domingo, 6 de enero de 2013

Project 6: Do we read pictures or do pictures read us?: The sixth dwelling



He was hungry so he went directly to the place where he had the certainty that he would not have to pay to put something in his mouth. It is not necessary to say that he never would have gone to eat while he was dying of hunger without having the company of his best friend.

Together they went to a hostel in the village where they very politely attended to all travelers passing through there. They had to wait more than two hours, but it was worth it because in the end they got some food which they took to eat looking at the river in the park.

They were watching the sunset from a park bench for a long time once they had finished eating. They then continued with their usual routine, which was finding a place to stay during the night.

As always, they had to try several times to find a place that would serve them. For this reason, they took it calmly, and they enjoyed the search and the walk. They finally found a mailbox full of letters, indicating that the owner of the house, whoever he was, had been away a long time.

They did not think twice before sneaking into the apartment. Once inside, they huddled together, as usual, so as not to show that they had been there. This was the sixth apartment in which they were to sleep and this was going to be the last.

They did not realize that the door was opened and the porch light was turned on because they were already asleep. In any case, they did not care because the only thing that mattered to them was being together their whole lives.

The two friends were the happiest in the world.







I was waiting with great enthusiasm for the moment of the Oscars. It is a celebration that I always liked and, as every year, I was going to watch it. The only problem is that something changed that year compared to the rest, and this change was awful. Everything seemed normal, the presentation, the monologues, the atmosphere was quite nice. Everything was fantastic until the two people chosen to present the award for best visual effects emerged onstage.

Since four years ago, the Academy Awards has been taking more money than they should. Maybe I've been too frank to say this but it's time someone dares to bring to light the scam that is taking place every year at the Oscars. Among candidates for the award for best visual effects were Transformers 3, made by Industrial Light and Magic, and Hugo, made by a company that has not got worldwide recognition.

Just the subject and content of both films should be enough to discern that Transformers 3 deserved to win the award. Needless to say that the film which won the award, Hugo, doesn't have any IMAX scenes and it also doesn't have any enhancement added to the recordings. However, Transformers 3 has those both things but the Academy Awards thought that it was more suitable to give the award to Hugo.

This is just one of the awards presented but there are many more injustices in the world of cinema and we should do something to change this very regrettable fact.

viernes, 4 de enero de 2013

Project 4: English Through Literature: Babylon Revisited

SCOTT FITZGERALD



Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, an author well known for his short stories and novels, was born on September 24th, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to an upper middle class family. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers American soil produced in the 20th century.

Being from a practising Catholic family, Scott started his education at Catholic schools in 1903. From an early age Scott developed a reputation of being a boy with unusual ability and keen interest in literature. Young Scott’s first publication The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage was a detective story issued in his school’s newspaper when he was 13. In 1913 Scott was enrolled at Princeton University where his love for theater and writing really came to the forefront. He wrote many short stories for Princeton Tiger, a college humorous magazine published by Princeton University and scripts for Princeton Triangle Club, a musical comedy society. His association with Triangle Club provided him with an opportunity to publish his first novel, The Romantic Egoist to Charles Scribner’s sons with a renowned publisher and editor of his time. Charle omit though praised the writing yet rejected the book. However, it proved to be a great success when finally published after three revisions as This Side of Paradise. In 1917 Fitzgerald left university to join the army during World War I. However; the war ended soon after his acceptance into the army. In 1919 Scott moved to New York City after his discharge from the army.

The 1920’s were the most influential decade of Scott’s life. He got married to his fiancée Zelda in 1920. They went on a daughter Frances Scott in 1922. His masterpiece novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ was published in 1925. Scott had a number of trips to Paris and developed close relations with many members of the American community there. He also established acquaintance with Ernest Hemingway, an American author and journalist. However, this friendship remained shadowed mostly secret. The sore point of this friendship was that Hemingway never approved the sale of Scott’s stories and novels to Hollywood studios.

Many of Scott’s short stories are autobiographical reflection with referentes to his relationship with Zelda. His first collection of short stories ‘Flappers and Philosophers’ was published in 1920 followed by his second collection, ‘Tales of the Jazz Age’ in 1922. His second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, also adapted to the screen, was published the same year. By the end of the 20’s Scott had published three novels and had already begun his fourth one but was sidetracked by financial difficulties courtesy of his lavish life style. These crises necessitated his writing commercial short stories. This book was finally published in 1934 as Tender is the Night. Critics had mixed opinion about the novel.

In the mid 1930s, forced by his financial condition, Scott found himself working on commercial short stories and scripts for Hollywood. This gave him the basis for his fifth and final novel which was published posthumously. Scott died before he could complete this novel and left behind extensive notes for the unwritten part. This manuscript was edited by his friend Edmund Wilson and in 1941 the book which begam us The love of the Last Tycoon was published as The Last Tycoon.




REVIEW


Babylon Revisited begins with Charlie Wales, an American expatriate who has returned in 1930 to Paris, the site of much drinking and partying on his part during the 1920s. Since the stock market crash of 1929, Charlie has sobered up and now looks at the extravagant lifestyle he lived with a combination of amazement and disgust.

Charlie's first visit in Paris is to the Ritz bar he used to frequent in his wild days. He asks after many of his former party-friends but finds that Paris is largely empty compared to several years earlier. He leaves an address with the barman to give to a friend named Duncan Schaeffer. Since Charlie hasn't settled on a hotel yet, he leaves the address of his brother-in-law's house. He then wanders through Paris and sees all the hotspots he used to frequent during the extravagant days of the twenties. Everything looks different to him now that he's sober and doesn't have the money he used to.

As the story progresses, we learn that Charlie is back in town to try to regain custody of his daughter Honoria, who is currently staying with his sister-in-law and her husband. Charlie's deceased wife Helen died a little over a year ago from heart trouble. At the time, Charlie was in a sanatorium having suffered a collapse. Though we don't get all the details, we see that Charlie was, perhaps among other things, recovering from alcoholism. Now he only has one drink per day, so that the idea of alcohol doesn't get too big in his mind.

We learn that Charlie has a pretty bad relationship with his sister-in-law, Marion Peters, who blames him for her sister Helen's death. She is resistant to the idea of allowing him to take Honoria home with him, but Charlie eventually wins her over with his patience and insistence that he has reformed. They make plans for him to leave shortly with Honoria.

Meanwhile, two of Charlie's old party friends, Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles, who are still living the drunken lifestyle, have been trying to get him to go out drinking with them. Charlie resists, as he's left behind the wild days of running around Paris drunk. On the night when Charlie is at the Peters' finalizing plans to take Honoria home, Lorraine and Duncan show up, drunk, begging him to come out with them. Marion sees that Charlie is still associating with the party crowd, and so she goes back on her offer to let him take his daughter back. Charlie is baffled as to how Duncan and Lorraine found him, and either doesn't remember or refuses to acknowledge that he left the Peters' address for Duncan at the Ritz bar.

Charlie leaves the Peters' house and returns to the Ritz bar, where he has his one drink for the day and refuses to have a second one. He plans to try and get Honoria back again, perhaps six months from now when Marion has calmed down. He wonders how long he'll have to pay for the destructive lifestyle he used to live.

jueves, 3 de enero de 2013

Project 3: Team Work: News Bulletin

ÁLVARO:
Hello! Good morning welcome to the daily program of the Juan de Herrera news.
The headlines of the day are: Catalonia is finally getting separated from Spain, the US anounced the retirement of their troups from Afganistan,the latest economical news about facebook, the new Agatha Ruiz de la Prada collection and sports.
Now, we are conecting with our partner Kevin in Catalonia, Kevin it seems like Catalonia is finally getting the independence isn´t she?

KEVIN:
Hello, good evening from Barcelona. We can say now that Cataluña is independent from Spain, the population has voted and Artur Mas got the majority to make this famous independence real.
Now many people are asking themselves: Is this good for Spain? Will Cataluña survive out of the European Union?We will see, but for now that´s all we can say.Back to the Juan de Herrera news.

ÁLVARO:
Today at 12 am Obama has announced the retirement of the U.S.A army from Afganistan, now over to Kevin our coorrespondant in Washington.

KEVIN:
Hello Alvaro, here in Washington Obama just finished his last speech of the year, and he surprisingly announced that the USA is going to retire their troops from Afganistan. It´s planed that in April of 2013 there will be no more American troops left there, just the destruction and poorness that they caused these last years.
Some people are saying that due to this decision, he should get the next Peace Nobel Price.That’s all from here, we go back to the studio.

ÁLVARO:
Thank you Kevin. Well I know what most of you are wondering right know, "¿How is possible for Kevin to be in the Spanish Congress and in Washington at the same time, but the truth is that we are having some financial issues in the public TV channels right know and we can´t afford the flight to Washington, so Kevin were standing in front of a whit wall with a static picture of the white house projected on it.
Anyways, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada has presented her new collection today in the Puerta de America Hotel in Madrid, and finally we found one out of fifty one desings that was elegant and stylish. From here we want to thank you Agatha, we all know that you did a great efort.
And now over to Jack with the financial news.

ÁLEX:
Mike, tell me. What the first impression of Facebook in the stok market in Wall street?

MIKE (ÁLEX):
Good evening, Jack. Today at 9am hapends a horrible acted in Wall streat with the shares of facebook.Facebook is a social networking website, launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Marck Zuckerberg. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobil device .Now, we have problems with the new company, that his mane is facebook, is a social network what has joined in the world of the stok market.His shares has go down 1,37 points and people don´t buy this shares.Probably, Facebook close his doors and let his company. It´s horrible! We hope that people will buy this shares.

ÁLEX:
Now back with Álvaro in the studio.

ÁLVARO:
Thank you Alexandre, Finally our partner Juan is going to tell us about the sports.

JUAN:
José Callejón takes the ball home after making a hat-trick on his first debut with the Spanish National team against Germany. The player played a perfect match giving a goal assist and scoring three goals. Del Bosque said that it’s a possibility he will play the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 but that's still a long way off.

The ball Sergio Ramos sent to the space in the penalty against Bayern Múnich has finally arrived in Saturn, as expected. This fact Is going to bring the interesting possibility to explore this never before visited planet due to the fact that we have to go to bring the ball back to Earth.

miércoles, 2 de enero de 2013

Project 2: Creative writing: The Doggy Tragedy


The little girl couldn’t sleep. She was excited waiting for the three wise men so her parents decided to give her the present. They told her that the three wise men had come and they had left the gift next to outside the front door. She went to the street very excited and she found an opened box and a dog which was running away. The present was escaping and the little girl started to run after the animal.

The small dog was running as fast as he could trying to escape from the little girl. He didn’t want to live with a family, trapped and conditioned by rules and much less with a child, who was going to be very tiresome. He wanted to live free, as a street dog, doing what he wanted to do. He had to stop the girl by any means, whatever the price. He ran to the main road and he continued running until a truck appeared. The dog crossed the road very fast and when the girl followed him, the truck driver couldn’t stop in time and he ran her over. The dog was very happy because he had finally stopped the little girl.