1. The article I read was a review of the new Harry Potter movie. It intrigued me not because I am a Potter fanatic, but instead because of how popular Harry Potter is. I enjoy the series, but I’m not obsessed. I was interested to see what the critic thought of the newest installment – what they thought of the split of the movies. I was curious to see if it would be good or not. Harry Potter affects almost everyone I know – whether a fan or not, everyone knows when it’s coming out and practically everyone goes to see it. I was curious to see what peoples’ opinions might be coming out of the movie theater. The writing was very good, with many descriptive adjectives that really bring the movie to life. His description of Ralph Fiennes’ (Voldemort) acting was very intriguing, making me want to see the movie. It was well done with no errors that I noticed. Morris’ description was very impressive. He didn’t just descriptive words, but descriptive sentences and paragraphs as well, painting a picture of the movie and making it feel as though I was watching it right along with him.
2. This month, I wrote an opinion piece about Taylor Swift’s new album. Overall, I think it went pretty well. I loved listening to her music over and over, and I think that listening to each song multiple times helped me elicit different feelings or subtleties one may not notice upon first hearing it. However, since I did not have a copy of the CD itself (I got it on iTunes), I did not have the CD inside cover, which has all the lyrics, a special note, and clues to what each song really means to her. Once I found this out, the whole piece was transformed, since so much new information was added. The meanings of the songs and underlying tones I otherwise would not have noticed were suddenly clear, and I had to go back and practically rewrite the piece. It would have been better to find all this information out before beginning to write the piece and assume that I could understand what they were about. Some of the songs I was correct about, but others I was very wrong. Next time I write an album review, I will make sure to read professional writers’ opinion pieces before writing mine, since, typically, they know far more inside information than the general public.
