20 Tips for ‘Proper’ English

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Remember to never split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches. Or as bad as blank lines.

13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.

Famous lines – Watch the scene

Famous lines – Answer Key

05) “The first night’s the toughest. No doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born. Skin burning, and half blind from that delousing shit they put on ya. And when they put you in that cell, and those bars slam home. That’s when you know it’s for real. Whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left, but all the time in the world to think about it.”

Title: The Shawshank Redemption

Year: 1994

Director: Frank Darabont

Plot: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

Lead Roles: Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne). Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding) and Bob Gunton (Warden Norton)

Trivia: The American Humane Association monitored the filming of scenes involving Brooks’ crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, the AHA objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.

In Stephen King’s original story, Red was written as a white Irishman. In the movie, they left the line, “Maybe it’s ’cause I’m Irish”, in as a joke, even after they had cast Morgan Freeman as Red.

Although a very modest hit in theaters, it became one of the highest grossing video rentals of all time.

Kevin Costner turned down the role of Andy Dufresne, a decision he strongly regretted later on.

Stephen King sold the film rights for his novella for a dollar.

Human nature

“Years of love have been forgotten in the hatred of a minute”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

Listening Games

Improve your listening skills and have some fun!

Listening

Famous lines – Watch the scene

Famous Lines – Answer Key

04) “See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own, and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two you dropped 150 grand on a fucking education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

Title: Goo Will Hunting

Year: 1997

Director: Gus Van Sant

Plot: Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life.

Lead Roles: Matt Damon (Will Hunting), Robin Williams (Sean Maguire) and Ben Affleck (Chuckie Sullivan)

Trivia: Minnie Driver’s character Skylar is named after Damon’s girlfriend, Skylar Satenstein, who left Damon for Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich before filming began. Damon and Driver became romantically involved during production.

The mathematical equations seen in the opening credits are part of a math technique called “Fourier Analysis” which approximates functions by sines and cosines. It’s used a lot in physics and engineering.

The scene where Sean and Will are in his office, and Sean starts talking about his dead wife and her farting antics. These lines were ad-libbed by Robin Williams, which is probably why Matt Damon is laughing so hard. If you watch the scene carefully you can notice the camera shaking, probably due to the cameraman laughing as well.

When Will (Matt Damon) and Sean (Robin Williams) meet for the first time in Sean’s office, Will recommends that Sean read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States”. As a boy, Matt Damon was Zinn’s neighbor and provided the voice for the CD recording of that book.

When Will is mopping the floor at the beginning of the movie his name tag identifies him as “Bob” rather than “Will”.

The movie was named as one of “The 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time” by Premiere.