Good Endings

I think that a successful ending of a movie or a book leaves a great lasting impression on the audience. Because it is the last thing the reader/viewer has to read/see of the whole work, it stays the freshest in their minds and for that reason it is very important for the author/director to get it down perfectly. Some movies with great endings that come to mind are City of God and Django, because they wrap up the movie in a very intense and sound way, where the wrongdoers are brought to justice.

blows up Candie's house

like a boss

I also like endings that completely flip the movie on its head, like Fight Club, and American Psycho for that matter. When it comes to literature, one of my favorite endings was the Great Gatsby's. Although it was sad that Gatsby was gunned down, I'm happy that he died while thinking that Daisy was calling him. Similarly, I always admire Shakespeare's creativity in thinking of the terribly sad and moving ending of Romeo and Juliet. In relation to stories, I think that the ending of A Good Man Is Hard To Find was really great. I love how ironic it was that the cat was the only one to survive. Another great story ending was in the Trespasser. The juxtaposition between the daughter of the family sleeping in the scary house while the trespasser aimlessly floats down the river to the liquor store was very powerful.
In the end, I guess I like two type of endings. In one, all the rising action that was boiling up during the story comes together in an epic ending and all matters are clearly stated, leaving nothing up to the imagination. In the second, I like an ending that completely flips the whole work on its head and makes you reconsider everything you just read/saw.

Movies, Movies & More Movies

I love a movie that places me in a time/setting and portrays it so accurately that I feel as though I learned a certain way of life while watching it. A movie is great to me, if, when I think about a certain time period and/or culture, that movie immediately comes to mind. For example, Gangs of New York, to me, is a great movie. It portrays the Five Points of Manhattan in the mid-19th century, and while I was learning about that time period in History class, I kept on picturing Scorcese's film.

New York mid 19th-century

Django Unchained is also very successful for the same reason. Although it was a bit exaggerated (Tarantino seems to do that quite a bit), I think that it covered nearly all the aspects of slavery at that time in a very visually powerful manner. I also love mafia movies, such as Goodfellas, and the Godfather's I and II. These epic movies not only show me a way of life that I know very little about, but they are so well acted and well written that I can watch them a hundred times and still take away something new from them every time. One movie that I saw very recently that I think was fantastic was City of God, which is a story about a young photographer in the slums of Brasil who risks everything to uncover the truth about the immorality of the gangsters there.

Lil Dice - the youngest gangster

This movie is entirely spoken in Portuguese with english subtitles, which I think added to its cultural aspect.
Finally, I have always loved surfing movies. They are so calming and relaxing to watch and put me in a great state of mind. My favorite would have to be Riding Giants. It is so, so epic.

Another Look at Cheating Upwards

From the very beginning of this article, Robert Kolker drags the audience in. By using cliffhangers and descriptions that many people can relate to, Kolker sets the scene in the first two paragraphs. From that point on, we are in his hands, and want to read on to find out what Nayeem did to be called the "most brazen feat of cheating in the illustrious school's 107-year history." Kolker did a great job discussing the preparations Nayeem made for his scheme, and then how it played out in reality. By describing in great detail the lengths that Nayeem went to in order to plan out his strategy, Kolker made the article very suspenseful and dramatic, like a story rather than an account of events. Towards the middle of the article, when Kolker is describing the statistics behind student cheating and the reasons that drive students to do so, the article admittedly becomes more fact-based and not as story-like. However, Kolker brings back the story-like element when he describes his dinner meeting with Nayeem. When discussing Nayeem's case, he is able to make the story much more personalized. It is no longer a calculated guess about why high-school students are cheating based on studies and results, but rather, it is a real-life scenario, in which we can fully see the pressures put on a kid like Nayeem which push his hand to cheat. Overall, Kolker did a really good job of guiding his article between very personal and more general arguments behind cheating, which made reading the article more fascinating for me.

I vaguely remember that while reading this passage the first time through, before coming to college, I could not fully relate to the pressures and tension that eventually led Nayeem to resort to cheating. In reading this article a second time, however, I can relate more to the pressures that weighed down Nayeem. One line that especially stood out to me on my second reading is when principal Teitel says to Stuy's incoming freshman, "Grades, friends, and sleep--choose two." I definitely have had moments here at Michigan where I feel as though I must chose between these three aspects of life, moreso than ever before. Reading this again was a great reminder of how serious cheating is and how it is never worth it in the end.