Rojo Amanecer

For everyone interested in Mexican History, this is a nice movie to start or to get an idea. i know this is out of the subject, but I find this really interesting and though it would be nice to write about it in this blog. This movie is not about the Mexican Independence or the Mexican Revolution, the two most famous civil wars in Mexico, that already have a lot of movies. This movie is about the “matanza of Tlatelolco” or the massacre of Tlatelolco. The matanza of Tlatelolco was a massacre in Mexico City, occurred the october 2nd, 1968. A lot of students were making a pacific protest in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. The politic system in Mexico was terrible. The PRI was the unique party that really had power in Mexico, and controlled every important decision in the country. The Olympic Games were close, and they were going to be held by Mexico, so this was a big opportunity to get the world notice this situation. But the president in that time, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, was trying to show the country as a great, nice, peaceful country, and this protest wasn’t going to help. So to make things short, he ordered a squad of soldiers, the Batallon Olimpia, to attack the protestants. The result was a terrible massacre in Mexico, and a really sad day for the whole country.

The movie is about a common Mexican family in that time. The parents are supporters of the government, while the two sons start questioning it and are against it. So they decide to go to the protest.  It’s a very nice movie that shows the dark, scary side of what happened that day, and it even makes you feel sad, worried and even afraid. I really recommend it.

EXTRA CREDIT: Monuments Men

A time ago I saw an interesting movie called Monuments Men, starring some good actors such as George Clooney (who also was the director and writer of the movie) and Matt Damon. The story of the film is interesting. It all happens in World War II. The Allies are winning the war, but George Clooney (I forgot the name of his character) is told to form an army to try to rescue and protect the most important art masterpieces. On the other side of the war, Hitler is trying to stole some important pieces of art in Europe, in order to create his own museum, which would be named “The Führer Museum”. So these old, retired or inexpert soldiers, are given the task of going to the war zone and rescue these pieces. Why would they recruit these people, who know nothing about war? Well, because they are all experts in art. They could identify the real artworks from the copies or replicas. 

Of course, I’m not going to tell you all the movie, because I really recommend it. A very interesting thing in the movie, is that it is actually based on real events. I did a little research, and I actually found this is true. These group of soldiers were poorly equipped and actually didn’t have a real route to follow. So they had to go, and work things out by themselves. I also found this squad was called the “Venus Fixers”, and that their quest was focused in paintings and sculptures of artists like Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso.

Supposedly, the real monuments men.

In conclusion, the movie is very interesting, it has a nice historical context and is very related to the arts, (some famous and not so famous artworks can be seen in the movie). It has nice performances by all the actors, and the effects are nice; so I really recommend this movie and hope you see it, because it’s very nice!

The Koran

The Koran, is the sacred book of the Islam. The Christians have the Bible, as the Muslims have the Koran. These two sacred books are very similar in some things, but also have their clear differences, as the Christian and the Islam religions. The Koran was written by Muhammed, the prophet. According to him, he wrote everything told to him by the angel Gabriel. 

Many of the people mentioned in the Bible, are also mentioned in the Koran, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus of Nazareth, but with many differences. The Koran must be read exclusively in arabic, so believers must learn arabic in order to read this sacred book. 

Some similarities that I found are: both sacred books told their believers to teach the others and respect other religions. Jesus Christ is mentioned as a prophet in the Koran, but it says the supreme prophet is Muhammed. In the Bible, as we know, Christ is God’s only son.

Extra Credit Video: Actors in Greek Theatre

The theatre has been a very popular way to express and communicate ideas. Theatre is an art, and we still like it today. It has existed since a long time, and the Greeks liked to practice theatre. Although sadly there is not much knowledge about Greek theatre, there are some things that we know. The Greeks used masks. There is a debate of which was the real function of masks. Some  say it was showing the audience which character was being interpreted. Others say it was part of a ritual. The body language was a very important part of greek theatre, much more than the face language, which was probably easily represented with the use of masks, that showed the expression or emotion of the character. Masks had very clear, exaggerated facial expression, so the audience would have no problem having an idea of how the character was, and the most important characteristics, like age, sex or social status.Also, there were only 2 or 3 actors in stage, so the masks were very useful for the actors to quickly change their characters. 

As there were no female actresses, the masks helped the male actors to represent women. Many greek art pieces that represent moments where a theater play was being shown. In some of these, we can guess the actors were singing, and even dancing, which could have been part of a ritual.

Pliny the Elder – Natural History

Pliny the Elder, whose real name was Galus Plinius Secundus, was a Roman philosopher, naturalist and author. He was born in 23 AD, and died in 79 AD, in the eruption that also destroyed Pompeii. He was also a militar in the Roman Empire. He is very known because of his famous encyclopedia “Natural History”, or “Naturalis Historia”, which is its real name, in latin. This encyclopedia is divided in 37 books. It includes a lot of information, of very varied subjects related to nature, known at that time, and each subject is divided in different topics, which make this encyclopedia very useful and informative. The encyclopedia includes subjects like medicine, 

geography, zoology, botanic, and many more. I had the opportunity to download a version of Naturalis Historia translated to spanish. Although the spanish in this version is a little old, I could get the main details, and could understand a lot.

It is actually very interesting to see the quantity of knowledge they had at that time. We always talk about how the greek and roman cultures (along with some others) are 

  the base of our actual society and knowledge, but still, it’s amazing how they really knew about the world. They knew about everything. And I find that very, very interesting and incredible.

I will leave the link of the book down, but I’m not really sure everyone will be able to see it, because it’s downloaded with my google account, so i’ll leave some screenshots of the encyclopedia.

This is the link of the encyclopedia:

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Cayo_Plinio_Segundo_Historia_natural_de_Cayo_Plini?id=GeeSJwRF2lcC

Constructed Languages

Languages have been very important since they first appeared. They are very useful for us to communicate with each other. Without them, communicating would be very hard, if not impossible today. There are many different languages, depending on the regions, or the history of the places where they’re spoken. Most languages have been developing naturally, as they were being needed by people to communicate and exchange ideas. However, there are some languages that have been invented with different reasons. Some of the most popular constructed languages, are the Elvish languages, from J.R.R Tolkien or the Klingon, from the TV series and movies, Star Trek, these two had fictional purposes.

The characters in The Sims, use the Simlish to communicate.

Another language with fictional purposes is the Simlish. The Simlish is a fictional language specifically created to be used in the computer game series “The Sims”, from Maxis Company. Basically, in these game series, you have to live your life as a Sim, and keep your Sim as happy as possible. You have your house, your job, you have to eat, sleep, and all real humans need to do. To do this, you have to give commands to your Sim, telling him what you want him to do. The Simlish is the language used by the characters of these games. They talk in Simlish and they read in Simlish. The Simlish is based in Ukranian, french and tagalog. This language was born, when the creator of the game though it would be really expensive to have the characters talk with real languages, as they would have to be translated. Also, the phrases would be very repetitive.

The Simlish doesn’t really have well structured rules and when the characters speak it, it sounds like murmurs. Although it’s hard to hear comprehensible words, I think it’s really interesting they created a language (or half a language) for the game.

Classic Influence

The Greek and Roman cultures were very powerful cultures in the past, and as these two cultures were growing, their influence expanded with them to a big part of the world. So small cultures, started adopting characteristics, traditions, styles and the culture in general, of these cultures. Today, in the present, we can still see examples of roman and greek styles in our surroundings. This is called Classic Influence.

La Concha Acústica, in Culiacán.

A nice example could be the common circus style. The way the seats are arranged reminds me of two classic roman amphitheater put together. Talking about amphitheaters, other example is right here, in Culiacán. We have an amphitheater, in the Parque Constitución, called “La Concha Acústica”.

Aqueducts in Culiacán.

The aqueduct was a roman invention, which is still used today. They’re used to transport water from one side to another. It might look very simple, but they are very useful. So useful, that we can still see them today in the big cities. Here in Culiacán, we have aqueducts, in Las Quintas.

The movies are today one of the most known ways of entertaining. Sometimes, film makers decide to go back to the past, and remake the known greek and roman stories, or even sometimes, create new stories, using the typical known stuff of these cultures. To do this, they add impressive visual effects and great actors, to give these movies a fantasy, attractive style. Some well-known examples of movies based in the greek and roman cultures are: 300, Gladiator, Troy, Hercules, Clash of Titans, and many, many more.

In Mexico, there are some well known cookies named “Emperador”, which is translated to english as Emperor. Their whole theme is based in the romans, and they even have advertisements where some roman emperor’s guards. The following video is one of the advertising commercials from Emperador, which is kind of funny.

Emperador cookies

The Trojan Women

The Trojan Women is a story written by Euripides, the greek writer. The story happens right when the battle of Troy has been won by the greek. Three trojan women know that if the greeks take them, they will have to live in silence, having to obey the greeks, marry a greek, and/or probably become slaves.

Helena, the queen of Troy, is in a kind of cage. A lot of trojan women are very tired and thirsty, and the Greek guards have all the water to drink they want. One of them, the one who’s in charge of Helena’s cage, gives her full pot of water. This makes all women angry. They start fighting and yelling, and the guards have to calm them down. Because of this scandal, the guards decide to take Helena away. Helena argues with the Greek king. She explains what had happen to him, who she seems to know from the past. She had left Greece with Paris, to go and live in Troy. After he died, she says she tried to escape from Troy, but she couldn’t. The trojan women, leaded by Paris mother, clearly don’t like her, and accuse Helena, calling her a liar, and a greedy. The king has to take a decision. Helena’s life is on his hands. She tries to commit suicide, but he stops her, saying he’ll give her to the families of the ones who died in that battle. Also, Paris’ son is killed by greek soldiers, which leaves Paris’ mother totally alone.

I think this is a good representation of a greek story, in 1971. Of course, there wasn’t the technology to generate stuff with computers, but the scenery is very good, and it seems alike a greek/trojan city at that time. I liked the movie in general, but I felt the dialogues were like very slow, as if the characters were trying to sing poetry instead of just talking.

EXTRA CREDIT: Pompeii: The Mystery Of People Frozen In Time

Pompeii was a city in the ancient Roman Republic, which was one of the most powerful cultures around the world at that time, if not the most powerful. It’s unknown when exactly was this city funded, but it is believed it was in the VII Century B.C. There could be many facts why this city is so important, but without doubt, the importance of Pompeii lies in a very interesting, curious, and very rare fact. It was august 79 a.C, when an earthquake started to shake the land in Pompeii. People were scared. And sadly for them, this wasn’t the worst. Very near this city, was a volcano, called Vesuvius. It was the reason of the earthquakes, because it was about to erupt.  And that’s the end of the story of this ancient city. At least, as a roman, habitable city.

The interesting of this, is not the exactly the eruption, or the earthquakes, no. What makes this city so important, is the fact that we can still see the people that was living there, when the eruption came.

People frozen, facing their last moment. I find this really interesting. The whole city, somehow, is still intact. Obviously i’m not saying you can see Pompeii exactly as it was in 79 a.C, but we can say it is pretty well preserved.

A poster of the movie, which is currently in movie theaters.

I recently saw a movie in the movie theater, with this name, which is very interesting. When I saw the movie, I had no idea about the frozen people, and when it was showed in the movie, I though it was just an effect the movie director gave it for more drama or something, but now that I know this, it is really, really interesting and very rare. The movie is very good, I recommend it, specially if you like history.

Poetic Meter

Most people think it’s very easy to write a song or a poem. You just use words that sound nice together, and with a coherent meaning. Well, even though that’s the most basic, song or poem writers also need to know about Poetic Meter. Poetic Meter is a rhythmic element, which is composed by the number of lines in a verse and the number of syllables in each line.

I’m not very good at Poetic Meter, but I gave it a try. For this, I used the chorus in Eminem’s song “The Way I Am”.

And I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won’t even play my jam
‘Cause I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don’t know it’s just the way I am

For me, this an Iambic Pentameter. It is Iambic because, according to what I understand, it has one unstressed syllable, and then a stressed syllable. It has 5 feet in each line, which makes it a pentameter. A foot is the number of times we can count the Iambic in this case. It’s often composed of two or three syllables.

As I already mentioned, I’m not very good at this, but I wanted to give it a try. I had to watch some videos, and read instructions and guides many times, and this is the result. Hopefully, it won’t be too wrong…