2001: A Space Odyssey paper

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was a new experience for me. It was the first real science fiction movie I have ever watched, and it was hard for me to get into the plot. The movie begins with a group of primates who find a big, black "wall" that fascinates them. They begin to examine and it and then finally touch it. The film then moves to a more present-day scene where a scientist, Dr. Floyd, is preparing his astronauts for a space mission.

The astronauts do not fully understand their mission, but they willingly accept. They are sent into space as a team of 5 humans and one machine; the machine was the only one who had the full knowledge of their mission. The movie then progresses to a group of astronauts finding another one of the black "walls". To the viewer, the purpose of the "wall" still remains a mystery.

After about a year and a half on their mission, the machine named HAL starts to malfunction and the astronauts try to fix it. HAL seems to go back to normal, but soon begins to show signs of mutiny again. He knows that the astronauts are planning to disconnect him if he does not properly help them, and he kills all but one of the humans. Dave, who was the only man to survive, tries to prevent HAL from becoming too powerful, and eventually disconnects HAL. Right after disconnecting HAL, Dave finds out the real purpose of their mission.

Dave embarks on a journey to Jupiter to try and discover the purpose of the "walls" that were being found throughout evolution. On his way to Jupiter, he goes through a tunnel of time travel, and ends up arriving as an old man. After what I believe to be his death, he transforms into a fetus and becomes known as the "star child". According to Ed Williamson, the purpose of the movie is to showhow man will progress from a time of tool usage to a time when we will be interacting with "something else".

I did not like the movie very much, first of all because it was a sciene fiction movie; it did not hold my attention very well. I found the lack of commentary hard to follow, and I had a hard time understanding what was going on. Most of the time, I found myself trying to piece together the different scenes because they would switch so quickly. I would try to figure out why the "walls" were such an important part of the movie, and then it would switch to a different scene altogether.

I did have to do a little research on the film to see if I could get any background information. When I read the article by Ed Williamson, the "walls" made more sense to me. He described them as a sort of catalyst to speed up evolution. I though back to the parts where it would cut from the primates looking at the "wall" to the astronauts in space; then finally to the end when Dave is laying on his deathbed with the final "wall" in front of him and he becomes the "star child".

Once I realized that Kubrick was trying to portray evolution and the use of tools and technology, it became easier to follow what was happening in the film. I think Kubrick did a good job trying to predict things that would happen in the future, and the plot became more interesting. Once I understood more of his intentions, it was easier for me to see what the "walls" stood for. I realized that the "wall" was a symbol for evolution. I didn't like the fact that I wasn't able to see that on my own.

I don't think I enjoyed this movie very much because it was hard for me to see the "big picture" of all that was going on. The lack of commentary and quick switching of scenes made it hard for me to focus and piece together the plot. If it had not been for the movie synopsis and the article from Ed Williamson, I still don't think I would understand the main point of the movie.

Home Stretch

We had project presentations in class today. It was neat to see how everyone's projects turned out and to see the final product. I feel that we still have things that could be changed about our site to make it more interesting and useful to people, and we will continue to work it out. Our group did not present today, but we are going to next week. I feel that our information could be useful, but we have to come up with a way to make it better. We may even continue to work after the project is over.

Facebook Project Update

Today is one of the last days to work on our project. We are going to be doing revisions to our website we created, and putting on the finishing touches. The only thing we really need to do now is put a picture on our home page and check to make sure all of our grammar and wording is correct. We worked individually for the first week and a half and then we worked together a few times to finish our site. We think it will be pretty helpful to people who do not know much about Facebook.

Product Update 3

Now that we are about two and a half weeks into our group projects, our website is starting to come together. We are adding more of the information that we found on our topic, and we are going to start adding pictures hopefully soon. We are planning to take some of our own pictures to avoid copyright issues. We may try to use some of the pictures from the website we were shown at the presentation last Thursday. It is also getting easier for each of us to do more to our page because we can see examples of what our other group members are adding to their part of the website.

Project Update

We are in the second week of our group projects, and we are in the beginning stages of creating our website. So far we have a home page created and we are each working on our individual pages. Information is slowly coming together, and we have to watch out for infringement problems. We have figured out what kind of pictures we can use, but we are having a hard time trying to decide what information to use. Some of the information we have gathered overlaps each others' work, so we have to decide who should use it in their section and what is relevant enough to put on our site. So far the project is going well, though.

Group Project

We are just starting on our group project for English. So far we have set up a website to give information about Facebook. We split up subtopics and each of us are going to work on one. The website will have things related to using Facebook and privacy issues, as well as who owns the things you post and how to safely use the website. We have already run into issues pertaining to copyright problems, but Mrs. Evans helped us find different places to find pictures and information. We will be working on the website both together as a group, and also individually for each of our pages.

Road Map to Writing

Today's reading from chapters 28 and 29 in our English book, the Norton Field Guide to Writing, were about the importance of setting up our writing. We should have a strong opening to grab our reader's attention and a great ending to keep them interested. Having a clear beginning and end also helps our reader stayed focused and wanting to read more.

Another thing that helps when we are writing is to give the reader an idea of what they will be reading about. Setting up a guideline or a "map" will help the reader decide if they are interested in beginning the paper as well as help them along while reading it. The "map" will help them in-the-know. It is very helpful to readers to properly set up your paper so that it as easy and interesting for them to read.