1. Invalid - getting the red pen out
I am that lady at the front of the class in Peanuts cartoons saying 'Wah wah wah wah wah...'.
It was not a good start when the first girl I walked up to before the exam said, 'Miss! I didn't know we had to write about THREE texts! I only studied for TWO!' I replied, 'Good luck then!'
Hit head against wall.
Then someone wrote in their first sentence that Film Noir were made in the 1930s. During revision time I had MADE them write down 1942-1958 (or if you can't remember that, say 'the 1940s and early 1950s'). I had repeated it many many times. I had made them chant it back to me.
Hit head again.
And that Harry Lime does not die at the end of Third Man. His best friend freakin' shoots him. It's a pretty massive part of the ending.
Repeat.
I am marking in reverse order, from the people who left the exam first to the ones who stayed the whole time. It should get better.
I have an eight page epic to look forward to - and it's the girl in the class who has the smallest, hardest to decipher handwriting of them all ('boy writing' if you will).
2. Inept
I, being a lady of leisure this week, went for coffee after lunch today.
I asked the waitor for a latte and piece of ginger loaf. He mumbled for a few seconds then said, 'That was a flat white, was it?'. No. Then he said, 'Oh yeah. And a piece of banana cake?' No. 'Do you want sugar with that?' No.
When he brought it over to my table, there was a packet of sugar on the side of my saucer.
3. Inconeivable - it's not actually Star Wars
District 9 sold out, half an hour before it was due to start. Who knew?
So we went to Sunshine Cleaning instead. I liked it. I may have been alone in that.
It had nice character development and a plucky lead. And a man with one arm. And they never explained how he lost it. There were lots of unexplained story details and sub-plots that were never resolved. I like that.
Life is full of unexplained one-armed men.
5 comments:
Your 1942+ timeframe excludes the Maltese Falcon (1941), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and a few other minor gems like The Petrified Forest (1937). I think you could make an argument that a lot of the 1930s gang-oriented movies were pretty clear precursors, but I guess like the MF, the argument is that they're more clearly in another better-defined genre.
The 1958 end-cap seems more reliable, though there have been a decent number of neo-noir movies. Most recently The Good German, but also Brick, LA Confidential...
The one about Harry Lime reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George tries to discuss Breakfast At Tiffany's (the book) with his reading group, having only seen the film.
Maybe there's some bowlderised adaptation of The Third Man out there that your students have used to avoid watching the whole film....
What does inconeivable mean? Is it like inconceivable?
I think I might have just scored a point in the grammer / punctuation / spelling war. Score may now be Kate 117 - Jon 1. I'm off the mark!
Typos do not count as grammar! Unless you are desperate for points.
Oh yeah 1941. We studied Maltese Falcon :) I think earlier ones are generally considered 'gangster' or 'crime' films and have a tidier good-guy wins outcome and less of the expressionism.
I have had kids writing about a Shakepeare script as a text, and refered to the use of set or lighting....
Oh... and my correction of your incorrect spelling of grammAr gives me one more point. 118-0. DOMINATION.
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