Looking at Women post

The author of this piece does a good job of presenting the inquiry question of why does the world look at women as lesser human beings to men in the way of the 3 basics of well written inquiry questions. The first piece of the 3 way method, personal and auto-biographical, is addressed immediately in this essay. The author starts the essay off with an anecdote about when he was younger and had his very first experience of looking at a girl more as an object then a person. This is a powerful note due to the fact that, at the ripe young age of 11 years old, he was already putting women down unintentionally. The second piece of the method, facts and concrete information, is addressed by talking about products in our daily lives that put women at a lower standard then men. One example he gives are large posters of models. He explains that the posters are clear proof that men simply want to look at attractive females. The poster itself cannot communicate or show personality, but this market is still a huge draw for men to dump money into. The third and final aspect of the method, poetic and human experience, can be seen on the last page. The author gives many examples of metaphors and symbolism to explain how the world treats women as lesser human beings and objects in comparison to men. 

The Overly Documented Life post

It took me a little while to really understand why we were assigned to read this article. While this article was extremely interesting to read, I was slightly confused. About five minutes or so after finishing the article, I realized why it had been assigned to read. While reading the article and especially after reading the article, I found myself having conversations in my head about this very interesting topic. I was thinking about how this idea of recording every moment in my life would affect me and the people around me. I was basically having an entire theoretical dinner conversation in my head. This is when I had my “Aha” moment. I realized that this is the point of an inquiry paper. It is to present a very simple and open ended question to spark conversation and deep thought. Even though the initial question of this article was based around our memory and if we have warped ideas of what happened in the past, I found myself questioning deeper ideas as far as even what kinds of fights in relationships are beneficial to a relationship. An inquiry article, as seen from this paper, can be extremely interesting to read and I imagine even more enjoyable to write. Reading this article and thinking about the meaning of it made me excited to start working on our inquiry paper in class.

Review critiques

Kelly’s review of MMLP2 critiques:

               -I found myself at many points throughout paper questioning whether or not you enjoyed the album or not.

               -As someone who is not familiar with much of Eminem’s work or personal life, I tended to be very confused when you were talking about the events in his life and references to his past albums.

               -I thought that you had great descriptions of some of the aspects of the album. 

McKenzie’s review of Pearl Harbor critique’s:

               -I thought you did a good job at explaining the positive parts of the movie and explaining why in your opinion that the critiques were not valid.

               -I thought there may have been a bit too much plot summary.

               -Some sentences were a bit too long and run on like but that can be fixed in editing.

Spencer’s review critique

               I really enjoyed reading this review. It was very well written with little to no mistakes or poorly written sentences. You had great voice in this review which I felt established good credibility. I loved that you analyzed and picked apart every aspect of the movie from the score to the cinematography. A couple things that I feel you could add would be to add some sources from other critics. Whether they liked the movie or not, adding some other opinions and then either agreeing with them or disagreeing with them and backing up your point will add to the overall credibility of your writing. Again, I loved that you analyzed all of the parts of the movie however I do think that some nice flowing transitions could be added between the different sections. Some of the transitions feel a bit clunky to me. Overall, really good job on the review though. It definitely made me interested in the movie.

Review Intro Paragraphs

Stylistic

Going into college, I knew I was going have to make an upgrade on the laptop that I had. I had been using a three year old Macbook Pro which I had loved for what it could do for me, but being in a technology governed business path with an engineering minor, I knew it wouldn’t be able to do the job I needed it to. So I began looking through countless reviews of laptops explaining the pros and cons of each machine. These amazing new machines seemed to be an extension of these owners and that is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a strong machine that could do everything I needed it to do, when I needed it to do it. After searching for hours a day, I narrowed my search to two different brands, ASUS and Lenovo. Both leaders in the market, I knew they would both be able to produce computers that would do what I wanted. This is where the truly powerful reviews came in. I needed to differentiate which would be better for me. Ultimately, I decided on the Lenovo Y50 and I could not be happier. The reviews that I read were the driving force behind this important decision and now it is my turn to help some lost soul find their true mechanized soul mate with my review of this magnificent, motorized machine.

Conventional     

In college, the technology that one uses can determine many outcomes of their experience. Whether that’s grade, friends, or simply overall experience. This is why it is extremely important to choose the correct technology, such as new laptops, when coming into college. This is where reviews come in. Before purchasing any new gadget, the consumer should read up on plenty of reviews of different products to see which would be the best. A good review needs to be thorough yet simple enough for the reader to understand. In my personal experience, reviews of laptops can vary very much and that is why it is very important to scour the internet for different sources and opinions on the product of choice. I have recently purchased a new Lenovo Y50 laptop. I have generally been very happy with my experience so far. I believe that with all of the new products coming out, we as consumers must contribute our opinions to help other potential buyers make the best decision they can when buying a laptop. In this review I will be discussing the specs, feel and raw experience that I have had with my Lenovo Y50.

Review Comparisons

For my review paper, I am writing about my laptop that I had purchased at the end of the summer, the Lenovo Y50. This is Lenovo’s newest model laptop of the Y series and was only out for several months when I bought mine. I read two reviews, one critic and one user, on the laptop. The critic review came from TechRadar.com and was written by Kevin Lee. TechRadar is a well-known critic site for electronics. This review I thought was very thorough and overall without much bias to cloud the judgment on the laptop itself. I read several user reviews on Lenovo’s website by various anonymous writers who had bought the laptop. These reviews were much less thorough and generally much more focused on a few aspects of the laptop that users either really liked or really hated. Lee, as opposed to the anonymous buyers, seemed to be doing his best to disregard his own personal likes and dislikes about previous Lenovo products and tried only to focus on this laptop. Lee’s professional review of the laptop also seemed to focus much more on the laptop itself rather than the price. This makes sense due to the idea that, if the reader has chosen to read this review, he or she most likely already knows the price of the laptop and is considering buying the computer. This is contrary to the user reviews in that most of the user reviews discussed the quality of the laptop in regards to the price of the Y50 and other competitive laptops. Another difference that I had noticed in these two different types of reviews was that the professional review tended to compare this laptop with one or two other laptops in the market. Whether he was comparing the performance, hardware, or the general feel of the laptop, he would always mention another product that might be better or worse for the consumer if that is a specific area they were looking for. The user reviews however mostly commented on only the Y50 as that is the laptop that they were familiar with. 

Short Film Review

For my short film, I watched Voice Over by Martin Rosete. This film was beautifully made. It kept me guessing the entire 10 minutes as to what was possibly going on. It takes a true creative genius to tastefully keep the viewer guessing as to what is happening when you have a narrator telling what is actually “going on.” Throughout the entire film a narrator, quite descriptively, tells the story of what kind of predicament you, the viewer, have found yourself in. Whether it’s panicking at the idea of simultaneously trying to get oxygen while fighting off an alien life form from eating away at your body, or struggling to find a detonator to save the woman you love at the expense of dying yourself, or clawing desperately at a rope that is attaching what seems to be your very life itself to a boat that represents the cold death that awaits at the bottom of the ocean depths, this movie constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat, gasping for air. And that is the common denominator in all of these scenarios; gasping for air. It is only in the end of the film when the viewer can truly see what this idea of gasping for air is about. You the viewer are about to have your first kiss and you are nervously gasping for air. These three scenarios are nothing more than extreme metaphors to show the feeling that you would feel before that innocent first kiss. When thinking back on the film, Rosete is a true master at getting the viewer to feel exactly what he wants the viewer to experience. Over the course of the film, I curiously found myself physically holding my breath and having painful butterflies in my stomach. It almost felt as though I was experiencing my first kiss all over again, I just didn’t realize that that was what I was feeling until the end. This film is a true example of how literature can play with your emotions however the author sees fit.

Godzilla review

After reading John Ebert’s very descriptive review of the 1998 version of the ever popular Godzilla saga, the reader should easily be able to tell that Ebert did not like this movie; not one bit. Ebert spends over one thousand words completely dismantling this movie into what it truly was through his eyes; a poorly acted, horribly written, and simply terribly made attempt at a movie. What is very interesting about this piece of writing is that Ebert does a very good job, in my opinion, at staying fairly transparent and credible. From reading the review, I didn’t expect to actually think his argument was valid simply because he was so one sided. I think that it is very difficult to give a review of a movie that has absolutely no positive remarks yet not let your own emotions get too much in the way to completely lose credibility. Personally I have never seen the 1998 version of Godzilla but I can sense from this review that it may not be the movie for me. Being a fan of the action genre myself, I can completely understand where Ebert is coming from when he talks about all of the impossible acts that Godzilla carries out in the movie. Putting the fact that the movie is about a 300 foot tall sea monster aside, there are some scenes that Ebert describes, such as Godzilla being able to fit into a subway line, that just do not match up even to the crazy storyline of the movie. In the end, I do think that Ebert was able to get his point across in such a way that even someone who hasn't seen the movie, like myself, can understand the caliber of this movie and still respect Ebert’s opinion. 

Yeezus reviews

I found that reading both of these articles back to back was extremely interesting. In the first review by the NY times, the writer explained how Kanye West had the foundations and artistic ideas to build a wonderfully moving album. However in the end Mr. West, as they referred to him, completely missed the mark on what this album could have been. The writer explained that Mr. West could’ve been trying to create an album that spoke strongly about civil rights and the dark times that African American people from poor areas have to live in, but in the end the album was mostly about sex, drugs, and women. This review was in complete contrast to the review in the pitchfork article. Pitchfork, which mainly reviews music, discusses the brilliance of Mr. West’s album Yeezus. This writer explains that the true message of this album, masked beneath a hard layer of some typical rap/hip-hop language, is one of a man who has reached a dark, almost zen-like state. He explains how every part of the music has been thought about to portray this message. From the hard, electronic, and almost painful beats to the careful selection of collaborative artists from Mr. West’s own “chi-town”, this album has the making of a true poetic masterwork. I found it very interesting how these two websites had completely opposite opinions in the music. My opinion is that the NY Times, being an organization known across the world for their wide range of articles, tended to look more so at the music itself and the outer feelings of the music, whereas pitchfork, who only deals with music, took much more time and effort to look deeper into the true meaning of not only the music but the other artists in the album and even the allusions to past event and songs.