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This is one of those movies that being offered in 2D and 3D format I would say truly it is better if you see it in 3D because that is the highlight of this film: when it comes to depict wild life I have rarely seen such an effort. Truly the photography is amazing.  The film begins with Pi already a grownup talking to a writer who has been told Pi has an interesting story to tell so he is visiting Pi to hear that story. Pi is not this man´s real name but a short for Piscine which was the name his parents gave him. His parents owned a zoo in India but they have decided to move to Canada where his father has been offered a good job. Pi's father intends to sell his animals in Canada so he hires a Japanese freighter to take his family and the animals to Canada but one night during a storm something happens to the ship and it sinks. Pi is the only one who is awake and manages to get on a lifeboat. Amazingly one zebra, a hyena, an orangutan  and a Bengala tiger whose name is (by mis

Let's begin by saying Albert Nobbs is a sad story, but an interesting one at it. Albert is a waiter in a hotel in 1he 19th century Ireland, both a difficult time and a difficult place to live in. Albert is extremely dedicated to work and also introverted. Before going to bed Albert checks the money received as tips and secretly writes down all that in a small notebook and keeps the money away in a secret compartment in the floor. Everything is quite routinary, and well, in Albert's life until the day Mrs. Baker, the hotel owner, hires a painter to improve the aspect of certain rooms of the hotel. Since there is no place for Huber Page, the painter, to spend the night, Mrs. Baker decides Hubert can sleep with Albert to which Albert panicks because he has a secret: Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close) is a woman. That night and due to Albert's incapacity to control his fear to be discovered Huber discovers Albert is a woman. Albert practically begs Huber to keep his secret. huber a

We knew already that Gandalf was appearing in this prequel, but if you were expecting Frodo Baggins, Legolas or even Gollum to appear there, well you were quitte right. Frodo does appear if only briefly in some of the first scenes, Gollum is central to what happens in this first installment and Legolas who does not appear here is part of the story and will probably appear in the second part. This is the story of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman in his younger version and Ian Holm in his older version), Frodo's uncle, whom we met first as an old man (or hobbit) in Lord of The Rings. He also had  an adventure to tell, events that happened sixty years earlier. Precisely the movie begins then when Bilbo decides to write his story which coincides with the time Gandalf arrives and takes Frodo and the other hobbits with him. Then the action goes back in time sixty years when a young Bilbo Baggins, who loves his peaceful existence and his cozy, home receives Gandalf's visit. This is

If you do and you have not seen this movie, go rent it or buy it. Apparently, his one was filmed during a break between some of the Twilight movies. So if you are one of Stewart's fans and wants to see that beautiful face of hers, her sexy voice and sensual lips all over again, this movie is the chance. Onto the movie itself. It is a love story that takes place in a small city and involves the lives of several others, in this case the people working at Adventureland, a local amusement park that is open during summertime. The main character is James (Jesse Eisenberg) who has plans to go to a good university in New York but those plans meet with a disappointing ending when his parents tell him they  can no longer help him economically. James looks for a good summer job and only finds one in Adventureland. Left with no other choice he gets the job and while at work he meets a girl called Emily or Em (Kristen Stewart). Em is pretty, easygoing, openminded but has had low moments i

First of all, it has nothing to do with punching anyone. Boxing Day (observed on December 26th) is not a regular holiday either in all English speaking countries. It is not in the U.S. but it is in Great Britain. If the U.S. (and now even Ecuador too) have Black Friday then Great Britain and all the territories of the Commonwealth have Boxing Day meaning with this that Boxing Day is a shopping day and stores everywhere offer great discounts and promotions. In some cases it is shopping madness especially outside some electronics stores with some of them opening as early as 5 AM and closing at 11 PM with long lines of customers waiting outside to get the best discounts.  People are unsure of the origin of Boxing Day. the most common tradition explains that at some point during the Middle Ages those who serve the rich during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were allowed to go home the next day, that is December 26, and were also given a box with some money, gifts, and even food. This

What is a Loop? It is a maneuver thanks to which you close a curve (that is if you are flying a plane). It is applied in other contexts as well.  In the one presented in this sci-fi thrilller the term Loop is applied to Time traveling but with a twist. It is the year 2044 in Kansas in a U.S. that has entered a deep social and economic depression. As a result, crime has widespread and many young people dream of becoming criminals themselves to have a priviledged life. Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is enjoying that kind of life already for he is a hired killer who works for crimelords of the future. It happens that in 2074 time travel is discovered but the use of that technology is also strictly forbidden and also if you have enemies to get rid off there is no way to "dispose" of the bodies because of some kind of advanced tracking technology. In order to solve  that problem, crime bosses use their own time travel machines to send their victims thirty years into the

The X in X-mas is not the same X the X-men have. The X-men are called like that because they have an eXtra power, or powers. The X in X-mas means Christ because originally this word came fromthe Old Greek and the initial letter for Christ (Saviour) was none other than an X or a letter with a similar sound. Thus the custom of using it as a short for Christmas in writing stems from this fact. BTW, X-mas is pronounced the same way as Christmas. Nevertheless, if separated the word Christ is pronounced differently (with a long i) whereas when we say Christmas we use a short i.  This happens because the word Christmas comes from the Old English expression Cristes maesse which meant something like Mass of Christ and that word Cristes was said with a short i. The pronunciation was retained even as it changed meaning since it is no longer a mass but a festival of sorts and that is what it means precisely: the annual festivity that celebrates Jesus Christ's birth.  Other possible na

Well, both are correct to start with, but one is more frequently used than the other and that is Merry Christmas . The question is then:  "why do people prefer to say Merry instead of Happy if both are synonyms?" One reason is to avoid redundancy since most people wish a "happy Christmas" and also a "happy New Year" together due to the proximity of both holidays. Instead of saying "happy" twice it sounds more elegant to use merry and then happy.  Another reason is Collocation which is a term used to explain this constant use of some words with others, e.g. We get tired. Instead of We get tired  we could say We become tired but it's not common. Collocation explains why we say Do homework and not Make homework. Why do we say a high mountain but not a tall mountain ? Well, collocation explains that.  Because of Collocation words are wise but not smart . So if most people say  Merry Christmas, Collocation is responsible for that.    Perh

                                                   "I told you not to turn left. Now we are in some place called Ecuador! "     T he REYES MAGOS, as we know them in Spanish, are not called Magician Kings in English. In fact, they are said to be only "wise men". The idea that they were kings came later because the Gospel of Matthew is the only one out of the four that mentions them. He does not say they were kings, or magicians, their names, or even if they were three exactly. We only know they came from the east, that they brought presents for Jesus (Gold, Incense ad Myrrh) and that they were men of science (astronomers perhaps since they were guided by a star).  So calling them WISE MEN  or The MAGI is appropriate. The word Magi may be misleading though, since one may think they had powers of their own, but no.  They were men of science who practiced "magic" according to the common men of that time  who did not understand the science of the Wise Men

ESCENARIO is not SCENERY. ESCENARIO is STAGE which is in this context, a platform set at a higher level than the floor so it can be seen by an audience and that is used for artistic performances mainly.  Then, what does SCENERY mean? A Scenery is usually defined as the group of characteristics of some place in particular, usually nature-related, rural. e.g. The scenery that can be seen from that hill has changed through they years: in the past there were many trees but now there are only bushes. SCENERY is then LANDSCAPE which is also related to VIEW or VISTA (the word VISTA is also used in English only not that often).  Curiously, the word SCENARIO exists in English but with a completely different meaning. SCENARIO means a sequence of events, one that can be easily foretold. It is used especially when planning what actions to take when you are going to undertake some endeavour so any of the possible situations and outcomes to be analyzed. The expression "The Worst Case

In Spanish we say EL FIN DE LOS DIAS o EL DIA DEL JUICIO FINAL to indicate the end of the world as we know it. In English the first is THE END OF DAYS and the other is JUDGMENT DAY. In Spanish there is another word to indicate the same and that is APOCALIPSIS which is APOCALYPSE in English. By the way, the last book in the Bible is usually called Apocalipsis in Spanish but in English is known as Revelations. Besides the ones mentioned above, there are no many more words in Spanish to describe that "special" day. Nevertheless, in English there is another: DOOMSDAY. There is no real equivalent of this word in Spanish and that is why is translated as EL DIA DEL JUICIO FINAL just like Judgment Day. A more faithful translation would be Día de la Perdición, but that is perhaps too literal.  RAGNAROK is mentioned also. Actually, that word is taken from the old Norse mythology and should be understood as the Twilight of the Gods. Since the English culture takes heavily from t

This one is not difficult because it is just as when we say the Aztecs or the Incas. In other words, we can safely say The Mayas if we refer to the people who once were part of this Mesoamerican civilization or their descendants. The word Maya can also function as an adjective and thus we can use this word in terms such as: The Maya Cities or the Maya period. Curiously enough, if we refer to all the Mayas then we can use the term The Maya, and it also serves as the name for the entire civilization. That use is not mandatory and if you find more comfortable to say The Mayas, do it and leave the other to the scientists. The term Mayan also exists but it is preferred when talking about the cultural aspects of this civilization such as their languages, traditions, architecture and so on. Last but not least if we want to say CALENDARIO MAYA then we say MAYAN CALENDAR. As stated before to use MAYAN or MAYA (when working as adjectives) is really optional and should not be considered a

The Iliad is an epic poem by which all the other epic poems are defined. It tells the story of the War of Troy that was fought by men and gods alike. Curiously it only covers part of the last year of the siege that the Greeks had imposed. That year was the last of ten long years,but the poem does not finish with the fall of Troy: it ends with the telling of the funerals celebrated for two great warriors, one on the Greek side and the other on the Trojan side.  It is a curious thing that Homer, the author of The Iliad, decided not to cover any of the events of the previous years or how the war ended (which we know thanks to other sources but still only partially). Homer seemed to be content with telling what happened when the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles, is infuriated because of an offense made by the Greek leader called Agamemnon. Secretly Patroklos (Achilles's best friend) takes Achilles's armor and fights along the Greeks until he encounters Hector, the greatest Tr

This is the story of Claireece Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) also called "Precious" a pregnant teen, not very good looking, with a most awful family. She is sixteen and is already the mother of a little girl who has Down syndrome and as the movie begins we learn she is pregnant again. In both cases the father is her own father who is a drug addict that leaves home and returns after a long while to stay some time, do his thing and leave again. Mary (Mo'nique) who is Precious's mother is an unbalanced person who mistreats Claireece both physically and psychologically and uses Precious's daughter to obtain welfare money from the government.  Precious lives in Harlem, a poor section of New York, and due to his pregnancy soon is forced to leave the school she is attending. Her problems do not end there. She gives birth to a healthy boy whose life is threatened by Mary. It seems Mary hates the baby because it is her husband's son but not hers. To make matters sadder f

Batman, The Brave and The Bold, was a TV series where Batman usually teamed up with another superhero for an adventure. Each episode actually included two different adventures. The art, quite cartoonish,  marked the tone of the show which seemed to aim at an audience younger than the previous series. Batman was still dark but not much and was also gritty abut only a little bit.The emphasis was more on his crime fighting skills than his detective skills or on his penchant to work in the shadows of the very shadowy Gotham. Most of the time it was lighthearted and entertaining.  Most of the time. There is one episode that stands for being different from the rest and that is Chill of The Night. Batman is on his way to confront the man who shot his parents and also to discover something that is a new element in the Batman mythos: that his parents´deaths were not a random event. Unaware of what is happening in a realm beyond ours, Batman's actions are observed with interest by two

                                                           "I'm the Ultimate Muscled Man! So many muscles I can't move."      ULTIMATE is not ULTIMO. LAST is, but not ULTIMATE. Though sometimes it is translated as ULTIMO (to mean the most recent), it never means "the one after which there is not another". For instance, we say: "the last episode" of a series and not "the ultimate episode".  ULTIMATE is generally used to indicate something is conclusive or the best as in "the ultimate guide to tablets" indicating that there is no better source to get data on tablets than that one. ULTIMATE may also indicate that something is so good in what it does that it cannot be overcome or defeated as it is the case of the man in the picture, a wrestler called The Ultimate Warrior, famous in the eighties and nineties and who was quite hard to defeat indeed.  So whenever you are preparing something if it´s really good you can declare yo

Have you not had enough of Dragon Ball Z already? I haven't, so that's why I was happy to know that a new Dragon Ball Z movie has been announced and its premiere will be on March 13, 2013. Though in one way or another there has been Dragon Ball material out there whether in the form of video games or the remastering of Dragon Ball Z (known as Dragon Ball Kai), this is different in some ways.  First, it is not a special or anything like that. It is a MOVIE (an animated film) and its theatrical release has already been teased in a trailer that is in the Internet already  Akira Toriyama is back to work once again in his immortal creation. Imagine that: the first time was a delight, surely the second time will be a feast.  It is called Battle of Gods because indeed two deities intervene. One is the god of creation Wils and the other, the god of Destruction, Bils. Of course Goku is ecstatic with the idea of fighting a strong contender, but perhaps this god is more than

For years I have wondered if Kléber was truly a name or it was the name of something else that somehow was adapted to be a name. I did my homework and found there is a small village in Germany called Kleve. The term Klever literally means "that who inhabits Kleve".  But it's not a name. During the French Revolutionary wars there was a general called Jean Baptiste Kléber (in the pic) who fought once against an army of 60.000 men and defeated them with only 10,000 at his side. That reveals he was a true master in the "art of war". But his was a surname not a first name.  I also found that there are klébers all over South America. Curiously, most of them are soccer players. In the case of my compatriots I have my suspicions. It was only in recent times that there are in Ecuador references to  Kléber, and so the only possible conclusion is that the name was introduced relatively recently. Perhaps somebody overheard the "future" name during

"Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a middle-age woman who is different from all the other women her age living in Jackson, Mississipi. She is a writer, much more open-minded than her peers who are content with being housewives and having black women raise her children instead of doing that themselves so they can dedicate to their limited but apparently very important (to them) social lives. Tired of seeing so much injustice Skeeter decides to write a book in which she exposes the hipocrisy of the society of that time and place and the intense but concealed racism that whites used to deal with black maids who in that time where collectively deemed as The Help (hence the title of the movie and the novel on which was based by then newcomer writer, Kathryn Stockett). This film is an impudent light that tells an "unglorious" part of the U.S. society of the early sixties that still striving to uphold the ideals of equality and freedom that supposedly were the foundati

Not necessarily Fried Potatoes. Not at least if you mean potatoes prepared the way you see them in the picture, those are FRENCH FRIES. In Spanish we just call them PAPAS FRITAS. If they are flat, rounded and a bit curved then those are POTATO CHIPS, but we also call them PAPAS FRITAS.  FRIED POTATOES in English are usually pieces of potatoes roughly cut in the shape of squares and thus fried in a pan (they are also called panfried potatoes) PAPAS are POTATOES, and PATATAS are also POTATOES. Why is this? Potatoes are from the American continent which was back then very religious. The original name was PAPA, but since that name was considered offensive to the POPE (PAPA in Spanish) a new name was give to this product and therefore the word PATATA was coined, but many who perceived the fact as silly kept the other word and these days both terms are accepted (though in Ecuador we only say PAPA).

These are not pill packages, but car pedals. Though you can say ACCELERATOR, if what you mean is ACELERADOR, GAS PEDAL is more common. Occasionally, some people refer to it as SPEEDING PEDAL for obvious reasons. In turn, the word FRENO in English is BRAKE PEDAL, perhaps the most important out of the three pedals in non-automatic cars. However, the most unusual is how we say EMBRAGUE in ENGLISH. The word is CLUTCH.  BTW, it is important to know that just like in Ecuador, they drive on the right in the U.S. but on the left in the United Kingdom. Also, in the United States, you need a Driver's License (Licencia de Conducir), but in Great Britain, the same document is called a Driving Licence.  Which one do you prefer?                                                                                                                                                  

Esa es una pregunta que muchos se hacen. Hay dos "tipos" de Inglés por así decirlo, el Inglés estadounidense y el Inglés británico.  Unos se inclinan por el Inglés de los Estados Unidos porque es "más fácil" y otros por el Inglés británico porque es el "verdadero". Ninguna de estas aseveraciones son ciertas. El Inglés americano es tan complicado como el Inglés británico, incluso tiene más palabras porque se ha demostrado que es más dinámico y acepta más fácilmente palabras tomadas de otros idiomas. El Inglés británico es tan bueno como cualquier otro pero no necesariamente mejor. ¿Es el Español de España mejor que el nuestro? No lo creo. ¿Lo cree usted? Al final es una cuestión de gusto o sentido práctico. Usted debería aprender Inglés británico si va a vivir o trabajar en ese país o si simplemente le gusta la idea de que este "suena mejor".  La realidad es que no hay muchos profesores británicos trabajando en Ecuador. Solíamos tene

Often my high schools students tell me that they are worried because "they  have many lessons that day". It is a common mistake in Ecuadorian students and it all begins with the fact that we call quizzes APORTES or LECCIONES. When they say LESSONS my students actually mean QUIZZES. A QUIZ is usually defined as an informal test, precisely what we Ecuadorians call a LECCION or APORTE. So it begs the question...what is the meaning of LESSON then? A LESSON  is a teaching session, a part of a course of study, in other words, what we know as a CLASE. When a teacher says in Spanish "la clase de hoy", in English that is "today's lesson". And then one more question...what is the meaning of CLASS? Well, a CLASS is a group of students (not the content to be taught) that meet at school to receive formal instruction.  So summarizing: A Quiz is una Leccion A Lesson is una Clase A Class is a group of students So next time you hear someone sayi