Déja Dead (Kathy Reichs)

Temperance (or Tempe) Brennen is the Director of Forensic Anthropology for the Province of Quebec and specializes in bone study and identification. Her job is to identify and examine bones found at historical sites mostly but occasionally she will have a crime scene to work. After days of planning her weekend trip to Quebec City she gets a call about two hydro workers who have found skeletal remains near a hydro line they are working on. When Tempe examines the body she discovers in fact that it is not a historical site and possibly not the first in a sting of murders that have been occurring. She may have just found Montreal’s new serial killer but no one in her division is willing to believe her claims; especially inspector Luc Claudel, homicide detective with the Montreal Urban Community Police. He, as well as other detectives on the case, find no motive to relate the murders to one another. Still, Tempe continues to investigate on her own, risking her job in the process as she infuriates Claudel. Tempe is always feels extremely sympathetic about the victims of the crimes she investigates and will often put herself in their shoes and put herself into emotional turmoil. She is a 40-year-old divorcee who recently moved back to Montreal from upstate Virginia. She finds it hard to associate with some of the younger staff in her office but is comfortable talking with the director of the “Laboratoire de Médecine Légale”, Pierre LaManche despite the fact that he is her boss. Her friend from anthropology school, Gabby, is studying the subculture of prostitutes and feels that she is involved in something dangerous but doesn’t know what it is. When Gabby drops out of sight Tempe gets worried and rightfully so. Tempe’s sense of sympathy and inability to do her job without getting emotionally involved in her cases makes it all the more interesting when her serial killer theory comes true.

The first body that Tempe finds is wrapped in plastic bags with the torso skinned all the way to the bone. There is a toilet plunger resting on the pelvic bone and the head of the victim is severed, twisted, and wrinkled due to the heat it has been exposed to outdoors. All of the victims are females who were bludgeoned to death, dismembered with extreme precision and dumped in bags in secluded areas. The killer cuts around his victims bones rather than through them. These cuts lead to Tempe to the killer.

“When summer arrives in Montreal it flashes like a rumba dancer: all ruffles and bright cotton, with flashing thighs and sweat-slicked skin. It is s ribald celebration that begins in June and continues until September.” I like this passage because it gives life to the city, which is mentioned in the book several times. I’m sure the city would seem to work against you if you were in law enforcement.
“I could see DEJ, SQ and cops from St. Lambert scattered here and there, each wearing a different uniform and distinctive insignia. The assemblage reminded me of the mixed flocks birds will sometimes form, spontaneous jamborees of twittering and chirping, each bird declaring its species by the colour of its plumage and the stripes on its wings”
I like this quote because if you do see a large group of cops it is similar to a flock of birds. Over the summer there was a police memorial parade and all the cops hung out after they had finished their walk, just chatting and having drinks and it was like a weird flock of birds congregating under a tent.

Senator Kennedy Eulogy Analysis

Describe how multi-media enhances the eulogy. (Consider still and moving images as well as text)
The pictures and silent videos that play beside President Obama as he speaks turns his eulogy from a evensong like chapel service into a more personal look at Senator Kennedy's life. Instead of just seeing and hearing Obama speak for 16 minutes we get to see the things that the President is talking about. This makes a viewer more engaged and less likely to say, "Well this is boring, let's see what else is on." Also the fact that it was broadcasted on many of the biggest news stations in America enhance it further. This means that we, as the viewer, can sit at home an be at Sen. Kennedy's funeral, and not have to worry about what we're wearing and having to be padded down by secret service men as we enter.



2) Comment on Ted Kennedy's attitude to service. Provide examples.
Sen. Kennedy did not take his job lightly. He tried to make everything mean something to him. For example after the attacks on 9/11 he called each family in the state of Massachusetts and asked if he could help them in anyway. He got them counseling and invited them to meet with him personally to talk about their lost loved ones.


3) Comment on the effective use of rhetoric (e.g. contrasting public and private; serious and humorous; triumph and failure) and diction (adjectives of praise, verbs, etc.) in Obama's speech. There is a link to an online dictionary of rhetorical terms posted above.


President Obama does it very effectively and it enhances the speech by letting you hear about Sen. Kennedy from a very personal view, connecting what you know from his public life to what you wouldn’t in his private. He also uses adjectives of praise when speaking about Senator Kennedy himself and more negative adjectives when talking about his less fortunate situations eg Chappaquiddick.

Rebel Without A Crew (Robert Rodriguez)

Rebel Without A Crew is Robert Rodriguez's own personal diary in the time that he was making his first full length, action movie "El Mariachi". The book starts with Rodriguez writing about when he was a boy growing up in Texas and how he made movies with a handheld super 8 camera and sticky tack figures or neighbourhood friends and would edit them together on his VCR. When he graduated high school he wanted to go to UT-Austin for film but his GPA was too low. Instead of taking another year of High school, Rodriguez entered one of his short films, "Austin Stories" into a film festival and won. He beat students of UT-Austin without ever taking a course in film making. As the book continues Rodriguez talks about using creativity instead of money on his film, "El Mariachi". He only spent $7000 dollars on the making of the film it self before editing.

Since the novel is non-fiction it’s hard to explain the authenticity of character development. I would say that the author learned the dificulties of making a film but that eventually turned into success.