1、Improve Your Reading Skills through Watching English Movies - Bride Wars Teaching aims:Knowledge objects1. To raise students interests in English through watching an English movie2. To make the students know how to appreciate an English movie3. To help the students learn some useful and common phras
2、es in the movie4. To help the students pay attention to the oral English5. To develop students reading ability by learning the useful expressions in the movie.Moral objects6. To encourage students to be themselves no matter what happens and be brave enough to overcome all kinds of difficulties.Teach
3、ing Key Points:1. To develop students reading ability by learning the useful expressions in the movieTeaching Difficulties:1. To help the students pay attention to the oral English2. To develop students reading ability by learning the useful expressions in the movie.Teaching Aids:Multi-media compute
4、r; overhead projector; Software: PowerPointTeaching Methods1. Task-based Approach2. Communicative ApproachTeaching Procedure：step1: lead in Give a brief introduction of this movie to the studentsStep2: Watching the movie to learn some usagesShow the movie to students, and ask students to pay attenti
5、on to some oral English and write down some sentences during watching the movie.Step3: TalkingAsk some of the students to say something about the movie and share their feelings with the classStep4: ReadingShow students some comments on this movie from ordinary people, and then ask students to read a
6、nd speak out their opinions.Text:1. If youre looking for a comedy with weird plot twists and a sprinkling of humor, then youll still be searching - Bride Wars excels at the former and sadly fails at the latter. Its not entirely silly sabotage and witless laughs as a few scenes and characters do stan
7、d out of the clich wedding comedy crowd, but ultimately the tragic outcomes and easy clean-up of a far too messy situation will leave viewers wishing for a more comfortably predictable plot line. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been best friends since childhood and both have always d
8、reamed of a gorgeous June wedding at the luxurious Plaza Hotel. When both girls boyfriends ask for their hands in marriage, Liv and Emma enlist the highly reputable wedding planner Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen) to acquire their dream locale. Unfortunately a clerical error has their weddings set
9、 on the same day and thus begins a rivalry of increasingly ruthless sabotage as both girls refuse to reschedule their most important day. No experimentation or originality can be seen in Bride Wars. Everything is terribly formulaic, from the music-narrated montages to the carefully patterned dialogu
10、e to the high points and low points for each of the heroines. When a half-expected love triangle forms, it is completely unnecessary and sorely mislaid - this is the kind of film where each event is better off contributing solely to comedy and every sad moment is best coated with ridiculous gags and
11、 off-the-wall mood-shifting resolutions. Touches of seriousness have no place in Bride Wars, which struggles so greatly with its adult dilemmas that the moments of humor feel forced - shoved into the cracks to even out the heartbreak most wont be feeling for these cookie-cutter characters. If it was
12、nt bad enough that no individuality finds its way through all the girl-oriented giggling, hormonal wedding craze and subdued cat-fighting, the humor itself is oftentimes indecipherable from the drama. Sometimes its funny to see these girls bitterly attack one another even if were meant to sympathize
13、, and other times its disheartening when were supposed to be laughing. Either way, so little of the film sparks interest or concern over two hopelessly contrived, generic best friends that it would be as wasteful to debate over them as it was to spoil two hours of valuable time watching the film. Ho
14、pefully even the target audience will realize the recycled, uninspired nature of Bride Wars.2. Martin Scorsese once famously said he does one movie for the studio and one for himself, and so do many other directors or actors (George Clooney admits he did Oceans Thirteen because that way he could do
15、Michael Clayton next). Although Anne Hathaway hasnt explicitly said she does that, one can assume its the only rational explanation for a piece of anti-cinematic trash like Bride Wars. Shooting The Devil Wears Prada after Brokeback Mountain is one thing, tainting your Oscar-nominated legacy with thi
16、s bunch of nonsense is another. And yet it sounded like it could be a lot of fun, at least judging by the premise, which reverses the classic wedding stereotype: women are in it for the romance, guys are game because its fun (thats what they make it look like in American comedies, anyway). This time
17、 around, the dudes are in it for the love, and the girls want to get married just to make a childhood dream come true. Apparently, if youre a woman and live in Manhattan, the ultimate dream of your life is to get married at the Plaza in June, so when best friends Liv (Kate Hudson with a Paris Hilton
18、/Britney Spears haircut) and Emma (Hathaway) get asked the fundamental question by their beaus, they immediately try to book the right place and date. A mix-up occurs, and so theyre both stuck with the same date, June 6th. Neither wants to postpone whats supposed to be the happiest day of their live
19、s, therefore a full-on war is declared on both parts. At this point, the real silliness kicks in: diet sabotage, tans gone awry and the occasional witty remark, like Your weddings gonna be huge, just like your ass at prom. What started as a potentially entertaining critique of materialism and shallo
20、wness is revealed to be a poorly executed farce, with a succession of lame jokes instead of a plot (then again, one of the screenwriters is best known for performing on Saturday Night Live, where the skits have no connection whatsoever, so that may be an explanation) and two atrocious caricatures in
21、stead of leading ladies. In fairness, no one ever expected any true brilliance from Hudson, given the last really good movie she appeared in was Cameron Crowes Almost Famous in 2000, but surely someone could have told Hathaway you just dont choose something this bland after working with Jonathan Dem
22、me (or Ang Lee, for that matter). Maybe she wanted to return to her comedic roots, but sadly theres nothing even remotely funny in Bride Wars, save for a few brief scenes featuring the reliable Candice Bergen. Everything else is just like Liv and Emma: obsessed with getting everything right, but ult
23、imately too self-centered to get any sympathy from others. The romantic comedy is a type of film that relies on two obvious traits; the ability to make its audience laugh, and the ability to make that very same audience tear-up or at least feel some degree of warmth towards the central characters lo
24、ve story. Bride Wars, which ostensibly at least, takes the form of your typical rom-com is an example of such that constantly tries to do the former -while constantly failing-, and only hints at the latter only in the background in order to advance plot. The result from this is a middling and sluggi
25、shly mundane feature that neither offers memorable characters or even a few cheap laughs. To be fair, there has to be something said for the fact that I am not exactly within the movies target demographic. Yet judging by the reactions of those around me, I got the feeling that what I was experiencin
26、g wasnt exactly gender exclusive.3. The story here, which revolves around two best gal-pals Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) as they try to cope with their simultaneous weddings, is one that is likely to get a few chuckles from females, but less so with their male counterparts. Yes, this i
27、s somewhat expectant of a movie titled Bride Wars, but then again, if half of your audience are neglected to the sidelines then youre needlessly cutting yourself short. This stunted, polarising depiction of every girls biggest day feels fitting to its source material, so women will enjoy this moreso
28、 than men, but not by much. You see, aside from the fact that Bride Wars wants nothing more than to cater to cheap gags and sappy melodrama fit to please the Legally Blonde crowd, there also remains blatant problems in just about everything else that fills the movies first two acts. With little roma
29、nce to back up the meagre plot, dull, dry characterisation coupled with non-existent chemistry between either the friends and their partners, or even themselves, the vast majority of Bride Wars turns ugly, rather quickly; the movie pushes that this cat fight between Hudson and Hathaway is meant to b
30、e fun and airy with plenty of laughs, but its too transparent and formulated to even move beyond dry caricature. It doesnt help at all that the majority of the performances from the main cast are border line negligible. Hudson and Hathaway, who are supposed to playing long-time best buddies who sudd
31、enly fall out over a petty dispute, are strangely forgettable, if not repelling. In all fairness, both hit the proverbial hammer on the head with their portrayals as stock-pile, cardboard cut-out typecasts befitting of the genre and only the genre, but this isnt exactly saying much. The remainder of
32、 the cast, who each have around ten minutes tops of total screen time are just as unremarkable, with Kristen Johnston giving the movie its only real favour and edge. So, whats worse than a romantic comedy with next to no compelling or memorable performances? Not much. To be fair however, Bride Wars
33、isnt really a romance at all. At least, thats what I hope director Gary Winick was trying to put across (somehow I get the feeling that Im giving too much benefit of the doubt). If anything, the movie exists more as a mildly poignant example of companionship in the form of friends rather than romanc
34、e. This tangent, which takes full form in the third act, for the most part surpasses the drudgery that comes beforehand, and establishes a touching, if slightly overly done sentimental climax. By all means, its far too little, all too late, but I at least found myself moved by the movies final state
35、ment, even if it was by means of extreme contrast. Yet had Winick went with this theme for the majority of his film, rather than save it for after all the silly, perfunctory cat fight scenes that in turn just about destroy all human shades within his characters, Bride Wars could have been a much mor
36、e flowing, and relevant feature. Instead it exists simply as throwaway popcorn fodder for girls on a night out who have nothing better to do than to revisit the same old characters, wacky situations and sit-com dialogue typical of your average Will & Grace episode.Homework: Learn some useful expressions in the movie and make sentences
