good reason. It's ridiculously brilliant (loving the Celine Dion remix) just as long as nobody from Hollywood thinks it is ACTUALLY a good idea. That would be...painful...

Video Courtesy of: youtube.com

Strictly Stupid

Over the last few weeks there have been so many big, bold and shocking stories blasted into our face. There were the big bad pirates of Somali who celebrated the biggest hijacking in history with a 14 day (and counting) party aboard the Sirius Star, or there was the leaked BNP membership list, that wonderful little violation of the data protection act which caused twitching curtains all across the country. And of course, how could we have a week without being reminded by the media that our country’s economy is down the crapper and as a result we’re all going to have a disastrous Christmas/life/future.

But there has been one particularly significant story to have risen up from the last few weeks, one that has completely captured the public’s attention, been commented on by so many esteemed journalists, discussed amongst MPs and been blasted over every conceivable media outlet available. Forget the Mumbai terrorists attacks, all anybody really wants to talk about is…John Sergeant.

According to the newspapers, televised and online news bulletins and just about every single discussion show around, John Sergeant’s two left feet and his subsequent removal from Strictly Come Dancing is the most important story in the world right now.

If like me you’re not a fan of the show, but you fancy a laugh and want to see what all the fuss is about then check out John's Cha Cha

Sure, Sergeant’s dancing never fails to put a smile on my face but really the controversy surrounding John should have only been front page news on the Strictly website.

I remember the shock of going into my local newsagents and seeing John’s smug little face staring back at me from the newspaper rack with headlines such as “Why John Sergeant should win”, “John shunned by fellow strictly competitors” and “Judge urges the public to vote out dismal Sergeant”. I expected this kind of thing from the tabloids but Sergeant had managed to conquer every front page on every newspaper there. Bear in mind this was in the same week as the atrocious “Baby P” case and surely nobody in their right mind could argue that the outcome of a Saturday evening light entertainment show was more important that that, could they?

And never mind all of those journalists and public figures trying to contort Sergeant’s appearance on the show into a much bigger argument, such as how the public’s favourite contestant, and obvious eventual winner, was bullied out of the show by the higher powers who didn’t like that idea, somehow relates to the real world problem of democracy and dictatorship. That’s all nonsense.

The only real story here is about a man who can’t dance trouncing the competition on a dancing show. That doesn’t really sound like front page news to me.

Photograph Courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

Video Courtesy of You Tube: BBC-John and Kristina-Strictly Come Dancing 2008 Round 8