quinta-feira, 10 de março de 2011

Say prePOSterous again...

I was watching to Two and a Half Men when Charli (Charlie Sheen) enters his house bitching about having ran out of gas. Soon, he discovers that his brother stole his gas and dare him to say the word preposterous. I could only think of Henrick telling us how to make some sounds in English, as P, C and the T sounds. He used to say: "Remember Pócótó!". Well, here is the video. I wish I could embed it, but the damn uploader deactivated the embeding system... ¬¬


                                           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOlWu8fmrj0

domingo, 20 de fevereiro de 2011

sexta-feira, 18 de fevereiro de 2011

Another Friday, another class...

          Damn it was a long week! I was almost daring to have another class. Today we reviewed the last class expressions and saw a lot more, mainly expressions with body parts. The interesting about body parts expressions is that if you don't pay attention, you may use some impropriate words. For example, you may say 'give head' or 'handjob' instead of handcrafted. The meaning of that expressions I won't say here XD... if you want to know, ask google. We also made a little review about conditionals. Altough it was preety easy, we have to be with the eyes open to some details that may be on the CAE test.
          We also discussed about politics and education in class. Marcos showed himself very interested in language subjects, and that indeed pleased the teacher. I'm afraid I may have been a little harsh with Amanda when I argued with her. I hope she doesn't take my words too seriously.
          I just realised that today I have a lot less to talk than last week. Maybe it was the first class excitment or something like that. Anyway, that's all folks!

segunda-feira, 14 de fevereiro de 2011

Weekly Cultural Review - True Grit


After Frank Ross is murdered in October 1880 by his hired hand, Tom Chaney, Ross' 14-year-old daughter Mattie hires the aging U.S. Marshal Reuben "Rooster" J. Cogburn Mattie has heard that, despite his vices and missing eye, Cogburn has "true grit". She gives Rooster a down payment to track down Chaney, who has taken up with "Lucky" Ned Pepper, a gang leader whom Rooster once shot in a gunfight.
Is this movie the resurrection of an old cliché? Will it bring back some genres that used to make a lot of money some decades ago? Or is it a critical view about how much has changed in the modern times? It doesn’t really matter since True Grit is one of the best movies released lately (even though it is a remake).
Anyone could say that Wild West movies are out nowadays and that means the movie is probably mediocre. It is a bad mistake because this film edges the perfection. The plot is amazingly surprising and touching. I can’t even say anything about the photography: just stunning.  The actors were just perfect too:  Jeff Bridges as an old and cruel drunk U.S. Marshal, Hailee Steinfield exceedingly well as a stubborn teenager that turns up as an extremely courageous woman and Matt Damon as the ‘stranger’ that ends helping everyone out.
The film seems to bring back an old formula that worked out very well in the past: the Old West; The Good Guys X The Bad Guys. This time, however, the good guys aren’t that good; they fight, insult and even shoot each other. Above all that, there is another innovation on this Wild West Movie: a woman as the main character.
The movie is very interesting if you start thinking about the message it tries to bring up and how the director managed to do that. Instead of an already known philosophic phrase that is repeated over and over again during the exhibit, the director used the characters very well in his favor. Most of the characters presented on the film are of strong beliefs and follow them. The director used that characteristic to expose a problem that’s getting bigger and bigger as the time pass by: the distortion of values and the lack of strong beliefs.
Undoubtedly, if some moviemakers stopped to watch this film over and over, they certainly would learn something about cinema. The Coen brothers did a great job overcoming my expectation about the movie.  The production by Steven Spielberg made sure why Spielberg is one of the greatest names in the cinema world.
The rhythm of the story is more regular than a Swiss clock, and it doesn’t make the film boring. When you watch that movie you want to stand up and help the good guys to find the bandit because you can’t just stay sit still and just watch, it is too exciting. The statistics of the movie prove that: no one yawned during any exhibition of the film, worldwide.

domingo, 13 de fevereiro de 2011

Sunday Afternoon Filosophic Thought

‎''Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you" - Dr. Seuss

sexta-feira, 11 de fevereiro de 2011

Give me something useful! Please! Just kidding

          Even though I always try to stop making blogs, every now and then I get a chance to start a new one. Anyway, this one I started as a homework for my new English class and I think I'm going to enjoy it XD. Well, today I felt a little (a little?) stupid and new at English because we were studying lots of expressions that doesn't mean't anything to me, they couldn't "talk" to me. The words were there, I could understand them, but I just couldn't get the meaning of those ones.
          Except for that part, the class as very much fun: the students got to know each other better, Henrick (our teacher) talked a lot (even though we didn't clap anytime), we learned how to write an article (uhul! finally something useful haha XD) and we got a lot of information about how we could study better for the exam we are going to take.
          It seems I didn't say anything about the course and the test. The class is actually a preparatory course for the Cambridge Advanced Exam (CAE). This is a test the measures our proeficiency at advanced English. There are 5 parts (papers if you will) of the exam: reading, writing, use of English, listening and speaking. I really expect to get a very good grade in it (A or B, at least) and for that I'm going to work hard. And this promise I'm do going to deliver.
          By the end of the class, happened the worst moment of all the three hours we spent there (no, it isn't the end of the class). I t started raining, and was probably the worst rain I've seen lately. It couldn't have to be that bad, you may be thinking. Well, I've got stuck inside the school for about one hour before I could catch a bus without getting VERY wet. And the traffic? God, you chose a damn bad day to decide to water your plants...
          Well, I better get going, there is a 30km bike ride waiting for me. CYA