All posts have to be written in English, they have to follow an acceptable level of grammar and the vocabulary used must be appropriate and polite. Posts without the author's name will not be published.
When you listen to the songs of this band you can easily think that you are listening to any new, fresh folk-rock American band. The same can be said about any of the videos of The Bright. They could have been filmed anywhere in the Rocky Mountains or on any Canadian lake.
However, The Bright is a band from León and their videos have been filmed in places as near as the Cantabrian Range in León or the Lake of Sanabria. This is a clear example that sometimes you don´t need to go far away to find quality music.
Miryam Gutiérrez (guitar and vocals) and Aníbal Sánchez (guitar, mandolin) form The Bright. Their first album, Soundtrack for a Winter´s Tale, is completely in English. Among their most important influences, they mention Neil Young (there is a cover of his song Cowgirl in the Sun in the album), Lucinda Williams or Tom Petty.
Miryam Gutiérrez is the band´s voice
They are releasing their second album, Estados, on April 2. They sing in Spanish in their new album and they hope to confirm the success they got with their first album.
Mind our reccommendation and see the three videos we have included. Not so many years ago, Miryam and Aníbal were students at any high school in León and they studied English the same as you do now.
You have probably heard some songs of the band Dire Straits. Since the formation of the band, in 1977, they have had a lot of popular songs which have sounded once and again all over the world.
Formed initially by former journalist and teacher Mark Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), his younger brother David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals), and Pick Withers (drums and percussion), this British band´s career spread for over 15 years, having split up in 1988 temporarily and in 1995 definitely (after having joined again four years before).
The band´s sound evolved from the influence of punk rock in their early years to the prominence of the "rootsy" rock of their last albums. In fact, many of Dire Straits´ compositions are melancholic. Among their best-selling albums, we can mention Dire Straits (1978); Communiqué (1979); Making Movies (1980) or Brothers in Arms (1985).
The cover of the album Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits have sold over 120 million albums worldwide and have won many music awards during their career, including four Grammy Awards. In 1995, Mark Knopfler began his career as a solo artist, having released seven albums since then, including Golden Heart, Get Lucky or Privateering.
Mark Knopfler began his career as a solo artist in 1995
As we always do, we show you some of their most popular songs. Hope you enjoy them. And you know, you can ask us for your favourite songs, if they haven´t been included.
Have you ever thought seriously how it is possible that someone who is dead can hang around the town as if he or she were alive and kicking? Don´t rack your brains! Movies´ wonders apart, it is an obvious case of oxymoron.
Oxy...what? Yes, you had read it all right. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms, that is to say, words that are supposed not to be able to appear together.
All languages have many examples of oxymorons. We want to show you some of the most curious and eye-catching ones in the English language. It can be a good way to reflect on the language and an amusing way to learn some vocabulary. We don´t mean to give you an exhaustive list since the Internet is full of enormous lists of them. Here we´ll review some examples:
First of all, we must divide oxymoron into some basic categories:
GENUINE OXYMORONS:
act naturally, clearly ambiguous; simply superb; second best; only choice
WORD GAMES:
living dead; virtual reality; friendly fire; peace offensive; non-alcoholic beer;
If we have to give you our most sincere opinion, the last category is definitely our favourite one, and it´s that way for several reasons: It is the funniest one; it´s also the most creative kind of oxymorons since reality can suggest some new examples every day; furthermore, it´s the most personal way to create oxymorons, as different people can agree or disagree about an expression being an oxymoron or not.
Well, as we said at the beginning, you can find hundreds of expressions like these in the Internet. Make a try, you´ll have a funny time discovering how playful and puckish a language can be.
An example of the lists you can find surfing the Internet
The English Department is going to suggest you some books written by English or American writers which will take you to the marvellous places where only books can take you. You will only have to readand...enjoy!
To begin with, nothing better than a vampire story. You are probably one of the millions of fans of the Twilight saga all over the world. This series of four vampire-themed fantasy romance novels by American author Stephenie Meyer has sold millions of copies worldwide and gained immense popularity and commercial success.
Twilight, a 21st century vampire story
If you are one of those young people who felt fascinated by the story of "Bella" Swan, his love for the 104-year-old vampire Edward Cullen and the fight against the sadistic vampire James, you will also feel caught up by Dracula, a Gothic horror novel written in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker. But don´t be afraid if you felt the Twilight saga was too much of a romance. Dracula is not only about love. In a mixture of genres, it includes vampire literature, horror fiction, gothic novel and invasion literature.
Whitby Abbey´s ruins helped inspire Dracula
The novel introduced the character of the vampire Count Dracula, telling the story of Dracula´s attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by professor Van Helsing. Bram Stoker didn´t invent the vampire but defined its modern form, providing inspiration for numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations.
One of the most famous adaptations of the novel was the 1992 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins as the main stars. The film had extraordinary critics and it also became a box office hit. Love and horror filled the whole film and it won three Oscars.
Even though the film is so thrilling, you should start by reading the novel, with its frenetic action full of love, desire, mystery and horror. You won´t be able to stop reading the brilliant dialogues, trying to uncover the hidden messages and to get over the overwhelming stream of feelings and emotions it arouses in the reader.
One of the most popular film versions of the vampire
So, if you are brave enough, don´t lose one more second! Get hold of the book and get ready for an unforgettable experience! This is a book unlike any other!
The English Department wants to take you virtually to some of the most beautiful places all over the English-speaking countries. We are starting today with the city of Bath, which is considered to be England´s most beautiful city. Here is a video which shows some of its most beautiful places:
Bath is in South-West England. It has a population of about 85,000. The city was first established as a spa by the Romans in the AD 60. They built baths and a temple taking advantage of some natural hot springs they found in the valley of the River Avon. Many years later, it became a popular spa town during the Georgian era (XVII and XVIII centuries), which explains the enormous heritage of Georgian architecture that you can find in the city. Apart from its well preserved Roman Baths, the city has a magnificent cathedral.
It became a World Heritage Site in 1987. Bath has a variety of theatres, museums and other cultural and sports venues, which have helped to make it a major centre for tourism. The city has also two universities and several schools and colleges. For literature lovers, we can say that Jane Austen, the author of Pride and Prejudice, lived here for some years and you can even visit the house where she lived.
So, if you go to England and have some spare time, don´t forget to visit bath. You won´t regret! Here you have pictures of some of the landmarks of this wonderful town.
Aerial View of Bath
The Bridge
Bath Abbey
Roman Baths
For more information about the city you can visit this website: www.visitbath.co.uk
At present, we can see several Spanish players in the American National Basketball league every week. It is not only full of players from Spain, but from many other countries, different from the United States. We have now Pau and Marc Gasol, Ricky Rubio, José Manuel Calderón, Víctor Claver and Serge Ibaka there.
Marc and Pau Gasol
The NBA is still considered to be the most important all over the world and its players are, with no doubt, the best ones. But the distance between them and the rest of the world has shortened a lot in the last twenty years.
Not so far away in time, players in the NBA seemed to the rest of mortals playing basketball like a kind of aliens. In Spain we watched astonished on TV the incredible actions of players such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird or Michael Jordan, to name but a few of the most spectacular ones. We wondered how it was possible to play in such a way and thought that our national players could never compete against them.
A video showing the best ten plays of Spanish players in the 2010-2011 season.
That´s why Fernando Martín had such a great importance for our sport. His figure must never be forgotten by good Spanish basketball fans as he was a pioneer not only for our basketball but for the European one. He became the first Spanish player, and the second from all Europe, in the NBA when he decided to accept the offer of Portland Trail Blazers in 1986.
He showed that we were not inferior to them.
Fernando Martín opened the doors of NBA for European players
Unfortunately, several injuries didn´t let him play as often as he would have wished and he eventually came back to Spain at the end of the season. But, in spite of not being a successful experience for him, his arrival in the NBA opened its doors for the rest of players and helped many American fans to place Spain in the map of World basketball.
Good luck was never on the side of Fernando Martín. Only two years after coming back to Spain, he died in a car accident while he was going to play a match for Real Madrid. Since then, no other player has ever put on the number ten shirt for that team.
People who love basketball in Spain will never be grateful enough to Fernando Martín.
Some of the best followers of this blog complained about our choice of U2 some weeks ago. They claimed that they were overvalued and that they could not be compared to rock bands such as Pink Floyd or Deep Purple.
In Rock (1970)
That´s why we want to talk now about one of these bands: Deep Purple. Formed in England in 1968, they have been considered as the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock. Together with LedZeppelin and Black Sabbath, they have been referred to as "the unholy trinity" of British hard rock and heavy metal in the mid-seventies. They were also listed as the Globe´s loudest band for a concert in 1972 at London´s Rainbow Theatre.All in all, they have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
Fireball (1971)
Over these years, the band has gone through many line-up changes and even an eight-year-long separation (1976-1984). The line-ups between 1968-1976 are commonly labelled as Mark I, II, III and IV. The second one was the most successful one and featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards) and Ian Paice (drums). This line-up was active between 1969-1973; 1984-1989 and finally 1992-1993. The current line-up has Ian Paice as the only original Deep Purple member still in the band.
Who Do We Think We Are (1973)
Their influence on later hard rock and heavy metal bands has been enormous, including Metallica, Queen, Aerosmith, Van Halen or many New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Def Leppard.
Burn (1974)
As the best thing you can do about music is to listen to it, here you have some videos of their most popular songs: (Don´t miss the riff -the guitar introduction- at the beginning of Smoke on theWater!)
Óscar, Carlos, I think YOU should be satisfied now, TOO.
This Wednesday, February 13, all European football fans will have their eyes on the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, where Real Madrid will play against the English team Manchester United. Every time these two teams face each other, all attention is placed on them since they are two of the most laureate teams all around Europe.
Let´s talk about Manchester United, one of the most important football teams ever, not only in Britain, but in the whole European continent. Founded in 1878 with the name Newton Heath F.C., it changed to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to their current home, Old Trafford, in 1910.
Bobby Charlton nicknamed Old Trafford "The Theatre of Dreams"
Manchester United has won many trophies in English football, including a record 19 league titles, a record 11 FA Cups, four league cups and a record 19 FA Community Shields. The club has also won three European Cups, one UEFA Cup Winners´Cup, one UEFA Supercup, one Intercontinental Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup.
A poster with United´s greatest legends
The most dramatic moment in their history occurred on 6 February 1958 when the team was returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade. The plane on which the team was travelling crashed in Munich airport when it was trying to take off after having stopped to refuel. 23 people died, including 8 players. Fortunately, among the survivors were some people so important for Manchester United like manager Matt Busby and legend-player Bobby Charlton. Here yo have some images of the disaster.
It´s impossible to understand Manchester United´s history without learning about Matt Busby. He was the team´s manager for 25 years (1944-1969) and he took the team to play the impoprtant role they have always had since then. His greatest achievement was the European Cup in 1968 (the first for an English team). At Wembley, they beat Portuguese champions Benfica 4-1. It was the time of players that are now football legends: Bobby Charlton, George Best, Patt Crerand or NobbyStiles.
Thirty-one years later(1999), Manchester United won their second European Cup in Barcelona in one of the most thrilling and unbelievable finals anyone can remember. The match will always be remembered for Manchester United scoring two last-minute goals in injury time to beat Bayern Munich 2-1, after having trailed for most of the match. The most important players in that team were Peter Schmeichel, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham or final scorer Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Sir Alex Ferguson was the manager.
Their third and last Champions League victory was in Moscow in 2008 in the first all-English final as they beat Chelsea F.C. 6-5 on penalties, after a 1-1 draw following extra-time. Though not the most brilliant of matches, the game was hardly contested by both teams. Among Manchester United´s players, we can mention Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo (he scored their goal) or Wayne Rooney. Sir Alex Ferguson was still the manager.
Of course, this will not be the first time Manchester United plays against Real Madrid. They have faced each other four times in the European Cup history. All of them have been exciting heats. Recently, it is impossible to forget the confrontations in 2000 (Real Madrid´s fans will always have the match in Manchester as one of their most affectionate memories) and 2003 (when Brazilian forward Ronaldo destroyed all the English team´s efforts to win on his own)
Manchester United is today one of the wealthiest and most widely supported teams in the world and has one of the highest average home attendances in Europe. Wherever you go, you will find people who support this team, which has already become, on their own merits, a real legend of football.
So, when next Wednesday, the match kicks off, it will not be the beginning of one more match. Probably the best two teams in the world will keep in suspense all good football fans worldwide for the next fortnight. MAY THE BEST WIN!
The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of English painters and poets founded in 1848 by William HolmanHunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The group would be later joined by some other artists, like Edward Burne-Jones,John WilliamWaterhouse or Frank Dicksee.
These artists considered that Raphael had had a corrupting influence in the development of art and wanted a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art. That´s why they were called The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Their paintings took biblical, mythological and medieval stories as their subjects. They had ardent support from numerous other artists of the day. Their influence has even arrived up to our days.
As we think that art is to be enjoyed, we´ll show you some of the most famous paintings by these artists.
The ball is thrown into the game from the "plinth"
Have you got any possibility to go to Ashbourne, England, next Tuesday? If you can´t, don´t worry. We´ll explain to you what happens at this small town in England every year on Shrove Tuesday.
The River Henmore is part of the pitch
You have probably seen some images on news bulletins on TV. Since the 12th century, hundreds of men, divided into two teams, try to catch a ball that is thrown into the town square. The goals are two mill stones and the pitch is the town, the fields and very often the river which crosses the town.
Players must catch the ball to score a goal for their teams
The river is precisely the line according to which the two teams are selected. They are the Up´Ards if they are born north of the river and the Down´Ards if they are born south.
Even Prince Charles has visited Ashbourne
The players can kick, throw or carry the ball. The teams push and fight. Teams form a scrum. Once they reach the goal, they must hit it three times with the ball. A goal signs the end of the game.
The rules of the game are clear:
-Committing murder is prohibited. Unnecessary violence is frowned upon. -The ball may not be carried in a motorised vehicle. -The ball may not be hidden in a bag, coat or rucksack, etc. -Cemeteries, churchyards and the town memorial gardens are strictly out of bounds. -Playing after 10 pm is forbidden. -To score a goal the ball must be tapped 3 times in the area of the Goal.
Here you have some videos that can let you have an idea about how the game carries out. And remember, if you have nothing better to do at this time next year, go to Ashbourne. There, you will discover the maddest face of football.
When in 1979, American director Francis Ford Coppola produced the film Apocalypse Now, he was creating a masterpiece and what has been widely considered one of the greatest films of all time.
This epic war film set in Vietnam War and starring Marlon Brandon, Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen followed the central character, U.S. Army Captain Benjamin Willard (M. Sheen) on a mission to find and kill the renegade and insane U.S. Army Colonel Walter Kurtz (M. Brando).
The screenplay was an adaptation of Joseph Conrad´s novella Heart of Darkness into the Vietnam War era. This is shown in Kurtz´s last words: "The horror! The horror!", which are taken, among many other things, from Conrad´s novels. Many other episodes in the film respect the spirit of the novel and in particular its critique of the concepts of civilization and progress.
The filming of the movie was very long and troubled: Marlon Brando showed up overweight, Sheen had a heart attack and extreme weather destroyed several expensive sets. All these setbacks postponed the film several times.
In spite of these problems, the film was met with with enthusiasm both by critics and audiences. Since then, it has been considered as one of the best movies ever by lots of specialised magazines and experts and we can say that the film has always had a pervasive cultural impact, as it is reflected for example in the picture below.
A 2010 cover of The Economist on European crisis with imagery of the film
All in all, we are before a film that you shouldn´t miss as it has become a very important cultural reference in our time. To end with, here are two famous scenes of the film. In the first one, Coppola accompanied Lt. Colonel Kilgore´s (R. Duvall) division on a bombing of a Vietnamese village with Wagner´s Ride of the Valkyries. The second one shows the moment when Kilgore says: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning..." after ordering a destructive attack on a village. It is one of those sentences which belong now to the history of films.
Art critics considered almost unanimously the Exhibition of Hopper´s paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum as the best one in Spain during the whole year 2012. Nowadays, you can see this same exhibition in Paris.
Nighthawks
Edward Hopper was an American painter (1882-1967). He is usually called "The Painter of Silence" since he used the real daily life of middle class America to show silence and emptiness, uncertainty and mystery. Don´t worry if you could not go to Madrid to see his paintings! Here are some of his most famous masterworks displayed in a video and in some photographs. You may have already seen some of them.
Morning Sun
Lighthouse Hill
What do you think about Hopper and his paintings? Do they suggest you something?
For more information on this painter and his work, you can visit the following website:
