Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows Part 2

Book vs. Movie

I myself have never read the Harry Potter books but I have constantly heard that the movies are immensely different than the books. Different stuff from what they say to what they do at certain parts. That is the reason many fans to either not see the movie or not read the book to not be confused and frustrated by the differences in both.

Many reasons for the differences between the books and a theatrical version of a book is the director. Some directors feel that if they make the actors do exactly what it says in print the movie will be boring and viewers will lose interest. Directors often put more romance in a theatrical version or more action and add scenes to elaborate on stuff that is unsaid that maybe the character said in his head in the book but obviously can’t be said in his head in the movie.

Looking through research as to the differences of the books and the movies I found a list of eight of the biggest misfires in the film written by a blogger. Some of his reasons are as follows.

8) JK Rowling in her last book gives the reader a tease of what Harry is like 19 years later with him standing at the train platform. In the book everyone is gawking at Harry because of how famous he is. But in the Movie fans are furious because Harry just stands there with his children and no one is recognizing him.

2) In the movie Harry snaps the Elder Wand in half leaving him without a wand but in the book Harry takes the wand, fixes his own which Hermione broke and put the Elder Wand back in Dumbledore's tomb where it belongs.

Some of these examples probably have good reason. The director had a lot of CGI he had to focus on in this movie and reading my research bloggers feel he focused on the roller coaster feeling CGI with the death eaters rather than simple things that are important in the book. http://tessa666.hubpages.com/hub/Harry-Potter-Movie-vs-Book

Reading reviews for this movie on IMDB. Many critics feel that this director simply wanted to rush through this movie and in doing so missed many key parts of the movie and lacked the emotion that viewers would have been able to appreciate if the movie wasn’t rushed.

On the other side of this many reviews of this movie feel that the fast paced action was necessary and the key things left out would have dulled down this action movie. They feel the Deathly Hallows Part one was the movie that was a much slower and emotional movie and the Part two was the movie that needed to be much more up paced and more action packed. http://collider.com/harry-potter-deathly-hallows-part-2-review/102440/

Are video games rotting our brains?

The short answer is no. according to a study done by The Guardian. Video games in fact are not making us zombies but instead helping us learn important skills that can help us in school and even in the workplace as we get older. some of these skills being learned are strategic thinking, creativity, and cooperation.

In the video the speaker talks about how students like feeling like they are gaining something than loosing something which i feel is completely true. all video games reward you with more and more which is the drive to want to play these games. 

In a classroom all you can do is lower your grade from the beginning  of class. once the class started if you were to accidently  do bad on one of the first couple assignments your grade would significantly drop to a very low grade and it is very hard to bring it back up. this is why i feel it should be a gaining grade instead of a lowering grade.

i did feel i would enjoy this class and i did enjoy the feeling of getting more and more points my biggest downfall is my entire life i have had a set time to do something and in this class we just had to do it by the end of the semester. but with a catch. if you waited to the end of the semester you would miss the deadlines and so essentially you couldn't just wait to the end of the semester which was very confusing and frankly misleading but none the less, the idea of the gamifying the classroom is a good and new idea that i think can be expanded upon.

The two movies I chose to compare is The Karate Kid.  The First Karate kid was made in 1984 and directed by John G. Avildsen and starred Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, and Elisabeth Shue. The 2010 version of this movie was directed by Harald Zwart and starred Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.

This is an underdog story where a kid named Daniel and his mother move from New Jersey to California. Daniel quickly realizes that he does not fit in to this new California crowd.  Daniel starts getting in confrontations and one day he is cornered by a group of karate students. He is quickly beaten up and an elderly man named Miaygi jumps into the fight and all by himself defeats six students single handedly. This man turns out to be a handyman at his apartment. Daniel asks this man to teach him karate and Miaygi agrees after seeing that the teacher of the kids who beat Daniel up only teaches them violence. Daniels sensei teaches him karate and decides the best way to stop these bullies is to beat them in a karate tournament so Daniel beats them and then his sensei dies.

These movie posters show the sensei and his student in both.  They show that this is a movie most likely about karate and it seems that the man in the poster is his teacher of some sort or maybe the childs father. 

They both seem like fighters. The poses that the characters are doing in both posters both show some sort of meditation which to me signified that this wasn’t a bloody fight movie.

In the newest Karate Kid movie the names are no longer Daniel and Miaygi. Instead they are changed to Dre who was the student, and Cheng who is the maintenance man and sensei. The font on the posters is very original and gives a sense of strictness I feel.

The times of these movies are the eighties and the second movie was made in the present. I feel society today is a much more violent society and the movie tries to seem much cooler with its red background and faded font and the movie doesn’t follow the original story line at all because Dre moves to china instead of California which you can see by the building in the background. The original was trying to appeal to the society of the eighties who didn’t like violence and didn’t try to be cool.

In the first poster the two actors are looking at each other which seems like they are closer than the second poster and seem like they aren’t just looking for a fight. In the second poster they are facing the camera with a fighting pose showing that they are looking for a fight and not as close as in the first movie. 

Teen Pregnancy is the biggest trend to hit society next to smart phones. It is what this society loves to watch and learn about. With shows and movies like Teen Mom, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, The 

Pregnancy Pact, and 16 & Pregnant I’ve begun to notice a new trend. A trend of fascination with pregnant and unplanned pregnancy.

While I see no glamour or appeal in being a teen mother (especially after seeing Teen Mom) or being pregnant at all I can fully admit to being fascinated by this phenomenon. Just to see how others’ lives are not as bad as yours is one reason to watch it. Also to see why you should not be stupid and think you can go bare just this once.

In today’s society a pregnant teen is not an odd or strange sight. In fact it is very normal. People might judge but these days the amount of teens getting pregnant make this sight a very common thing and it’s hard to not just accept it. Early in our culture, especially in the 1950s, it was common for teen girls to graduate and marry their high school sweethearts and have children young. Now, in the present day, women are more independent and attend college, sometimes while raising a kid. This is one reason why pregnancy is getting more and more common for the youth.

Maybe for some girls, watching shows like TheSecret Life of the American Teenager makes pregnancy and teen motherhood look great. I myself cannot understand how this could seem good to these girls but it could possibly seem like they could raise this baby just like the girl on the show did.

Also on the rise is sex in the media. The media seems to revolve around sex because it draws viewers. This kind of flaunting to teens about how sex is hot and how it’s great has to be a big cause to the rise in teen pregnancy. The media makes pregnancy seem glamorous and attractive. The media also lowers the teen’s self-esteem and so they look to men to raise this confidence and make stupid decisions when they feel they are in love and wanted.

In today’s society, teen pregnancy has become an issue. If you step foot into a local high school, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a pregnant student. In fact, if you asked a student if they have a friend who is expecting or has already given birth, the answer would most likely be a yes.

The first picture was easy to find. All you had to do was specify with quotations that I wanted a google search with the results of “Mrs. Henry M. Robert Jr.” and the first result was the picture I was looking for at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/eleanor.html a government site that is very reliable. 

This picture was a little harder to find in my opinion and I had a lot of specifications to use. Some of the key words I used were “background”, “ap newsfeature”. “east”, “United States”. I originally was just on the images tab and kept adding more and more to my search string. But once I moved back to the search tab and clicked on the first link the picture came up. my final search criteria was, "Background" "map" "east" "united states" "arrested" "released" "ap newsfeatures". I have no reason to think that this website is not credible.

http://www.virginiamemory.com/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/doc/freedom_rides_map 

For this picture I simply specified the search with everything I could see such as “police department”, “Montgomery”, “J.F. Flake”, “1955”. After I typed those terms in the search bad I quickly found that the first link was what I was looking for. It was a filed complaint of Rosa Parks sitting in the white section of the bus. This site has no reason to not seem credible.

http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/rosaparks/0/inquiry/intro/

This was the most difficult picture to find. I went from having too many search criteria to too little. I first had (roll call, 32, house of representatives, congress, February, January, 1^st, 1964) this was too much and no searches came up with anything but when I shrunk it down to just (roll call, 32, house of representatives, February 1^st 1964). Once I looked through some of the links I found it. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/treasures_of_congress/Images/page_24/72a.html this is a legitimate site because it was a government site.

Fads

 I chose to talk about The Hunger Games as a fad. This is a popular book series that has become a very popular movie and soon to be movie series. It is a story about a future society that thrives off watching their citizens from different tribes fight to the death and ultimately crown the last survivor the winner. This is only a fad so far because there is only one movie so far, but the second movie is being filmed right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games_(film)

 
 Harry Potter

Harry potter is a good example of a fad. It was a very big book and movie series but his has faded into society now as the books and movies finished. The fan base and hype about Harry Potter is unseen. No one talks about Harry Potter anymore and this is why is a fad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

  

Teen Mom

This fad will soon go away. Soon this show and this theme of teen pregnant girls will soon fade and a new theme will arise. This show is a fad and will soon pass because once the babies are older they need to find new moms. Which will make views try and learn to like the new mothers.

http://www.teenmomnews.com/

 Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore, another reality show. This show follows a group of friends that are all from New Jersey who continuously party and do ridiculous things. This show is a fad because at first every one went crazy over it but didn’t know why they liked it so much. As the friends got older and one of them got pregnant  the show slowly started to shut down and eventually stopped producing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_(TV_series)

                               TRENDS

Smart Phones

Smart phones, this is a trend because they are continuing to evolve. A couple years ago no one knew what a smart phone was but soon they blew up. They are what everyone has or wants and these phones are apart of our life now.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/199243/a_brief_history_of_smartphones.html

Siri on the Iphone 4 which allows you to send texts, create reminders, search the Web and much more using just your voice may be the start of a new trend in voice controlled devices. Voice control is the biggest thing, they are the newest thing for productivity.

http://www.apple.com/ios/siri/

 Laptops/tablets

Tablets and Laptops are all around us. These devices are getting smaller and smaller and more portable. These devices are being able to do more and more while keeping us connected no matter where we go. These devices are getting even more productive every year and making it easier to do work. And these will continue to be popular so this is why it is a trend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_PC

Facebook

Facebook, this is definitely a trend because Facebook has been intertwined into our lives with every app we have or whatever we do on our phones. Before Facebook it was Myspace,  but with any trend things do move into the past and I feel Facebook is slowly moving into the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_shore

In his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid" Nicholas Carr suggests that even though the web has been an amazing asset to him and his writing career it also has changed the way we think and use communication. As we reach out to the most innovative ways to collect information, books and older media are being phased out. Carr suggests that when we are reading we simply skim over important words and sentences, which is called "Power Browsing." Rather than reading books fully and understanding topics, we are merely power browsing by clicking from one site to the next reading simply what we need to. Carr uses the analogy, " Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Carr's observations really show us how we are not seeing how society and technology is changing us. We all go with the flow and take in new things as they are presented to us, not considering any negative consequence that might go along with them. There will always be new technology and new ways of learning new material which will make our lives easier and faster. I feel this article is very supported because this exactly how I read articles online and do not read the entire articles if I do not have to. I feel the thesis of this article is the web is an amazing tool but it has slowly made us lazier and lazier.

 “Your brain is evolving right now”, by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan. While I feel that they made a variety of arguments, the one that struck me most was this idea of an “artificial sense of intimacy” and a “new culture of communication” that exist because we interact with other people online and through text messaging. In “techno-brain burnout”, Small and Vorgan make a valid point, that the lack of face-to-face interactions could be detrimental to our social skills and our relationships to others, but I also feel that they are being a bit over dramatic. They are looking at the minority in this situation. The average person may spend a good deal of time on facebook and their phones, sending text messages and writing comments, but that’s not where their relationships end. They still get up, go outside, and socialize with others. In “the new, improved brain”, the authors speaks about relationships through digital media. I think their weakness here is to automatically assume that there is a fundamental problem with this form of communication. I feel some of her arguments are supported but they are up to interpretation and this is too dramatized. I feel the thesis of this article is that technology is ruining our social interactions.

Marc Prensky opens his "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"(2001) by stating  that the problem with education today is  that " Our students have  changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system  was designed to teach".  He tells us that students today think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. He also talks about digital imigrants or people who were not born into this technology but instead has tried to imbrace it. He gives examples of people printing essays to edit them instead of editing on the screen. Or calling people in to show them a website instead of simply sending them it. The writer talks about how most teachers are digital immigrants and cannot connect with their students. The digital natives find this very frustrating and lose focus very quickly. Teachers need to try and integrate this technology in their classrooms to reach this generation of students. I feel this argument is very effective because this is exactly what is making the gap between this generation and between older generations. The thesis of this article is that digital immigrants need to reach their younger generations better.

“Do they really think differently?” Marc Prensky tells us how children today are being put into a society that no one has been put in before. Children today have been born into technology and spend their lives watching tv, playing video games, and sending emails. The writer tells how previously people thought our brain structure can’t be changed or altered but this is in fact incorrect and our brain structure can change by stimulation or various kinds. Evidence also shows that one’s thinking pattern can also change depending on our experiences. All these video games with hours on hours of focused attention are changing the way we process information and how categorize information. This is not necessarily a bad thing but we just need to find new ways to process information in school because reading out of books does not keep the generation today attentive like it used to. Marc tells us that teenagers today use different parts of their brain and think in different ways than adults when at a computer. Marc also shows evidence that the generations attention span is much smaller than previous. I feel this article is very supported with all the studies he gives. I feel the thesis of this article is that this generation’s brain structure and thinking process is much different than other generations.