Comments about the film "Rain Man"

This post is dedicated to comment about the film that we saw in class: Rain Man.
It is a 1988 dramatic film directed by Barry Levinson and It tells the story of a selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his father has left all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his brother, Raymond, of whose existence he knew nothing and who is an autistic savant.

The movie stars Tom Cruise as Charlie Babbit and Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbit. The film won four Oscars at the 61st Academy Awards (1989), including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor in a leading role for Hoffman.

The official trailer of the film is shown below

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening

I'm not into painting as much as I am into music, but for this post, I'll take Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, by Salvador Dalí, as an example of those paintings that I consider are one of the most intriguing and disturbing but yet fascinating pieces of art.

According to the experts, this painting (as many of the works of Salvador Dalí) has made an enormous contribution to the surrealism movement and its consolidation in the history of art.

There is some debate about the surrealism name, there are some people who argue that the name itself has a sub-prefix connotation, and represents the total opposite of what the movement was about. A few years ago I attended to a surrealism conference, and the speaker said that the correct name, at least in spanish, should be suprarealismo, but I'm aware that some people call it superrealismo.

Anyway, the painting, as I already have shown it, has a lot of symbolism, and many interpretations, which explain the painting as a consequence of the historical context, and many other causes, but I have always liked to think of the meaning by myself, and just get lost into the colors and shapes.

I mean, the painting is gorgeous, and though staring at a painting in the computer monitor is nothing compared to what staring at a real painting is, I was really shocked when I discovered Salvador Dalí and this particular painting. It evokes sensations like fear and despair, but it is impossible to not continue discovering details and think about them.

For example, if you look closely you will see a bee around a pomegranate at the bottom of the painting, but the magnificence of the painting is the tigers threatening the woman in her sleep, while one of them is coming out of a fish, which at the same time is coming out of a giant pomegranate.

But the landscape is even more interesting, you can see a distorted elephant walking into what looks like the sea, but the elephant itself is quite creepy, with those long and fragile legs.

Finally, the whole painting represents what the tittle suggests: a moment, that's what makes the painting so atracctive, you can feel the dynamics of it, and get involved in that instant.

As you see, I didn't write my interpretation, this is just a description, I'll let you think of it as whatever you want it to be, and let yourself make your own.

- Miguel Ángel Benítez Torreblanca

British Humour

After having thought for some time about the topic that I have to post, I finally chose one of my favourite topics: humour.

Humour is a very important cultural aspect of any nation and reflects a lot of its way of thinking and how they conceives themselves as well as what they think about the other. “Humor can be a form of self-assertion and of defense; it can also be a particularly effective weapon to ridicule others.”[1]

By the choosing of the three videos that I post in the blog, I want to show a little bit of what British humour is.

As you can notice, British humour is based in some particular aspects as nonsense, black humour, sarcasm, irony, satire and self-deprecation, that make it effective and hilarious. 

By the way, I consider humour to be a wonderful way to know more about the culture and the people of any place and of its language, in this case about Britons, but a point to consider is that it can be very difficult to understand because the cultural and language differences that exist.

Here are the three videos that I chose, I hope you enjoy it!

“A Bit of Fry and Laurie” is a comedy television program starring by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, who is better known for his perfomance as Dr. House in the American Medical drama Dr. House MD.

Dylan Moran is an Irish comedian whose work has been very well taken and been awarded many times.

Rowan Atkinson is an English comedian who is very famous for his character Mr. Bean.

 

 

Just to finished, I want to say that I love British comedy and I do consider it a perfect way to know  Great Britain´s culture.

  

 Norma García Morales.

1. Rosenthal, Angela y David Bindman. “No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality and Ethnicity.” Fannie and Alan Leslie: Center of the Humanities. 2007. Dartmouth College. 25 de octubre de 2008. 

Our Second Post:Thinking Outside the Box.

"Advances are made by answering questions.
Discoveries are made by questioning answers."
Bernard Haisch.

Sometimes when we think in a scientist, we tought that they don't believe in God. Sometimes this perception is true, principaly, because religions have been used to justify crimes against humanity: the Inquisition of centuries past or the sectarian slaughter in the Mideast today. But the human misuse of religions and the existence of God are very different matters.
With this idea in mind, nowadays, a new generation of scientists have accepted the existence of an inteligence that is behind everything, God. They started doing one simple question:
Is there an intelligence behind the origin of the Universe?

The next video introduce us to the ideas of these new kind of scientists. It was taken from the presentation of the book "The God Theory" written by Bernard Haisch. In this video he proposes the alternative that the special properties of our universe reflect an underlying intelligence. However exceptional human experiences and accounts of mystics throughout the ages do suggest that we live in a purposeful universe.



The assumptions that Dr. Hairsch made in the last video are according with the new theory in what the theoretical physics are working nowadays: The String Theory. String theory proclaims, for instance, that the observed particle properties, that is, the different masses and other properties of both: the fundamental particles and the force particles associated with the four forces of nature (the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity) are a reflection of the various ways in which a string can vibrate. To understand about the string theory and how it is related with the proof of the existence of God and the existence of other dimensions, I invite you to see the next video, enjoy it!!.



As I said before, these are new ways of thinking in scientist world. I'm included. I would like to finish with a quote from Albert Einstein, it reflects what I have been trying to say in this post.
"At any race, I'm convived that God doesn't play dice."

First Post

For the first post I'd like to introduce one of my favorite bass players of all time: Tony Levin.

He is known for being one of the most innovative musicians in the last decades. In the brief video you are about to watch, he talks about the Chapman Stick, a 12-string instrument that contains melody and harmony sections, which are played at the same time with both hands.



Tony Levin is best known for his work with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Liquid Tension Experiment, California Guitar Trio, among others, but has also released several solo albums; nevertheless, his work as a solo artist is not as known as his collaborations mencioned before.

In 2006, he made an appeareance on the show Animal Nocturno (Tv Azteca), playing some of his solo stuff as well of some King Crimson songs. The video for this performance is shown below as a link, in case you want to see it.

Tony Levin Band performing Elephant Talk

Finally, I'll present a performance of Tony Levin with King Crimson, it may not be what you could expect from a average band, the music is complex, with changing tempos and "awkward" melodies, hope you'll like it.



- Miguel Ángel Benítez Torreblanca