Movie Activity: Let's watch BABEL (2007 Oscar Nominee for Best Picture)

Hello, dear students.

Let's challenge our brains and pretend we are Screenwriters this time! Hope you enjoy taking part in this activity!

Have you seen BABEL? If not, this is your chance. I'll upload the YOUTUBE trailler (see below) for you to have an idea of the plot.

CHARACTERS and Main CAST:
RICHARD - Brad Pitt
SUSAN - Cate Blanchett
SANTIAGO - Gael Garcia Bernal
YASUJIRO - Koji Yakusho
CHIEKO - Rinko Kikuchi
MITSU - Yuko Murata
AMELIA - Adriana Barraza
MIKE - Nathan Gamble

CREW:
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga
Producers: Jon Kilik, Steve Golin, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Director of Photography: Rodrigo PrietoProduction
Designer: Brigitte Broch
Editor: Stephen Mirrione

PLOT:

FOUR interlocking stories all connected by a single gun; all converge at the end and reveal a complex and tragic story of the lives of humanity around the world and how we truly aren't all that different.

In Morocco, a troubled American married couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are on vacation trying to work out their differences.

Meanwhile, a Moroccan herder buys a rifle for his sons so they can keep the jackals away from his herd.

A girl in Japan dealing with rejection, the death of her mother, the emotional distance of her father ( Koji Yakusho), her own self-consciousness, and a disability among many other issues, deals with modern life in the enormous metropolis of Tokyo, Japan.

Then, on the opposite side of the world the married couple's Mexican nanny ( Adriana Barraza) takes the couple's 2 children with her to her son's wedding in Mexico, only to come into trouble on the return trip.

Combined, it provides a powerful story and an equally powerful looking glass into the lives of seemingly random people around the world and it shows just how connected we really are in the big web of inter-cultural dimensions.

Your Challenging Activity:

After watching the movie, you are going to choose one of the 04 stories (a) the American couple; (b) the Nanny; (c) the Japanese girl and father; (d) the Moroccan father and son ... to continue the plot, because there are some pending resolutions to make and solutions to find to some of these characters. You can either write in DIALOG FORM, or in TEXT FORM, by trying to answer some of these questions (or others you can bring up) related to the 04 stories:

(A) What will happen to Susan (Cate Blanchett) after the hospital?

(B) What happened to the nanny's nephew Santiago ( Gael Garcia Bernal) in Mexico and the nanny herself?

(C) What was written in the note the Japanese girl delivered to the police officer? Will he tell her father what happened?

(D) What will happen to the Moroccan father and son? Will they be penalized or not?

You will have 02 weeks to fulfill this assignment. For a better connection with everyone, I invite you to go to a new Web2.0 resource: http://creativenglish.wikispaces.com/message/list/home . I'll exaplain in class.

I really hope you enjoy challenging your creative mind by using the English language to both write your screenply and put your message across .

Have fun with English!!

See you around.

Flávia