My favourite film

Mad Max

The film opens in Australia "a few years from now" the country has collapsed and law and order has begun to break down. Berserk motorcycle gang member, Nightrider has escaped from police custody and is running from the Main Force Patrol (MFP), the police unit, in a stolen MFP pursuit car. Though he manages to outrun the first policemen, the Nightrider then encounters the MFP's best driver, leather-clad Max Rockatansky who is played by Mel Gibson. Max and the Nightrider have a high-speed chase which results in the death of the Nightrider and his woman in a fiery car crash.
Nightrider's motorcycle gang is led by the barbaric "Toecutter" and his lieutenant Bubba Zanetti and they are running roughshod over the Outback, vandalizing property, stealing fuel, and terrorizing the citizenry. Max and his fellow officer Jim Goose manage to arrest a gang member, Johnny the Boy, when Johnny stays too long at the scene of one of the gang’s crimes. However, when no witnesses come for his trial, the courts declare there is no case, and Johnny is released. A shocked Goose attacks Johnny and Max has to stop him and as Johnny leaves he and Goose shout threats at each other, Goose saying “See you on the road scag”. After Bubba, the motorcycle gangs lieutenant, drags Johnny away, MFP Captain Fifi Macaffee tells his officers to chase the motorcycle gang as they want, "so long as the paperwork's clean". (Make sure it all LOOKS legal)
Shortly after, Johnny the Boy sabotages Goose's MFP motorcycle; the motorcycle locks up at high speed the next day, throwing Goose from the bike, but Goose survives without injury. Goose borrows a pickup to carry his bike back to town. However, Johnny the Boy chases Goose and runs him off the road. Toecutter, the motorcycle gang leader then makes Johnny burn Goose alive in the wreckage of the pickup. Goose survives, but after seeing his charred body in the hospital's burn ward, Max becomes angry and disillusioned with the police force. Worried of what may happen if he stays in the job, and fearing he may become as savage and brutal as the gang members, Max resigns from the MFP with no intention of returning.
One day out at the beach Max's wife, Jessie, runs into Toecutter's gang, who attack her. She escapes, but the gang manages to follow her to the house where she and Max live. While attempting to escape, Jessie and their son are knocked down and run over by the gang and killed. Max arrives but it is too late.
Filled with rage, Max dons his police leathers and takes a supercharged black Pursuit Special ( “the last of the V8s”) to pursue the gang. Max visits a mechanic the gang uses and “persuades” him to tell him where the gang are, Max hunts down and kills the gang members: several gang members are forced off a bridge at high speed, hes hoots and kills Bubba at point blank range with a shotgun and Toecutter is forced into the path of a lorry and crushed. After a long search Max finds Johnny the Boy taking the boots off a dead driver at the scene of a crash, he handcuffs Johnny's ankle to the wrecked vehicle and sets a fuse. He gives Johnny a hacksaw and Max leaves him the choice of sawing through either the handcuffs, which will take 10 minutes, or his ankle, which will take 5 minutes. As Max drives away, the vehicle explodes; Max drives on further into the Outback without turning back, his face emotionless.
The film stars Mel Gibson who was completely unknown at the time. He went to auditions with his friend and classmate Steve Bisley who would play the part of Jim Goose. Gibson didn’t look very good when he went to the auditions because the night before he got into a fight with three men at a party, he ended up with a swollen nose, a broken jaw, and various other bruises. Mel Gibson went to the audition the next day looking like a "black and blue pumpkin" (his own words) He did not expect to get the role and only went to accompany his friend. However, the casting agent liked how Gibson looked and told him to come back in two weeks. He said "we need freaks." When Gibson returned, he was not recognized because his wounds had healed almost completely but he got the part anyway.

The last to Fall

Final fallen

THE 11th of the 11th at 11am is the time we remember the dead of World War One. It is the time the armistice came into effect in 1918. It is the time the killing stopped. Imagine you were a soldier on that last day of “The war to end all wars” Imagine you had survived till then, imagine you then had to just make it through a few more hours and then you could go home. No more killing no one else had to die, then imagine the sound of a gun and the thud of a bullet and the scream of a man, the unluckiest of men, the last man to die in world war one.

So who was the last to die?

New research by the BBC's Timewatch tells the story of some of the last to fall in WWI.
The final British soldier to be killed in action was Private George Edwin Ellison. At 9.30am Pte Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers was scouting on the outskirts of the Belgian town of Mons where German soldiers had been reported in a wood.
Aged 40, Pte Ellison must have found it strange to be back in Mons again. This is where his war started four years earlier when he was part of the British Expeditionary Force retreating from Mons in August 1914, just weeks after the war started. During his four years at the front, George saw every type of warfare. He went into the first trenches as the war became deadlocked. He fought in the first gas attack, and on the Somme in 1916 and watched the first ever tanks go up to the front."
Almost a million British soldiers had been killed in those four years, yet miraculously Private Ellison had so far escaped uninjured. In just over an hour the ceasefire would come into force, the war would be over and Pte Ellison, a former coal miner, would return to the terraced street in Leeds to see his wife Hannah and their four-year-old son James.

And then the shot rang out. George was dead - the last British soldier to be killed in action in WWI.

Although the last British soldier to die, Pte Ellison would not be the last to be killed that morning. As the minutes ticked towards the 11 o'clock ceasefire, more soldiers would fall.
At 10.45 another 40-year-old soldier, Frenchman Augustin Trebuchon, was taking a message to troops by the River Meuse saying that soup would be served at 11.30 after the peace, when he too was killed. Augustin Trebuchon's grave - along with all those French soldiers killed on 11 November 1918 - is marked 10/11/18. It is said that after the war France was so ashamed that men would die on the final day that they had all the graves backdated.

Just minutes before 11am, to the north around Mons, the 25-year-old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price was on the trail of retreating German soldiers.
It was street fighting. Pte Price had just entered a cottage as the Germans left through the back. On emerging into the street he was struck by the bullet which killed him.
But Pte Price's death at 10.58 was not the last.

Further south in the Argonne region of France, US soldier Henry Gunther was involved in a final charge against astonished German troops who knew the Armistice was about to occur. What could they do? He too was shot.
The Baltimore Private - ironically of German descent - was dead. It was 10.59 and Henry Gunther is now recognised as the last soldier to be killed in action in WWI.

A perfect school

A Perfect School

We should start later so we can sleep later. We want the same hours as an English school (8.30/9.00 until 16.00/16.30). We also want a good canteen. It should serve kebabs, pizza and burgers but no lentils or Brussel sprouts. Good sports facilities for Judo, Badminton and Horse riding would be good.

The lessons we would like to have are maths, sport, French and biology but we don’t like English or STSS.

The present school rules don’t need changing but we want cooler teachers. They should have a kind personality, look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie and be funny and understand their subject.

by Elodie, Betty, Jeremy, Laetitia, Adoline and Pauline (1e STS2)

Desperate Housewives

Desperate Houswives is a series on TV. It is an American series. There are five principle characters, five wives, who live in Fairview. Four of them are best friends and the fifth is an enemy of two and a friend of two. The names of the principle characters are Lynette, Bree, Susan, Gabrielle and Edie and they are played by Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria and Nicollette Sheriden.

Their normal life changes after the suicide of their friend, Mary Alice, who shot herself. After her death the four wives find her secret, her son is not her son. This leads to the big secret, Wisteria Lane is dangerous, mysterious and not as perfect as it seems.

by Valérie, Mélanie and Romanie (TST2S LV1)

Your Mission

For the class of Mme Chevallier

Time part 2

thanks for all your papers about the time magazine cover, You should have them back with corrections and comments very soon

Here is something I wrote about the cover, It is how I would do it.

This document is the front cover of a magazine called Time. I think this magazine that is sold in many countries because of all the different prices in different currencies printed around the border.

The main focus of this cover is a picture of some soldiers trying to hold up or plant a tree. This is very interesting as the image of the soldiers and their background is in black and white but the tree is in full colour.

The absence of colour for the soldiers gives the impression of age. I think it is meant to give the impression of a time that has past or changed. The tree, a conifer, on the other hand is in colour and therefore stands out perhaps to highlight that this is the thing we should really be caring about. To me it is obvious that this image is meant to make us think of preserving the environment. The soldiers are standing on a decimated hill, covered in rubble and other debris, even the background is razed. The scene is one of total destruction, apart from the valiant soldiers who are battling to either save a falling tree or plant a new tree. I believe that they are trying to save a falling tree due to the fact that you do not plant fully grown trees!

The predominant colour of this cover is green that in itself is special as Time usually uses the colour red for its titles and its borders. This time however it uses the green to highlight that this is a special issue focusing on the environment and specifically ‘The War on Global Warming’ which is also the title of the article advertised on its cover and represented by the image of the soldiers and the tree. The soldiers representing war and the falling tree the destruction of the environment that is adding to global warming fears. This article is written by Bryan Walsh whose name is written below the tag line in green.

The picture is a composite picture; the tree has been added to replace a US Flag. The original picture is a very famous World War Two photo showing the raising of the Stars and Stripes on the third day of the battle for Japanese island of Iwo Jima. This battle was very hard fought and the photo has become iconic of the US’s war time endeavours. I think this is another reason why the photo was chosen for this cover, its heroic message is meant to help inspire action on the environment and also underline the effort it will take to solve the environmental problems of our planet.

Above the title there are three other stories highlighted. Each story has a little photograph with it that is relevant to its content. The first , reading from the left, is about the US presidential candidate Barak Obama, the second about why more women are choosing to have caesarean sections to give birth and the third about whether Richard Branson, an English billionaire, can save the airline industry.

I think that this is a very interesting cover that appeals on many levels. I do know however that some Second World War soldiers who were at the battle of Iwo Jima have taken exception to the use of the photo that represents their struggle. They feel it belittles there efforts to use it as a method of selling a magazine. I however am very sympathetic to ‘green’ issues and therefore look at it and feel the need for action, the need to stop talking and to fight the war.

Please feel free to leave any comments.

Happy New Year

You might think that is a strange thing to say on the 1st of November but for the ancient Celtic people this was New Years Day.

Halloween, Toussaint, All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and Samhain are all names for the celebrations that happen at this time of year, a time when European peoples celebrate the end of harvest and prepare for the coming winter and also celebrate and honour their dead relatives and friends.

The oldest of these festivals and the origin of all the others is Samhain. This is a festival to honour and remember the dead. The night of the 31st of October is the night that the worlds of the dead and the living overlap, a time when you an almost touch the other world, when you feel closest to those who have passed on and when maybe you can catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the veil of death.

Most of the festivities include a large bonfire and a big feast, maybe because it is the last chance for big party before the hard times of winter. Stories of dead friends and families are told as well as scary and spooky stories involving the supernatural and local heroes. You can see that modern Halloween is very much taken from these ancient festivals.

How does harvest fit into this idea? Well if you think about it the harvest is the end of the growing season, the final product of a plant is gathered and the plant dies or goes dormant until the spring. This is a time when the plants are on the edge of death or dormancy. Everywhere nature, including man is preparing for the onset of winter which due to its harshness often means death. It truly is a time when life and death are very close together.