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The Kingdom was a great movie that I recommend for everyone to see (however, I wouldn’t suggest it for younger kids) and was a definite eye-opener, especially the ending. The ending was completely unexpected, and really made me think. I assumed that the ending was going to be the stereotypical happy conclusion where everyone went home feeling good because they avenged their friends death and prevented future terrorist attacks, and right from there go straight to the credits. However, the ending was not that at all, and definitely did not disappoint.

A killer with Amnesia ? There are very few Suspense/Thriller movies with this concept. When you think of a killer, you almost consider that person an animal. In this case he would technically be an animal because the one of the things that separate a human from an animal is in fact memory.  Go figure.  What this character represents, the structure of the film and the refreshingly new idea brought to the table is what made this movie great, brilliant. Leonard is on a quest of vengeance.  

Film Review: the Grave of the Fireflies

The film begins with a scene of the boy Seita after he is dead, giving the audience a understanding of this movie that it is a tragedy.

The way of using color in this movie is very unique. The scene of dead Seita is shown by using reddish color to portray the character and background, which is attractive since the dead Seita sometimes has some interaction with the actual world, or his memory. For example, when a guard at the train station threw away the candy can that carries Seita’s sister, Setsuko’s bone meal, the dead Seita, or his soul picked it up.

On character portraying, the film shows a strong contrast between different characters. In the aunt’s house, Seita and Setsuko’s cousin always spoke for them while the aunt was mean. Also in the later part of the film, when Seita and Setsuko lived the abandoned mine, without anything to eat, other boys ran pass them with nice clothes and went to fishing happily. Meanwhile, those adults are all different with each other on the attitude of treating Seita and Setsuko, for example, the aunt’s selfish but a little compassion, the old farmer’s sorrow, the doctor’s indifference and the demobilized soldier’s abhorrence, each person has his or her idiosyncrasy.

About the film itself, I have some opinions. Firstly, I consider Setsuko an innocent poor girl suffered in the war, but Seita a ignorant and lazy boy with a simple mind filled with militarism. If Seita really loves his sister, what he should do is not taking her to the seaside and play with her but trying his best to find a work or help his aunt’s family by doing housework. Although he was only thirteen or fourteen at that time, although he was brought up in a rich family, he should have grown mature enough to handle things, and the decision he made to move out of his aunt’s house is totally wrong and childish.

Secondly, being a Chinese, I really abominate what Seita thinks about war. Even before Setsuko is almost dead, he is still dreaming to join the army. What will he think him be doing? Killing Chinese or Americans? Although the main theme of this movie is about anti-war, Seita is apparently some sort of advocator for war.

Thirdly, the film itself is really moving and touches deeply into one’s soul.

Everybody knows from the beginning that this film is a tragedy, but people still feels sad or even cries for Setsuka’s Death. Seita and Setsuka's desperation  reflects the theme of protesting to war and a wish of hope. In the entire war, countless families like Seita and Setsuka's are broken and destroyed, and even seldom does one know whether their government is right or wrong. This film no longer shows a tragedy of a family, but a tragedy of a whole nation, a whole world.

Despite the fact it's a terrorist movie which I tend to not like the movie overall was actually rather amusing. There weren't very many parts which I could say were bad or parts I'd really want to critique. It was well done story line wise. The visuals of the movie were very nice with an exception of the angles in some of the running scenes, in the very beginning of the movie there was a scene with the US military running towards a building but the camera was looking at them from almost ground level so the majority of the image was the floor lower body of the people. I felt as if they could have done that better. There was a scene within the movie where they chased down a young terrorist the organization recruited and threw him off the side of a bridge to get hit by a train the angles and the way the camera was worked during the chase scene and the body being thrown was done well. The music in the movie kept it alive it made me feel some what on the edge of my seat as I watched. 

As the main character Samir Horn was organizing and selling bombs to the islamic organizations. He was a former U.S soldier and Citizen. The FBI, and the CIA begin to track Samir as he tries to set up multiple terror attacks on all 50 states. The movie ends with Samir saving his country he puts all of the terrorist on the same bus and it only ends up killing a few citizens and he becomes hospitalized and once he is better he is greeted by Clayton the man who was chasing him down.

Chart 1:

This chart shows the ages of voters. There is a clear trend: as people get older, they become more likely to vote for Gingrich or Romney, and less likely to vote for Santorum or Paul. My theory is that this is caused by the kind of advertising the candidates use and who their policies appeal to. I find the divide interesting: Paul and Santorum, who are kind of on the fringes of the campaign, appeal to young people; Gingrich and Romney, who seem to be the two main contestants, appeal to older people.

This chart shows the incomes of the voters. Each candidate has a really interesting trend. Ron Paul's strongest support is in lower income households, and becomes less and less popular with groups of greater incomes. Gingrich has relatively high support across all levels, but his strongest point is definitely in the middle – he has less support among the richest and poorest groups. Mitt Romney is popular in exactly the opposite way as Gingrich: among the richest and poorest, he is popular, but less so among middle classes. Santorum is, like Gingrich, most popular in the middle – but less so among the poorest and wealthiest voters.

Chart 3:

This chart is the results of the polling question, "What quality matters most to you in a candidate?" I found a few things most interesting. First, each candidate has a clear weakness: clearly, Romney does not appeal to anyone who wants a "true conservative", and Gingrich is not considered to have strong moral character. Santorum is not popular among those who want an experienced candidate, and Paul is not favored for beating Obama. Another great analysis of this chart is the fact that there seems to be an inverse relationship between having strong moral character and being able to defeat Barack Obama. Clearly, people do truly believe that those who are morally true can succeed in politics. And, apparently, for good reason: there is also an inverse relationship between those who are favored for experience and those who have strong moral character!

When I found out that we had to take 200 hundred pictures, I was shocked because I didn't know how I was going to take 200 pictures in a week. But when you actually do it, it's not that hard and it goes quick because you're having fun taking pictures. After taking 200 pictures we had to photoshop 5 of them. The reason for taking 200 pictures is because you would get a variety of different pictures, some will bad lighting and focus and some with good lighting and focus. When I found out that I had to photoshop some pictures, I was excited because I was learning something new. I didn't really know how to use photoshop and this was my chance to learn.

  When I photoshopped my pictures, I chose five of my favorite pictures. And then I did different things to my pictures. For one, I took a picture of my hallway then photoshopped a creepy little girl in it, for another it was a picture of my aunt and I photoshopped my face into it and made her eyes red. For the next one it was a picture of me and my two friends and I photoshopped us into a concert. I took a picture of me and then put bubbles in it. And the last one I took a picture of me and my friend and then put leaves in it.

The hardest part of this assignment was taking one pictures and photoshopping it in another because when I tried to crop it out, parts of the picture was getting cut out because my hand wasn't that steady. Also I had to get the right background or picture because sometimes it would be too big or small. Another thing that was difficult was making my aunt eyes read because the red was going on her skin and it wasn't even.

I didn't have a clue what to make when I found out that I had to make something off the internet. At first I was going to make a piece of clothing, then I was going to make a picture frame, and then I finally decided that I was going to make a phone booth. The reason I was going to make a phone booth is because a phone is something I can't live without. Also because a phone booth is something no one would think to make.

The whole process while making the phone booth was easy. First I got an old shoe box and then covered the outside of it with paper because the outside couldn't be painted without it. Next I took a mix of blue and black and painted the outside and inside of it. Then I took the bottom of the box and cut it down some so it can be the part with the numbers on. I cut pieces of paper out with the numbers, star, and pound sign on it and glued it to the box. I then glue the piece with the numbers on it to the bigger box and painted the whole thing. After that I took the base that my perfume was on because it looked liked a phone and painted it black. Then I put a string at the end of it and connected it to the bottom of the box.

I wasn't shocked or hesitant of making a large clear object because we did it before. So it's not like I don't know what I'm doing. But making a larger clear object does make me more confident of making one. I was happy that we had to make a larger clear object because this one of my favorite assignments. And since I already made one before which was smaller, I wanted to make one with an object that I didn't use yet.

To make the larger clear object, first I decided which clear object I wanted to draw. Then I decided to do a object that looked like a measuring jar. Then I took a piece of charcoal and shaded the whole paper black. Next, I started to draw the object. I took an eraser and erased the parts that were clear and places where it was lit. Then I darken the places that were dark on the object and then made a shadow for the object. Lastly, I made a table like figure for it so it looks like it's not floating in mid air.

I love to draw so copying a master piece is one of my favorite assignment. When I was looking for a picture to copy, I was searching for something that wasn't to hard or to easy. I finally found a picture that was called "Donkey and Cart". I decided to choose this picture because it was something that I've never done before so I was welling to try it.

I started with the end of the picture and when I was done with the end, I did the front then the middle; this part is just the donkey, cart, and the man. After doing that I did the rest of the pictures and then put the details in it. 

• http://bit.ly/xtoQR5 (Link to video)
  
  My partner and I chose this topic because it was something that caught both of our attention. We both love art and believe that censored art is something that has a deep meaning. I really liked that we could be creative with our projects. I felt as though we could go anywhere with it and expres ourselves. The one challenging thing was trying to tie it all in together. The most interesting thing that we investigated was "Piss Christ" because learning about it's background was very challenging because many people find it sacreligious. This project could have had more time put into it. The one place we ran into trouble was trying to upload it. On thing that went well with this project was gathering the information. If I had to do something over I would pick a different topic because it was hard to find things to speak about. I learned that many things in our world are looked down upon but have a deep meaning and people don't seem to be ready for it.