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sister_luckNext week the car situation will finally be sorted and I'll get my shiny new car (same model, different colour and better extras). For the past six weeks I've been using the bf's 11-year-old Golf and even managed to crack the 100.000 kilometre milestone. (Urgh, that sounds weird.)
The oral exams are over and I only had one nightmare about them. There will be more oral exams at the beginning of June for those who did badly in their written exams. That won't be much fun, but at least now I know how it feels sitting at the opposite end of the table and asking the questions.
Last weekend I got through the Year 10 exams and this weekend will be used to mark the Year 12 essays and coursework.
Also, I watched the WORST.EVER. film adaptation of a novel, a 1998 tv version of Brave New World. The two guys who wrote the teleplay for it obviously didn't understand half the novel or (which is worse) thought they could improve it.
The terrible thing is that I can imagine what they were thinking: The audience needs to have a male protagonist they can like, so we'll just make timid and ugly Bernard Marx into a chick magnet who has got a rebellious streak. For the same reason, we'll also change everything about the female protagonist. We need to introduce conflict a lot earlier, so we invent a silly subplot about the Delta conditioning not working properly which we can then use later when we let the antagonist use a re-conditioned Delta as an assassin on Marx. Actually showing a savage reservation with "Indians" would be totally not politically-correct, so our savages look like they come straight from Seattle in the grunge era. Let's dress the World Controller in a sarong, because nothing screams futuristic like a man in a long skirt. Sex scenes should have the aesthetic value of a soft-porn flick without showing any of the naughty bits. The ending needs to be alot more upbeat, too, and show that happiness can only be achieved in a family unit. At the beach.
My students were exasperated and frustrated and only a tiny bit amused. At first, they thought the future looked odd, because the film was so very old. When I told them that it was only 10 years old, they couldn't quite believe it. I'm looking forward to their assignment for the last weeks of the school year when they'll watch better science fiction films and then present them in class. Any suggestions?
Sorry for that rant about the film but it was really awful. Any other adaptations of novels that should be avoided?
Also, there was an incident involving urine and a bookcase at school.
The oral exams are over and I only had one nightmare about them. There will be more oral exams at the beginning of June for those who did badly in their written exams. That won't be much fun, but at least now I know how it feels sitting at the opposite end of the table and asking the questions.
Last weekend I got through the Year 10 exams and this weekend will be used to mark the Year 12 essays and coursework.
Also, I watched the WORST.EVER. film adaptation of a novel, a 1998 tv version of Brave New World. The two guys who wrote the teleplay for it obviously didn't understand half the novel or (which is worse) thought they could improve it.
The terrible thing is that I can imagine what they were thinking: The audience needs to have a male protagonist they can like, so we'll just make timid and ugly Bernard Marx into a chick magnet who has got a rebellious streak. For the same reason, we'll also change everything about the female protagonist. We need to introduce conflict a lot earlier, so we invent a silly subplot about the Delta conditioning not working properly which we can then use later when we let the antagonist use a re-conditioned Delta as an assassin on Marx. Actually showing a savage reservation with "Indians" would be totally not politically-correct, so our savages look like they come straight from Seattle in the grunge era. Let's dress the World Controller in a sarong, because nothing screams futuristic like a man in a long skirt. Sex scenes should have the aesthetic value of a soft-porn flick without showing any of the naughty bits. The ending needs to be alot more upbeat, too, and show that happiness can only be achieved in a family unit. At the beach.
My students were exasperated and frustrated and only a tiny bit amused. At first, they thought the future looked odd, because the film was so very old. When I told them that it was only 10 years old, they couldn't quite believe it. I'm looking forward to their assignment for the last weeks of the school year when they'll watch better science fiction films and then present them in class. Any suggestions?
Sorry for that rant about the film but it was really awful. Any other adaptations of novels that should be avoided?
Also, there was an incident involving urine and a bookcase at school.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-16 06:16 pm (UTC)Oh god... That must have been my worst nightmare. Fortunately bullying never got to the point where they'd actualy break other people's things.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-17 11:02 am (UTC)It was a silly prank that spiralled out of control and launched a revenge attack.
It all started when the boys took their foam football (they're not allowed to play with a proper one) to the toilets and it accidentally 'fell' into the rather basic urinal. They took it back to the classroom, touching it only with their feet, and then had a fairly normal lesson. Afterwards, they used the same method to get the ball outside where they proceeded to play with it. Naturally, the select few who knew where the ball had been were very careful to only touch it with their feet but played it in a way to encourage the others to use their heads to keep the ball in play. Bad boy got the full facial treatment and was then told by a sniggering horde of boys that he just got pee on his face. Naturally, he was very upset. His revenge meant that pee ended up in one boy's compartment in our bookcase where the kids store their books, textbooks, ringbinders and lots of loose paper. We aren't totally sure how he did it, but we assume he used the easiest method available to him. We did get them to clean up, but haven't decided on further measures.
The worst thing: Some male colleagues thought it was more or less just 'boys being boys'. I hate that attitude.