Evaluation over 2001 A Space Odyssey

Annah Humphries
Evaluation over:
2001 A Space Odyssey

Watching 2001 A Space Odyssey was little difficult for me being that it was full of science fiction and had very little dialogue. The movie really makes the viewer sit there and think when they view the film. The first time viewing this movie the intention of the movie was very unclear to me. I had trouble picking up the plot and distinguishing the motives between characters. I found the characters in the movie were very complex and had definite motives once I learned them. It took several views and a deeper examination of the film to discover these true motives and to relate to the characters. After being able to do this, I could evaluate the movie. Overall I found the lack of dialogue to be the biggest problem, which led to problems understanding the plot and the motives for the characters.
At the beginning of the movie, I think this was the hardest part to understand and grasp my attention. The apes came across a giant rectangular monolith. As soon as the apes saw this they began to wonder what it was but the giant rock was big in size and very hypnotizing. It began to make the apes become crazy like with their actions, which was very clear in the scene. But this large rock also brought revelation to them, and they soon learned how to provide food for themselves. The rock enlightened the apes and brought a sense of survival mode to them. While coming in contact with a pig, Moon-Watcher, the smartest and keenest of the apes picked up a rock and threw it at the pig. This rock killed the pig and allowed the apes to feast on it. This visual was a creative way of showing the evolution of the apes and their development due to the monolith. Since there was very little dialogue, this visual helped bring the concept full circle.
One of the biggest characters I had trouble understanding was Hal. He was a very intelligent computer operated robot, but his motives in the plot were uncertain to me. Hal at first seemed like a smart, witty robot that was there to navigate the voyage to Jupiter. As the movie went on I found his motive changing and his character to be somewhat untruthful. Hal was programmed to help Dr. David Bowman and Frank Pool get to Jupiter successfully to find out about the monolith. His plans quickly changed maliciously when he realized his existence was at stake. This caused for a change in the mood of the movie and other characters such as David Bowman changed their actions to accompany Hal’s.
Dr. David Bowman was one of the characters that stroke me as the most relatable. Throughout the movie I was looking for a character to relate to on an emotional level. Bowman quickly became the character that I felt was emotionally tied to the voyage. When Bowman found out that Pool had been sucked in by Hal and killed during this attempt, this really turned the tables for him in the movie. At this point, Bowman had revelation and better understanding of the voyage. Bowman accompanied his new eye-openers with actions. Quickly Hal became the victim and Bowman would disconnect him, so Hal would cease to exist. There was dialogue in the movie that showed revelation when Hal discovered what was happening to him, he says “I’m afraid, I’m afraid. Dave, Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it.” As Hal spoke his last words there was little bit of comic relief, Hal began to explain when and where he was created, who his instructor was, whom told him how to sing. Then Hal went on to sing a song to Bowman while he was beginning to lose all recollection of himself. In this moment the movie’s focus changed.
Bowman’s revelation of the purpose for the voyage was a new direction for the movie. Bowman discovered the purpose after Hal was excommunicated. There was a recording from Floyd that Bowman found and discovered his mission, which was to go to Jupiter and beyond the infinite. Bowman learns that he will be turned mortal toward the end of the movie. Bowman becomes more aware and his motives become clearer toward the end of the movie because of this discovery.

Creating a Portfolio

Personally, I have never had to create a portfolio for an english class, so this is all new to me. In the text, it explained there are five steps to creating a porfolio. They consists of finding the: purpose, audience, genre, stance and media. I imagine the main purpose of creating a portfolio in an english class would be to keep records of written essays and different projects in the class. The other step was recognizing your audience, which is important in any written paper or anything meant to be looked at, heard or read. It is crucial to know who your audience is so you can provide information that is appealing to the audience or reader. The other aspect of creating a portfolio was deciding a genre. When you pick a form of writing for the portfolio, it should be consistent throughout. Stance ties in with the audience because once you recognize the receiver, the author should have an idea of how they want to be portrayed by them. Today forms of communication varies greatly, so I can see why media and design is one of the elements to consider when making a portfolio. You can either choose paper or of course elecronics.

Evaluations

In the text the author stresses the importance of looking for a phone that has the main basic qualities. In the text the author evauluates the cell phone and its features. The author goes in to detail explaining the importance of these features in a phone and why they are needed. One of the features presented was the push to talk feature, compared to the walkie talkie. Although this feature may have been important when the article was published, now it is not the main feature people look for when they go hunting for a phone. Now I would say texting features many people look for and the apps in a cell phone. In the evaluation, I think there was a certain expectation the author had for cell phones, and that will most likely change over time.

Evaluating Fairly

I realize that when you are evaluating something you look at the most important aspect that interest you. For instance if you were going to evaluate a movie. The part in the movie that struck you the most would probablly be evaluated. When evaluating something you need to have a justified reason for backing your belief up. This is very important, so people will have a reason to agreee with you or disagree. One way you can do this is by quotes that were given either in the movie or book.

Project Winding Down

This past week our group met at the library. Our goal was to revise our writing, add more pictures if needed and decide what we needed for our survey. One of my group members and I, explained to everyone in the group what we thought was the main problem. Some of these ideas we got from the writing center. One of my group members and I went to the writing center this past week. It was very helpful. Our instructor gave us points on how we should make sure each page is in the same format. She gave suggestions on how we should make sure each page is the same in length and our message is to the point. Overall the writing center was really helpful for our group project, because it gave us helpful ideas to bring back to our group.

Plans for the Project

One of the ways I plan to show why people use facebook is by taking a survey. The survey will consists of seven different reasons people might use facebook. Each person is supposed to select all the reasons that apply. The survey will be given to random people who already have a facebook page. It will be posted on the status and a link will be sent to people randomly. There will not be a specific group, the selection of people will be varied. In this study, we want to get feedback from people of different gender, ages, and race. This way we will have a more broad feedback.

Plans for the Project

In our group we all decided to put together a website explaining facebook and what it is. We were all assigned to a topic and a page to do. We have access to other pages on the website if we wanted to help someone else. Lately our group has met in the library to work on the project. Individually we have been looking for information on our own. In class, when we have time to work on it, we talk about what we have found and brainstorm.