Back 2 School

I went back to secondary school this week, not my old school, not as a student either but as a lab technician/ teaching assistant. The 6.30 am starts were horrific, sleep became the thing I most looked forward to every day. I'd get into school at 8 am and most of my day was filled with the strangely satisfying tasks of setting up experiments and cleaning test tubes. Every so often I'd help out in the classroom.


One of the first problems that I faced in the classroom was what I should let the kids call me. Mr Gillett? Sir? A girl asked me this on my first day and I replied with 'call me Jack, that's fine.' She did and was immediately cautioned by the teacher. 'Don't be so rude! You will call him sir! That's one less vivo point for you!" (Vivo points being the reward system used within the school). 


She looked over at me for support and I was torn between sticking up for her but undermining the teacher's authority and saying nothing but losing the kid's respect in the process. I turned from her gaze and said nothing. I realise that it's not important for your students to think you're cool, their adoration is good for the old ego but it isn't a prerequisite for being a good teacher. I however, am not a teacher, so I gave her an unprecedented 3 vivo points for drawing a picture. We immediately became best friends again, kids are fickle like that. It was a shit picture.


As this is a very new school, the only pupils were year sevens. They're not the most threatening bunch but they were constantly chatting and asking questions. My mum is the deputy head teacher, this means I would get asked at least twenty times a day, 'is your mum Ms Richford?' to which I would always reply, with a slightly embarrassed smile, 'yes.'


Some would say, 'you look just like her' others would say 'you two are nothing alike.' One Design and Technology class thought I looked more like one of their classmates, an awkward looking kid with curly hair. It actually stimulated a little class debate on whether I looked more like him or he looked more like me, I obviously argued the latter and at the time their seemed something quite profound and philosophical about the whole discussion. On later reflection it was probably just the class attempting to waste some time, kids love wasting time. If that was their plan then it proved successful, by the end of the lesson none of the kids had come close to finishing their plywood wind chimes. I would probably try and waste some time too if I had two hours a week dedicated to making a wind chime out of cheap wood.


Being a teaching assistant I don't have any teaching qualifications or training so I was never really sure about how much authority I had. A kid came up to me during a science class shouting 'Sir! Sir! Kade threw a pencil at me!' She had the actual pencil clutched in her hand. My first thought was 'who is Kade?' Not knowing the names of any of the kids in the class my first hurdle was deciding where to aim my discipline. Secondly, I wondered if it was even right to tell someone off based on the word of a kid I'd just met. She did have the offending pencil in her hand but anyone can pick up a pencil and wave it in my face, not just someone who had it thrown at them. Finally I questioned whether I was even allowed to dish out discipline and, if I was, was it appropriate to dish it out onto someone for throwing a pencil, not exactly the worst thing someone can do.


In the end I responded with 'oh...ok.' The kid, looking fairly despondent, walked away. Most likely in awe of my alternative teaching style. I later started to think of the possible consequences of what had happened, how kade would probably grow up to be a criminal because of my inaction. Pencil throwing, I imagine, is a gateway crime, often leading to more serious offences such as armed robbery and GBH.


Ironically, spending time working in a school hasn't taught me very much. I already knew that teachers work incredibly hard and I already knew working with kids can be very rewarding. As a living creature I already knew I had a massive appreciation for sleep and as a human being I already knew I had a bit of an ego. It seems, like the students, I spent most of the week wasting time. I suppose, I learnt that I'm still more of a student than I am a teacher. Then again, I think I already knew that.

Source Code

Sergeant Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train, he doesn't know where he is, how he got there or why he is there. The pretty girl sitting opposite him starts talking to him but she's calling him a different name. He takes a walk around the train to get his bearings. 8 minutes later the train explodes and Stevens wakes up in a strange pod. He is then briefed about how he must relive the same 8 minutes over and over again, until he can determine who blew up the train, in order to prevent a future disaster. What would you do if you knew you only had a few minutes to live?

This is Source Code, a film which at its most simple is a whodunnit story, at its most complex is a thoughtful and well written sci fi adventure. You may think that watching the same 8 minutes over again becomes tedious but director Duncan Jones (director of Moon) finds a way to make each trip into the past both increasingly intriguing and eventful. Jake Gyllenhaall stars and is wonderful, we enter the film knowing only what he knows, we learn as he learns and we care about him. Its a thoughtful and sensitive performance and is one of the main reasons the film works so well.

Its nice to watch a science fiction film which focuses on ideas rather than special effects. In essence, that's what good sci fi does. It's not about the visuals or the computer generated imagery, its about the concepts. Lazy film makers forget that and try to please the viewer by overloading them with huge visual effects and explosions, leaving less time for a well thought out plot. These films look nice but I often lose interest, I don't feel any sense of jeopardy or tension as I know it's all shot in front of a green screen. Films work well when we suspend our disbelief, in the case of films like Avatar, I can't help but imagine the scenery, the na'vi and the spaceships all being created on a computer and therefore I feel less involved in the film. I get the same feeling watching a thousand na'vi get slaughtered in Avatar as I do deleting a word document on my computer, if anything those word documents probably mean more to me.

On the other hand, the special effects in good SF films like Source Code, Moon and Inception are incidental, they compliment the story rather than distract from it, leaving only the story, the acting and the concepts to hook our attention. 

Back to Source Code, I can't praise it enough. Its smart, thoughtful and pays a lot of attention to detail. My attention is on the story and it rouses genuine feelings of emotion. What would you do if you only had a few minutes to live? Probably spend the first couple of minutes thinking of something cool to answer with before breaking down and crying at how I wasted my last few minutes trying to be cool.

Suckerpunch

The director of '300' and 'watchmen' has created another highly stylised film. This film, unlike his previous two, doesn't use a graphic novel as its source material but rather what would appear to be a fantasy he had during that new-hair-in strange-places phase of his life.


It follows the very sexy 'baby doll' as she is admitted into an insane asylum. Once in there she creates a fantasy where she is no longer trapped in an insane asylum but trapped in a brothel. She then hatches a plan to escape with a group of equally sexy girls with equally odd names by dancing in front of various  clients to distract them in order to steal certain items which will allow them to escape.


Each dance is represented by a battle sequence in a different fantasy. These fantasies include; a Japanese samurai battle, a steampunk world war two zombie battle, a lord of the rings-esque Vietnam battle and a sci fi robot battle. It's as if Snyder is trying to show off his range as a director by squeezing in every single genre he could possibly imagine.


Known for his love for the slo mo effect, zack makes no exception here. So much so that watching it in fast forward probably wouldn't hinder the plot. Like a hipster writing a novel in a little known café chain, the style is there but the substance is not. The girls are sexy but none of their characters seem to go futher than this and although they have all been mentally and physically abused they are still presented as overly sexualised objects for the audience to enjoy. Also, because much of the action occurs in these fantasy realities, there is no real feeling of danger or peril.


Released on April 1st you could be forgiven for thinking this may have been an April fool's joke. So where's the (sucker) punch line? There isn't one. Therefore, if you're in the mood for a film that contains sexy girls, guns, short skirts, mental illness, short skirts, violence towards women and short skirts then this is something you'd probably enjoy. If on the other hand you want a more sensitive approach to the subject matter of abused women you'd probably be better chatting with a serial rapist.