03/01/2010 - 9:12am

TV, Movies and Your Brain- Tips to watch Academy Award movies and engage your brain

With this weekend’s upcoming Academy Awards, many of us may be thinking about our favorite movies and spending time in front of the television catching up on movies from the past year. What does that mean for your brain? Unfortunately, television isn’t the best thing for our brains; it’s the kind of passive activity that doesn’t help to stimulate new pathways and connections so important for cognitive health.
 
To advance our brain fitness, we must constantly seek out new activities that challenge our cognitive functioning. As a daily activity, television won’t do this. However, if you’d like to keep your brain engaged while watching some of this year’s Oscar nominees, we’ve put together a list of ideas to transform a typically passive activity into a more active cognitive engagement:
 
1. Read and Compare: Read the book first and then compare it with the movie. For best effort, select a book different than those you typically would read. As you read and watch the movie, consider the characters, plot line and thesis. How do they compare?

• The Last Station –Read: “The Last Station” by Jay Parini
• Precious- Read: “Push” by Sapphire
• An Education- Read: “An Education” by Lynn Barber
• The Blind Side- Read: “The Blind Side” by Michael Lewis
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince- Read: “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling
   

2. Language work-out: Select one of the foreign language films in a language you don’t speak fluently. Watch with subtitles and pick out words that you hear and see if you can match them to the subtitles. Write down the words you begin to understand. Watch:

• Ajami- Israel
• The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada)- Peru
• A Prophet (Un Prophete)- France
• The Secret in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)- Argentina
• The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)- Germany 

 
3. History lesson- Before watching the movie, research the era and history of the movie’s setting and see what inconsistencies or new information you learn from the movie. Fact check any new information you learn from the movie. Watch:

• The Young Victoria
• Inglourious Basterds 

 
4. Question what you learn: Watch a documentary and write down a list of facts and information you learn. After watching the movie, research the points you write down and see if they are accurate and correct. Watch:

• Burma VJ
• The Cove
• Food, Inc.
• The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
• Which Way Home