Off The Hook

The University of Westminster and television

Can you imagine a Spanish TV series filmed at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Sevilla. I am sure we would not be short of stories to tell...


Well, here in the UK, there is a new BBC TV comedy filmed at the University of Westminster. It is about a group of first year students (freshers) and it can be watched on-line.

Click on the picture to go to the BBC iPlayer and watch the first episode (they are available for a limited period of time and you have a download button too!!). There are more episodes if this is your "cup of tea":

Regent Street cinema project

The University of Westminter and cinema

If you did not know, I'm working this year at the University of Westminster. I have been very lucky and the Polylang, the modern languages programme in which I am collaborating, is based in the original building at Regent Street.

What I did not know is that this was also the site of the first public film screening in the UK with an audience paying to see a film.

Now the University wants to recover the original cinema under what they call the "Regent Street cinema project" with the intention of (in their words) "transforming the birthplace of British cinema back into a multimedia facility and teaching space for our students and the wider community and putting Westminster back in the Heart of London."

Here is a video about this building and its implications for the cinema industry in the UK, which has been released with the campaign:

Here you also have a link to a slide presentation of the project:

http://www.regentstreetcinema.co.uk/

Books and films: Life Of Pi by Yann Martel

Life Of Pi, by Yann Martel (2001)

A few years ago I recommended this book to 4th year students at the EOI of Lebrija, and then knew that M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) had been chosen by 20th Century Fox, who bought the rights, to direct the film version. It seems he dropped the project to direct The Lady in the Water, which did not turn out so well after all... Then Alfonso Cuarón replaced him but also dropped it to direct The Children of Men. After him it was Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amelie) who was chosen but he also dropped "after initial exploration". Finally, it seems Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) will hopefully direct the film, which will be released in 2010/11.


I still recommend its reading before watching the movie, as it is highly inspiring and suggestive and I guess the film will have to cut on lots of interesting parts to fit into an acceptably long motion picture. And also suggest you approach it with an open mind and not having read any summaries about it (thus my lack of links to the book reviews). You will have to trust me here.

So, do it and then let's see if the film is up to the original novel. I bet Ang Lee is the perfect choice to transmit the beautiful feelings of the novel but I prefer finding my own viewpoint and then contrasting it, don't you? Of course, you can always try the easy way and just wait and watch the film, but you will probably lose a lot of the nicely surprising moments of the novel.

A curiosity: the Canadian author of the book, Yann Martel, was born in Spain.


Check out this SlideShare Presentation where different people create illustrations for the novel (ideally after reading it ;-))

Life Of Pi Art

View more presentations from Matt Christensen.

MOVING HOUSES AND SCAM

The first thing I obviously had to do before moving to London was to find a place to live. I started looking for a place on the web, as I was still living in Spain, and a word began to appear more a more frequently, and this word is "scam":

SCAM: a fraudulent business scheme

And it was not just a word. I had already discovered the reputation London has for being one of the most expensive cities in the planet but still wanted to find that "bargain" and contacted "flat owners" through different sites. Of course I also contacted people who were genuine landlords but had the opportunity to come across some examples of real SCAMMING.

The funniest SCAMMER was someone who claimed to be a reverend moving away on a mission and for whom money was not important. The important thing for him, he said, was to find someone who took good care of his house while he was away, a house which looked pretty much like a five star hotel room. Others were not that obvious, but I began to identify some of the tricks and to my disappointment, I discovered that it was very difficult to find a bargain in London, especially if you are not there to check by yourself.

Of course, this is not something to laugh about, and some SCAMMERS have managed to deceive people by making them believe they are the real owners and taking a minimum of a 3-month-rent deposit (which can be a considerable sum), and then the real owner had turned up to everybody's surprise (but the SCAMMER, who would have disappeared).

Here are some comments from "Gumtree", a site which works like "Cambalache" or "Segundamano" here in Britain and which provides a lot of warning and even a forum to denounce SCAMMERS, as it is something that escapes their control:



Beware of SCAMMERS. It is already happening in Spain too.

So, what did I do in the end? I followed my tutor's advice and decided to go to a State Agent, but this is another story...

New born blog

About a year ago, I started this blog with a picture of Eros, in Picadilly Circus. It seems his power of attraction captured me and now I have moved to London for a year to take part in a new project.

This blog was originally created for CAL students and it worked well (or that is what my students and other colleagues told me) so I would like to keep it going. However, I will use it as a diary of my stay here and it will not be specifically designed for a profile of students.

But I want to keep the spirit of the original blog in this re-birth, so here is the first entry again:

Teaching is a difficult task. Teaching your subject in English to Spanish students means adding more difficulties, especially if you are Spanish and have to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous" English.

This blog tries to offer some help in that task and provide some "arms to oppose" those difficulties. Let Eros (or Anteros?), the Greek god of love assist us with his arrows in this act where love and affection also play an important role.

Now here I am, "trying to" teach Spanish to students of other nationalities and polishing my English. Welcome everybody and , to those who follow the blog, welcome back!