Week 10 Project 3

I would have to say for my research paper, I am not 100% sure on what my paper is going to be about. However I do have somewhat of an idea on what to write it about. The movie I choose was Blood Diamond so there are several things going on in this movie on which I could write a research paper. I am having a real hard time narrowing down my idea between something to do with conflict diamonds or the Sierra Leon Civil war, but what I will probably do is just combine it all together. I would say I am pretty interested in this topic because I really do not know a lot about it. According to the movie the war and the diamond issue is one of the craziest things I have ever seen. I really want to find out more about these topics to see how accurate the movie portrays these events.  Also recently the whole Kony thing fits really well with my topic, so this has also made me more interested in the topic. After researching these general topics I have found several sources that could be useful to me. I found this book titled Blood diamond, which talks all about the Sierra Leon war and mining diamonds in Africa. Another few resources I have found are from the library search engine and have found a few online articles and academic journals that could be really useful to me. Overall I would say I had a very difficult time in choosing my topic, because technically I still have not chosen my topic. As I said early there is so many things I could choose to write about with my movie, so narrowing it down to one thing to do a paper on has been a difficult task for me. However I am confident one I talk to the teacher I will be able to decide on my topic. (324)

Blood Diamond Review

The Film I am going to be a doing a review for is the movie Blood Diamond. The plot of this film takes Place in 1999 right in the middle of the Sierra Leon Civil war. The film is about two main characters Danny Archer (Leonard DiCaprio) and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou). In this film Solomon Vandy is kidnapped by Sierra Leon Rebels and is forced to work in the Diamonds mines of Africa, and he eventually finds an extremely rare valuable blood diamond, which he hides in a camp( leaving the diamond behind), he then escapes from the mines to only find out his son has been kidnapped by the rebels, he then comes across Danny Archer who say he will help him find his son if he helps him find the Diamond, and the two then embark on a journey through Africa to retrieve the Diamond and his son.

                The director Edward Zwick shows several cultural themes throughout the film; however I would say his two main themes would be how human beings will do anything for power, and the blindness of people behind where diamonds come from. Let’s start with how brutal people can be when it comes to power. I say Zwick does an excellent job demonstrating this in the film. The director shows several scenes of just pure violence and destruction by the rebels of Sierra Leon, the rebels continuously return in the film and massacre innocent people, every time they come back you just think to yourself” great here we go again”, all these massacre scenes are extremely graphic and can be difficult to watch, they consist of children getting shot in the head and people getting their limbs cut off. All these scenes are put in the film to show how far the rebels willing to go in order to have all the power of Sierra Leon. Not only does Zwick does demonstrate this with graphic scenes he also uses Leonardo Dicaprio’s cunning and sneaky charm to show how far people are willing to go for power.  Leonardo continuously lies to every person in the film, to get closer to his goal of an extremely valuable blood diamond. Zwick also shows how young children are kidnapped and brainwashed and are turned into rebels to get the audience emotionally attached. Now for his next message, people’s blindness on Blood Diamonds in the world. A large reason why this film was made was to bring awareness to western societies of the gruesome hardships of where diamonds are actually coming from. I know personally I and every person that I have seen this film with had no idea of all the awful things that took place in order for Diamonds to be found and processed. Such as people being thrown into slavery, or people having limb cut off. The film also sheds light on how some of the biggest diamond companies in the world use conflict diamonds such as De beers. The film has a really good shock value.  The way Zwick show the blindness of individuals in the film is through a journalist (Jennifer Connelly) who wants to show the world the corruption behind these diamond, however she needs to find a names and statistics and her answer to her problem is Leonardo Dicaprio who originally in the film only cares about himself but, grows to feel for others and gives Connelly all the information she needs to spread the word on these conflict diamonds. Some people may say Edward Zwick was a bit too extreme on his message here but I personally disagree. I think Zwick needed to be extreme otherwise he could not get his message to the public. If Zwick was too soft in terms of showing what is going on in Africa, then his movie would have been pointless.  I overall loved the movie and thought Edward Zwick did a great job in this movie in every aspect.  I honestly cannot think of any flaws in the film that would stick out to cause any one not to watch this film. Blood Diamond is one of my all time favorite films and would give it five out of five stars. This film would be great to be seen now because of its relevance today with the “Kony” situation in Africa now. I would highly recommend this film to anyone because; it gives a great message and is relevant in today’s society. (740)

 Here is link to my Movie review http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450259/reviews Its under Garbis09

OMG its spring Break 2012

I am so excited for this spring break, because I am actually doing something fun this year. For spring break I Normally I just sit at home and do not anything to interesting. But This Spring break I am going to California to visit my older brother Kevin who just moved there at the beginning of January. He lives in L.A in Manhattan Beach. His house is literally right down the street from a beach which is pretty cool. I have not seen my brother since January which is probably the longest time I have gone without seeing him.  I guess that is just a couple of months, but me and my brother are pretty good buds, we were roomies last semester. Now I cannot wait to get there but I have to fly there by myself. I have never flown on a plane by myself so I am kind of nervous, not so much of the flying part but just figuring out how to check in and all that stuff. However I think it will totally be worth it, to go hang out in California for a couple days. Once I get there I Plan on just hanging out on the beach all day. My plan is to go to the beach and get really tan. I also might want to go swimming in the ocean. I have never swum in the ocean before, but have always wanted too so I am looking forward to that. But To be honest I am kind of scared to swim in the ocean because there is a bunch of crazy stuff that can be in there.  I also think we might go check out Hollywood and see what it is all about.  I also plan on to visit some old family friends who I have not seen in a couple of years who live right by my brother. So that’s my plans for spring break should be pretty sweet. (328)

The movie fan blog #6

My Experience at the Movie Fan brought back some old memories. I cannot remember the last time I have been to a movie rental store, because I stopped going to them ever since Blockbuster started to go downhill. Blockbuster was the main movie rental store I use to go to for my movie rental needs. However I thought the movie fan was actually better than the former powerhouse Blockbuster. I liked Movie fan because it was like a time machine. When I was little blockbuster use to have VHS’s but, as I got older they got rid of them and only had DVD’s. Now the Movie fan had new releases on DVD’s and really old movies on VHS. Now Blockbuster also had old movies but, I feel the Movie fan had every movie ever. I really liked looking at all the movie selections they had, I just walked around the store for about 40 minutes trying to decide on a movie to pick. When I finally picked a movie, I realized that my friends and I did not have enough money to rent a film, so after all that time in the store we left with nothing. I also like how the store was decorated. I thought I was cool how right when you walked in there was a lounge area, with lights and movie posters hanging up, and then on your left side was a candy wall which looked really delicious and tempted me  to go buy some. I also liked how they had kids sections in a little room that had a bunch of my old favorite movies, which really made me want to rent them especially the movies Heavyweights and the Land before time. This section also reminded me of Blockbuster because; I remember how they had a special section for kids very similar. The one down fall of the store, was that I could not figure out how it was organized. I know they had the kids section and the new release section but, besides that the movies were not categorized by a theme, I think they were organized alphabetically. I really did not like this because what if I am looking for a horror or action movie, the organizational system makes it difficult for one to find this type of film. So compared to Blockbuster which I remember being clearly organized by signs labeling the section it was for example it would be labeled horror for the horror sections and also it would be alphabetized as well so it was really easy to find movies.  So overall I would give the win to The Movie fan, even with its lack of organization. The movie fan had a great movie rental atmosphere with all the candy, posters and the million movies in the store. I plan on going again soon, except this time I will be prepared because I got a sheet that has all the info about the store from prices to hours (:  (500)