Memento

            Memento, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is a movie about a man named Leonard who has short term memory loss.  He is unable to make new memories so he writes down everything he needs to know.  He also has tattoos all over his upper body and he takes pictures of events, places and people that he needs to remember.  The audience watches this movie through the eyes of Leonard, who is just as confused as the audience is during the movie.  Throughout the movie, Leonard is in a frenzy trying to find the man who raped and murdered his wife.  The audience has no clue who the man is, when it happened and why it happened.  All the audience knows is that Leonard is after this man named “John G” who allegedly raped and murdered his wife at some point in time.  This movie is especially interesting because it is backwards.  The scene that you are supposed to see at the end to tie in all of the information was the very first scene.  This immediately confused me.  It was a struggle to keep up with this movie because the only information you know is the information that Leonard knows but he does not remember a lot of information because of his disability.  Although this movie is backwards and rather confusing, I would still say that it is a linear movie.  The scenes were not out of order; they were just backwards, therefore making this movie linear.  After watching the entire movie, I was still a little confused because you had to go back and think of what you saw and then tie it all together in the end scene (which would be the first scene if it was not backwards). 

            I personally really liked this movie because a like a little bit of challenge while watching movies.  I liked not knowing what was going to happen next.  Memento was definitely not predictable to say the least.  The audience had no clue what was going to happen.  It was almost fun to play detective along with Leonard because you are actively involved in the movie. 

            After the watching the 20 minute interview with Christopher Nolan, I was a little disappointed.  I thought that the interview was going to reveal some information that I didn’t understand in the movie.  Christopher Nolan literally just talked about the movie and how his brother thought of the idea three years prior to the actual movie idea.  Personally, I was a little bored during the interview.  It was monotone and not really interesting in my opinion.  The questions that the audience members asked were not even interesting!  I really just wanted to hear Christopher Nolan’s take on the movie and what the true story is.  Memento is one of those movies where the audience has to figure out the story plot for themselves.  I talked about the movie with some of my classmates, and we all had different opinions of the movie. 

            All in all, I really enjoyed the movie.  I liked trying to figure out what was going on, but I wish that I could have found out in the interview what the story plot actually was from the actual writer of the movie.  It would have been really helpful, but I am almost okay with it.  I like that I can keep my imaginative thoughts about this movie and now have them altered by the writer.

Final Project Idea

                Fashion is all around us.  There is no other way to put it.  Everyone has their own fashion sense and many love to show it off.  For those who don’t always love showing off their fabulous clothes, I have invented a product that will help the fashion inept people in the world.  I call it “My Personal Shopper.”  This is a product that shows the user different outfits they can wear using their own clothes.  All the user has to do is take pictures of their items of clothing.  Yes, this idea sounds like a ton of work, but don’t worry.  The customer is able to lay out several different items on anywhere that is flat and take a group picture!  Of course, the items will have to be under the same “category,” meaning that shirts have to stay together, and so on. 

            Once the customer has taken pictures of their clothes, My Personal Shopper goes to work!  This hand-held gadget is no bigger than your average cell phone.  It has a large screen showing you different outfits that can be put together with your own clothes.  There are many different settings such as day wear, outerwear and evening wear.  Another great feature is that you can select from hundreds of different clothing stores programmed into My Personal Shopper so if you like the fashions from that store, My Personal Shopper will try to put together outfits similar to those of the store!  This is a very smart gadget that will help those in need of a fashion boost.  This gadget is also very helpful for men who do not feel like picking out clothes to wear; My Personal Shopper does all the work for them!

            My Personal Shopper is mainly targeted for women aging from 17-30.  These women are typically more technologically advanced, but this does not mean that these are the only women who can use it!  My Personal Shopper is very simple to use.  It has a touch screen but comes with a pointer pen so it knows exactly what you are pressing.  It comes with an instruction manual so anyone is capable of using the item.  Advertisements will most likely be in fashion magazine and commercials on television.  We do not know how popular this item will be, so we plan on advertising it in a small way at first.  Teenage girls will probably be the first target mostly because they are the ones who watch the most television and read massive amounts of magazines.  An idea with Facebook might come up with advertising it on the sides of the pages.  We want this to be advertised for a long time.  If we get to a certain selling point, then we will cut down on the ads, but for now, My Personal Shopper will be everywhere!  My Personal Shopper will mainly be a North American product.  Once the product starts going viral across the country, we will introduce it in Europe and other continents. 

            As for the commercials, we want the advertisements on television to be tasteful.  We do not want it to sound like a “teen” product.  The makers of My Personal Shopper want this product to attract many different people in many different age groups.  We are going to limit the commercials to around 30-45 seconds; just enough to get what the product is and lure people in to loving this product.  My Personal Shopper will mainly be advertised on stations where teenagers are most likely to see it, such as MTV, CW11 and ABC Family.  I hope that this product will be appealing to many people across the country. 

Two Articles, Same Topic

            This week’s assignment was to take the same story, but find 2 different articles about it from different news sources.  Sounds easy, right?  Wrong.  I had a lot of trouble trying to find a somewhat interesting story in two different news sources.  Of course, I immediately went to the internet because I am always on the computer and I started to search.  I went to Google News, which brought me to NorthJersey.com, and The New York Times to find two articles of the same story. 

            Recently, there was a change with Cablevision and the channels we were able to view.  Cablevision as now “blocked” Fox 5 from viewers.  Many sports fans are quite upset with this decision because they are unable to watch a lot of the sports programs on television.  This change was only in the Tri-State area but it did affect approximately 3 million viewers.  This decision is really similar to the HGTV and Food Network decision a few months back.  Viewers were literally unable to watch anything on those channels, and the same situation is happening on Fox 5. 

            The first article I found on NorthJersey.com opens up with a short story about how Rich De Simone had to leave his house during a game to go to a Sports Restaurant to watch the game.  While he was at the restaurant, his wife called up the cable company and “game them a piece of her mind.”  Apparently, according to this article, Fox 5 was not the only channel that went “dark” on viewers.  My9, Fox Business Network, National Geographic Wild, and Fox Deportes were also dark for the 3 million viewers.  The viewers interviewed in this article, all male, were just concerned that they were unable to watch their favorite sporting events.

            The second article I found on The New York Times was about the same exact topic.  This article mentioned, just like the first article, the other channels that were affected by this “blackout.”  In this article, they writer mentions that the spokesman for Fox Sports just “asking for fair compensation for the value that Fox5 and My9 programming offers and the same negotiated rate that other cable operators have agreed to already.”  The New York Times article provided similar information as the first article.  They had their differences, but both articles offered sufficient information about the subject.

            These articles are about the same topic, but they do in fact have their differences.  The first article from NorthJersey.com gives opinions from actual Cablevision customers.  These opinions make it easier to see what the public thinks about the whole subject.  The article from The New York Times has quotes from the spokesmen from the companies which is also helpful because it shows the readers and customers the facts about the decision making process.  The New York Times article also gave more specific information about exactly what programs customers would be missing during the blackout.  The writer gave the times and teams that were playing on the station.   The NorthJersey.com article was pretty vague about the facts and was basically an overall opinion of the men who watched the station for sports. 

            Both of these articles are good articles and give the readers an overall feel for how the customers feel about the new decision.  This example goes to show you that different articles about the same topic can be very similar but really different at the same time.

The War of the Worlds

            In 1938, Orsen Welles broadcasted a radio show and one of the episodes was titled The War of the Worlds.  In the first part, something that was “like a jet blue plane” fell from the sky and landed in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey on a farm.  They believed that it was a meteorite that struck the farm.  This meteorite had the intensity of an earthquake.  When this meteorite landed, it was to everyone’s surprise that in fact it was not a meteorite, it was a cylinder.  This cylinder was metal and had a peculiar movement inside of it.  This radio episode was obviously not real, the public thought something different.

            This was right after the end of World War II.  People were so worried about the war and the safety of their lives and their country.  When the public heard about this meteorite hitting New Jersey and the possibility of it being aliens (because of the movement inside of the cylinder) everyone panicked.  Newspapers claimed that people were escaping the area and their homes.  Others claimed that they could see smoke and sparks from the object.  This caused panic all of the country and no one knew what to do about it.

            This radio episode started as being a harmless joke and was just for fun but what Orsen Welles did not know is the effect it would have on the innocent people that live in this country.  His harmless joke caused a great frenzy across America.  Apparently over 1 million people heard about this radio show and believed that this incident was true.  Personally, I do not even know what I would do in a situation like this.  I don’t blame the people for fleeing their homes and running away from the panic and horror this radio show caused.  Apparently, the newspapers blew the whole situation out of proportion.  People were now starting to get confused about the whole situation and did not know what to think at this point.  I am sure that Welles had no idea that this would be the effect his joke radio episode would have on the innocent people of the United States.

            Different people knew different facts about the whole incident and rumors started to circulate around the country.  People were beginning to get more and more confused about the situation because of the rumors.  One of these rumors was that the Germans were invading, not Martians.  These people felt frustrated that they did not know what was going on.  They felt scared and panicked that something could be going wrong in their country and lastly they felt unsafe.  They felt unsafe in their own country because they did not know what to believe and did not know who to trust at this point. 

            Orsen Welles made a radio show that was almost like a psychological experiment.  This experiment put panic into the lives of innocent Americans and made them scared for their lives.  Confusion flooded the country as well as fright.  Welles did not realize the amount of fright this joke would cause and he worried a lot of Americans in the process.

Topics for Final Project

Well, considering I don't know what the final project is, I had a tough time figuring out what to do for it.  I came up with a few ideas that may or may not work.

1.  Do a character analysis of someone on campus.  I did this in high school so I know how it works.  It's a little creepy because you kind of have to follow someone and observe what they are doing, but it's really interesting.  What you have to do is you follow someone and observe what they are doing, and make a scenario about what is going on and write a monologue or something about what you think is going on in their life.  It was really interesting in my acting class and if I had the opportunity to do it again, I would.

2.  Study different fashion styles on campus/going on now.  I am really into fashion so I thought it would be a cool idea to study the different fashions on campus and compare them to what is in now/what is going to come in now.  I work at a Saks Fifth Avenue so I know when the new fashions are coming in.

3.  Create a gossip blog.  I don't know how this would work but I think it would be cool to do a Ramapo Blog, kind of like what they do in the movies.  I would talk about rooming situations, parties, food and more.  I think this would be really interesting if people actually read it.

Left or Right Brain?

I have always told myself that I was both left and right brain dominant, but what does that really mean?  In simple terms, being left brained is when you are good at logistics and being good at math and science.  Right brained is when you are creative and like art and so on.  I took 3 quizzes on the internet to figure out what I am since I was confused.  I read a lot of information about being either left or right brained, and I was STILL confused.

The first quiz I took said I was a right brain dominant student.  The explanation sounded just like me and I was almost convinced that was truly a right brained person.  It said that I get bored during long lectures (which is true), I like to day dream and imagine things (also true) and a lot of other stuff that was just like me.  I wanted to make sure that I was right brain dominant so I took another quiz.  The results?  Completely left brain dominant.  This didn't really help my confusion.  It said that I answered 0 questions as a right brained person and I answered all 18 questions as a left brained person.  So I took yet another quiz.  The results?  Well, there were 32 questions and 16 of the questions I answered were right brained and the other 16 were left brained.  I am now convinced I am both a right and left brained person.  I am good at math and I'm creative, so why can't I be both?