"A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Read this short story by Flannery O'Connor. In Journal #20, discuss the short story...tell me what you got out of it. In particular, discuss the Grandmother. The antagonist is called "The Misfit," but in many ways, the Grandmother is also a kind of "misfit." Explain how.

Story read, annotated and ALL JOURNALS due on Monday, April 8th!

Really Cool Time-Lapse Photography

The Godfather and American Identity

For period 9/10:

Assignment: Labeled Journal  #18: Draw an informal sketch of a family tree. Stretch to add something or someone you did not know before embarking on this journey. Use the whole page to sketch out your tree. If you become stymied, express your family ideas in other ways...draw, write or express yourself in any way you find appropriate.

For period 11: 

Journal #19: Discuss and describe in detail a tradition your family engages in that reflects an ethnic or cultural importance. Is this tradition important to you? Why or why not? As you wind down, discuss the importance of understanding the roots of such cultural identity. What is the value of this process?

For Monday

Please bring a digital copy of Take This Waltz. If you have not written the paper, yet, please do so

Your job for today's in-class assignment: 

1. Re-write your paper based on the specifications in my edit. If you have not typed it, do so. If you have not written it...do so. If your paper had major structurally or mechanical errors, find someone who did well and ask them to read your paper. Better yet...YOU read it to them, slow and aloud. 

2. After you have revised your paper, you are looking to integrate a third-party, credible source in it. Be sure to consider, ultimately, what point about the film you are trying to make. Use that ultimate point to find a more credible person who shares your point of view. Be sure to both cite and attribute the quotation as discussed earlier this year.   

Your art is your art...no matter what!

If you don't like it, Puppet!

"Take This Waltz" more

From The Guardian. Bold is interviewer. Regular font = Michelle Williams

You mention feeling comfortable with your body – there's a shower scene in Take This Waltz that's really the crux of the movie. How hard was it to shoot that?

I agree, the nudity is not the crux of the movie but the ideas inside of it are. None of us wanted to do it, us three ladies, Sarah [Silverman], Jennifer [Podemski] and I. How do I describe it? I imagine it's like the moment before you jump out of a plane safely – with a parachute or something. You have to do it, you've paid to go up in the plane, you've got the backpack strapped on and there's other people in line, you know you're going to do it. It's just that moment before you jump that's terrifying. But boy oh boy, it was in a way a lot easier doing that shower scene than the shower scene in Blue Valentine. It's easier to be naked with girls than boys.

"Take this Waltz" Assignment

One pager: 

Choose any single technical element from the film (color, lighting, music, acting, angles, symbols, metaphors, camera movement, etc) and explain how the element advances one of the film's themes (love, loss, indecision, infidelity, etc).

Due Monday