quarta-feira, 12 de novembro de 2008

JOKES

We found this jokes on internet and we though it was pretty funny. Sometimes, it can be hard to tell a good joke in a foreign language - you forget words or the tense you want to use... Anyway, we're laughing already...



The smart tramp
A tramp walks into a bar and orders a drink. “I don’t think you can pay for that, can you?” says the barman. “OK” says the tramp. “If I promise to show you something amazing, will you give me a drink?” Reluctantly, the barman agrees, and the tramp pulls a baby chick out of his pocket and puts it on the bar.
The little creature runs over to the piano and plays Imagine by John Lennon. “That was amazing,” admits the barman as he pulls the tramp’s pint. Once he has gulped it down, the tramp asks for another. “I’ll need another miracle in return,” says the barman. So this time the tramp pulls out a piglet and puts it on the bar. The piglet clears his throat and sings Bohemian Rhapsody.
At this point, a man sitting in the corner of the bar comes up and gives him £100 for the piglet. When he’s gone, the barman says to the tramp, “You’re crazy to sell that pig so cheaply. You could have got much more.” “It’s OK,” replies the tramp, “The chicken’s a ventriloquist.”



Bad day
A big lorry driver with a reputation for making trouble walks into a bar. Everyone pretends not to see him and hopes he will leave them alone. A little man is sitting at the bar just staring at his drink when the big lorry driver walks up to him, grabs his drink and gulps it down in one swig. The poor little man starts crying. The lorry driver is surprised and says, “Come on man, I was only messing about, I’ll buy you another drink. I just can’t stand to see a man rying.” “This is the worst day of my life,” says the little guy, sobbing. “I can’t do anything right. I slept-in and was late for an important meeting, so my boss fired me. “When I went to the car park, I found my car was stolen and I have no insurance. I grabbed a taxi home but, after it left, I found out my wallet was still in the taxi. “I got in the house and discovered my wife had left me for my brother… And then you turn up and drink the poison!”


We hope you had fun!

segunda-feira, 3 de novembro de 2008

INTERTEXTUALITY

We are going to present you the intertextuality among many kinds of artistical expressions, contrasting their age context and cultural differences about the issue: ART REPORTING TECHNOLOGY



Art is the expression of the human reality. Every time something changes in the world, in people’s way of life, it is reported by music, literature, painting, theatre, cinema and many other kinds of artistical expressions, when technology was introduced in society it was not different. Check out some examples of it.


The songs Admirável Chip Novo by the Brazilian rock singer Pitty and Brave New World by The British rock band Iron Maiden are intertext with the book Brave New World from the English writer Aldous Huxley.

MUSICAL INTERTEXTUALITY

There are many kinds of intertextuality: parody, homage, citation, reelaboration, etc.
In record stores or musical web sites we can easily find similar covers of albuns from artists that have nothing in common one each other. Check out some examples of this kind of intertextuality.
BIOMECHANICAL

The Swedish architect and plastic artist H. R. Giger is the creator of Alien and he was inspired by the Austrian science fiction movie director Fritz Lang, who was the first in associate biomechanical elements with the cinema, Lang’s masterpiece is Metropolis from 1927, which shows a dehumanize vision of the future.


MOVIES AND BOOKS

Is also pretty common the intertextuality between cinema and literature. One example is George Orwell’s book “1984” and the science fiction movie “Equilibrium” from 2002 written and directed by Kurt Wimmer.
The film itself is an original story, but it takes a large amount of influence from many books such as Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World", George Orwell’s book "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury.
Some similarities and ideas taken from the book are for example the conditioning of the population, the obligatory injected “drug” they must take, the rules dictated by the Father, also called "Big Brother”, who is watching the population all the time. The destruction of the art and books by the fire is an idea from "Fahrenheit 451". Which have not the same story, but the movie is clearly based on these mentioned books.

PAINTING INTERTEXTUALITY
“The Dwarf Sebastian de Morra” from 1645 by Diego Velázquez.
"Velázquez Dying Behind the Window on the Left Side Out of Which a Spoon Projects” from 1982 by Salvador Dalí.
In this painting Dalí uses the same central element as Velásquez portrait, but he mixes it with surrealist elements, in such case he does a reelaboration.

Portrait of Pope Innocent X” from 1650 by Diego Velázquez.
“Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X” from 1953 by Francis Bacon
In this painting the Irish artist Francis Bacon does a citation of Velázquez portrait . He uses the central element deforming it and shows a distorted version of the Pope’s portrait.

GOOD HUMORED INTERTEXTUALITY


The American cartoonist Matt Groening uses intertextuality in this picture of The Simpsons, which is a parody of the painting from 1931 “The memory persistence” by the Spanish painter Salvador Dali.


"Texts exist in cultural and aesthetic contexts alongside other texts. They influence one another and often refer to one another overtly, this being a particular characteristic of postmodernist writing. In fact, all language is itself intertextual, since language always pre-exists the speaker: words and meanings are always second-hand in some sense”. Aidan Arrowsmith