Busy days

It's been a few days since my last post but a lot of unexpected things have happened since then. The good news is that the visit to the Reindeer Food event in the Hubs hosted by Amy's Retreat (www.amysretreat.org.uk) turned out to be extremely worthwhile. I managed to speak to the person in charge. Gabrielle Latham and in turn she gave me detailed info about the event and the charity itself.
The interview itself is a clear message that bringing a dictaphone with you to a news source is ALWAYS a good idea, seeing as my shorthand isn't a high enough standard (yet) to keep up in a conversation.
Looking back on what I got, I can honestly say that of the 15 minutes of dialogue I recorded, there isn't a single piece of utterly useless information which is a pleasant surprise compared to the vox pox I did last year, where the british public supassed themselves yet again in being "helpful".
It's fair to say that whilst with the vox pox people may of had no clue of how to answer the questions, Gabrielle as a member of the charity, obiviously has background knowledge and is more prepared. What she didn't know however, is that I would be showing up at all to ask her those questions in the first place, so with having to deal with me, I give her credit for.
I'm hoping to write up a draft of this story tomorrow so I can send it to Claire Jenkins for feedback on Monday, unfortunately with good news comes bad news.
Thanks to a scheduling conflict I didn't manage to go to court with Leanne, instead I went to sheffield council with another fellow journalism student, Jack Bertram. My reasoning for going to this instead was that whilst court is open monday to friday, every week, this would be the last full council meeting for a while, and I'm not entirely confident to whether or not the Abbeydale Grange School story will turn out to be interesting or not, so it seemed like a safe bet to go to council instead and see if there's anything else happening that I could use.
Unfortunately, there was about at least 30-40 other students who had the same idea as us, and a lot of public speakers, meaning we couldn't get inside the actual gallery due to lack of space. After waiting for a couple of hours, we eventually had to give up and went to Sue Featherstone for advice on what to do next. Sue told us that it would be an idea to try and get in contact with the usher who had emailed her previously about the council meeting in the hopes of getting information about the council.
Ironically, we actually bumped into the same usher ourselves on the way out so we kicked ourselves for not getting his email address of him, but thankfully Sue herself still has it, so I'll be emailing her in the week to get it off her, so all is not lost. I'm still planning to go to the cabinet meeting in the week to hear the verdict of whether Abbeydale Grange stays open or not as well.
Asides from all this, I'm knee-deep in revision since I've got both my second shorthand exam and preperation for accredation exam on tuesday and thursday respectively this week, leaving me with very little time to do this assignment as well.
Focus will have to shift onto the exams this week, but like mentioned I still plan to write out my first draft on the reindeer food story and go to council cabinet this week, but I'll probably have to save the visit to court for either this Friday or the beginning of the week afterwards. It's turning out to be a small mercy that this blog and reflective report isn't due with the rest of the assignment itself, or i'd be screwed
-J

"...it's alive!"

After months of inactivity, I'm pleased to announce that I've resurrected my blog! However, the purpose of it this time has changed: instead of covering film related news and articles, I'll be using it to keep track of my progress relating to my Writing the News assignments.

The assignment itself consists of reporting a story from sheffield city council, a case from magistrates court and a own source story. I've already picked up an interesting lead from the council about the possible closure of Abbeydale Grange school on Hastings Road and managed to write down related notes last week on the 25th November, and will be returning to the council on the 9th in order to find out the verdict there.

Also, tomorrow I'm planning to check out "Reindeer Food" in the union, it's a one-off event to help raise money for "Amy's Retreat", a local children's cancer charity. Considering how this involves both sheffield hallam students and the community, it seems worth investigating further as a possible own source story to include in the assignment

Finally, I'll be heading down to magistrates court this Wednesday (2nd December) with fellow Journalism student Leanne Chuter in order to find an interesting case to report on

That's it for now, Jon out

Vox Pox Assignment

Sheffield's climate is changing, wetter winters and summers and higher temperatures all year round - what are you doing to help save the planet?

To try and find out peoples different opinions on the subject of climate change and the effect it has on the environment, we asked this question to six people to try and determine what they thought and had to say about this complicated and sometimes controversial issue


Dan Barber, 20, Student, Originally from Essex

I'm going to leave my SUV running all day and all night, with my heating on 30 degrees and the windows and doors open, whilst possibly burning effigies of Al Gore. Climate change is a scam, and even if it wasn't, it's too late to 'save the planet' now

Andrew Bottjer, 19, Student, Living in Sheffield


There's not much I can really do to help cut down my carbon foot-print, I don't have a lot of money so I can't buy more expensive but planet-friendlier things really... the amount of effort involved is just too much for me to be bothered with

Daniel Bates, 19, Student, From Sedgefield, living in Sheffield


I didn't really used to take into consideration what I could do to help save the planet but I recycle more than I used to and make sure I don't use as much electricity by not using standby on thing like televisions. But I still don't think that just me as one person can make any much of a difference, it needs to be on a much bigger scale

Leanne Chuter, 19, Student, From Aldershot, living in Sheffield

Using my own waste as compost. Seriously, I’m just taking every advantage I get to go out into the sun...recycling my many alcohol bottles and newspapers... that kind of thing. It’s more than most people do, so I’m happy with myself

Rachel Hale, 19, Student, Originally from Essex

I recycle any old object that can be recycled, I reuse plastic bags or use them bag for life bags when going shopping... I use roll on deoderant rather than the spray can ones... i try to use public transport or walk where necessary and i use energy saving bulbs

Hemz Jani, 19, Student, Originally from Nottingham

Well I guess I am reducing my carbon footprint by not using a car, and i rarely use public transport by walking everywhere, but I only really do both those things because it saves me money and not because it's good for the environment... I don't keep my lights on all the time too, is another thing that I do

See you, Space Cowboy...

(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGnNehAp-ri5OddzsjQ6OQyrFlqJPLtdzc9q3tA5l30gWovjVf1jdeT2LtpiiXRsJlYu0VFRO5TCi6UDxWj0dWeXzfGoSmP9nR5hXWOfM8edjP3X4mHVNADKsf0mlIJTV5qKifCG3uARs/s400/cowboybebopnf5.jpg - Original sauce)

It seems like yet another conversion to film is in the post. Keanu Reeves seems to manage to worm his way into starring as Spike in the upcoming Cowboy Bebop film, reports Screenrave.com (http://screencrave.com/2009-01-16/keanu-reeves-to-star-in-cowboy-bebop/) "Reeves will star in the Bebop film as Spike Spiegel, the show’s main character who makes a living as a space traveling bounty hunter." Cowboy Bebop is possibly the greatest anime show ever created, to the uninformed - the only anime show that i can actually said i genuinely enjoyed watching, and feel no shame admitting so (I would like to point out that it is one of the few i've attempted to watch, however) . In fact, go watch it now, all of it, then come back and read this. Done?

You should now have an overwhelming sense of fear. Reeves is possibly the worst selection to be cast as Spike, ever. The man has no ability to lose any of his personal traits, in any of his films, and instead of giving the role to an actor who could give a decent performance as the apathetic, mysterious but loveable Spike, the Powers That Be have given it to Reeves, who will play the same role he always does - Keanu Reeves, being Keanu Reeves.

I say to you know that I have no aspirations for this film conversion, so long as Reeves is associated to the project. To be honest, i'm more worried that his terrible performance will in fact put more people off seeing the original series (Go watch it already if you haven't, it's art, and proof that Anime can be a mature medium instead of just being giant robots and japanese schoolgirls). There is however, the part of me inside, that still has a flicker of hope, that somehow that *this* conversion will be the one that's truly epic and justifiable to why it was made apart from to drag in the punters money. Just like the flicker I had for every whatever-to-film conversion before it. Jon out

-J

The campaign game

A brief interlude from film news right now: instead i'm going to off on a different tangent and write a little about a few campaigns websites that do incredibly good and selfless work for others. To start off with, i'm going to mention a more well known organisation, Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/) :

• The home-page contains links to the following pages: blog, about greenpeace, what we do, what you can do, donate now, and media centre - there's a lot of information on each of these pages, which are easily accessable
• A criticism however is having to register to post comments - perhaps a anonyminity opition would attract more people to share their views?

Next on the list is, The Campaign For Real Ale, or Camra for short (http://www.camra.org.uk/home.aspx) A fan of the Chelmsford Beer Festival that it hosts annually, I found it generally a joy to go through their website:

• Again, like the Greenpeace website, there's a lot of information on the home-page.Whilst Camra started like as literally a campaign for real ale, it's now progressed to the stage of promoting good cider and good pubs as well. There's links to relevant news stories concerning pub culture in general because of this, so anyone's who concerned about any new laws effecting drinking in Britain should defintely spend a minute going through this site
• However, the criticism this time is that there is a members only part of the site which you have to register for. Whilst understandably Camra deserves as many members as it can for it's worthy cause and registeration is easy, it's a personal opinion of mine that all information should be available to everyone instanteously, without having to sign up or join a particular cause

Finally, the last campaign i wish to mention is Child's Play, (http://www.childsplaycharity.org/index.php) founded by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade fame (http://www.penny-arcade.com/) The aim of Child's Play is to send books, games and toys to various hospitals around the world, in order to help raise the spirits of sick children.

• The site itself is quite basic, although this is necessarily not a bad thing. The information's very direct and straight to the point, and contains links on how to contact the charity and get involved
• There does however seem to be a great lack of community interest on the site - there's no photos or a forum, however this may be because the Penny Arcade forum tends to host both of these instead of the Child Play's site

Anyway, I hope you take the time to go over each of these campaigns, you'll probably find something interesting. Ciao

-J

GIVE ME BACK MY FAAAAAACE!

(Original pic source: www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com)

Whilst i'm playing the updating game, it's time for my slightly late verdict on Watchmen, be warned for spoilers will follow. For those of you unfamilar with the original graphic novel written by Alan Moore (also credited for previous graphic-novel-turned film, V for Vendetta), trailer being here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4blSrZvPhU. Watchmen follows the tale of former masked vigilantes livng in an alternative version of the 1980's, where President Nixon is currently in his third term of office after being voted as President for life following the success of the Vietnam War, who find themselves involved in a conspiracy to kill them off, following the death of The Comedian (Jeffery Dean Morgan).

I myself am a fan of the original graphic novel, so it might come as a shock to a lot of fans when i say that the end of the result of the conversion is a highly entertaining film for what it's worth, a lot of the scenes are lifted directly from the novel, and all the actors seem to nail their roles, especially Jackie Earle Haley's portrayal of the moral absolute and ultimately vunerable Rorschach.

However, the problem with most comic book to film conversions, is that the content inevibility gets toned down. Watchmen earnt a reputation for being uncompromising and graphic, containing an attempted rape scene, a disturbing psyche evaluation with Rorschach, and the covering up of the genocide of millions to ensure world peace. What really annoyed me however, was all three of these things were included in the film, and not toned down, but instead unneccesarily modified - the attempted rape's setting is changed and the evaluation with Rorschach, which establishes the characters psychological background is considerably shortened.

More importantly, the key detail that brings about the prospect of world peace - the staged invasion of an alien squid and the countries around the globe uniting against a common foe - is replaced with framing Dr Manhattan attacking the world. While it can be argued that this might sound more plausable for a certain perspective, surely if you're doing a film that involves costumed superheroes and a blue demi-god who walks on Mars, you might as well stick with the original slightly more preposterous ending to satisfy the fans of the novel

Lots of other little features are missing too - the inane dialogue of the newsreader, the pirate comic-within-a comic... the end result of this shows why Alan Moore himself didn't originally make Watchmen as a film - there's just no way to fit that level of detail within the medium. That's not to say Director Zack Synder has done a bad job, in fact I'm willing to argue that no one could of handled it better, but the film itself is really just an homage to another piece of art, and some scenes, like the Silk Spectre/Night Owl sex scene on the Owlship, feel like the Directors over-indulging his own love of the novel instead of presenting it from a detached and professional viewpoint

Never-the-less, I still like Watchmen, and I do recommend you see it. It's not an eye opening thing of beauty like the novel was, but it's still an entertaining romp for 2 and a half hours, and miles better than other films out there. Final rating: 3.5 / 5 stars

-J

Choose your future, choose life

Annnnnnd it's time for another late update. The excuse this time? Assignment work, never ending assignment work. On the plus side, i've changed the layout for the blog to something more a bit more familar if you're a fan of either British cinema or Irvine Welsh, which i think will be the blog's final major change in terms of how it looks - whilst the prospect of having a full functioning blog site coded in Flash does seem appealing from the point of view of having nice, shiny graphics and buttons, it's not simply going to be practical or possible to do that amount of coding for the blog before the end of term. However, I think the new layout's great, and I hope you do too. Jon out
-J