This week's homework is to write a REVIEW.
You can choose whether you are writing a review of a movie, a book, a game, a theatrical performance, or an album. (You may even have some other ideas - if so, ask me and I'll tell you if that's okay.)
WHAT NOT TO DO: Please don't just write a summary. If you just write a summary of the plot, you are writing a bad review.
HOW TO WRITE A REVIEW WELL:
You need to tell us the title.
You need to tell us who wrote the book (or, if it's a movie, who's the director and who the main actors are).
You need to tell us the genre, and compare it to other examples of the genre - if it's a superhero movie, is it better than X Men or Thor? If so, why? If not, why?
You need to think about who the audience is supposed to be, and whether this movie is suitable for that audience. (For a game or a movie, this includes telling us whether it's PG, 13 etc etc and why.)
You need to give us some background - that means doing some research, so that YOU know about who the writer/director is and what else they have done before.
You need to think about what works well, and what doesn't work.
You need to tell us a bit about the main characters (and, if it's a movie, the way that the actors perform their characters - do you think they are well cast? If so, why? If not, why?).
You need to tell us a bit about the main relationships in the movie/book/game.
If it's a game, you need to tell us what makes it an exciting and successful game, and what weaknesses it has.
I've talked about this before; if you follow this link, you'll find examples of good book reports:
http://sweetlikecrabapples.blogspot.com/2011/09/homework-book-report.html
If you want to read some good examples of movie reviews, try Rotten Tomatoes, which will give links to many different reviews of each movie:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chronicle/
(To read the FULL reviews, you have to click on 'Full Review'. The teaser for the first of the reviews on the 'Chronicle' page only says: "Chronicle is the kind of movie that makes one excited about the future prospects of the man at the helm" but when you click on 'Full Review' it takes you to the actual review, which is much longer:)
http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2417
