EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

You may remember him as Major Tony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie, where he is a good guy in love with a blond genie; but he is better known for a much darker role he played in a famous series of the eighties, Dallas. Larry Hgaman was J.R. Ewing, the oldest son of a wealthy family in the oil and cattle-ranching business. As such J.R. saw every member of his family as a pawn in a chess game where pretty much everyone else was his opponent. J.R. was the perfect portrayal of the manipulating, merciless, scheming multimillionaire who was hungry for more. There was only one word to define him: evil. Still this character had such a mysterious charm that perhaps the phrase "the villain everyone loves to hate" was created for him. This is so true that Hagman appeared in the entire run of the series (357 episodes), also appearing in two subsequent movies made in 1996 and 1998 respectively. His character is not a cliche because every other character of similar characterisitcs became an...

Years ago while attending an EFL conference in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the president of some local EFL group said the following while speaking: "In the past this was different but ACTUALLY it's much better..." I had not really been paying attention (not that she was addressing any relevant topic) until she said that.  I don't know if the other attendées understood what she meant or maybe they were not paying attention either; but as an Ecuadorian I'm better suited to understand how other Ecuadorians think and what they mean when they speak; especially if like me those Ecuadorians are from Guayaquil, too. And that was the case here. I was awfully surprised by who made the mistake rather than the mistake itself.  In my experience to misuse the word ACTUALLY  is a common occurrence among Spanish speakers who are learning English. I see it happening all the time. The problem stems from the similarity existing between the spelling of the words ACTUALLY and ACTUALMENTE...

Hablar de Pescador es hablar de una pequeña joya de nuestro cine. Sebastián Cordero se luce dirigiendo un filme donde nos vemos reflejados todos de alguna manera. Todos, hombres y mujeres, somos como Blanquito, el protagonista (Andrés Crespo), quien teniendo una oportunidad de esas que no se dan todos los días (a su pueblo llega un cargamento de droga el cual es reclamado por narcos que para evitarse problemas no dudan en pagar a cada poblador una cierta cantidad) la toma para responder una pregunta que le ha intrigado toda la vida: ¿me aceptará mi padre si me ve?. Blanquito sale de su pueblo desencantado porque la mujer en la que había puesto sus ojos escoge a otro. Sale en búsqueda de su identidad, quiere conocer al hombre que es su padre y que nunca lo reconoció pero de quien se sabe hijo gracias a su madre que nunca le ha ocultado la verdad. Le acompaña una bella mujer (María C. Sánchez), que reside en una villa aparte del pueblo y a quien su amante tiene abandonada. Cada quien ...

M.T.I. stands for Mother Tongue Interference. It is basically the collective formed by all the problems experienced by English learners when using the L2 language and that are at the same time the result of an involuntary mixture between L1 and L2. The stage when learners are developing English structures in their minds and using them either correctly or incorrectly is called metalanguage and it is in this stage when MTI most often takes place. MTI apparently occurs at a subconscious level so the learner does not notice there is a problem in what he or she says and therefore the intervention of a third party (a teacher or another learner) is usually required to make a correction.  My experience as a teacher is mostly with Spanish speakers who are learning English, and as such I can only refer to that group. There are numerous examples of MTI in this group, perhaps due to the afinity of both languages which are really more similar than different. Of course there are those who...

This is one of those times when I wonder " What were they thinking?", and it resounds so loud inside my mind is no longer a question but something else. Really if the producers of this 21 Jump Street remake wanted another teen movie I don't understand why they chose such a cool series to base their fiasco on. The movie has a comedic tone, that even becomes grotesque at times, and thus diverts from the more serious tone the original series had. Unbelievably it happens in the continuity of the series and tells the story of  Morton Schmidt ( Jonah Hill ) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) former classmates who end up becoming police officers that for their youthful appearance are sent to a special division to work undercover as high school students and to investigate crimes being committed in those educational centers. After messing up the situation with their clumsy efforts to discover the mysterious supplier of a new drug, Schmidt and Jenko finally find out who the crimina...

The Men in Black are back and this time agent J (Will Smith) will save the world as we know it by saving agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and for that he will have to travel to the sixties in order to prevent that an alien time-traveler murder K's younger self (Josh Brolin). Sounds mindboggling? Well, it is. When an alien who was imprisoned by K in the past escapes from prison, he then begins a scheme that will result in K's death and an alien invasion in our present. Using his influences J manages to get a device that will take him to the day before K is murdered. There are a lot of things happening in th+´p This new sequel allows Smith to prove he was born to be agent J, Tommy Lee Jones looks truly old but does not disappoin and Brolin surprises in his role as a younger K. The movie also has all the stylistic elements that made the previous two a great success each, especially the weird-looking aliens contrasting with the serious though sleek human agents. The plot is consistent...

Tower Heist is the story of a group of employees who work happily in one of the most exclusive apartment buildings in New York. One day one of their most exclusive clients, a businessman called Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), is arrested when attempting to flee from the Police because he is being accused of running fraudulent operations. It happens that the employees of the builiding had previously entrusted Shaw with all their pensions, and even their savings, believing Shaw would triple their money when in fact ended up losing it. Soon they realized that Shaw is not the good man they believed him to be and figure out he has probably saved money "for a rainy day" and decided to steal that hypothetical money from him. The plan is a dangerous one and since none is experience in stealing thye enlist the help of one who is (Eddie Murphy). Toge ther they attempt the bold operation and what happens during and after the heist is the focus of the movie. The cast is full of stars with ...

Hard to say, really. If only for what we can see in the picture added to this entry, my money is on Charlize. She looks cold, cruel and yet regal, while Julia cannot shake off that "good girl" image. Without the proper context I would even say she is some fairy godmother though there is none mentioned in the story of Snow White. Of course they are both consumate interpreters (they  both are Oscar winners) and to be fair, we should watch first both versions of the fairy tale where this queen witch rears her pretty-then-ugly face. And in this case, two of them. BTW, it´s not the first time that Snow White is taken to the silver screen in non-animated form: Sigourney Weaver (the famous Ripley in the first three Alien movies was also the evil queen in Snow White: A Tale of Terror. Is it having two different interpretations of the same tale put out the same year a good idea? It´s not unusual that two film companies decide to release movies that deal with the same theme if onl...

An interesting film, and the first directed by Quentin Tarantino. It is here where you can see those elements that became recurrent in Tarantino´s following films such as gunmen, lots of blood and violence, profanity, music classics from the seventies and a non-linear argument. It tells you the story of a heist. We get to see the events before and after that event but never the event itself. Sections of the movie are devoted to certain key characters who know one another only through aliases. The heist fails miserably and therefore these criminals figure out that their carefully prepared plan can only have failed by the intervention of a traitor. True, there is a traitor since one of them is a cop working undercover; and when his identity is revealed that creates an even bigger problem than the one they had before. The actors include Steve Buscemi (who has been in The Sopranos and Pulp Fiction) , Tim Roth (who appeared in Hulk 2 as the Abomination), Michael Madsen (who also starred ...

La luna está ahí para solaz de los enamorados y como blasón de los dementes, pues por igual se la asocia con los unos como con los otros. No hay pieza para piano más hermosa que la sonata Claro de Luna de Beethoven ni palabra más despectiva para un loco que ser llamado lunático. La luna ha estado ahí desde siempre (se cree incluso que una vez fue una sola cosa con nuestro planeta), marcando el paso de las mareas, ayudando a los agricultores o iluminando una parte de todas las noches de un año. Su faz tan cercana a nosotros no es sino un gran enigma, uno más de los que se esconden ante nuestros ojos allá en los cielos; incierta y dudosa es sin embargo el símbolo de grandes grupos religiosos como los musulmanes aunque no es en sí un símbolo del Islam. Pero más allá de todo eso hay un papel que la luna siempre ha tenido y del que poco se ha comentado y es aquel de ser escudo de nuestro planeta. Si repasamos la superficie lunar sin mucho esfuerzo encontraremos infinidad de cráteres ...

To empower means to give power or confer authority to; to give some ability to do something; enable or permit. It is difficult to translate to Spanish for lack of a term that entirely reflects the meaning of that word, so most translators prefer to use the word "empoderar". Amazingly as it is  the RAE  already defines it as  " Calco del inglés  to empower,  que se emplea en textos de sociología política con el sentido de ‘conceder poder [a un colectivo desfavorecido socioeconómicamente] para que, mediante su autogestión, mejore sus condiciones de vida" .  Those collectives mentioned by the RAE might as well be Women, Indians or Afroamericans which are known to be relegated by the governments or society itself. Still when used in Spanish the word Empower  sounds awkward. There is this feeling of uneasiness accompanied by the inevitable thought of "Can they not find a better word?" I´m not a hundred percent sure but perhaps Facultar could have be...

"Lleve, lleve, su BISTEC  a dos dolár..." Subir arriba, salir afuera are all examples of redundance in Spanish. In Ecuadorian eating places it is common to hear people saying:  "¡Quiero un bistec de carne!"  and that in a way is also redundant, but not for the same reasons. It turns out that the word BISTEC is originally English - a ST EAK is defined as a thick slice of beef, usually taken from the hindquarters of the animal. In other words, it’s unnecessary to say "de carne" because that is part of the definition of that word. The definition of BISTEC in Spanish is  filete de carne asada o frita, so that is also different in the Ecuadorian culture where a BISTEC is prepared differently. It´s also a slice of steak but cooked in a sauce that includes onions, green pepper, and tomatoes. I have tried both and preferred the Ecuadorian BISTEC though accompanied with boiled potatoes. Isn't it yummy?

Perhaps one of the most intelligent, and also fervent, apostles was Paul. Said to have been an enemy of the ancient Christians, he changed when the recently resurrected Jesus himself appeared before him, encounter that left him blind for three days and with a different mindset forever. He used to be called Saul and apparently a Roman citizen. In order to spread the gospel he traveled to Rome in a time when Christians were prosecuted. Still he managed to preach in the heart of the Roman empire and say the following words to people that were warrior-like and a bit bloodthirsty but apparently also very religious: "Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands." (  Acts 17:24) . What Paul meant was a an altar that existed in the city of Rome which was dedicated to the Unknown God. The Romans listened to Paul because they wouldn´t w...

Hulk is one of the strongest Marvel superheroes (perhaps the strongest) and yet he cannot lift Thor´s hammer (called Mjolnir) because the hammer is magical in nature. Odin, Thor´s father, enchanted the hammer so only someone who is "worthy" can use it and thus possess the power of Thor. This worthiness issue has never been disclosed completely. Perhaps being worthy in this context indicates that a person has to be a noble and magnificent warrior since it was a warrior-god who enchanted the hammer in the first place. Hulk does not really qualify since he is driven by anger and not a sense of justice. This also means that other people besides Thor can lift Mjolnir and that exclusive list includes Captain America, Odin himself, and amazingly also Wonder Woman and Superman from DC comics, Marvel's eternal rival. True, during a collaboration of both companies the superheroes of these two universes became allies to fight against an all-powerful enemy and in one of the final i...

ELE is what we know as an Extinction Level Event, an event so catastrophic it can wipe out an entire species or several species at the same time. Many disasters can be catalogued as ELEs, for example a solar flare of the right magnitude could render our atmosphere useless forever. The classic one is a meteor impact. The image of a dinosaur raising his eyes to the sky to spot a flaming ball heading toward the planet is at the same time enticing and haunting. This is so true that there are dozens of films inspired in the possibility of these events ever happening with Deep Impact being one of the most convincing and better researched (also one of the few where they use the  ELE term).  Apparently t he chance of a meteor ever colliding with Earth is not that unlikely. There are millions of objects roaming the Solar System and many can potentially start a collision course and impact Earth. In fact it happens quite often only that these objects are so tiny that they are destr...

It´s hard for me to believe in what I cannot see. I believe in what I can prove it's real so whimsical deities or angry stalking ghosts are for me only immaterial characters. But if angels were real then I´d say I know them. Having met several the first one was my mother. She lit my existence, she opened my eyes to the grandeur of the universe, she taught me to persevere. She was an example to me and when I´ve been good is because she said that was the right thing to do. She was proud of me, and above all she loved me. Still after all these years I feel she's somewhere and we´ll be reunited if only for a moment before I die...the things we´ll talk then, the hugs and the tears that will come to be. I loved being loved by her and felt lost when she was gone all these years ago. Her love was immeasurable and I could never comprehend where all that came from until the moment Luis was born. Now every time I see him I smile and I understand. Somehow I feel my Mom is smiling as wel...

The Navy forces of the world gather together annually in order to exchange experiences  and strenghten their collective brotherly bonds. This time, however, everything will be so much more different since an alien force has arrived in the Pacific ocean and there is nothing that can stop it from achieving its purposes ( to invade Earth of course and exterminate all humans in the process ). "Very original" but also very fun. Taylor Kisch (John Carter in John Carter of Mars  and Gambit in X- Men Origins. Wolverine ) plays lieutenant  Hopper , a hotshot that does not fit in  the Navy and is about to be kicked out for his recless behavior. Through an embroidered chain of events Hopper ends up being in command of a ship and leads its crew to face the alien threat, survive it and actually win. How? Well, it turns out that Hopper is a master in military strategy, a talent he discovers as he fights the aliens; and of course, there is a lot of convenient "facts" that help a...

It’s a bit complicate. If we mean The Avengers of the “standard” Marvel universe then the answer is no. The original Avengers were comprised by the same characters of the movie minus Hawkeye and Black Widow who would become members later on (in fact, Captain America was not one of the original Avengers either since he was retrieved from his frozen prison by The Avengers and not Nick Fury). Also Giant man and The Wasp were in the original team, but they do not appear in the movie.  If we mean a parallel universe called “The Ultimate universe” the answer is closer to a yes (still a no). There is an infinite number of universes coexisting with the “standard” Marvel universe which means infinite versions of the same superheroes and therefore a myriad of versions of The Avengers. At the time Marvel wanted to offer a fresh, more modern take on its superheroes without eliminating the current versions and created “The Ultimate” line, a universe with updated versions of the heroes we ...

Everyone knows the story of Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm brothers. What many ignore is the background behind this so called fairy tale. The story is set in the Europe of the Middle Ages in a time where the quality of life was anything but good and food for example was scarce. As a result, infanticide was one of the practices families of that time performed in order to ensure survival. Little children were abandoned to die and in the original version it is Hansel and Gretel´s mother (not stepmother) who asked her husband to leave the children so deep in the forest that they could not find their way back. The children found a house, a cottage made of candy, chocolate and icing. The owner of the house, an old lady invites them to come in and traps them. Inside the cottage the kids are trapped by the old lady and fed to have them ready to be eaten. The old woman is described as an old witch with bad eyesight  (hence the reason for the cany house to work as a trap and make things ea...

It's true. He's a god and everything  but flight is not in his list of abilities. Superman can fly, Iron man can fly, Green Lantern can fly,but not Thor; nevertheless, we see him flying in his own title and in the movies. How does he do it? The answer is really simple. It´s all about that whirlwind-like movement he performs before he goes up in the air. He moves Mjolnir (the name of his enchanted hammer) that way and then he thrusts it forward and as a result Thor is pulled by his hammer and looks like he's flying. Of course, it also falls on Thor's skillfulness to keep the momentum for as long as he can, plus it also helps that Mjolnir is essentially a magic tool created to help his owner in this and many other endeavours. This really ingenous method is only exhibited by Thor's Marvel's version. The Norse version, moves around in a chariot pulled not by horses but by two goats called  Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr   . As you can see, Marvel was right to keep t...

Were fairy tales created to entertain children or to frighten them? Perhaps it depends on which fairy tales we are referring to. Some are “harmless”, so to speak, such as Pinocchio written by Carlo Collodi. But there are others like those written by the Grimm brothers by Andersen the intention of which is a bit suspicious. The Red Shoes by Andersen for example tell the story of a vain stepdaughter who is so proud of her red shoes she even wears them to church gaining apparently divine disapproval. At a party she begins dancing and cannot stop. An angel then appears to her revealing her shoes are now cursed and  won´t ever stop not even after she dies (creepy!) to serve as an example to other children.  She keeps dancing for days until she finds an executioner who taking pity on her chops her feet off, and the shoes still with her feet inside kept dancing around. The executioner replaces her feet with wooden part. Repented the girl attempts to go back to church, bu...

     Last night the sky over our city was so clear you could see Mars as a point that whimsically showed its redish color and then not. Mars is the Roman name for the Greek god of war, Ares. Romans pretty much adopted a great part of the Greek culture including the religion and just changing the names with some of their own making (the exception is perhaps Janus, the two-faced god). In Roman culture Mars was an important god, more even than Jupiter himself; understandable, considering how tightly they embraced warfare. The presence of Mars in the sky was not regarded by all cultures the same way. Some saw it as a herald of ominous things to come. the Egyptians knew about its retrograde motion, the indians tried to calculate their diameter,the Babylonians recorded its position and movements, the Italians calculated its distance to the Sun, andin 1610,  Galilei´s eyes were the first to observe its surface through a telescope.          ...

Well, now we know that the villain in Avengers 2 is none other than Thanos (or so it's suggested by the bonus scene after the credits). The name is based on Thanatos, the name of the Greek god of death; however, Thanos is not Greek but some sort of megalomaniac superbeing, member of a godlike race exisiting in the Solar System of the Marvel universe. What's the meaning of this? Well, if you're not a fan it'll mean very little. Unlike Batman, Superman or Spiderman who have villains that are well known, the Avengers do not have enemies who are known to the public. Nothing to be surprised if we consider that the Avengers themselves were mostly known only to comics fans before that scene at the end of Iron Man 1 where the Avengers initiative is mentioned for the first time.  Thanos means business. To have an idea of his power level, suffice to say that Loki compared to him...well, in words of us, Guayaquileños: "Loki es un pendejo comparado con Thanos". Every ti...