节目资讯
刊物:娱乐时尚
日期:2009-09-30
难易度:High
关键字:passionate, compulsion, journalism, requisite, fas
(Music).
Hi, friends.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to study English with us.
My name is Steve.
This month, Studio Classroom is asking Justin Chang about being a movie critic.
Chang, who studied at USC, is a film critic and an editor for the Hollywood
trade publication Variety.
I know there are a lot of movie fans out there who think it would be great to
watch movies and get paid for it.
What a great job that would be.
Well, Mr. Chang shares with us today just how you can prepare yourself for such
a dream job.
Three key words you need to know for this lesson.
We start with the word:
passionate.
Martha has been a passionate gardeners since the age of seven.
Next is the noun:
compulsion,
as in:
I feel a compulsion to drink coffee every afternoon.
And thirdly, journalism.
The ability to do research is very important for those who want to succeed in
journalism.
Now please turn to page fifty-five in your magazine as we get started on day two
of Getting Paid to Watch Movies.
Getting Paid to Watch Movies.
How does one become a movie critic?
There are all sorts of different doors leading into this profession.
I became a passionate lover of film in my teens and soon developed a compulsion
to write about them long before I decided to start doing it professionally.
I reviewed films for my college newspaper and studied journalism, film and
business.
After graduating, I got an internship at Variety; eventually they hired me, and
the rest is pretty much history.
Hi, friends. And welcome.
I’m Chelsea.
And I’m Chip.
And thanks for joining us for our second day in our Ask the Expert article this
month.
This month, we’re talking... we’re asking uh, a movie critic uh, what a movie
critic does and how a movie critic does it.
And our title uh... says that we’re talking about getting paid to watch a movie.
Now that sounds to me like a great job.
If you’re getting paid to watch a movie, that sounds pretty easy, Chelsea.
It does sound easy and it does sound like a great job.
But as we learned yesterday, it is much much more than just watching a movie and
saying:
Oh, I like this movie.
Or:
No, this movie is not very good.
There’s so much more involved,
and you have to understand the historical and cultural context.
And so it takes a lot of work.
Well, today we start out by asking Justin Chang:
How does one become a movie critic?
How do you become a person who gets paid to watch movies?
Chip, how does this work?
Well, he says that there are all kinds or all sorts of different doors leading
into this profession.
And here he’s not talking about a literal door but a way into this profession,
into this professional job.
And he goes on to say that he became a passionate lover of film in his teens.
Now if you are passionate about something, it means you have many emotions or
very strong feelings or you are full of passion.
So he became passionate.
He became a passionate lover of film.
That’s probably the first step to becoming a movie critic.
Uh, you always want to find a career that suits your passions.
And for Justin Chang, his passion was watching movies,
and so he was able to turn this into a career.
And so he was a passionate lover of film as a teenager,
and he soon developed a compulsion to write about these movies.
And now if you develop a compulsion, what you’re developing there is a strong
motivation to do something.
Probably an inner desire, a desire in you that causes you to act, causes you to
do something.
And so he became passionate about movies and had a compulsion to write about
them long before he decided to start doing it professionally as a career.
How did he start out?
Well, he reviewed films for his college newspaper and studied journalism and
film, business.
OK. And if you studied journalism, then you’re... you’re uh, studying to work in
a profession in which a person writes articles usually,
uh, and then gives those articles to the newspaper or writes them for magazines.
Or it can also be a career or profession in television or radio.
Some... in some way, broadcasting the news, uh, giving the public the news would
be journalism.
Yes. I actually have a college degree in journalism.
I, at one point, thought that I wanted to write for a magazine.
And then I ended up being on TV.
But journalism is a very exciting uh, field to be a part of.
So that’s how Justin Chang got started.
And after he graduated, he got an internship at Variety.
Now Variety is a magazine that is pretty well-known in America.
It’s a magazine that I have read before.
And this is the magazine that he got an internship at.
That’s a pretty big internship.
Yeah, that’s...
Sounds like a pretty great internship.
And usually, when you’re an intern, uh, you... you probably don’t get paid very
much money if any money,
but what you’re getting is experience.
Uh, you’re not making a lot of money,
but you’re getting good experience which will help you get a good job in
journalism or a similar job in the future.
Yes, an internship is kind of like practice for the real thing.
It kind of, we would say, gets your foot in the door, gets your feet wet, gets
you used to doing this job that you hope to do as a career on down the road.
So for Justin Chang, his internship was at Variety, this magazine,
where he started writing movie reviews.
And he was pretty lucky because eventually, they hired him.
Oh, wow.
OK.
So Justin is pretty fortunate.
Sometimes this happens.
At the end of your internship, it’s possible that that uh, place or that company
might want to hire you.
They’ve seen how well you work, how well you have done in their company,
and they’ll say: Hey, we... we want this guy.
That’s actually what happened to me.
I had an internship uh, in... in a school.
And then at the end of my semester of being a student teacher of interning, I
was offered a job.
So it worked out.
It was a very good deal.
Justin goes on to say:
And the rest is pretty much history.
And we’ll be taking a look at what that phrase ”the rest is history” means here
in the Chat Room with Ken.
And then we’ll take a break.
Stay tuned.
Hello, friends.
You’re in the Chat Room.
I’m Ken.
And this is Doris.
Well, hi, everyone.
Welcome to the Chat Room.
You know, today, we continue to look at the interview with the movie critic,
Justin Chang.
Doris, I’m a bit confused by something Justin says.
He says:
After graduating, I got an internship at Variety.
Eventually, they hired me,
and they... and the rest is pretty much history.
I don’t get it.
What does history have to do with him working at Variety?
Well, that’s an idiom, Ken.
We knew at the beginning of the article that he works for Variety.
So when he says ”the rest is history,” he means that everyone knows the rest of
the story.
There’s no need to further explain his current job at Variety.
So we can use this idiom when we’re telling a story?
Mmhm, that’s right.
You tell a story up to the point where the listener knows the rest of the story.
And at that point, you can say:
Well, the rest is history.
I see.
the rest is history.
(Chinese).
Are there any other idioms that use the word:
history?
Sure.
Have you ever made history, Ken?
Make history?
How do you do that?
Well, if you make history, you’re doing something important that will be
remembered for a long time.
For example, Barack Obama made history earlier this year when he became the
first African-American president in the U.S..
I see.
What about history in the making?
I’ve heard that somewhere.
History in the making has a similar meaning.
It’s referring to something very important that’s happening right now.
(Chinese).
Will you be making history oneday? Think about that as we take a break.