Class notes for May 29, June 5, and June 12.

We started watching Blade Runner rather late on the 29th, because we were talking about homework such as the Movie Journal. Therefore we were unable to finish watching it on the 5th. We watched the end of the film today, but before we watched the last bit, I skimmed through the scenes and narrated the important events. We then had a test on the characters, (animals, symbols,) and a summary of Blade Runner.

We now begin a short journey through Bicentennial Man. Unlike the other films so far, the artificial-intelligence character of Andrew is shown as a completely positive character. Compare that with HAL, COLOSSUS, the crazed gunslinger robot in Westworld, and the morally-complex character of the replicants of Blade Runner. We have no required reading for this film, but you will understand it better if you read the detailed plot summary at Wikipedia, in English and/or in Japanese. We watched the opening scenes up to where Andrew is cleaning out the basement. We will watch about 15 chapters of the dvd and have a worksheet on it. Then we will briefly summarize the rest of the film with my narration of the last half of Andrew's life. The final assignment will be to write a Movie Journal about it, just as you are doing for every film. In this way, we will reduce the time spent on Bicentennial Man to one (more) day.