Some Summer Ideas
2014
Year 7 (2013-14) becoming Y8 (2014-15)
Remember from last two years how helpful it was to work through some summer exercises. This is new version for this year but along the same lines.
First, read through the booklet. Please do what follows each piece whether that is typing in definitions, looking at hyperlinks, finding visual images etc. With each article, you should look up the highlighted words and define them and, when instructed, in the tables. In some cases, you are also again asked to find suitable visual images to help fix and explore the meaning in your mind. Do talk to your family and discuss the reading with them. There is plenty to chew on. Make sure that you try to complete the definition and image tables. You must complete this document as an electronic Word document and give it to me at the beginning of term. Please remember to SAVE as you go along. When you e-mail it, please make sure you label it as follows:
SURNAME Form
Suarez 8M.
This makes it easier for us to save and look at. These booklets are then printed off at school and we use them in enrichment lessons and mock interviews.
First, read through the reviews of the Lego Movie and Despicable Me 2 and do the exercises. You will be asked to discuss this and the other passages/poems on your return in your English Enrichment Comprehension classes with the Head and others. Make sure that you have looked up the words you do not know! There is no excuse for saying you cannot do this! Ask your friends; prod your family and ask the budgie. But, do not leave this blank or scrawled in biro/pencil and say in September, with tears in your eyes: ‘It is just like last year, in Year Six: OMG, I cannot believe it: Once again, we didn’t have a dictionary or Wi-Fi at any point in the summer and my dad’s office blew up and mum dropped her Mac in the sea when we were in St. Tropez & then I sprained my typing wrist water-skiing. Honestly, Paul! Why are you laughing?’ My uncle will back me up (and he is our family lawyer.) Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I suffered temporary paralysis of the hands in August too.’
Just do it! You will actually enjoy learning these new things! All the stuff is worth reading!
They can, because they think they can!’
Virgil
Paul’s Learning Enrichment Pack Y7 2014 68
Review of Lego Movie Robbie Collin, Chief Film Critic The Telegraph
Andy Warhol would have been knocked sideways by The Lego Movie. The new animation from Warner Bros. takes art and commerce and clicks them together as naturally and satisfyingly as a pair of plastic bricks on their way to becoming a castle or spaceship. Never before have I felt less like a film was selling me a product, and then left the cinema more desperate to fill my house with the product it wasn’t selling.
That’s largely because The Lego Movie is swooningly in love with the Lego brick itself: its look, its feel, its clutchable there-ness. The film is computer-generated, but it looks like an old-fashioned stop-motion production. Individual bricks and figures come scratched, scuffed and smeared with fingerprints. The Lego world looks lived-in. No, even better: played-with.
And playfulness is the prevailing sprit. At ground level, The Lego Movie is an uproariously funny family adventure – a Star Wars-Matrix hybrid with jokes, that bound along with a kind of crazed, caffeinated energy. Dig down a little, though, and you realise that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film’s two-man writing and directing team, are telling a classic quest story precisely because those stories are so Lego-ish at heart.
Two sides in the Lego world are vying for supremacy. One is led by Lord Business (Will Ferrell), the ruler of Bricksburg, a bustling city where the cars and buildings are all assembled, and lives are lived, in line with the instructions. The other is made up of the Master Builders; visionaries and outlaws who see new, exciting ways to connect the blocks Lord Business would rather remain in place.
The security of order versus the thrill of working outside it: that’s the struggle at the heart of any number of classic adventure films, but it’s also a choice made by every seven-year-old who’s ever unwrapped a brand new Lego set. Do you follow the instructions, and end up with the model on the box? Or do you set the manual aside, click the pieces together at random, and see what chance produces?
This decision also faces Emmet (Chris Pratt), a Bricksburg builder whose life, when we first encounter it, is one never-ending routine. Wake up, exercise, work, eat, relax, sleep, repeat. He does this every day, in order, and fits in because of it. His favourite song is everyone’s favourite song: a pop track called ‘Everything Is Awesome’ that’s catchier than Velcro.
But unbeknownst to him, Emmet is also The Chosen: a saviour foretold in a prophesy by a Morgan Freeman-like sage – who is, brilliantly, voiced by Morgan Freeman. The hooded freedom-fighter Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) finds him and whisks him out of the city and into new, unexplored parts of the Lego universe, where they plot Lord Business’s downfall, with help from Wyldstyle’s celebrity boyfriend, Lego Batman (Will
Each dimension is home to a particular range of Lego kits, and the long-standing favourites like pirates, Wild West and space are where most of the action takes place. Less-successful Lego sub-brands, meanwhile, such as the unloved Fabuland and Galidor ranges, are hastily covered in a self-deprecating montage.
There are so many blink-and-miss-them moments to appreciate: in another wonderful detail, a 1980s-vintage spaceman character, voiced by Charlie Day, has a helmet that has snapped in exactly the place where all the 1980s Lego spacemen figures’ helmets used to snap.
Parents who themselves grew up with Lego in their toy-boxes will almost certainly feel the prickle of nostalgia, and a sweet, witty passage late in the film acknowledges that for fathers, in particular, a son or daughter’s plastic bricks can spirit them back to a childhood long-past.
Lord and Miller, both former sitcom writers, have arrived here via two unexpected hits: the 3D animation Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and their comic reboot of the teen police drama 21 Jump Street. Those films didn’t have to be particularly inventive or thoughtful or witty to turn a profit, but they were. The Lego Movie is too, but it reaches even further. For a shot of pure forward-leaping, backward-dreaming animated pleasure, pick brick.
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Now think about these words/phrases too!
· knocked sideways
· satisfyingly
· swooningly in love
· clutchable
· Vying
· Supremacy.
· Bustling
· Visionaries
· Outlaws
· Security
· the manual
· Awesome’
· Unbeknownst
· Foretold
· Prophesy
· Sage
· Whisks
· Dimension
· self-deprecating
· montage.
· vintage
· prickle
· nostalgia,
· inventive
Tricky WordTricky Phrase / Can you define it?
Maybe think of a synonym too! / Can you make another sentence with the word, thus showing that you REALLY know the meaning?
knocked sideways
satisfyingly
swooningly in love
clutchable
Vying / verb
Word forms: vies, vying, vied
1.(intransitive; followed by with or for) to contend for superiority or victory (with) or strive in competition (for)
2.(transitive) (archaic) to offer, exchange, or display in rivalry / Paul K was vying in vain with Paul C in the marathon.
Supremacy.
Bustling / verb
gerund or present participle: bustling
move in an energetic and busy manner.
"people clutching clipboards bustled about"
synonyms: rush, dash, scurry, scuttle, scamper, scramble, flutter, fuss; More
hurry, hasten, make haste, race, run, sprint, tear, shoot, charge, chase, career;
"people clutching clipboards bustled about"
•(of a place) be full of activity.
"the streets bustled with people"
Visionaries
Outlaws
Security
the manual
Awesome’
Unbeknownst / happening or existing without the knowledge of someone specified —usually used with to : Unbeknownst to us, rumors were flying!
Foretold
Prophesy
Sage
Whisks
Dimension
self-deprecating
montage.
vintage
prickle / Prickle noun: prickle; plural noun: prickles
1. a short pointed outgrowth on the bark or epidermis of a plant; a small thorn."the prickles of the gorse bushes"
.
a small spine or pointed outgrowth on the skin of certain animals.
a tingling sensation on a person's skin, typically caused by strong emotion." Bob felt a prickle of excitement"
synonyms: / tingle, tingling sensation, tingling, prickling sensation, chill, thrill, itching, creeping sensation, gooseflesh, goose pimples, pins and needles;
verb: prickle; 3rd person present: prickles; past tense: prickled; past participle: prickled; gerund or present participle: prickling
1. (of a part of the body) experience a tingling sensation, especially as a result of strong emotion."the sound made her skin prickle with horror"
synonyms: / tingle, itch, have a creeping sensation, have goose pimples, have gooseflesh, have goosebumps, have pins and needles
nostalgia,
inventive
Tricky Word
Tricky Phrase / Can you Google image/picture/cartoon which helps show the meaning of some key words?
knocked sideways
satisfyingly
swooningly in love
clutchable
Vying
Supremacy.
Bustling
Visionaries
Outlaws
Security /
the manual
Awesome’
Unbeknownst
Foretold
Prophesy
Sage /
Whisks
Dimension
self-deprecating
montage.
vintage
prickle
Nostalgia, /
inventive
Read these three contrasting reviews of Despicable Me 2. Then, please do the exercises which follow.
Despicable Me 2 Review Tim Robey The Telegraph
The animated supervillain comedy from 2010, was an average flick with a neat enough premise. In Despicable Me 2, it’s gone. You see, Steve Carell’s bald, beaky hero, Gru, is now a reformed soul, occupied with round-the-clock childcare rather than dastardly plots to steal the moon and whatnot. The withdrawal of his evil motives is so complete that the movie’s very title feels like a misnomer – what we get this time is Grumpy Old Me at best, or Secretly Lovable Me, or Doting Me. And none of these “Me”s are very much fun.
It’s clear even from the advertising that Gru’s Minions – those knee-high yellow Tic-Tacs, on a poster near you wearing dungarees and goggles – are key to the commercial equation that got a sequel green-lit at all. So they swarm all over the place doing various child-pleasing routines in hard hats and beachwear, while Gru gets embroiled in an afterthought of a plot, involving a secret agent called Lucy (Kristen Wiig) who’s also, boringly enough, his love interest.
The one inspired idea here is what happens to the minions when they’re injected with serum by the film’s mystery baddie, and this is enough to give us at least a reel’s worth of anarchic pleasure. Not to give too much away, but the sound they emit after transformation has a pleasingly Chuck Jones-ish mad simplicity, and the animators, in a rare gesture towards adult wit, even throw in a smart little nod to the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Still, the movie is overconfident about the charm of these beings in their natural state, at least to an audience over three feet tall. There’s a complacency about it which makes the surrounding storytelling feel lazy and underpowered, like a low-energy episode of after-school telly. Lo and behold, these supporting players are getting a spin-off unto themselves next year – it’s called Minions – so perhaps this is best counted as a modest bridge to that promotion, an enabling movie to give them a leg up. Helpful Little Me.
Despicable Me 2 Review Mark Kermode The Observer
Funnier – and perhaps cuter – than its predecessor, this blockbuster animation finds jam-making adoptive parent Gru (Steve Carell) being reluctantly recruited by the Anti-Villain League to bring down a rival fiend. His mind, however, is elsewhere – on the growing pains of his young charges and the wily charms of a fellow agent (Kristen Wiig).
The real joy, however, is in the increased role of the goggle-eyed Minions, who outdo Ice Age's Scrat in the scene-stealing stakes. Voiced by the directors in babbling helium-fuelled goobledegook, these yellow weebles are comedy gold, their slapstick antics blending a simplicity of form with a complexity of expression rooted in the traditions of silent cinema. Having laughed my way through pretty much the entire film (including an ace end-credits sequence that will delight aspect ratio nerds), I left the cinema to the sound of a child announcing; "That was the best movie ever!"
Despicable Me 2 Review Peter Bradshaw The Guardian
Resilient in its daftness, reliable in its silliness, Despicable Me is on the threshold of franchise-status with this likable sequel. Steve Carell again voices Gru, the once-evil genius who has gone over to the side of light. He is recruited by the Anti-Villain League, led by a corpulent Englishman called Ramsbottom, voiced by Steve Coogan, but facially resembling a very pudgy James Fox.
Gru must go undercover to track down a bad guy who has stolen an entire research laboratory using an airborne magnet inorder to get his hands on a serum that transforms nice creatures like bunnies into hideous killers. Gru is given an assistant, Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, who is smitten with Gru. Could romance be on the cards – along with this sensational return to the battle between good and evil, which Gru has now joined on the correct side? Nothing here to challenge anything from the Pixar golden age, but Despicable Me 2 is a sweet-natured family film.