ELS Autoblog

The idea of the general public being able to ask presidential candidates questions  seems like a great idea, the only problem is there were more questions sent in than answered. So who decided what questions were asked? If you ask me, I think they should have let the general public that “plays” on YouTube decide.  That way the questions that the majority of the population was concerned about would be asked, instead of random questions like, “When will African Americans be given reparations for slavery?”  I don’t see how that has anything to do with our present government, I might be able to see it as a reasonable question if we were living in a time when people that had actually been slaves were still living, but they aren’t!  And when a twenty-something “thug” is asking this question, it makes me wonder why?! You hear lots of rap music talking […]

Original post by Amanda

Tonight we watched the CNN/YouTube democratic debate.  I thought it was a great way for major issues to be addressed on a more personal level.  A problem with that type of questioning is that while the people who submitted questions had time to prepare their questions and videos, the candidates did not have that same time to formulate their answers  (although I am sure they spent much time preparing answers to possible questions).  However, I think that one of the points of the debate is for the candidates to show that they are able to think quickly and come up with satisfactory answers under pressure while presenting themselves as a proficient public speaker, since public speaking is a necessary component of the presidential job description.  I feel that sending in questions via YouTube is an eye-opener for people who have not before considered how much the internet is an important […]

Original post by Ashley

The Westerner is regarded as one of those classic genre films so easily identifiable by the public due to its characters, settings, and story plots. These movies are filled with semantic and syntactic elements, such as small dusty towns, bars, horses, guns, and cowboy hats, with the ultimate showdown between the lone “good guy cowboy” against the trouble makers of the town. The Westerner always seems to end with the hero freeing the town from the grasp of the bad boys. The lone cowboy is then expected to ride off into the sunset, out of the town which he just saved and brought back to justice, to wander into his next daring adventure in the next helpless town that comes along. These movies involve good vs. evil, and the central focus is strong figures that fight for dominance. Who holds power and how they […]

Original post by khusband

Today’s discussion on soulmates and the nature of love in class today reminded me of an AP story I’d read about a two neolithic skeletions unearthed a few months ago:
Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua, just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet.
Buried between 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric lovers are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.
Alongside the couple, archaeologists found flint tools, including arrowheads and a knife, Menotti said.
Although the Mantua pair strike a rare and touching pose, archaeologists have found prehistoric burials in which the dead hold hands or have other contact, said Luca Bondioli, an […]

Original post by crain2mn

While reading the book Portrait of Jennie, having previously seen the movie, I was struck by two things. The first one was Eben’s behavior while painting Jennie’s portrait, which differed radically in the book and the movie. The second was the almost-romance (or at least sexual tension) between Spinney and Eben. In the scene(s) depicting Jennie’s portrait being painted, the Adams of the book was much more brusque and impatient to the point of insensitivity (case in point: he rationalizes making her cry because it makes the portrait turn out better) than the Adams of the film. In fact, what was one of my favorite scenes in the film turned out to be one of my least favorite scenes in the book, and the scene that cemented my dislike of Book Eben. For Movie Eben, on the other hand, the scene of painting Jennie was not so much a purely […]

Original post by anniek

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/coma/index.html
Here is a link to the HBO site that talks about the documentary “Coma.” There is also a video preview of the film on this site as well.

Original post by ellie

I wanted to talk a little bit about a documentary film I saw over the weekend on HBO. The title of the film is “Coma,” and it’s a gripping account of four people who have endured severe head injuries, and the struggles that face them, and their families. The film maker, Liz Garbus follows each of these patients at JFK Medical Center as they try to recover. In watching this film, I couldn’t help but compare it to the Errol Morris’ films we viewed in class. I previously posted about the differences between films such as “The Thin Blue Line,” and “Gates of Heaven,” vs. others like “Super Size Me,” and “Farhenheit 911.” “Coma” is in complete contrast to all of these films. There are no reenactments, no background music to influence a certain mood, zero narration, and the interviews are rare as well. […]

Original post by ellie

Original post by ellie