A New Hero: Grammarman!

More video adventures and comics to learn English here.

Animation: More Typography

Students' Corner: Are you influenced by advertising?

Of course I am. I believe nobody can escape from it. It does not matter how hard you try to avoid advertising: it's everywhere. You could live alone in a cave and you could probably see sometimes advertising aeroplanes crossing the sky. The world we have made is an empire of purchasing and selling, and money is the engine that makes it all move, so it has become the most important thing.

I don't usually watch TV, mainly because I don't like commercials at all: I hate the idea of somebody trying to influence me to make me think that I need things that aren't really necessary in my life. But, anyway, I see lots of banners on the Internet, and there are many advertisements anywhere you look in the street: shops, posters ... Even when you are wearing designer labels, you are publicizing them.

If you don't see advertisements, you don't think you need their products. But once you've seen something and somebody has told you how useful and cool it is, automatically you want to have it. On the other hand, I believe luxurious things attract us someway. I don't know exactly why: maybe when we see that something is expensive, we believe we will be more important if we can buy it. But we don't become important if we get it, we are only more stupid and insecure, because we're trying to give a good image of ourselves to everyone basing it on how much money we have. But that does not define us as a person.

Paloma Prados Ruiz (1º Bach.)

Culture: Book Day

To celebrate Book Day, here are some of the most famous love poems in British Literature, from Classic Poetry Aloud:

Sonnet 18, by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.





Sonnet 30, by Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599)

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentile mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.





How Do I Love Thee?, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Environment: Earth Day

Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Since that first Earth Day in 1970, people around the world have created their own ways to celebrate Earth and to renew their commitment to saving our living planet. More information about the history of Earth Day here.

Earth Day is a moment for us to think about our way of life and an opportunity to do something to protect the future of nature.

Some interesting sites to help you make the most of this day:

Earthday Network - Events, campaigns, programmes, fact sheets, tips and activities.

Environmental Kids Club - Activities to help you explore your environment and learn how to protect it.

Earth Day - News, videos and photos.

National Geographic's Green Guide - Tips to help the planet.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - Simple steps you can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

The Nature Conservancy - More eco-tips and activities

Earth 911 - Links for students and teachers.

World Environmental Organization - A guide to the best environmental web sites.

The EnviroLink Network - Lots of environmental resources.

Global Warming and Water Planet, two short films by Leonardo Dicaprio:

More videos on Earth Day Television.

Music: Linkin Park

Linkin Park has presented Projekt Revolution 2008, the band's new tour, which features former Soundgarden/Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell, The Bravery, Ashes Divide, Atreyu, 10 Years, Hawthorne Heights, Armor For Sleep, and Street Drum Corps.

Since their formation in 1996, the band has sold more than fifty million albums and won two Grammy Awards. These are two of their most popular songs:

What I've Done (Minutes to Midnight, 2007)

Crawling (Hybrid Theory , 2000)

The future of your generation?

Sports: 2008 NBA Playoffs

NBA Playoffs are already here and this the first ad - featuring Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal - for the new postseason campaign called 'There Can Only Be One', which will include star players from all playoff teams.

All the information about 2008 Playoffs on NBA's Home Page.

Full schedule here.


These were the best moments of last year's Playoffs:

Education: Spectacular Physics

Walter H. G. Lewin is a 71-year-old professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whose amazing online lectures have become famous all over the world. You can read about it here.

These are some of Professor Lewin's greatest moments:

His video lectures can be found on MIT's OpenCourseWare and TechTV, and here.

Photography: Vanity Fair

VANITY FAIR PORTRAITS - Photographs 1913-2008

National Portrait Gallery, London.

14 February - 26 May 2008

(Gloria Swanson by Edward Steichen, 1924)

(Legends of Hollywood - Nicole Kidman, Catherine Deneuve, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Vanessa Redgrave, Chloe Sevigny, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz - by Annie Leibovitz, 2001)

Vanity Fair magazine has an impressive photographic collection. The National Portrait Gallery exhibition includes vintage and modern prints and celebrates the masters of this great art form, from Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Helmut Newton and Cecil Beaton to Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino.

Vanity Fair's first period, from 1913 to 1936, is represented with portraits of personalities such as Albert Einstein, Charles Chaplin, Pablo Picasso, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Vanity Fair suspended publication in 1936. The second period, from the resurrection of the magazine in 1983 up to the present day, includes film and theatre stars as well as writers, athletes, style icons, and business titans, with portraits of Robert De Niro, Arthur Miller, Demi Moore and Margaret Thatcher amongst many others.

Animation: Typography

Created by Vancouver Film School students.




More examples of animation projects using typography:

A music video for Art Brut's song Emily Kane.



A project on The Beatles' song Eleanor Rigby.




Finally a project using motion graphics called Conscious (music by Depeche Mode).