Children of Men: Minutes 13-26

Please find below the third video looking at the film Children of Men as a comparative studies text. The video looks at some major themes from this section of the movie and the cultural context presented within the film. The end of the video also contains the major quotes from this section of the movie.

Children of Men: ShowMe Videos

Over the coming weeks I will be posting a collection of ShowMe videos on the film Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The film appears as a text on the Leaving Certificate English Comparative Course. The movie is set in the year 2027 when humans have lost the ability to conceive children. The plot is centred around a character called Theo and his quest to bring a young pregnant woman, Kee, to safety. The videos will focus on the comparative modes of Theme and Cultural Context. Each video will focus on roughly 13 minutes of the movie. Each video will contain annotated still shots from the movie and will end with the major quotes from that section of the movie written for your convenience. Posted below is the introductory video and the first 13 minute analysis video. It might make the long revision process ahead a little easier!

College Press: The Love Issue

Short Story Competition

Sylvia Plath Revision Booklet

Please find below a revision booklet on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The booklet was compiled by a group of 5th years from Newbridge College. The booklet is accompanied by a video representation of Plath's poem Elm.

Video interpretation of Elm

The Million Dollar Gift: Book Reviews by First Years

Book Review

Reviewed By: Olivia, Rebecca and Taha from 1Z

Title: The Million Dollar Gift

Author: Ian Somers

Summary

At the beginning of this book the main protagonist, Ross Bentley, is a lonely and unhappy teenager living in a small, quiet town in Ireland. Still filled with resentment due to the loss of his mother at a young age, Ross has only one friend, hates his job and has an extremely difficult relationship with his father.

Ross discovered in his early teens that he has the gift of psychokinesis which means that he can move things using the power of his mind. Instead of using his extraordinary abilities to enhance his life, Ross kept his gift a secret and pushed everyone he loved away from him.

Then he learns of The Million Dollar Gift, a competition being run by an American company who are offering a million dollars to anyone who can prove that they have a superhuman power. Ross decides not to pass up the opportunity to turn his life around and with new-found hope he leaves his job and opens up to his father. He travels alone to London to enter the competition unaware of the dangerous situation he is putting himself in and is thrust into the middle of a chaotic struggle for money and power. 

by Olivia

Review

The author's writing is very powerful and effective. He uses a technique called omniscient narration really well. There is suspense and intrigue in this book which also has a lot of great imagery. At the end of the novel we get lots of exciting revelations.

We personally found this book very humorous, action packed, thrilling and very intriguing but this book also contained a lot of spelling mistakes along with typos.

  

We will definitely recommend this to other first year classes because it is fast-paced and very interesting and makes the reader continuously eager to turn to the next page!

Our overall conclusion of this book is that it is very good and that since we finished the book we still feel very curious as to what will happen in the next book. We found the Million Dollar Gift an interesting read and much better than the books we had to study in primary school. We really came to like Ross and wanted to know how everything turns out, although some of the plot was a little stereotypical and was easy to predict. 

The next book in the series is due to be released next month!

By Taha and Rebecca 1Z