The Shine

Today, I'd like to write about this really good film: The Shine. It is an Australian production from 1996. And what is so special about it? Well, maybe it just reminds me of Australia because the main character says the word "mate" quite a lot. But that is not the only reason. This film is something worth of watching.

This movie starts with a man (Geoffrey Rush) trying to go through heavy rain. This man tries to enter to a restaurant/pub that just closed. A kind waitress let him in and he tries to play a piano that is in the middle of the lounge. The man obviously has some kind of mental disease as he cannot speak correctly and appears to be as stubborn as a little kid. Who is this guy? He is David Helfgott, the protagonist of the movie.

The movie is about this man/kid who is a gifted pianist. He is invited by the most prestigious schools of his time to study with them. But his dad, who is kind of strict, doesn't want David to go since he thinks that will shatter his family. Not just that, but he also wants to teach him musical scores that are far beyond his ability.

The way the time is manipulated in the movie is really good. It consists in two different storylines: the one of the grown up David and the one with the child David. As the story advances, the young David storyline reaches the old one, or it seems so. But later on the young David storyline reaches the beginning of the adult storyline and from there just the older David's story is depicted until the end. It may result a bit difficult to understand if you haven't seen the movie, but it is unlikely that you will end in a knot due to the way the time is manipulated since the technique used is really good.

Also, the acting of Rush as David is superb. The way he stutters and fires all David's words is outstanding and it really helps to make the audience believes that David is mentally-ill. Also, is kind of hilarious when David does things that are not well-socially accepted like touching the breasts of women in public or jumping half-nude in a garden.

In conclusion, The Shine is a movie everybody should watch. It depicts David's in a realistic form. And what is more, it is really entertaining.

Letter to the editor of a newpaper

This is just the body of the letter directed to the editor of a diary from the Sunshine Coast. about the following article: http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/aug/23/too-many-deaths-our-roads/ It was easy for me to write from the perspective of a resident of the zone for two reasons: I lived there for a few months and also the subject of the article is quite universal.

(It still lacks the layout, I will fix it later)

I think that it is an excellent effort taking into people’s attention tragedies like these. It is important to make the people consider that the deaths may not be just occasioned by reckless drivers but by reckless pedestrians as well. Everybody should do his own part in the effort to stop accidents. People should be aware that it is easy to lose your life in just a mere distraction. Driving carefully should be an everyday action, and not just a reaction to the death of an anonymous person who we saw in our way home. Most of the people in this world won’t care about this kind of things until it happens to them. Then, they will raise an outcry against the people who they think are the guilty ones. But I think that almost each one of those persons related to accidents are guilty in some way or another, for not taking into account their and others security. And you may think that I’m saying this because I haven’t lost anybody. But I know the grief of loosing somebody and I think that we as a society need to stop this, or nobody will.

Battle of San Jacinto

Well, this is my second post. Pretty fast, isn't it?

I had to post a biography that wasn't written in an Encyclopedia style. So I choose Antonio López de Santa Anna, one of the most interesting and probably, hated characters in Mexican History.

He is known for loosing half of the country to the Americans and other things. He ruled the country eleven non.consecutive times. He standed for a lot of political movements as long as it helped himself.

I choose to write about San Jacinto battle instead of whole Santa Anna's life. I know that in an IB exam I would get less points, but this is just a homework, isn't it?

The style resembles Carlos Fuentes’ Aura and La muerte de Artemio Cruz. I don't think I would be able to write a whole book in this style since I'm not a really skilled writer (in English, in Sapnish I'm quite good), but it worked fairly well for a small passage.

There it goes:

You are staring at your bad armed troops. Are they going to be able to defeat the Texans? It is truth that you have defeated them in other times, but maybe you won’t be so lucky this time. You know that most of your soldiers are bad prepared. As you walk through your encampment, you can see the infected wounds, the wild eyes of your soldiers, and you can hear the fatigue in their voices.

Even though you received reinforcements, you haven´t still decided in beginning the attack. All of your generals think that you can make it. Your forces are almost the double than Houston’s, counting the fresh soldiers that just arrived. Your position is better than Houston’s. Your soldiers are better motivated due to your new victories that Houston’s. There is no reasonable cause to hold on a minute more! Why do you still feel uneasy about it?

Better forget about it, at least for a while. Let’s go and get some sleep. You are instructing that soldier so you won’t get bothered while you are getting some rest. Now that lousy dog is asking about the precautions! How he dares! You are the chief commander and you get neither orders nor advice from anybody!

You tell him that you have already made sure that the security of the camp is enough to detect the entrance to a rat into the perimeter. You are still confident that Houston won’t attack since he has no advantage over your army. Probably, you will slaughter every soldier that is in the other side of the river and you will be known forever as the greatest Mexican conqueror. So you won’t order any patrolling group and you will go.

Now you are sleeping. You are dreaming about El Lencero. You are there with your wife. You are peacefully dreaming… Suddenly, you see fire in your dream. You can hear cannons firing at the hacienda. But something seems to be wrong. There is something wicked about your dream. Suddenly you are not at your idle landscape, you are on a tent. It was just a dream. But it seems the explosions weren’t part of the dream!

Suddenly, you have to run out of your tent because it was about to be blown away by the artillery of your enemy. Your soldiers are being killed by Houston’s men. Houston’s men! You know what all those men swear to do due to the massacre in Goliat. You have to run! So, you start running. You see a fellow Mexican dead, but you know that you don’t care that all of this is your fault. You take his clothes with you and leave his dead corpse. But then, when you thought you were safe, you heard somebody telling you to stop right there. He is right behind you and you know that you won’t have a chance to flee…

...

And that is all for now. You can search on any textbook what happened next (but considering that Texas hasn't been part of México for quite a long time, the general outcome is pretty obvious).

MY very first post!

Well, so this is the beginning. I'm not really intending this as a really long project, but as long as the teacher requires it, this little effort of mine will continue alive.

This is the very first post I've ever done in my life, and, to be honest, I would have never started one if it wasn't because of the IB English teacher. Who knows, maybe I will end up liking this whole blogging thing and I will have one or two more blogs (if the school or my self-steem let me). But, right now I don't even know why do I even bother --this was optional, I could have just printed my homework and stop the birth of this blog--.

This is everything now, if you are out there, whoever are you, well, try to enjoy this.

P.S. I'm not an English native speaker, so you can expect some spelling and grammar mistakes, which I hope are minor mistakes.