#6- Critiquing a Media Critic

Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah is the current host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. His spot as host was previously held by Jon Stewart for 16 years, and Trevor took over the show in 2015. Trevor Noah is a 33-year-old “comedian, writer, producer, actor, media critic, and television host” from South Africa. He had been involved with The Daily Show since 2014 but became the host the next year when Jon Stewart announced that he would be leaving the show.

I first watched The Daily Show with Trevor Noah last semester when I was writing a paper on television news for my Intro to Mass Communications course. I admit that I had never seen The Daily Show before I had to work on that assignment. When I noticed the show was on Comedy Central, I thought it would be a good news program to watch because I wanted a break from the other typical news shows I was analyzing.

I’ve seen articles on the Internet talking about Trevor Noah is not as good as Jon Stewart was as a host for The Daily Show. When I first watched it, I was not biased on Trevor Noah being the lesser host because I had honestly never taken the time to watch The Daily Show when Jon Stewart was hosting. I thought that Trevor Noah was a good host for The Daily Show. As a critic, he talks about news in politics along with other world and pop culture headlines. I watched The Daily Show when the 2016 Presidential Election was underway, so there was a lot of talk about the latest Trump and Hillary news. Trevor has an enjoyable sense of humor, and everything sounds nice and smooth when he says his jokes in his South African accent. He criticizes everyone to certain point, but I don’t think he tries to push any kind of bias on his audience. He just says what he has to say, and his critiques of political figures, celebrities, and real life people often get a few laughs out of me. Even when his jokes or critiques fall flat, I still enjoying watching him and listening to what he has to say.

Probably one of my favorites episodes of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah was where he interviewed Tomi Lahren, a beautiful blonde who is known for making her conservative opinions known loud and clear on The Blaze (since this episode was released, Tomi has been suspended from The Blaze due to her views on being pro-choice). In the episode, Trevor and Tomi discussed different issues (such as immigration, Colin Kaepernick, and the Black Lives Matter movement) while both sharing their own personal opinions. Even though they both disagreed on many issues, it was a mostly civil debate, and even though Trevor believed differently than Tomi, he never once belittled her. Trevor handled the debate well and made his opinions on the issues known without trashing Tomi on-air, and she did the same to him. I feel that Trevor Noah is an adequate host for The Daily Show and an effective media critic because he critiques things with humor and truth, but he is also very polite and genuine.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/m9ds7s/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-exclusive---tomi-lahren-extended-interview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Noah

#5- Movies

Arrival

I've loved movies for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, and any animated movie that Disney released. Whenever my parents watched a movie, I would sometimes join then in the fun and sit next to them on the couch. I will never forget the time I watched an alien movie called Signs. I’m pretty sure watching that movie scarred me for years (even though it wasn’t that scary), and for some time after I saw it, I was too afraid to be alone at night in the darkness of my room because I was convinced that an alien would come snatch me in the middle of the night. Today, I’m not really scared of alien movies anymore. Probably the best movie I’ve seen lately is Arrival, a movie that’s about aliens but not in the way one would typically expect of alien movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g

Arrival is a science fiction/mystery movie that was released on November 11, 2016, and stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker. The movie received a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 8 out of 10 stars on IMDB. Arrival was recently nominated for Best Picture and several other categories at the 89^th Academy Awards. The main plot of the movie revolves around twelve alien spaceships that land at different locations around the world. The United States Military and the government, along with scientists, attempt to figure out why the aliens had landed on earth and what exactly they wanted from humans. Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics professor who has been whisked away to a spaceship site in Montana. While at the site, she has to find a way to communicate with the aliens and also has to decode their language.

When one sees that a movie revolves around aliens, he or she might expect it to be an intense, action-packed ride. Arrival is a slow burning movie in my opinion. The movie is never really intense, but it does rely on emotions and a race against time to make you interested in watching it. I thought the plotline was very interesting at first, and I was curious to see what the aliens were going to look like. The film starts off with an emotional bang by showing flashbacks of Amy Adam’s character raising her daughter, Emily, only to lose her to cancer when she’s a teenager. When the movie moves into the scenes where Louise Banks is in contact with the aliens, it’s confusing at first because of the aliens’ language (which consists of O’s connected to various other shapes). During the movie, you watch the team try to figure out what the aliens are really saying, and you might feel a little lost like I was the first time I watched it. Even if the aspect of the alien's language in the movie gets confusing, I would say just keep on watching because everything will make sense in the end (I'll talk about that here in a minute)

The storyline of Arrival gets a bit more dramatic when certain countries around the world decide they want to attack the aliens instead of taking a gentler approach to figuring out why they're on Earth. Near the end of the movie, there is an important revelation that the aliens give to Louise Banks which ties the whole film together. I'm not going to give away any spoilers here, but when I first watched Arrival, I didn't really understand the whole point of the movie until this certain part near the end. It was one of those revelations that don't necessarily shock you, but it will make you go, “Oh, now everything makes sense.”

The last few scenes of Arrival were the ones that truly affected my emotions. The events that occur in these scenes are, in my opinion, both sad and beautiful. I didn’t expect myself to tear up while watching this movie, but when those scenes came on and the score music starting playing, I found myself crying. I think the instrumental song that played during those parts added that emotional depth to the movie that tugs at your heart. I thought this movie was fantastic. Even though it’s not an action-packed movie, it makes you think about the way we as humans communicate with each other and about your choices in this life. One of the main ideas that Arrival is trying to put out there is, "If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?"  I can say that it definitely made me do a little thinking of my own, and its effects definitely stuck with me long after the credits rolled out. The last thing I want to mention about Arrival is that its cinematography was very breathtaking and well done. The trailer honestly doesn’t do the movie any justice because the only way to experience the emotional depth of this movie is to watch it for yourself. I can honestly say this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXNvm-7ZZVc