"The Pursuit of Happyness" was released by Columbia Pictures Corporation in 2006.The movie is adapted from a true story of a famous self-made millionaire Chris Gardner. Chris Gardner is a black American investment expert. The story tells us that how a homeless father with a 5-year-old son pursues his happiness. In the pursuit of happiness, he faces many obstacles, but he never gives up, and finally he succeeds. Will Smith acted as Chris Gardner, an ordinary person who lived in San Francisco in 1980s.  In order to create a touching drama out of the true story, a lot of changes have been made. The biggest change is Gander's one-year-old son turns into a smart 5-year-old boy. Jaden plays small Chris Gardner and he is the real son of Will Smith. 

"The Pursuit of Happyness" is a simple inspirational movie. It doesn't have pretty actors, no fancy pictures, but it can also attract you, because it has good enough story. Some of the scenes are very impressed. For example: In order to catch up with the lost scanners, Chris was knocked down by a car.  He looked for his shoe groveling on the road without checking himself being hurt or not. Chris is a man with purpose.  He said “If you have got a dream, you should protect it.” He encouraged his son “Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something”, this sentence was also said to himself. When Chris saw the spelling error in "happyness", he said these words: There is no “y” in happiness, there is “i”. It aims to express: there is no “why” in the happiness, we should be responsible for our own happiness. We can not blame others when we are not happy. If we want to be happy, we can only rely on our own and struggle for it. 

The film title is intentionally misspelled, as it also appears as graffiti in a scene in the film. The misspelled phrase is actually taken from an essay written in 1776 that argued whites and blacks were created equal. The essay, which was written by Lemuel Haynes (1753–1833), a biracial man living in New England during the Revolution, quoted Thomas Jefferson's well-known sentence from the United States Declaration of Independence, but spelled the last word of the sentence with a y. The sentence, as it appears in Lemuel's essay, is as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-Evident, that all men are created Equal, that they are Endowed By their Creator with Ceartain [sic] unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happyness."

电影标题是故意拼错的，因为它也出现在电影中的一个场景中。这个拼错的短语实际上取自于1776年的一篇文章，文中认为白人和黑人生来平等。这篇文章由莱缪尔·海恩斯(1753–1833)撰写，他是一个混血儿，在美国独立战争期间居住在新英格兰。他文中引用了托马斯·杰斐逊在《美国独立宣言》中的名句，但在拼写句子最后一个单词时误拼写成y。在莱缪尔文章中写的这句话如下:“我们认为这些真理是不言而喻的:人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利，其中包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。”（sic 表示“原文如此”，这里原文有2处单词拼写错误Ceartain应为Certain; Happyness 应为Happiness）

Rubik’s Cube （魔方）

 Rubik's Cube is also called Magic Cube. It is a 3-D mechanical puzzle and the most famous puzzle as a mobile version across the world. Erno Rubik（厄尔诺·鲁比克）, born in July 13, 1944, who is an architecture professor of a university in the Hungary（匈牙利）has invented the mechanical toy in 1974. The aim is to help his students to improve the ability of spatial thinking. There are different types of the original Rubik's Cube and all derive from the original Rubik's Cube (3x3x3). Rubik's Cube is not only for children, but also for other different people. Playing Rubik's Cube can challenge and exercise your logical, understanding and memory abilities. It is beneficial to the intelligence, health and brain. So, that is to say, it greatly contributes to hands, eyes, and brain to operate coordinately. Some websites recommended:

lRubik’s official website:

http://www.rubiks.com/

l Mofang8:

http://www.mf8.com.cn/

lRubik’s CubeCHINA:

http://www.rubik.com.cn/

 

United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of  Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting（第二届大陆会议）at the Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚州） State House ( Independence Hall) in Philadelphia（费城） on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain,regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule.  Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America. 

         John Adams（约翰·亚当斯，前美国总统） was a leader in pushing for independence, which was passed on July 2 with no opposing vote cast. A committee of five had already drafted the formal declaration, to be ready when Congress voted on independence. The term "Declaration of Independence" is not used in the document itself.

 John Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson（托马斯·杰斐逊，美国第三任总统） to compose the original draft of the document, which Congress would edit to produce the final version. The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War（美国独立战争）. The next day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail（阿比盖尔）: "The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha（时代）, in the History of America." But Independence Day is actually celebrated on July 4, the date that the Declaration of Independence was approved.

★扩展

电影《当幸福来敲门》象征符号分析.pdf(下载附件 1.28 MB)