Movie Reviews

Check out your classmates' podcasts on movies in Let's Talk.

Our college library has a good post on Internet Movie Databases. Very useful before you write a review.

This one is a very reliable film review website, Rotten Tomatoes. It has some professional film critics writing their reviews there, but also reviews by film buffs, like you and I. My class read two reviews of the movie we are going to see on Tuesday, Australia. One positive and one negative. Do you like to read reviews before seeing a movie?

Her is another review of Australia from the ABC programme At the Movies. What do David and Margaret think of it? Do they recommend us to go and watch it? How do they say it?

Marion was showing us a bit of Ellen Degeneres programme. I found this interview of Nicole Kidman wiht her in yappr. Check it out!

We also read some information about the Bombing of Darwin during WW2, as this is part of the movie Australia.

You can also read about another theme of Australia: the Stolen Generations and the Sorry finally given to them by our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

• Do a search for the movie we are watching in class, The Castle, and see what the critics say about it. Do you agree with their views?
  
• Write your own film review for The Castle. Remember to follow the structure of a film review we learned in class:

1. Introduction of the film and its director
   
2. Description of the plot
   
3. Evaluation of the performances of the main actors
   
4. Evaluation of the plot, music and photography
5. Comment about the rating of the film (G, PG, M, MA 15+, R 18+,X 18+)


6. Recommendation

I just found a very good wiki page about this movie, Australia. It's wendysclasso8. It has links to reviews, slides on the Stolen Generation and many more interesting links. Thanks Wendy!

Films

Our new topic for the last three weeks is movies. One of the things we've been talking about is different kinds of movies, which is called genres. This wikipedia will give you many ideas about movie genres.

Movie interviews and reviews

One day in class we were talking about movies, film reviews, ratings, scores... watch this red-carpet interview with Keira Knightley talking about The Duchess. You can read as you watch and you can repeat sentences that you don't understand. (Thanks to Diana and Matt for pointing out this very good website!)

Just by chance I found another review of the same movie, this time in a craft blog! Instead of stars Melissa gives movies balls of wool (take note Elmira).

Time4English has a good selection of movies reviews. Go t Movie Reviews on the main page, choose one (preferably one that you have seen), read the review and do the exercises.

Use Audacity now to record a conversation with a classmate about that movie. Remember to make it an active listening practice for the person listening, as we practised in class with the Splendid Speaking worksheet on it, you can also listen to a model podcast by two students here: Active Listening.

When you have a spare moment, have a look at this great website, Twelve Canoes. Twelve Canoes is movie made and written in collaboration with Aboriginal people. Worth seeing (in the movies) or watching (at home on a DVD). The website gives visual information about many aspects of Aboriginal culture.