"Angels In America"

This week we will talk about "Angels In America". Originally a play, was adapted by HBO into a minisseries. The story is about two gay people, Prior and Louis, lovers for 4 years, and Prior tells Louis he's HIV positive. Then we have Joe Pitt a laywer who is mormon, has a chance to work in the Departement of Justice, amd for that to happen a lawyer called Roy Cohn has to make a call.

Now the reason why this serie is called "Angels In America" is because it actually appears a an angel in the show. This angel asks Prior to be her prophet of death, due to the ancient and rooted history of his family. 

Andy Warhol - Michael Jackson

Hello everyone, today we'll talk about an artist of the movement "Pop Art" of the 60's called Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol was born in Pennsylvania, on the August 6 of 1928, his work is well know and many times controversial, he ultimately became an industrial illustrator. There's even a museum in his hometown Pittsburgh, with an extensive collection of his work, that contains art and archives, in  what is the biggest museum in the U.S. dedicated to a single artist.
We choose his work about Michael Jackson who is the greatest pop artist of all time. Born on the August 29 of 1958, he was one in a family of ten children. He started in a band with his brothers, called the Jackson Five. Later another of his brothers join them and they rename the band to the Jacksons. Finally after their success Michael Jackson decided to pursuit a solo career. Michael was responsible for lauching the best-selling album worldwide, the "Thriller". He has won 13 Grammy Awards and is even in "Guinness World Records" for all the awards he received.
When Andy Warhol criated this painting in 1984, was trying to show that Michael Jackson was just like everyone else, that's why made the colour of the skin white ( at the time he was black ), the colorful outlines represent the elaborated choreographys that he performs on his videoclips, the way the red fades into yellow reveals the change in Michael's music. The blue behind Michael and the shadows in blue represent is popularity and the power of his music. He tried to take a remarkable person and make it common, bring him down to the level of us mere mortals, sort of speaking, but while retaining Michael Jackson's character and presence.
In our opinion this painting can be considered a tribute to Michael Jackson and to his legacy, it reminds us of his best times and music, the time of the unforgetable "Thriller", a honor to the deceased but forever "King of Pop", long live the king !!!

Tiffany

Hello everyone, this weekend we are here to discuss "Tiffany" and everything related to it. Since our blog is all about music, I thought about starting with the soundtrack of the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", which is about Tiffany. So the hole soundtrack was composed by a man called Henry Mancini, and he was an american composer, conductor and arranger. Mancini was born in Cleveland, in the neighborhood called Little Italy to be more precise, he started to have piano lessons at the age of 12, played flute in the Aliquippa band, in 1942 attended to Julliard School of Music in New York, which he interrupted to join the United States Army. In 1952 he joined the Universal Pictures music department, and for 6 years we composed and contributed to more than 100 movies. In 1958 he left the company to become a independent composer, and helped for hundreds of tv shows, recorded more than 90 albums, and performed more than 600 live symphony's in his lifetime. His worked was well recognised and incredibly awarded with nominations for 72 Grammys, winning 20, nominated to 18 Academy Awards, winning 4; won a Golden Globe Award and 2 Emmy nominations. Unfortunatly he died in June 14, 1994, but his work will be forever remembered.
Tiffany was also famous for being referred in a song performed by Marylin Monroe called "Diamonds are a girl's best friend". This song had many versions and was singed by various artist like Nicole Kidman in the "Moulin Rouge", Kylie Minogue in 1995, Beyoncé in 2007, Christina Aguilera in the movie "Burlesque".

The reason why the version performed by Marylin Monroe became so popular, was due to the celebrity status of the actress. Marylin was an actress, singer, model and showgirl, born on June 1, 1926, spent most of her childhood going from one foster home to another, started her career as a model which then changed to actress when she signed a contract in 1946 with 20th Century Fox, starting with minor roles, but gathered attention from the audience with her blonde looks. Quickly she progressed to leading roles, becoming not only a movie star, but a sex symbol of her time. She was also known for her life of excesses and drug abuse, leading to her very premature death by overdose, which circunstances were odd and uncertain, being classified has a "probable suicide", but not ruling out homicide.
Well, we hope you have enjoyed our post, and that it has been informative. Thank you all, and nice weekend to everyone.

"Rebel Without a Cause"

"Rebel Without a Cause" is a movie  about a group of teenagers confused and tormented by their age's problems, starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. This motion picture as a very short soundtrack of only 4 tracks.

The first is "Ride of the Valkyries made in 1856 by Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner was a german composer and theatre director born on 22 May of 1813, known for his musical themes of complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration. He died on 13 February of 1883.
The next track is "I'll String Along With You" made in 1934 by Harry Warren. He was a composer and lyricist who won 3 oscars for composing three songs.
The 3rd track is "Five O'Clock Whistle" made in 1936 by Gene Irwin and Josef Mirow. Josef Mirow was a russian composer nominated for an Academy Award.
Thr final track is "Wiegenlied" made by Johannes Brahms. He was a German composer and pianist.

Finally we would like to finish with a curiosity about the vehicles used in the movie. The main character's car is a "41 Chevrolet Special De Luxe with a straight six-cylinder engine with 90 horsepower and the white stripe tires characteristic of the 40's. The car used by the police was a "55 Ford Mailine with a powerful V8 engine with 162 horsepower and chromed rims with a classic style.

The Oscares Night

Hello Eavesdroppers, has we were told by our “boss”. Last week we skipped a post since this week we have a bigger theme to talk about, which is the Oscars, that were awarded last Sunday (26/02/2012).

We were told to talk about the categories related to our blog, which in our case is music.

Well let’s be honest when comparing the nominees for Best Soundtrack of this year with the previous ones, we can see that among “The Adventures of Tintin”, “The Artist”, “Hugo”, “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy”, and “War Horse”, we don’t know which one is the best and to be honest “The Artist” shouldn’t even have been nominated to “Best Soundtrack”, but went even further and won many other categories, thank God none of them related to music. Another big failure on the nominees was on “Sound Mixing”.

Really, let’s not even start with the poor translation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, then we have “Moneyball”, “War Horse”, and one movie that doesn’t have nothing in common with all the other movies and it’s the biggest failure, which is “Transformers”. The best movie awarded among all was “Hugo” is to be congratulated.

Our final disagreement is with “”Original Song”, which was a crime, the two nominees were “Man or Muppet” from the movie “Muppets” and “Real in Rio” from the movie “Rio”, we are totally against the decision, it was a huge mistake to compare an animation movie, which was done with an enormous amount of music, with a movie that everyone loves because of the childhood character. So for the first time we think that both movies should be winners.

Nice weekend everyone.

Crush them all ( crush crush crush )

Hello eavesdropper, this week our “boss” teacher Helder Gomes and we are supposed to crush our peers ideas.

First the Anonymous. They won’t be the next decade personality due to 3 main reasons:  the Anonymous don’t have the guts to show their face to the world. Their brand image is stolen from a movie, and by attacking the sites and other organizations, they are promoting piracy.

Now the Facebook, as the social network of the moment, Facebook as it’s disadvantages. It promotes a sedentary lifestyle, and downgrades the physical interaction and socialization, which in extreme situations can lead to a decrease in a pollution growth.

The ray gun, if humans currently are already self-destructive and violent, even if that isn’t it’s purpose there will be people who will use it to that purpose. The witricity will be very expensive and it will take some time until someone makes it rentable and usable.

China won’t be the next decade brand, first it’s extremely difficult language which is very hard to learn prejudicing it’s expansion, their culture is as well very different from American one, and English is currently very influential and dominating.

Lady Gaga’s fashion, or Gagashion is very freaky and strange to most people, it can’t be dressed in every day use. It’s probably very expensive and dressing it and use it on the street would probably be ridiculous.

The scientific advance can have it’s disadvantages. It requires testing and experimenting, which often leads to a grey area in ethics and morality. By trying to eliminate every disease and defect from humans, they will be eliminating the human condition itself, since human aren’t perfect and illness is part of our nature.

Merkel is the German Chanceler, and that is very important, but only for Germany not the whole world, she simply isn’t that important for the decade. And especially since she may well turn out to be the next Hitler…

Solar power will be important in the future but I think it will be something common which will be very used but not revolutionary, and certainly not for the next decade.

Apple will not be the brand of the next decade. Why ? First it’s biggest booster was Steve Jobs who is currently dead ( R.I.P.). Secondly, Apple is currently in a great number of lawsuits, which makes it loose credibility . Samsung is currently overtaking Apple and drawing it’s clients towards Samsung’s products, Google is starting to overcome Apple’s sales . Finally, in my opinion, Apple’s greatest flaw is it’s ecosystem, it’s too closed, either you play by their rules, or you don’t play at all, and that is too restraining for me.

Alexander McQueen is a big name in fashion industry, but only in that theme not for everyone, and since he’s dead I think it will be hard for him to be the next decade icon.

Samsung Everyone’s Invited

We all, as students, have been in the situation in which the teacher take our phone just because it ringed or just because we were looking at the hours. The incontestable truth is that teachers don’t understand that smartphones, tablets and even laptops are objects to which we become attached and make our academic life much easier. A smartphone’s agenda can easily be used to tell us after the class is over which is the homework or warn us that in the next week there is an exam and is time to start studying for it.

Computers and tablets can be used to replace notebooks, we save paper and their memory and easy utilization help to organize all the files from school, and this way we wouldn’t have to buy new notebooks in each school term. Paper sheets will continue to be used  for homework and to prove that this was done by us. There will still be paper consumption, but will be much more reduced that the current one. Bottom line: we go through all this and in 10 years our children will continue with the same problem. Is it really? Sorry but the answer to those problems is already being solved and the answer is in the head of Heyon You, a cooperator with the brand we choose: Samsung. But there’s no need to be sad, because very soon you too will be able to enjoy this technology.

Since we are aware the people’ needs, and not helping students to go against teacher’s decisions, we are developing a system to make both students and teacher’s life more easy. Worksheets transferred to students in real time, the possibility for the teacher to check on what each students is doing in the class. Tecnology that will be available to the hole world and everyone. Rogue students that will stop hiding their phones and use them by shaping them to their wrist as the device change and adapt to the students needs. A future were anti-tech teachers will incentivize it’s use through smartphone and tablets, which will be used by the teachers themselves on the long class meetings, and completely eliminating the necessity of photocopy worksheets for the class on the next day.

Samsung, in the past, in the present and in the future.

English Project

Hello eavesdroppers, as usual one more weekend one more post. This week we have the presentations about the final project work of the third term. So this week our boss (teacher) said to do this post talking about what we think that would be the best project.

So in our mind the best project was the project of Kcénia and Alexandra. They gave us very good reasons to the choice of their theme, the hippies and Woodstock would is an easy theme to talk about and very good choice to the decade that they will talk about. Even with games we think will be an easy way to captivate our attention instead of a 45 minutes powerpoint presentation seems like a nightmare, since in the final 20 minutes everybody will be sleeping. We have already agreed they have really thought about what they will do in each part of the the presentation since they have even gave us the detailed time of that each part of work will take.

Thank you, and a have nice weekend everyone.

The Yoruba

The Yoruba are a ethnic group with their own language, and are from West Africa mainly Nigeria. They use music on special occasions in life such as religious festivals, royal occasions and entertainment.

Their music is played basically with Dundun ( a typical drum of West Africa ), the voice of the singers and the clapping of their hands, sometimes metal bells and wind instruments are used, performing a very simple but very specific music. The singing is rather caracteristic as well, the words must be pronounced in a appropriate tone, in order to the speech be understood with the correct meaning of the words.

Yoruba's popular music originated a style in the 20's called Juju, and it's well know in Nigeria. Juju comes from the traditional Yoruba's music played with drums, but evolved into a dance music which is played by a large group of people in circle, with guitars and drumming. Singing is also a major part of Juju and their lyrics are inspired in Yoruba's poetry, proverbs, praise songs and musical character of the languange.

The Yoruba's music as originated many other genres such Highlife, which combines the african sounds, with western music and jazz instruments, Sakara is Yoruba's music with islamic influences and the singing made by present day singers, although the theme of the remains the same; Agidigbo is a piano based Yoruba music and also uses in conjuction with a bell and a typical Dundun.

Yoruba music as originated a large number of musical genres, and probably even some contemporary music that we listen .

The Song with a message that no one discover (or yes) in the english class

So dear colleagues, teacher and some others eavesdroppers of this fantastic blog, we want to start this first post of 2012 by wishing you a good year. We hope that you have received the gift that you want in Christmas, if you haven't received what you want, well something wrong you should have done during the last year.

Then as people often say " New year, new life" and to begin we change our old headphones for a new headphones in design to save energy.

But as always a task must be done, the same task of all the weeks talk about something related to the English class, well this week we don't have any reason to complain becaus our amazing teacher gives us a list of songs to chose one and talk about it. Forget it, you all know it, you all probably must have that to do it.

So to begin as obvious we have chosen the song "It´s a new day" from that wanna be, the Will.i.am.

The song "It´s a new day" talks as we said in the class about the raise of Barack Obama to the place of president of the U.S.A.

Since 1609 until 1807 that black people were taken to be slaves in the U.S.A. ,that person and their succeding generations was discriminated, until in 1963 Martin Luther king say "I have a dream". Since the death of Matin Luther King the mentality change but the Negro never had the same opportunities in live that the white persons. So the time passes and in 2008 a black men becomes the first black president of the U.S.A. With this achieved a new world of opportunities was opened to black people because 500 years later a black person had the same opportunity as a white person. So in november7, 2008 the album of Will.i.am was launched and the third track was " It's a new day".

"It's a new day" talks about the day when Barack Obama reached to the place of President of the  U.S.A and it was a achieved to all the mix of races in the U.S.A not only to black person but to all persons who lives there, something that happened after a long battle for the rights of all the races.

I went asleep last night
Tired from the fight
I've been fighting for tomorrow
All my life
Yea I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
'Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Have finally came true

It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day

It's been a long time coming
Up the mountain kept runnin'
Souls of freedom kept hummin'
Channeling Harriet Tubman

Kennedy, Lincoln, and King
We gotta invest in that dream
It feels like we're swimming upstream
It feels like we're stuck inbetween
A rock and a hard place,
We've been through the heartaches
And lived through the darkest days

If you and I made it this far,
Well then hey, we can make it all the way
And they said no we can't
And we said yes we can
Remember it's you and me together

I woke up this morning
Feeling alright
I've been fightin' for tomorrow
All my life
Yea, I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Have finally came true

It's a new day
(it's a new day)
It's a new day
(it's a new day)
It's a new day
It's a new day!

It's been a long time waitin'
Waiting for this moment
It's been a long time praying
Praying for this moment

We hope for this moment
And now that we own it
For life I will hold it
And I ain't gonna let it go

It's for fathers, our brothers,
Our friends who fought for freedom
Our sisters, our mothers,
Who died for us to be in this moment

Stop and cherish this moment
Stop and cherish this time

It's time for unity
For us and we
That's you and me together

I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Have finally came true
Yea, I woke up this morning
Feeling alright

'Cause we weren't fighting for nothing
And the soldiers weren't fighting
For nothing
No, Martin wasn't dreaming for nothing
And Lincoln didn't change it for nothing
And children weren't crying for nothing

It's a new day
It's a new day
A new day
It's a new day
It's a new day!

Will.i.am (William James Adams Junior also known as Zuper Blahq) was born at March 16,1975 in Los Angeles  it is a rapper, DJ, singer, actor and a music producer. His best performances are related to the band BLACK EYED PEAS.