Prayer Day/ Hotel Rwanda

Genocides can bring you back into focus of what you should be thankful for or what your taking for granted. Immaculee's inspirational story gave us hope and somewhat taught me how to be strong when worse comes to worse. We sometimes lose focus of whats of real importance to us in life. What do we value? For example, when Immaculee talked about how she wasn't going to go home the day before and for easter because of a big exam. She finally realized what was more important and was thankful she did go see her family since that was the last time that she got to. In Paul's situation, all his hard work of gaining people's trust and respect paid off in the long run. It came in handy having people of higher status and power in your favor. I don't understand how some many genocides occur when they are over the smallest issues. In the movie Hotel Rwanda, they talked about how at one point they were deciding who was a Tutsi and Hutu by the width of their noses.We learned something more from this movie and speech which is that you have to have faith and prayer in God. You can't just go through the motions but believe in what your asking and trust in God's choice of judgement.
Being currently involved in the terrrorist war in the middle east and Iraq, I find it difficult to stay positive about the whole situation.This war has impacted many young adults my age due to growing hand in hand with it. I still remember hearing about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center in my 7th grade Enlgish Class. The message that the media portrayed was that the Al' Queda randomly attacked the United States. Right off the bat, they made us believe that going to war was the right action. What else was I suppose to believe? I was 12 years old and naive. This occurance was the first time I had heard of the words "terrorist attacks" and they were against my own country. Of course I supported the war and actions of the U.S. Yes, maybe the U.S. jumped into the idea of sending troops over to Iraq and the middle east but I didn't understand any of the other options they had. I always wondered if I hadn't been exposed to the war for the first time like this, would I have the same political and ideological views? Life experiences are what shape you not matter if they are good or bad.
Like the movie Hotel Rwanda and other films like "World Trade Center", "Flight 93" or "Saving Private Ryan", the directors change bits and part to fit the different scenes. The truth can only go so far in a film. I believe they should keep all the major issues or parts of the story line but as fas as the little stuff, I think they can arrange it around to make it fit the best and most appealing to a wide array of people.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

To start off with, I can't stand the Indiana Jones movies. I was pretty bummed when I heard that we were going to be watching the Raiders of the Lost Ark last class period. But once i got to watching the film, it wasn't that bad. Although I don't like snakes and dead people hanging from ropes flying out at me, the story and visual effects were what kept my interest. I knw Spielberg is a big junky on the whole holocaust era and I found it ironic that in this "adventure" it would deal with the religion of the jewwish heritage and the Nazis. A theme in the movie I really liked and kinda laugh about is how Spielberg throughout the movie, in little ways, is kinda "sticking it to the man" and the man being the Nazis. This fight that the Nazis and Hitlet fight with the Jews keeps my interest in the movie since I'm a fan of watching movies with that topic such as Schlinder's List. But behind the topic, I do like the special effects the best. There are very dramatic and percise for the time the movie came out. When the movie first started, I was not impressed with the effects; they seemed very unrealistic. But then I had to think of the time this movie first aired and was impressed. I think this movie was the foundation or the beginning to many more movies with special effects. I like movies that are suspensful and as Roger Ebert would say " a bruised forearm movie ( you squeeze the arm of your date every time something startles you)" kind of movie. This film definitly kept me on the edge of my seat . As far as the article goes about "the Real Indiana Jones" or " the Texas Jones", I think he's crazy. There's many people that go after old artifacts as their living. I guess I don't believe that he actually wrote this script or had anything to do with the production of the series of Indiana Jone's films. Anyone can make up stories like that. He never really had any proof of his finding with all his adventures. I think they talked about on his sixth or seventh adventure he found something tiny but not enough to prove that he had discovered a significant amount of history. Overall the movie was alright. The special effects were good for it's time but doesn't compare to anything these days that were use to.