...The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, directed by Luc Besson is a historical film which reveals the conscious and subconscious struggles of Joan, a famous French war heroine and religious martyr of the fifteenth century. Character portrayal plays an enormous part in this film due to the fact that much of Joan of Arc's experiences were private, as revealed through her numerous visions. While I believe director Luc Besson had the mindset to portray Joan of Arc as patriotic and devout to her religion, the portrayal of Joan of Arc was more warrior like and hallucinogenic rather than patriotic and devout. In the beginning of the movie there is a scene were the young Joan of Arc finds a sword, and goes into an elaborate "vision" of soldiers riding on horses, and wolves roaming around in the forest. The lack of differentiation between Joan's visions and what was actually going on around her makes it seem as though she is having tactile hallucinations rather than visions from God. One also has to take into account that the director clearly depicts Joan of Arc being raised during war time, and because of this, what she sees in her "vision" can most easily be attributed to what she saw growing up daily. The war like portrayal of Joan of Arc comes in when the audience first sees Joan as an adult. In this scene, the king received her letter and it is revealed that she is writing to him in regards to gaining an army of men for herself so she can go into battle. Because of...
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...Plot Having stolen some compromising documents from a powerful and successful entrepreneur/gangster at a party, a man known as Fred (Lambert) escapes from the police and takes refuge in the underground world of the Paris Métro. There he integrates with the dwellers and befriends several colourful characters, some of which are living under the subway to avoid police arrest like him. While the gangster's henchmen look for his trail, Fred develops a romance with the gangster's young trophy wife Héléna (Adjani),who had invited Fred to the spoiled party, and is bored with her gilded-caged life. Fred forms a pop band with some of his friends, like "The Drummer" (Reno) and Enrico The Bass Player (Serra), who compose the songs. While he is working on his project, Héléna's powerful husband pressures the police to find Fred. One of Fred's sidekicks, The Rollerskater, who had been targeted by the police from a long time, is captured by Commissioner Gesberg (Galabru). Another one, The Florist, robs a train carrying money alongside Fred, and then escapes. At a performance in the subway with the newly formed band -which was possible because Fred paid off the actual performers of an announced concert, with money from the train robbery, and put his band in their place- Fred is searched by the police and a henchman of Héléna's husband. The henchman shoots Fred just when Héléna was about to reach and warn him of the approaching danger. The film ends with Héléna kneeling beside Fred, who is...
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...There’s an audacity to Lucy. Luc Besson has the balls to make the stupidest possible movie about being smart, a sort of 2001 for people whose movie-going mantra is ‘turn off your brain.’ It’s the cinematic equivalent of a The Matrix-obsessed moron blowing lines of coke and talking to you about a human potential article he skimmed in Wired while a National Geographic special blares in the background. It’s not just that Lucy is dumb; Lucy is really agitated and excited to explain to you how its dumbness is in fact profundity. But it’s just really fucking stupid. Lucy is so well made you almost don’t care. It’s so well made you also almost don’t care that it’s largely devoid of interesting action scenes. There’s a boring shoot out and an incoherent car chase, plus a couple of different scene where Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy walks down a hallway just like Neo at the end of The Matrix and, just like Neo at the end of The Matrix, does some wacky reality-altering shit. But mostly there are scenes where ScarJo is typing and scenes where she’s looking around like a bird and scenes where Morgan Freeman is giving lectures and saying such extraordinarily science stuff that you have to assume. The film’s central premise is based on that canard which says we only use about 10-15% of our brains, but I don’t mind that. Radioactive spider bites don’t turn people into superheroes either - I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that a new designer drug expands Lucy’s brain ability, especially if...
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...KNOWLEDGE in BLOOM: Listening with an Open Mind Each chapter-end assessment is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. See the inside front cover for a quick review. UTILIZES LEVELS 4 AND 5 ON THE TAXONOMY EXPLANATION: Seldom (if ever) would you pop in a CD, click a song on your iPod, or tune your radio to a station that you strongly disliked. It just does not seem like a good use of time, and it is not something that you would probably enjoy doing on a daily basis. However, for this exercise, we are going to ask that you do precisely what we’ve described above and then apply what you’ve experienced and learned to several questions and four ESSENTIAL CORNERSTONES from Chapter 1. PROCESS: Over the course of the next few days, find a song from your least favorite genre. If you are a huge fan of R&B, move away from that genre and choose something from a genre of which you are not particularly fond. You might choose an old country song or a song from rap or bluegrass. If you enjoy listening to “Easy Love Songs,” try something different such as metal or swing. The only stipulation is that the song must have lyrics. You will have to listen to the song several times to answer the questions. HOWEVER, it is important that you read the questions BEFORE you listen to the song—particularly question #2. The key to this exercise is to practice listening with an open mind, listening for content, and listening to words when barriers are in the way (the barrier in this case would be...
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...The term French New Wave is also known as La Nouvelle Vague. It refers to the work of a group of French film-makers between the years 1958 to 1964. The film directors who formed the core of this group are François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. They all where once film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Other French directors, including Agnés Varda and Louis Malle, soon became associated with the French New Wave movement. They momentarily transformed French cinema and had a great impact on filmmakers throughout the world. During the late 1950s and early 1960s young film-makers in many countries were creating their own "new waves", but the new wave movement in France turned out to be the most influential. The French New Wave directors' background in film theory and criticism was a major factor in this. They changed notions of how a film could be made and were driven by a desire to forge a new cinema.The term ‘New Wave’ was coined by a journalist named Françoise Giroud who, in late 1957, wrote a series of articles on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express. The Cahiers du Cinéma critics were highly critical of the glossy, formulaic and studio-bound French cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, but praised the work of 1930s French film-makers Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo and the work of the Italian neo-realists, including Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. They also championed certain Hollywood directors, for example...
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...Jorge Rodriguez-Sawao Professor DiAngelo ENG112 March 31st, 2014 In Favor of Love Laura Kipnis, in her essay Against love, touches many aspects of love. It is a sensitive topic simply because love brings out many different opinions and beliefs. The author argues the fact that in order to have a good relationship and love we need to meet creating requirements like good communication, coherence and close relationship or intimacy. It is an interesting essay. What quite caught my attention is that at the beginning of the essay, the author says “Love is, as we know, a mysterious and controlling force. It has vast power over our thoughts and life decisions. It demands our loyalty, and we, in turn, freely comply. (Kipnis 734). This is the simplest way to explain what love is about. When people realize that you really love someone we do and say things you never imagine. Love is an important part of life. Life without love is like an ocean without water. Love is not something you find on the streets or stumble on. It grows on you with time. On the essay, the author, also refers about passion. “Of course, the parties involved must work at keeping passion alive ….. (Kipnis 736). Passion can be described in two words: strong and uncontrollable. We can’t control how we feel about the people, activities and ideas in our lives. Passion unfortunately is not always a good thing especially it can make a person incompetent. Everyone has a passion of their own and their pursue it...
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...Androids and the Mind/Body Problem In a Star Trek, episode of The Next Generation, Captain Picard of the enterprise is left with the job of defending an android by the name of Data, whom believes he has the right to say no to a direct order for him to be disassembly by the Commander Bruce Maddox. Although Data is an Androids which basically is a machine, Picard defends him using the dualism theory. Picard shows that Data has two aspects, he is a machine but like humans Data processes a body and mind, which are not identical even though his mind is program he is able to make decisions on his own. I think Data is a perfect example of the dualism theory; he has the elements which are mention above, so many philosophers have debated whether there is such a thing as a soul with Data Picard did not need to establish that. Data is the perfect display of the Mind/Body problem, the issue between mind and matter, whether he is a person or property. Picard saw an entity that had a body and mind, an entity with the dualism theory; having both a body and mind wouldn’t that make you a person? I would think a body and a mind that can function on its own would be considered a person. Commander Bruce Maddox saw Data as machine, he saw him for what he was built to be, and to do serve mankind. To the Commander Data was an object. I see the Mind /Body problem Commander Bruce Maddox was having; in fact some of those problems would have worked in his...
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...Through the use of “jump cuts,” abrupt transitions from one scene to another, Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" is one of the most influential films of la nouvelle vague, New Wave cinema, which rejected the "well-made traditional French cinema and embraced a rougher, more experimental personal style" (Ebert). “Breathless” is a film that dared to break away from the conventions of traditional cinema, which consisted of characteristics such as “invisible editing”, three-point lighting that enhances clarity and visibility of subjects, and the notion that the film “had to be inhabited by psychologically-consistent ‘characters’” (Connolly). These techniques were used to reduce the audience’s awareness that they are watching a film, maintaining the illusion that reality is...
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...Essay films are arguably the most innovative and popular forms of filmmaking since the 1990s”, Timothy Corrigan claims in his diligent new study, The Essay Film. Corrigan may have an agenda to press, and a thesis to justify, but the recent critical and commercial success of the genre is hard to ignore. A cinematic wave that arguably has its contemporary roots in the late 1980s, when American filmmakers such as Michael Moore and Errol Morris rose to public prominence, reached an apotheosis with Moore’s hugely popular, though hugely flawed, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Davis Guggenheim’s information-heavy An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which conjured a compelling piece of screen drama from Al Gore’s Powerpoint presentation. Nowadays, the Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars is one of the most highly coveted. For Corrigan, the essayistic film “describes the many-layered activities of a personal point of view as a public experience”. While this is a perfectly good starting point, the author is so convinced of the elasticity of his subject that he has trouble constraining it under the broader umbrellas of documentary, non-fiction or even fiction. At times it appears that, for Corrigan, all filmmaking is essayistic. Nevertheless, he traces a convincing history of the genre(s) from D. W. Griffith’s prototypical A Corner of Wheat (1909), which contrasts the lives of the agricultural poor with those of their capitalist exploiters, via Dmitri Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein to...
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...Thank you for allowing me to read your essay. I feel that I know you after reading it, in fact I felt that we had sat down over a coffee and had a chat. I felt throughout reading it that you were exploring your personal experiences and what you had learnt about yourself through the years. I enjoyed your anecdotes that give strength to your reasons on why you feel this area of your work is a strength. I enjoyed how you discussed your previous work career and all its perks and how this all lead from personal experience into a new career path for you. This showed how much passion really is important to you and something that should be valued in the care community. I would like to note that I did not feel that I knew your personal strength until half way through the essay. I felt that you needed to identify this in your introduction . Maybe add it to your first statement: Making my career switch recently…that I possess strengths such as my passion for my work. Not sure how you would like to word it, just that it is needed in the introduction. I feel you may also benefit from splitting your introduction around the area that you state : However, I never truly felt I had strength or ability in any of it. I feel that this could be your first paragraph, see how you feel I just think it will make it a stronger essay. It would need to be slightly re worded such as : Working in corporate management I never felt like I had any strengths (i would leave out abilities). I found...
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...Bonnie and Clyde retains several direct links to Breathless: its influence can be felt in the editing of Bonnie’s bedroom scenes, where nervous jump-cuts suggest her sexual restlessness; in the headlong driving scenes, conveying the exhilaration of the open road; in the exciting acceptance of mistakes, as when a fight spills out of frame and the camera must scurry to catch up. As if to openly state it’s a relationship to Godard’s film, Bonnie and Clyde replicates the scene in Breathless where Michel and Patricia hide from the police in a movie theater, the onscreen dialogue offering ironic counterpoint to the characters’ situation. There’s even an odd reference near the film’s end, when the lens in Clyde’s sunglasses pops loose, just as Belmondo’s does in Breathless. But by comparing two lead characters from each movie you find major contrasts. On Characteristics alone you have some similarities: Both Clyde and Michel are trying to fulfill the dapper gangster look, by wearing suits and fedoras and fancy sunglasses. The comparisons go deeper than that as well, but more specifically the fact that they both rely on a strong female character for support is a major comparison. Although, with that, it brings to light one of the biggest contrasts: how different each of the lead male character’s relationship with the lead female character is. Michel is a more of a playboy and will lay with nearly anyone he can make a quick buck on. But with Patricia who he has slept with before,...
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...I believe that being a Resident Assistant is far more than just a job that requires monitoring a floor or even unlocking doors, those things are only the tip of the iceberg. To be a Resident Assistant means to be a role model, an advisor, a therapist, a problem solver, and a great deal of other responsibilities are expected of such a person. Even though this is my first semester at Governors State University and I am considered a new student here, I am not new to college. My first experience with learning what a Resident Assistant was, was when I attended SIU in Edwardsville, during my freshman year of college. My RA that year was very personable and down to earth. She made certain hours throughout the day available in her room, if a student needed to ask questions, share comments, or even make suggestions. She also hosted different miniature gatherings on the floor, so we could get to know our fellow peers. Those encounters with my RA at the time, inspired me to want to be in a position where I could contribute to or even create that same environment for other students. When I saw the opportunity posted to become a Resident Assistant at GSU, I was eager to apply. I feel that my personal experiences and challenges I have faced during my years of college and the way I have recovered from those experiences, shows adversity, goal-orientation, and determination. I am willing to shed light on those experiences and help other incoming students who may struggle with getting acclimated...
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...Unit 2 Notes -To create a safe space- *Note when others withdraw or attack* -both are responses to threat *Not how you feel in response to others* -What makes you feel at risk?- *Note the effect you are having on others* -diminish the threat *Show respect for others* -recognize your own challenges, weaknesses, or errors (mistakes) *Consider other points of view with an open mind* -check that you understand clearly *Look for common interests and mutual benefits* -To Build Trust- *Acknowledge feelings-emotional response* -Never pretend they don’t show -If you ignore your own or the other parties emotional response to that of another you damage trust between both. -Accept Criticism- Constructive criticism is key between both parties. -Evaluate its merit -Choose to *ignore it, follow it or take issue with it -Acknowledgement- *Difficult Conversations* -Require Trust- -constructive criticism -Safety – view as threat (communication not working, must revise approach) -respect -Acknowledgement -Requires Mutual Interest- -Common ground -Win-Win -Relate to other party(s) of the conversation (stay open-minded) *Exchange of information by 2 or more parties through a medium of transmittal such as writing, speaking, or signing. -pay attention to other party -If other party is withdrawing or starts to verbally attack you, communication is not effective at the moment you may need to revise approach… -Thinking of how you would feel in the same situation…Listen...
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...Teambuilding Marzena Kulis Article Analysis Introduction Teambuilding is essential for an organization as it yields more benefits than personal accountability. Members of a team are motivated to focus on the objectives of the group and this increases the agility of the members’ knowledge, skills, and capabilities. If an organization succeeds in building strong working relations between team members, productivity is increased. However, this is not always the case. There are numerous challenges towards teambuilding. Alexander Bertrand (2011), author of the article The Limits of Workplace Community: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Possibility of Teambuilding, claims that there is no hope of unifying people at their places of work. This paper presents the summary of the article, and an analysis of the ideas presented. This article is based on a French philosopher, Jean-Luc. According to the article, Nancy articulated the challenges faced by a community in a bid to build a cohesive team at workplaces. The author reflects that it is impossible to convert people to be natural workers. According to the author, a community is, at its best, out of action (Bertrand, 2011). Bertrand adopts the ideas of Nancy to apply them to a business set up. The article presents the complicatedness of the efforts towards realization of a solid team. The article illustrates that every business has a desire to build a strong team working in harmony (Bertrand, 2011). This is motivated by the knowledge of...
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...Synopsis: Star Trek Episode “The Measure of a Man” [1] Most of us are aware that the television series Star Trek was about a starship, the Enterprise, whose mission was to explore the galaxy. This ship was part of a larger organization known as Starfleet. Serving as a Lt. Commander on board the ship was an android named Data. Data was an extremely advanced and unique android even by the standards of 24th century science. He had a special processor known as a “positronic brain” that allowed him to mimic human behavior in an extremely accurate manner. As a result, not only could he process information at lightning speed and arrive at rational conclusions, he also seemed to have desires, interests, and inclinations. He could formulate relationships and make free choices. In this episode, Commander Bruce Maddox, a member of the scientific research division of Starfleet, arrives on board the Enterprise with orders for Data to be transferred to him for the purpose of being disassembled with the goal of learning more about “it” (Maddox refers to Data as “it”, not “him”, throughout the entire episode). His ultimate goal is to create an army of androids like Data which can serve the needs of Starfleet in space exploration. When Data learns that Maddox may not be able to reassemble him, he refuses to submit to the orders and is supported by Captain Picard, captain of the Enterprise and Data’s commanding officer. Picard argues that, as an officer on the Enterprise, Data has rights—among...
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