Movie and music-related topics

Today's topic was related to movies. We first visited IMDB (the Internet Movie DataBase) to show how you can get information about a movie such as Wall-E. Imdb has a search feature which allows you to search in various ways. If you forgot, or do not know, the title of a movie, you can search for it by looking for the actors, cast, crew, the name of a character, or other keywords. Movies are rated so that you can compare them. There is a list of the top movies of all time in terms of the viewer ratings. You can also see the box office (revenue, profit), release dates, and budget for each film. Future films, films which have not yet been made, but which are being planned, filmed now, in pre-production or post-production are also listed there. I recommend that you explore the site fully. If you understand how to navigate (find your way around) the site, you should be able to answer questions such as "Who was the director of...", "When was this movie released in Bolivia?," and similar difficult questions about movies by finding the information in the database quickly.

The second site we visited was Allmovie. Allmovie.com has similar functions to IMDB but IMDB is probably a little better. Allmovie gives less information, but delivers it more simply and compactly. It includes "Keywords" and "Tones", which are useful ways to get an idea about the film quickly.

To get a quick idea about what people are saying about the movie (Is it good or bad?) I suggested Rotten Tomatoes. The opinion on Rotten Tomatoes may be different than the rating on IMDB, so it gives a second (and third, and fourth, and fifth) opinion about the movie. For Wall-E, the opinions on Rotten Tomatoes were 96% "Fresh!" (not rotten).

One way for English students to study and improve your English is to read the screenplays of movies. You can usually do this for FREE on the internet; you do not need to buy a book at a bookstore. Do it yourself! I recommend you go to the Yahoo (US) directory and navigate to Entertainment--Movies and Film--Screenplays. You can get there by googling "yahoo movies OR film screenplay script transcript". There is a good list of sites which have collected movie screenplays. If you click "Search This Category" you can search through all of the sites at once. Many movies are there but not every movie, so you may not be able to find the screenplay of your favorite movie. Also, sometimes the script is modified several times before, during, and after the movie is made, so that the movie you see may not always match the script which you read! As an example, we found the screenplay for WALL-E (pdf).

You can find the DVD release information at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or amazon.co.jp. DVDs from the USA are Region 1, and will not play on most Japanese computers or DVD players unless you change the Region Code. DVDs from the UK can be played in Japanese computers without any problem, since both countries are Region 2, but Japan uses NTSC and the UK uses PAL, so you can not watch it on a Japanese television monitor. Have you ever ordered a DVD from another country, such as the UK, US, or Australia? Have you ever reprogrammed your DVD player to play DVDs from any region of the world?

I demonstrated the "discovery engine" liveplasma. If you enter the name of a movie, director, or musician (recording artist), it generates a map of other movies or musicians that are related to or similar to the one that you entered. How do you think this "discovery engine" could be used?

We transitioned from the topic of movies to the topic of music. The site allmovies.com is related to the allmusic.com website. Here we were able to browse through musicians, musical genres, albums, followers, influences, musicians' biographies, discographies, and find other information. Like the IMDB, you should explore this site and become comfortable and good at navigating it to find information.

Now that we have found some music, where can we hear that music? You could go to LastFM, MySpace, the musician's home page, or FaceBook profile (or iLike), but today I discussed the Live Music Archive. Archive.org has text, movies, software, and various collections of media, but today we visited the archive of free concert audio. These musicians have agreed to allow people to record their concerts and upload them. In other words, recording of their concerts are in the public domain. This means anyone can download the mp3s and listen to them on their music player, or burn a CD of them. You are able to browse by the upload date, concert date, rating, number of downloads, or by various ways. One drawback is that concert audio has loud noises made by the crowd that was there! However, you can listen to recent concerts without going, and it gives you the feeling of being at a live show.

Archive.org also has text (such as Alice in Wonderland, which is in the public domain since the copyright expired long ago). The Moving Image Archive (including the Prelinger archive) is a collection of (mostly old) films, such as this documentary film about Japan from 1963. These films can be viewed online, downloaded, burned to DVD, or embedded in your blog!

In future, if there is time, I will talk more about archive.org, classic cinema online, Libravox, the Wikipedia, and VOA as related sources of information for the independent English language learner.

Flickr Photo Album Project

Today we will make our Flickr photo albums. 

To sign in to Flickr, you will need to make a Yahoo account --not Yahoo.co.jp, but Yahoo.com.

After creating your account, you can upload your photos. I think a minimum of 6 photos is reasonable. If you don't have any photos, go outside for a few minutes and take some, or have a friend take some. 

To upload your photos, you need to have them on the computer. You could do this by using a USB drive, by mailing them to yourself, or by other means. 

When you have uploaded the pictures, add an English Title to the picture. Add an English description. Add tags. Tags help you to organize your photos, so that if you had 2,000 photos and wanted to see one of your dog that you took at home in 2007, you could search for the tags dog, home, and 2007 to find it. 

You can also create sets. Sets are like albums. This could be a time, place, or theme. 

You could upload a profile picture and write a profile. 

You can make comments on other people's photos, and create links to your friends who are on flickr. You can find pictures from other people which are your favorite pictures and call those your favorites. 

Create a badge for your blog at flick.com/badge.gne

If you would like, you can make a photo album at Picasa Web Albums, Zooomr, or Facebook, too. Compare the features and quality. Which photo-hosting service is best for your purposes and why? 

Learning about yourself: online personality test

There are many different kinds of people. Surely, people are different. What do you know about human personalities? Here are some discussion questions to talk about or think about before we try this activity. After you finish, you will write a little about what you found out. You may look at these questions again and see if your answers to the questions have changed.

Questions to think about and talk about before and after:
What is "personality type"?
What personality types are there?
What personality type is best? Is one personality type better than another?
What do you know about your own "personality type"?
Are your friends the same personality type as you?
Is it easier to get along if you are the same type, or if you arecomplementary types?
Are the members of your family the same personality type as you?
Do you think it is possible to change your personality type?

First, go to this site to try the personality test which is there.

The Humanmetrics Jung Test is a Jungian (actualy Myers-Brigg's) psychology test consisting of 72 Yes/No questions. Answer the questions as well as you can and click "Score it!　You will then see a page which describes your Jungian psychological type with four letters. What were the four letters that you got? Read the description by D.Keirsey and the description of your type by J. Butt.

Do these description sound like you? What parts do you think are right? What was wrong? What kinds of jobs are suggested by the writers for your personality type? Do these jobs match what kind of job you think you would like? Do they match the results of the career interest survey that you tried?

You could also go to this page and click on the four-letter code which you got. Then you can read a little about your personality type according to this "test".

Do you think it matches you, or was the test wrong? What famous people is your personality type (according to the test result) similar to? Are your answers to the questions the same before and after? Write a short blog entry about Personality type and what you learned about personality and about yourself from this activity and reading.