Prize Winning and other interesting ways to make money

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio directed by Jane Anderson was based on the true story of Evelyn Ryan (played by Julianne Moore). Her daughter, Terry Ryan, wrote the novel about her mother who helped support her husband financially while raising ten children. The movie was beautifully tragic, it showed the life of a women who lived in a hard situation but expressed nothing but happiness. She was loving, forgiving, and thankfully quite lucky when it came with prize winning.

Evelyn is a housewife who must be creative with her ways to gain an income. She uses contests where she invents riddles, songs, phrases for companies. At 14/15 I used to google weird ways I could make money, at 20, I still have the same question. 

I came up with a list of 5 interesting ways to make money quickly:

College Student? Agent Anything allows people to post random tests they would like completed onto a virtual bulletin board. There are many quick tasks like invite your Facebook Friends to an event with a payout of $10

Surveys are a great way to get paid for sharing your opinions. You can use Find Focus Groups to do this!

Get cash for books, music, movies, and video games by selling them online. If this sounds like too much work for you, try Half.com which is a branch from eBay.

Do you have old gift cards laying around? Quickly turn them into cash by going to CardCash. Receive up to 92% of what the gift card is valued and receive the money on Paypal. 

Lastly, here are a list of apps that can make you money! You're on your phone all day anyway! 

On my search to find easy and weird ways to make money quickly I ended up one interesting post, a man who decided to sell his soul in a project called "Community Through Capitalism." Mike Merrill decided to divide his "soul" into 100,000 shares and sold them for $1 each. He then gave his shareholders voting rights to all personal decisions in his life. Currently up for voting is "to beard" or "not to beard." In the past there have been decisions of a vasectomy, they chose "no" by the way." (source)

Opinions Worth Blogging

I never considered myself a blogger, especially one who writes about movies. I never really found myself to be a movie critic, or interested in movie critics. Movies are an art form and I feel like art isn't something to criticize but rather contemplate for yourself. 

I often find myself deciding to watch movies even if I see the tiny two-star rating. Often, I realize that I didn't necessarily agree with others opinions on what I watched. For instance I decided to watch Breaking Bad to see what the hype was about. I struggled through the first few episodes before deciding, it just was not for me. 

Maybe I just have terrible taste in things, maybe I have the wrong opinion. Whatever it may be, I feel like blogging with help me work through my opinions and ideas hopefully before I taint my original thoughts with the imdb reviews. 

Do You Speak English?

Watch List: Second Week of April

Watch list for the week:
- The First Grader
- Ask Me Anything
- Charlie Barlett
- The World Before Her
- The Dark Matter of Love

The Right to an Education

Recently I watched The First Grader, a film directed by Justin Chadwick and released in 2010. The movie is based on a true story about an 84-year old Kenyan man who returns the primary school. Maruge, played by Oliver Litondo, was part of the Mau Mau tribe and had been a freedom fighter. He was captured by the British, was tortured, and then put detention camps for many years. The story was very captivating and inspirational; we followed the journey of an old man as he fought for his new legal right to get an education. He was very persistent and determined stating that if he did not learn to read than he would be no better than a goat. It had a very clear message about how important education was and how it is the only sure way out of poverty.
I also encourage you to find your own way to help in the World’s fight for education!Trailer for The First Grader Below:I loved the movie, as did my mother, we both cried a lot. It was absolutely beautiful and it had a happy ending which is always wonderful. It also inspired me to try and do something, which led me to some Internet research. I learned that the lack of supplies in countries make it very hard for children to get a valuable education. Could you imagine not having the money to buy a pencil? I came across Develop Africa, an organization that sends school supplies to different schools in parts of Africa. Please visit the website, even if you do not have supplies to donate, a donation to help mail the supplies to the children is greatly appreciated.
I learned to learned to appreciate the education I have gotten in the United States. Sometimes we forget that in many places of the world, free education is hard to get. While on the internet, I came across a viral photo set of children on their journey to school from around the world. View photos below! 
Donate to Develop Africa: [ X ]Watch The First Grader: [ X ]More photos of journeys to school: [ X ]

Does the World Need Another Movie Blog?

I have never really considered watching movies to be one of my hobbies, but as of recently I have really found movies to be one of my favorite pastimes. Since moving to Manhattan for college, I see my mom a lot less and it's been a hard change for both of us. Recently, I've been trying to come home on most weekends and we have started to really use those weekends to watch movies together.

We’re both Netflix addicts but I also use Amazon as a rental system very often. Movies are a way for us to bond but we also using them as a way to inspire change. I have a new love for movies that I can’t vividly recall having during childhood. I have even gained an interest in animation and an appreciation for documentaries. I’m an easy to please movie watcher but every movie sparks something inside of me and I wanted to share that on a blog.

Though there are many other movie review blogs out there, this will be something different. I will try to be more focused on the ideas or inspiration caused after the movie, rather than the review. Movies won a place in my heart that I would love to share with others. I’ve really learned the value of important things and can see myself growing as a person because of movies. I have been keeping a list of movies I’ve seen since the start of the New Year and will post the link below.