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Saw XXVII: The Long Yawn. It's the year 3000, messages from a forgotten character who called himself Jigsaw (yawn) have been unearthed. People have been found after suffering unnecessarily painful and bizarre deaths (yawn). The authorities believe Jigsaw has managed to find another disciple even in this time... You know though I came up with this sketchy plot, the always money-hungry Hollywood execs could easily come up with something similar. It´s amazing that they took this concept and stretched it out to make seven films. Make no mistake, though I don´t like gory movies I enjoyed the first installment of Saw because there were some interesting elements in it. One was this aged man who happens to harbor a dementially sadistic imagination and decides to take revenge upon those who didn´t help him with his disease or mocked him. He also wants to teach them a lesson in the process, a lesson which if learnt correctly could mean the salvation of the victims he chooses. It ´s so o

This is one conversation out of the many I have with my students, day in and day out. T: What is that on your desk? S: Oh, erm... I´m working Mister, really. T: That doesn´t look to me like the Language B book. S: Oh! That book...I have it in my backpack... T: So, why don´t you take it out of your backpack and begin to work? S: Oh, yes Mister, of course, Mister. T: Still you haven't answered my question. S: Oh that... T: I told you already: Math class is over. Put that calculator away! S: Oh, it´s no calculator, Mister. T: What is it then? S: It´s a hmm, it´s a smartphone. T: Wonderful! Listen X, I can tell the difference between a smartphone and a calculator. This one has numbers, algebra symbols, even algorithms! S: So, Mister...maybe that´s why they´re called SMARTphones!

Meet Dr. Martin Harris. After arriving in Berlin with his wife, he alone suffers a car accident. Four days later, he awakes in a hospital; his documents, lost; his memory a blur and no one, not even his own wife, seems to remember him. Is he the victim of some sick joke? The truth is actually even worse than that. "Unknown" is a roller coaster with its ups and downs, never boring though. A must-see, already in DVD, with the usual extras and of course the acting of the always consistent, and overwhelming, Liam Neeson

Reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a wonderful experience. It’s one of those novels that leaves you with the impression you were in some roller coaster, meaning it has its ups and downs. Characters for one thing are really flat; most of  them are one-dimensional such as Nelly one of the narrators of the story (it is told in third person through some of the characters) who is kind and patient, or the main character himself, Heathcliff, who is greedy and revengeful for no apparent reason. The strong points are in the plot itself, full of surprises, and the dialogs which perfectly capture the spirit of each of the characters. Though it’s not a love story Wuthering Heights is about a love story. Truly, it’s the story of how the members of two families become pawns of Heathcliff, a man who is cold, calculating but at the same time immensely driven by his love for Catherine Earnshaw who in turn loves him, and yet such love is doomed to never be consummated, not at least in this

If you haven't seen Tron The Legacy well...you should, but see it in 3D. It's a movie made to impress your eyes. It begins in our world with the son of the creator of an alternate reality following the clues that will help him find his father who has been lost for years. It turns out this man's father created a video game that is much more than that: it's another reality that can be accessed by others, not only his creator, and inadvertently the young man enters that reality called The Grid and his adventure to locate his father within The Grid begins.  There are other aspects equally remarkable, details  as in the scene where the main character steps in his lost father's office and just then you get to listen to the immortal "Sweet Dreams" (the Eurythmics version). The acting is all right and the story is consistent and well-paced though nothing astounding. The good thing is you don't need to have seen Tron, the first installment, to understand wh

Before the X-men ever existed there were only mutants. What drove Xavier to believe in a world where humans and mutants could coexist harmoniously? What made his best friend oppose that dream and thus become Xavier’s greatest enemy?  If you want to watch a good superhero movie then this is a good pick. It can be found in the DVD format already with extras that include scenes that were never seen in the movie, and there is one in particular that deserves attention: when Xavier and Magneto are looking for mutants to recruit and they go to a nightclub. You´ll be able to see Michael Fassbender, the actor that appears as a young Magneto, dressing as a drag queen!  Chronologically speaking this is also a good point to understand the X-Men  since it is supposed to be the first of the series. Then you could continue with Wolverine: Origins and then X- Men I, II and III. This film also answers the question of how the X-men came to be, why Magneto came to the conviction mutants are a supe

Y podría llegar a serlo si juega sus cartas bien. Por ahora pareciera estar sondeando el terreno. Está de acá para allá, llegando de improviso a barrios pobres para ver cómo le reciben. Le conocen poco. Es por ahora sólo un ex-banquero con ambiciones.  Por supuesto desde ya cuenta con un gran apoyo marcado por todos los sectores de derecha que odian a Correa. Es tal vez el rival a temer y probablemente ya los asesores del reyezuelo se lo han hecho ver. Las elecciones del próximo año van a ser interesantes con candidatos conocidos que no quieren entender lo estúpido de su persistencia y con nuevos que sólo buscan una notoriedad que les durará cinco minutos. Ahí estará Noboa quién sueña con suceder al reyezuelo aún cuando se arriesgue a una derrota más. (¿La cuarta? ¿la quinta? Ya perdí la cuenta). Ahí quiere estar también  el auto-exiliado quien incapaz de creer en la capacidad de su propio hijo aún apuesta por sí mismo como si ya estuviera cansado de jugar en los casinos y de toma

This one happens more often than not and again is all due to the influence of our mother language (MTI). It is common that during the learning process our students assume that the use of the definite article THE is the same in English and Spanish, but this is true only in some cases. Expressions such as the last year or the next class instead of last year or  next class regularly happen in the development of our students' metalanguage and clearly show that the old "think-in Spanish-first-then-quickly-translate-it-into English" approach  is in process in our learners. Another explanation for this problem in particular is that Spanish has not one but five different definite articles: el, la, lo, los las. It is possible to say THE LAST YEAR in English but in an entirely different context: after THE LAST YEAR there is not another year because THE LAST YEAR already happened. Saying THE NEXT CLASS implies there is only one class left and after that one there is not another

  The Truth about your Life We're very sorry, very sorry indeed. You see, this is a document to explain that your life, your life as you know it, will come to an end. Please, we do not want to upset you at any level. Those who write this are your friends, your partners and perhaps the closest to a family you will ever have, but as they used to say: "To all good things an end."          There is a real existence )9?&& and the one you are living through right now is not real. The people you call your family are not real, your friends are not real, the place you are in right now, even this document, are nothing but fictional “””k¨L&%% products. They do not exist, you do not exist, because the person you believe you are is a creation, your creation. Are you puzzled? Are you smiling? Good, then you are reacting well. We are your friends but none of us is a psychologist so we are not sure how to do this properly, without mentally disturbing you too muc

"And what if instead of talking I just whistle?" Yes, it is. It all began with the man in the picture, none other than Alexander Graham Bell. Though he did not invent the telephone (it was developed by Antonio Meucci) he did come up with its first practical version. Once the first phones began being commercialized they did not have the capacity to connect directly and it was necessary the help of operators who of course when receiving a call requesting a connection had to greet somehow so they used the most conventional one, none other than the very English word HELLO. Of course, such a necessary tool as the telephone soon had to cross the borders and made its way to Spanish-speaking countries where HELLO remained similar, only with a different spelling: ALÓ. In other words, whenever we answer the phone and say ALÓ, we're actually saying HELLO.     English is indeed present in our lives in the most unsuspected places. We can safely say it is with us even from the mom

El señor Fernando Lugo ya no es presidente de Paraguay una vez que fuera destituido al ser acusado de tener responsabilidad por la muerte de casi quince campesinos durante  un desalojo violento de invasores de una hacienda privada. Es cierto que Lugo ordenó el desalojo pero no el modo en que se hizo y sin embargo por ello fue destituido. Lugo a manera de reacción  en lugar de aferrarse a su cargo sorprende a todos y personalmente llama a la prensa para informar de su decisión de aceptar la destitución. El de Lugo es un mensaje poderoso. Por mucho que haya sido el presidente de la república al final saber que una orden suya costó la vida de quince inocentes no es algo que una persona decente, sobre todo alguien que alguna vez fue sacerdote, pueda llevar sobre sí.  Cuando Lugo juró para ser presidente él también juró que buscaría el bienestar y la protección de todos los paraguayos e indirectamente él falló en ese sentido. El que una orden suya halla sido llevada torpemente a cabo

True, it doesn´t.   According to its most common definition a GIRL is a  female   child   from   birth   to   young   womanhood (around 21 years old). That means that Kristen Stewart (in the pic) could be called a girl just one year ago since she was born in 1990 and is (at the moment this article was written) now 22. And pretty much this also applies to boys so a boy is a boy until he is 21. In our culture NIÑA is not the same. A NIÑA can be called that until her first period and then she becomes an ADOLESCENTE or a CHICA (we calculate that at some point between 11-12 years old). We also use this age to indicate when a boy is no longer a boy. That is why we find the names of certain superheroes silly, such as Supergirl, who is usually drawn as to be in her late teens or Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is usually a middle teen. For us The Backstreet Boys and The Spice Girls were a little old to be called Boys or Girls respectively.  So a  NIÑA is really a LITTLE GIRL and a NIÑO is a

Hollywood has announced that soon one of its most "original" projects will be out:   Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter   based on the work by   Seth Grahame-Smith, published in 2010.  Really, I can't understand how anyone can take the memory of someone so decent, so honorable and so relevant to the history of mankind and give it such treatment. I know it´s all fantasy but still I can´t shake this nagging feeling that there is something wrong in taking elements that are so different, put them together and then call that original.  Also, there is something intrinsically valuable in the memory of certain characters that belongs not to one person or nation but to everyone. This common heritage should not be tarnished and if ever touched then it should be to compliment and not to ridicule. It is silly to take the memory of someone so noble such as Lincoln and downgrade it to a... supernatural demon slayer of sorts? Can they really not come up with a better idea?

Superman´s most recent animated film differs from all the previous ones in terms that is not just another Superman story, it is also a moral tale (superhero-style, of course). In this story a new group of superheroes has come to scene. They're brash and reckless. His leader is Manchester Black, a young man whose approach to justice goes like: "Shoot-first-ask-questions-later". He favors the use of full force against criminals which is something Superman abhorrs. Enters the Atomic Skull, usually a second tier that has received an upgrade for the purposes of this story. S.A. is depicted here as a killing machine that feels no remorse for what he does and can take any blow, or superblow. The Elite faces him and if not aided by Superman they cannot defeat the A.S. At the end of this fight the Skull is on his knees unable to reignite himself but feeling confident that he will be able to escape again as he has done several times in the past. This time it will be different fo

So Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has requested political assylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Mmmhhh, probably p eople   around the world are wondering: - "Where the hell is Ecuador?" (while looking at a world map) "Oh, I know...in Africa next to Equitorial Guinea." -   "What is Ecuador? Let me see, now I remember...it’s that imaginary line that divides the world  into the Northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere! (What a genius!) " - "Ecuador? I`m sure it wasn’t there last year. It must all be part of some sort of conspiracy...no doubt about it!" Well, at least, people are talking about us. Any publicity is good publicity!

It´s common among "bilingual" high school students to address their teachers and even talk about them as "el mister de Química" o "la miss de History". No one (it seems) takes the time to let them see how wrong it  is to use that term that way. Why does this happen? Well, in Spanish we use the word Señor much more freely than in English. In L2 we use Mister, Mistress and  Miss as titles and that is why they must be accompanied by a family name (never a first name). So it is right to say Mr. Bermudes but not  Mr. Luis. It is possible to say Mister alone in one specific case but only to express our displeasure to the person we are talking to. Something like this: " Listen to me, mister..." ( the speaker is obviously not happy ).  The ones who use Mister in the States are usually illegal Laimmigrants who do not know the culture and assume they can use Mister as they use  Señor. That explains the surprise American men feel when they are addressed