Pride and Prejudice.... Revisited

Recently my son (16 years old, 10th grade) has been reading Pride and Prejudice for school. I found this interesting right off because his teacher is a young guy, and obviously, not something you'd expect him to pick to teach the students! But cool, nonetheless.

Our approach at home has been to watch a bit of the Colin Firth movie together, then my son would promptly read that section. It helped him a lot with the Jane Austen language... something he can't stand and something I love with all my heart! Anyway, soon, the movie took over and he finally watched it to the end. I don't know if he is caught up with the reading or not... I need to check on that!  But as for me,  I have certainly enjoyed watching the movie yet again, I've lost track how many times it's been now. It truly never gets old.

At school they've been watching bits and pieces of the Keira Knightly version. I asked my son to compare the two and he said he liked the actors better on the BBC one and that it followed the book the best, but that it was TOO long and too drawn out and...gasp...too boring. That being said, I told him he needed to tell his teacher that, in my humble opinion, he is showing them the wrong version, shorter or not.

As part of this P and P discussion, the students had to figure out a project to do... anything goes, the teacher said, as long as it relates to the story. My son and his friends decided to do a modern video version of the story. His friend is a pretty brilliant video editor and just last night, he shared it on YouTube.... and since I think many of you would get a kick out of it, I've decided that they won't care if I share it here! Be sure to watch the bloopers at the end and you can see how my phone call (yes teach me to check in on my son to figure out our crazy evening that night!) made the cut! Also, keep in mind that somehow, they accidentally taped over  many of the scenes they shot and since they were doing this at the last minute, had to just go with what they had!




I'm told the kids at school laughed so hard throughout this that you could hardly hear it... and the teacher showed it to all his classes throughout the day. That's a good sign, I thought, even though he said (in jest I hope) that it was to show them what NOT to do!

The next project they have to do is to make a book trailer. (Not of P and P... but of some random book they pick to read off a provided list.) My guess is I'll end up sharing that one too. Consider yourself warned.

Oh, and P.S.... if you enjoyed this.... they did a similar thing to Hamlet awhile back which you can watch here.