Ying Ying’s Movie Review:

Stills from the movie Love and War:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiSu3YCDEuw



I have placed Ying Ying's review
http://yingchen89.blogspot.com/2009/01/love-and-war.html#comments
on my blog because I want all of you to better understand the movie review writing assignment:

Saturday, January 24, 2009
LOVE AND WAR
“Love and War” is the world’s first animated opera film. It is a romance film. Bunny, a nurse, met with Bear on one day. They got married after falling in love. Bear went to the war with his duty. Unfortunatly, his plane was crashed down by the enemy rocket. He tried to escape. But he was shot to death by the enemy. Bunny was missing him seriously. He left her with a baby. It ended with despair. The soundtrack is very good in it. It is a astounding animation film.

Time 14:25
From youtube
Posted by Ying Ying at 7:46 PM 0 comments

First off, I’m happy that you wrote a review that’s based on a short film from the internet, and you picked a great film. You did give me enough information to find it, but I wish that you had given us the address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiSu3YCDEuw


CONTENT
You summarized the main things in the plot, but that is not a movie review. A movie review gives us the author’s opinion of the movie, and it helps the reader decide if they want to watch the movie. You did give us your opinion of the movie (“It is a[n] astounding animat[ed] film.”), but you didn’t tell us why you hold that opinion. And by telling the reader everything that happens in the movie, you spoil the movie.


COHESIVENESS
Your movie review is supposed to have an introduction, a body (supporting sentences — examples, explanations, or details that support the topic sentence), and a conclusion. In a paragraph, the introduction is often a topic sentence. Topic sentences contain both a topic (what you are going to write about) and a controlling idea (“what you want to say about the topic”):

http://www.eslbee.com/topic_sentences.htm
http://eslbee.com/topic_sentences2.htm

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/para.html


GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY
All of the grammar and the vocabulary in the following “paragraph” are correct, but it is not a good paragraph because of the aforementioned problems with content and cohesiveness:

“Love and War” is the world’s first animated opera. It is a romance. Bunny, a nurse, met Bear, a soldier, one day. They got married after falling in love. Bear went to war. Unfortunately, his plane was shot down by an enemy rocket. He tried to escape, but he was shot to death by the enemy. Bunny missed him terribly. He left her with a baby. The movie ended tragically. The soundtrack was very good. It is an astounding animated film.

THE TEACHER’S VERSION
“Love and War” (14:25 on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiSu3YCDEuw) is an animated opera that will captivate the audience with its music, its animation, and its story. The movie begins with a operatic soundtrack that seems both ridiculous and wonderfully appropriate as animal puppets in human clothes sing and act out the story. Through wonderful stop motion animation, you soon believe that these animals are not puppets but living creatures that live, love, and long for one another. The main characters are a bunny, who is a nurse, and a bear, an air force pilot. They fall in love, get married, and he goes off to fight while she stays home and cares for wounded soldiers. Will he come back safely? Will they be reunited? Will the story have a happy ending? The amazing thing is that you will have to learn the answers to these questions. You will forget that these are puppets. The music, animation, and the story will grab your interest, and they won’t let you go until the final credits roll.

HOMEWORK
Please choose another short movie from YouTube, and write a paragraph that has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Read, reread, and reread your writing again. Each time you reread your writing, remove any sentence that doesn't plays an important role, and add anything that's missing.