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Seen it already. I must admit I was expecting yet another disappointment since the translation from comics to film is always difficult, especially when you have several characters to deal with and this was a movie about a team of superheroe s. Now that I've seen it the only thing I can say is... THAT MOVIE IS AWESOME! The highest point is the dialogues which showed the great dedication of the writers in order to understand these characters and project to the public who they really are. Character development is usually a flaw in this type of movies but not a problem here because this is actually part six (or seven) of a series that began with Iron Man 1, so if you have seen the previous films you already know where they stand.  As I said I was afraid it wouldn't turn out so well but the fact it didn't proves that if you choose people who really care and actually know the characters, the translation to the big screen will be a successful one. Here the merit has a name and...

   The necessity some people feel to be remembered is and has been in more than one case, less than abhorrent. It has manifested throughout time quite often and one classic example is that of the destruction of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, a construction regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. According to historical accounts, some Herostratus set fire to the temple in 356 B, just to make sure his name would never be forgotten. Did he reach his nefarious purpose? Well, he was condemned to death and a decree made an obligation to never pronounce his name, but someone disobeyed (otherwise you wouldn´t be reading this).       Herostratus´s action though disgusting serves as the light that reveals one of our most secret and darkest desires: we don't want to be forgotten. We have many different ways to satisfy this need and it´s not usual to find people like Herostratus and his demential definition of going into posterity. However, p...

The prophets of our time, the real ones, do not announce the end of the world as we know it, not at least using any religion as their power base. They tell us about the future, the marvels it may bring and also the trials we may have to endure. Take Arthur C. Clarke for instance. This science fiction writer as early as in the 50s was already talking about geostationary satellites and their potential as telecommunication relays. Let´s not forget that the first rocket to space was sent just in 1957 (it was the Sputnik1). He also predicted the creation of a global library (the Internet?) again in 1958, stating it would be in existence by 2005. Though incredibly famous he remained a nice person and a gent through and through again: one of my groups sent him letters commenting on Songs of a distant Earth, another book of his, and he took the time to respond sending a letter, several pics and stickers with his autograph! It's a pity the world lost this brilliant mind in 2008.

A forgotten villain, and also the inspiration of Skynet, the self-aware computer of the Terminator series. HAL9000 is older than the sentient machines of Matrix and perhaps the coldest killer depicted in any science fiction film. It kills the entire crew of the spaceship that is being used to investigate a mystery in space and it does it saying they could jeopardize their mission (to locate a strange black monolith in the solar system, a piece that could be of alien procedence). One man survives and manages to overcome the machine's attempts to murder him and resets its memory. He then finds the monolith and discovers the object has the power to somehow boost evolution. This all happens in 2001: A Space Odyssey , a film directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick and based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke. The movie ends with the protagonist, whose name is David Bowman, being transformed by the monolith into a new, apparently superior being.

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Wrath of the Titans, sequel to Clash of the Titans (the remake) is a movie to be seen only if you really enjoy visual effects, fantasy and you have nothing better to do. Really I went to see this movie expecting it to be superior to the one before, and well the answer was "not really". This movie lacks of inspiration, trying perhaps to bank on their overuse of action and special effects. Sam Worthington returns as Perseus, along Liam Neeson as Zeus, and Ralph Fiennes as Hades and even with such wonderful actors this movie fails in bringing the strentgh required for an epic of this magnitude. One who did not return was Louis Leterrier, the director of Clash of the Titans who was replaced by Jonathan Liebesman. When a sequel is shot using  a different director, well, that change usually has repercusions especially felt in the creative aspect. Also there is the liberty taken in interpreting or changing the original myths to make the film "more accessible" to the aud...

"¡Chuta!" is a common expression in Ecuador. It´s widely used in the Coast and in the Highlands. We can find the same word in Perú and Chile but always with a different meaning. In Ecuador it means something like "¡Vaya!" or even "¡Caramba!", and it´s believed to be a Quechua word originally. But perhaps it is not: curiously it´s used in the same cases as the English "Shoot!". Here is a hypothesis that may deserve exploration and it´s all mine: when Eloy Alfaro began the construction of the train that would connect Quito and Guayaquil at the beginning of the 20th century, many British experts came to lend their expertise and because of the magnitude of the project they had to remain in Ecuador and as a result some English expressions and terms (most about technicalitites that didn´t exist in Spanish) remained and were assimilated with "Shoot!" being one of them. "Shoot!" is too similar to "¡Chuta!" not to at least ...

 Gabriel, Raphael, Michael are all said to be the names of archangels. Their rol in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic beliefs is always to act as messengers of God (it was Gabriel who revealed the Qu´ran to Muhammad) or as enforcers of his law. The suffix El (deity) in their names reveals their divine origin (Michael for example means "Who is like God") though it is not exclusive to only them since some prophets´names such as Daniel or Samuel also have it. In the Old Testament the Saviour's name is revealed to be Emmanuel (God with us).     It is interesting that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,the creators of the archetype of all superheroes (Superman) chose El to create their character´s real name: Kal-El and his father´s, Jor-El. The explanation behind this fact was that in Krypton (Superman´s homeworld) everyone belonged to a "house" (family) so in their case El was actually a family name. But this explanation was devised later on, and not by Shuster or Siegel. ...

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD was famous for being one of the very few virtous emperors Rome had. He was a Stoic who did not become ruler willingly but accepted the job as "his duty". In order to keep his perspective clear and not turning into another arrogant and shortsighted governor, Marcus Aurelius had a servant who constanttly whispered in his ears "You´re only a man! I know of some Ecuadorian president who would benefit if he did the same thing