Posts Tagged ‘film appreciation

02
Feb

Back on Track

By Mr. Wall 0 Comments
Categories: film class
Tags: ,

The last time I posted in here, I wrote about an unexpected turn that derailed my blog (as well as my train of thought).  I was halfway through a post about the Oscars and the end of my tenure teaching film appreciation when Heath Ledger died, so I put the draft of that post on hold and wrote about my reaction to his death.  One of the things I lamented in that entry was that I couldn’t share my question with my class.  Along with the Oscar nominations, Ledger’s unexpected death made me realize how much I enjoyed teaching the films class and how much I would miss it this semester when I returned it to one of my colleages.

Then, life took another unexpected (and this time, welcomed) turn.  To make a long story short, I’ll be teaching film appreciation again for the first half of the semester.

While I was caught off guard by this change, I’m excited to have another opportunity to teach this class.  I really enjoyed the last semester and learned a lot about films with my students.  I’m looking forward to teaching a group of students that are equally as enthusiastic and insightful as my class this past fall.  It also means that I’ll keep writing in this blog as a way to “lead by example” as I try to integrate some “Classroom 2.0″ tools into the film class.

So to my new students, who will find their way to this blog in a few days when I introduce their “discussion questions” - I hope that you’ll enjoy studying films and becoming “critics” as much as I enjoy teaching the class.  We’ll talk about how you can keep your own film blog as well as the class goes on.

As for my post about the Oscar nominations, I’ve decided that since I have film students again, I’ll save that post until we get closer to the ceremony.  By that point, I imagine that life will have intervene a few more times as well.

11
Jan

Playing “Favorites”

By Mr. Wall 0 Comments
Categories: film class
Tags: ,

Let me share a question I’ve asked myself recently: to what extent should teachers cater to student interest?

Perhaps I should give some background. With every unit in our film class, my students watch an entire movie and then write a review of the film where they evaluate the film based on the criteria from the chapter. With our most recent chapter (that focused on narrative structure), I had to decide between a few movies - The Sixth Sense (a film that most of my students already saw), Memento (a film that many of my students watched as part of psychology class), and Annie Hall (a film I was confident that none of my students saw, despite it’s “classic” status).

I ended up choosing Annie Hall because I wanted to show something different - we’ve watched a lot of violent movies (The Departed, Gladiator, etc) and Annie Hall provided that variety. Additionally, I wanted to show a movie that the students were not familiar with so that they could evaluate how well the scattered narrative structure worked to tell Alvy and Annie’s story.

However, I fear that the opposite happened. I’m confident enough to say that Annie Hall was certainly not the most liked movie that my class watched (several students indicated that they “hated it” as well). Obviously, I didn’t plan on showing the movie because my students would hate it, but I was disappointed that they seemed to labor through it’s 93 minutes. While I imagined that the movie (as with many Woody Allen movies) would elicit “love it or hate it” reactions, I didn’t expect the vocal signs of disapproval from my normally silent students (we meet first thing in the morning, not the ideal time to sit in a dark room and watch movies).

I have not received their reviews yet, so I can’t tell if this dislike (to be fair, a few students told me that they enjoyed it) will translate into poorly written analysis of the film’s narrative structure. Certainly, I don’t expect all of my students to like every film (nor should they - I frequently tell my students that they should have personal standards for what they like and don’t like) but I hope that their dislike of Woody Allen’s neurotic on screen persona didn’t mean that they “turned off” the film and didn’t learn anything.

The only reason that I raise this question is that with the previous chapter (Editing), I showed what I think was the best received film (The Departed) as well as the best group of reviews that the class submitted all year. At first, I chalked it up to my students “getting the hang of” writing reviews (and reacting to the frequent “use the material from the chapter” comments on their papers), but now I wonder if the exceptional reviews were related to the number of students that “liked” the movie.

So, returning to my question, am I being paranoid (perhaps watching Alvy Singer’s on-screen mental breakdown inspired one of my own) or do I have a right to second guess my choice? Sure, I know that students tend to learn more when they have fun, but certainly there’s a balance between meeting the students interests and expanding (or challenging) their interests with challenging material.

Right?

21
Dec

Value-able Comedies

By Mr. Wall 1 Comment
Categories: movies
Tags: , ,

One movie getting a lot of buzz this winter is Juno, a new comedy about a wise-cracking teenage girl who deals with a pregnancy. Critics have been quick to praise Ellen Page’s portrayal of the pregnant protagonist with a sarcastic mouth. However, Ann Hulbert writes in an article for Slate about how the film makes a profound statement about family values.

This article made me think back to a whole series of articles this summer that declared that Knocked Up, one of Judd Apatow’s countless comedic hits this year, preached a pro-life agenda. (Here’s one of the numerous articles to cover this topic). I haven’t seen Juno yet and I saw Knocked Up months ago, but I hadn’t even considered the political agenda of the movie.

So what does this mean - am I just clueless to miss something like this? Is our society so detached from the discussion of issues that we have to discuss some of the most pressing political issues (let’s not forget that there’s a presidential election in less than a year) through our entertainment? I’m completely in favor of entertainment with substance, but in some cases this might be too much of a reach.

Regardless, I want to see Juno (among about half a dozen other movies - it’s going to be a busy winter break!) because a lot of the feedback has been positive, I’m a big fan of Michael Cera (a.k.a. George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development), and it kind of reminds me of another small movie that garnered a lot of buzz (and became a personal favorite of mine) - Little Miss Sunshine.

So, if you’ve seen Juno, what do you think? Smart comedy? Poignant satire? Profoundly didactic?

17
Dec

Why blog?

By Mr. Wall 0 Comments
Categories: blogging and links
Tags: , ,

I’ve decided to start this blog as a way to lead by example. I’m currently tinkering with a wiki for my film appreciation class and I thought that I’d start keeping a blog about movies in an effort to inspire some of my students to write their own blogs.

So why am I, a secondary education teacher with barely any experience, so interested in using blogs and wikis in the classroom (and perhaps some of my films students have the same question)? On the most basic level, I think that this technology provides educators with the ability to expand the classroom beyond the four walls and (in my school’s case) 84 minutes every other day. It gives students the chance to explore their own thoughts through writing while also sharing these ideas with classmates. Additionally, blogs and wikis help create an authentic audience for student writing. I want my students to realize that they don’t have to appreciate just the films I make them watch in class (and I have them watch some good ones - we’re finishing The Departed with particular emphasis on the editing). While the odds of being the next Ebert are against my students, they can still think about the movies they pay $9.50 to see and be active critics. Who knows - my students might catch the “blog bug” and start keeping a blog, writing about films for other people on the internet, writing about movies for their college newspapers, or even using these skills in other facets.

Simply put, my philosophy of education involved creating life-long learners. I see blogs, wikis, and other internet resources as tools to help facilitate this type of enduring learning. I also need to thank my colleague Rob Kovi for being an invaluable resource. He’s encouraged me to pursue this type of activity in my classroom, provided me with assistance with the resources, and supported my (often incomplete) vision for my films class.

So in the spirit of that, if you’re one of my students I encourage you to write your own blog. Go to learnerblogs.org and sign up for your own blog. If you’re in my film class and you want to blog about films, add a link to your blog to our class wiki.

If you’re a fellow educator, check out edublogs.org and write your own blog! If you’re not a teacher or a student, blog through Wordpress (which powers both Learnerblogs and Edublogs). I personally use Wordpress for my own blog about music (if you ask Google nicely, you might find it) and I think you’ll find it both easy to use and full of many useful features.

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