Brokeback Mountain

I really liked this movie. I liked it the first time I saw it and this time. I feel like its about a lot more than just a love story and that is why I liked it. Its about gay rights and the stigma associated with being a homosexual. I think its great that these issues are addressed in something like a movie because everyone watches movies. What I don't think is great, is people who sit in the movie and moan and groan when a controversial part comes up. In my opinion, if you can't be respectful of other peoples views and lifestyles then leave. I think as college juniors going to school where there are TONS of people who are different and in such a liberal community, we should be at the point where we can be tolerant and respectful in a situation where there may be someone beside you who could be affected by your moans and groans. If you can't be a grown up about your opinions then don't express them in public. As for the adaptation, the director did a good thing by sticking side by side to the story because I don't think it would have had the same meanings and storyline had the director changed even a little bit. I really enjoyed watching and reading this story, I think it's a great movie/story for people to experience, especially with the diversity in the world today.

ShortCuts

This movie was crazy. I really liked the way all of those stories were originally not together but the director put them all together and then intertwined them. There were alot of things that I really didn't like about the movie though. The end was the worst part of the movie. It kind of just dropped off and left you there. Plus the guy hitting that girl and killing her was absolutely disturbing. Especially because you have no clue why he does it and then the movie just ends. I think the movie could have definitely ended better. Another thing I thought was wierd was the way the one woman was having phone sex using explicit language in front of her kids--one of which was absolutely old enough to at least repeat it. It was disgusting. Overall the movie was okay-- but I will not be watching it again...probably ever.

3 Short Stories Assignment

The first short story I read was Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff. This story was very interesting and easy to follow. I liked it because it had humor in it. There were some parts in the story however that I didn't understand. For example the part where Frank and Tub were telling each other about the lies that they both held inside. Franks lie was gross because the girl he loved and was leaving his wife for was a 15 year old who babysat his kids. Tubs lie was weird because it really wasn't that big of a deal--he only lied because he was embarrassed. I didn't understand what was going on with Kenny while Tub and Frank were in the diner. From what I got, they just left him in the truck bleeding from where Tub shot him--which is ludacris. Then in the end they made the wrong turn and the reader is left with no clue whether they made it to the hospital or not.

For my second story, I read The birth-mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne.I really did not enjoy reading this short story. First of all I thought it was really weird that the whole story was basically about this womans birth mark on her cheek. Yeah, thats the name of the story, but I thought it would have a little more to the story than what it did. I also did not like the way that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote. The entire story was written in an older language--maybe Old English?--and that made it really hard to understand and follow. I won't be recommending him or atleast this story to my group for our final project.

For my third story, I read A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. This story was also weird--but I did like it alot better than The Birth-mark. I liked this story because it gave alot of detail about Miss Emily's life. It, like Momento Mori, started out in the end and ended in the end as well. The middle consisted of what came before the end. Ever since watching Momento Mori I have really started taking an intrest in these types of stories. There isn't the level of significance of going backwards like Momento Mori did, but it worked for me. I also liked this story because it intrested me. It talked in what seemed like an "older" language as well but not as bad as the last story I read. Because it had so much detail, it left no questions in my mind after I got done reading, which I really like in a story.


Overall out of the three stories, I definitely liked The Hunters in the Snow the best. I will definitely be suggesting this story and or this author to my group for our final project.

The Sky Is Gray

I weirdly enjoyed reading this story. The language was a little hard to get at first but overall, I think it really complemented the story. If it was written any other way, I don't think I would have gotten the same feeling and thoughts as I did while I was reading it. I genuinely felt bad for that family but I felt great admiration for the woman and the way that she believed that they had to work for everything and that nothing was free. I also thought the generosity of the old couple was very sweet too. Theres not too many people nowadays that would just invite a random woman and her son into their home and give them free food. This story also had a few points that I believed didn't have much relevance to the story. In my opinion, the title also doesn't have much relevance to the story other than the weather and the fact that during the story they stated the title in a thought once.

Tomorrow the movie

After both reading the short story and watching the film, I definitely liked watching the film better. I didn't like the story because to me it was all over the place and I couldn't follow it at all. The movie was a little better in the sense that I had a better idea of what was going on. I liked how the story started out in the end and then went back and explained in the middle then went back to the end to bring it all back together in perspective. I thought the language was humerous-- Fentry talked like an idiot. Since it was so old, the acting was so dramatic and that was also funny. The only thing that I really didn't like about the movie was that the middle was so drawn out! After they took the kid they showed him running in the field for like 5 minutes. If they would have cut some of those unnecessary parts of the movie out, I definitely would have enjoyed the movie more. The adaptation from the story to the movie wasn't bad. There wasn't too many things that were hugely different but it wasn't quite the same either.

Tomorrow

I did not like reading the story Tomorrow. I felt like it was really hard to follow along partly because I found it boring which made it hard for me to really pick up what was going on throughout the story. I also thought that it was hard to keep the characters straight. I didn't get the gist of what was going on until the very end, which made it hard for me to keep my attention on the story. After watching the beginning of the movie, it kind of put the story into more of a perspective for me. I did like the part of the movie we did watch today better than reading the story. I thought it was a little wierd and drawn out but on the other hand, it was interesting hearing all of the language and seeing the different customs that were practiced way back then when it was actually filmed. Both the story and the movie are not even near anything that you would find being filmed now, unless the movie was focused in older times.

Memento Movie

I really ended up liking this movie. It was really hard trying to follow along because it was so jumbled up and it was even harder watching it on different days split between our classes, which was unavoidable. In the beginning of the movie, I didn't really like it because I didn't understand why it was jumping around so much. When I connected the movie with the story and that the movie was moving backwards, I started piecing everything together and started to really enjoy the movie. It was a bit too violent for eight o'clock in the morning, but I liked being able to predict what I thought was going to happen or in this movie predicting what happened to make the previous scene happen (since it was going backwards). The only part that I didn't like was the end. I was disappointed in the way the movie ended-- I thought it would at least go back until his wife's death and when Lenny was talking to Teddy in the end, it raised a lot of questions for me about what actually happened which didn't get answered for me. I think that could also be attributed to the fact that the story went backward. I could have seen the answer to my questions but because we were moving backwards, by the time they got raised in the end I forgot the details to answer my own questions. Overall, I thought that the movie was a good one and I would watch it again.

Memento Mori

This short story was odd to say the least, but as I read it I found myself actually liking it. I liked the beginning of the story more than the end. I think this is because I felt like I understood the beginning more as I was reading it. When the story started getting into what I believe to be letters to the man he wrote to himself it really started to get confusing. There were some parts of the story that really came out of nowhere that I still have no clue of the significance they had to the story. Parts such as the tattoo and the hotel room really confused me. But I feel like that was the point. The man obviously had some kind of brain injury that caused memory loss or Alzheimer's or something that caused him to not remember anything. I think that in writing this story so randomly and crazy that the author was trying to convey a bit of what the character in the story was feeling. He woke up every day not knowing anything that had happened in his life for quite some time. It almost seemed like he would come in and out of conscious thought and as he came to he wouldn't know what the heck he was doing. Which is exactly what I felt while reading it. I never knew what to expect nor did I know how he got there or what he was doing.

The Killers from page to screen

After both reading the essay and watching the movies in Thursdays class, I feel like I definitely understand and appreciate the short story The Killers a lot more. When I had just read the short story I didn't follow it at all which really made me dislike the entire story. Then we watched the portions of the movies in class. Of the two we watched I prefered the older version better. I liked the simple way it was filmed and the way it almost perfectly followed the story. That really helped me to connect what I was confused about while reading and it also helped me understand what Hemingway really was trying to convey. I did not however like the second movie we watched. I don't like the fact that the second movie was called Ernest Hemingway's The Killers and didn't portray one bit of the story line. It seemed like the only similarities between the two movies was that there was two "killers" and that the person recieving the hit didn't fight at all.

I did like reading the essay. I felt like the essay was very detailed in telling what happened in each of the movies and their similarities and differences both with each other and to the actual story. Reading this essay really helped me to not only connect each of the the movies to the short story, but it also helped me to connect each of the movies to each other as well.

The Killers

While I was reading the short story The Killers, I was very confused. I didn't quite follow the dialogue very well at all. As I was reading I felt like it would jump from one character saying something to another then to another without letting the reader know. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention while I was reading and maybe I just need to read it again to understand better. I think another thing that threw me off a bit with this story was the beginning. In the beginning, there wasn't much of an introduction setting the scene before they started jumping into the dialogue. At least for me, I think this story would have been a much better and a bit of an easier read had the author set the scene and explained the characters in the beginning better. Another thing that bothered me about this story was the nicknames and the way that the people in the story were addressed. As if I wasn't already confused enough, the author really threw me for a loop when he started calling Adams and George, "bright boy" and Sam, "the nigger". I just didn't see the point in it and thats what confused me. When I got to the middle of the story when they started talking about killing Ole' Anderson, the story got a little more interesting. I was able to follow it better after that. Through the end when Nick went and told Anderson that those men were going to kill him I was again a bit thrown off. I also don't understand how Anderson being a boxer or him not wanting to get out of his room tied into the story at all. I thought that the video on the blog of the people who remade this story was really kind of weird. I didn't think that it really followed the authors intended story line well. Overall I think the story was okay. I am used to reading autobiography books and self story books about things that really happened. I think that is a lot of the reason that I didn't follow this story like I would have liked. Maybe with more experience reading these types of stories, which I will be getting in this class, I can start to follow, understand and appreciate these stories more.