FilmBlog

Challenge Education Movie Guides

Challenge Education design Movie Guides with lesson plans based on sequences of popular movies aimed at optimising learning results and supplement any EFL course. Each Movie Guide has lesson plans created to be used independently of the whole film and designed for one of the following levels: Beginner, Elementary, Pre Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate. All lesson plans include step-by step Teachers' Notes, Answer Key and Students' Handout ready to use. Their web page has a catalogue with all the Movie Guides available:
http://www.challenge-education.com/catalogue.asp

TIME's All-Time 100 Top Movies

TIME's movie critics have chosen their list of the 100 most influential movies of the past 82 years. The films span comedy, horror, drama, romance, action and more. Some of the choices are bound to be controversial. For instance, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo makes the list, but there's no room for Annie Hall or Manhattan. You can comment on their choice via the Talkback feature.

Film Education

Film Education, a site funded by the UK Film Industry, has a directory of films recommended for use in the classroom. Many of them have downloadable PDF guides. There is also a series of online study guides for a number of films.

Teaching Trailers - Touching The Void

5-page PDG guide looking at the use of trailers in marketing films with particular reference to Touching The Void.

A Case Study: Film Marketing and Judge Dredd

A 17-page PDF guide in two parts. The first looks at the marketing of the film and the second looks at the themes dealt with in the character Judge Dredd.

Film Study Guide for To Kill A Mockingbird

This is a very detailed study guide covering both technical and artistic areas including screenplay, scene analysis and sound effects. There are also many links to other Internet resources. Also check out the 23-page PDF guide on ESLNotes and this ThinkQuest on teaching TKAM.

Movies for Business

Movies for Business offers downloadable study guides to 12 movies suitable for teaching Management 101. The movies include Wall Street (one of my personal favourites), Roger and Me (Michael Moore) and Zulu (!). Each guide costs $5.95 and a sample guide is available for The Wizard of Oz. Alternatively, you can buy a book containing 5 guides.

ESLNotes

Aimed specifically at learners of English, ESLNotes has guides to nearly 100 carefully chosen movies available in Word, PDF or HTML. Each guide comprises:
* a plot summary
* a list of major characters
* a glossary of key vocabulary and cultural references
* questions for class discussion
Congratulations to Raymond Weschler for creating such a wonderful resource.