Marvel's new movies.

I watched lately two of the new Marvel's film versions of comic books and each of them was really good. Firstly it was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is a continuation of a new series with Spider-Guy, made by Marc Webb. Comparing to the old trilogy it's a lot better in my opinion. Say whatever you want, but Tobey Maguire didn't really look like a teenager. One thing I've missed was Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborne, because the motif of the old Green Goblin was almost totally missed in the new series. Anyway, the new Spidey played by Andrew Garfield makes all the atmosphere of the typical comic book history about teenage superhero. And this is great. His relations with Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) may look cliché sometimes, but this is exactly what makes the movie more authentic. I very liked Jamie Foxx as Electro - this character was very well written and Foxx clearly did his best playing it. What was also cool is the music during scenes with Electro, because it was actually electronic music. Surprisingly this music was in the great harmony with the work of Hans Zimmer, which also did a good job. The funny accent for me was the actor playing young Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan) who totally looks like a young Leonardo DiCaprio (ex. in What's eating Gilbert Grape). I couldn't get this thought out of my head during the whole movie. One more thing - don't wait to the scene after the credits, because it's an exact scene of the next movie I'll talk about.

The second movie is of course X-Men - Days of Future Past. If you have an opportunity to go to the cinema to watch this movie - don't think, go. It's totally worth it! Starting from the brilliant cast, ending with the exciting story and special effects. The movie show us how people are affraid of something they don't know and what can they do to control it, even if it's not so dangerous. In this case it's about mutants, who, according to Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), may cause an extintion of the species Homo Sapiens. We can see all of the abilities of mutants trying to unite in the common case - survival. The movie has two layouts - one in the future and on in the past. The future is very dangerous for mutants, so they decide to send someone in the past to change it. Obviously they send the greatest diplomat amongst them - Wolverine. Ok, I'm joking. They send him because he's the only one who can survive the journey. Anyway, his job is to unite Magneto and Professor Xavier so they can find Mystique and protect her DNA from Trask. The best scene is the one with Silverquick - I totally love this guy! He's playing by Evan Peters, who made a big challenge for Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who will play the same character in the next Avengers movie. I don't want to tell you more about it, because I'm a Spoiler-Woman (or I'll be if I was a heroine). I hope I gave you enough reasons to watch this two movies.

Hate reversal.

Today I'd like to share my point of view on kind of difficult and controversial topic. It's about minorities who think they have more rights then majority. Firstly I'd like to show you an article which inspired me to talk about it. In the article a young student describes her reactions after she saw a spiteful comment on a polite and humorous message written by one of the professors of Faculty of History to students about their way of clothing during the exams due to the high temperature. The message wasn't sexist at all, he just advised people to dress properly, but the comment of Codziennik Feministyczny was really inappropriate.

I just don't understand this hate towards men amongst feminists. I do agree that a feminism movement was important to leave the stereotypes behind and let women live with equal rights to men. Nowadays, when the problem of sexism isn't that big as it used to be in the last century, the feminists are just trying to show everybody that they're still understate and still so aggrieved. I know, this problem hasn't gone, but we're missing the point - we have to ask ourselves if now there are the men who have sometimes more troubles than women if we're talking about sexism and things like that. And it's not just in this case.

Let's see other minorities. Racism - of course, we don't have this problem in Poland as big as it is in US for exemple, but still it's going to be upturned. You can't even look at a black guy, because he'll just say "Yo, honkey, you're staring at me!". And nobody bats an eye! I don't blame anyone, it's true that black people still have more difficult life that white people, but in general whites tries to make it better while blacks are still full of hate. 

The same with LGTB people who exaggerate everything they do for their movement - it's ok that you're in love with the same gender, but you really don't have to hate all of heterosexual people, tell everyone that sex with other gender is disgusting (I've heard that statement with my own ears!) and show us your butt. It's certainly not the way of making a society without homophobia (or maybe should I say heterophobia?). 

I could go on with other examples, but I just wanted to highlight the problem. I'm not feminist, althought I think some of their points are correct and we, women, have to be cautious. I'm not racist, because in fact I don't know personally any black person and even if I do, I don't think that the complexion would define one's personality. I'm not homophobic, but I don't like when they're showing off. I like vegetables, but I hate when someone says me that I musn't eat meat because blablablabla... And (s)he treats me like an animal murderer. I don't judge Jews, Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, etc. as long as they respect other people and  they are happy to believe (or not) in their own God. And this is the point - we should respect each other, no matter how different we are. 

Doctor Sleep

Have you ever wondered what happend to this little boy, who survived an explosion in Overlook Hotel? I'm talking about Danny, son of insane Jack Torrance who is the main character in The Shining - one of the best books written by the best horror writer, Stephen King. I'm happy to announce that King was thinking about him too and he decided to create a sequel of the story.

Doctor Sleep is a passionate novel about an adult Dan - a man with a gift called shining. He tries to deal with this special ability (or rather forget it) using alcohol like his father used to do. One day he crosses the line (in his opinion) by doing something, which will stick in his memory for a long time. When he gets to a little town in New Hampshire, Frazier, he decides to change his life and start from the beginning. Everything seems to be normal. Of course, the shining is back, but Dan can handle it now. Suddenly, someone starts to communicate with him throught this special supernatural radio. It's a little girl, Abra, whose shining is much more stronger than Dan's. At first it's just a few words. When the girl finds out about True Knot - group of creatures who kills children with shining, she's terrified and she asks Dan for help. Now son of Jack Torrance have to fight with his demons of the past to help Abra and himself, because True Knot is ruthless, dangerous and powerful. By now...

I strongly reccomend you this book, especially if you enjoyed The Shining itself. King did a masterpiece writing that sequel - it has many connections with the previous book and at the same time it tells a totally different story. And it's as scary and creepy as The Shining!

YouTube - learn and have fun!

Watching videos on YouTube could be a really good method of learning languages. I'd like to talk about 3 of my favourites english channels, which can actually teach us something new (besides the language of course). 

1) CrashCourse - as the name suggests, you can find here many crash courses of different subjects - Literature, History, Chemistry, Psychology (one of my favourites), Biology etc. Videos are made by teachers and professors in a really clear, simple and neat way. You always wondered how to say odczyn zasadowy in English? Now you have a chance to find out by watching Chemistry CrashCourse. You want to know something about American Revolution? US History CrashCourse is for you! You don't have to spend all your holidays watching 9gag or other stupefying websides. You can make a cours of biology and astound your friends. 

2) Fiddlerman - this is a great channel for violinists and violists. The guy who's making this channel is a very good musician which in a simple way can teach you how to make an arm vibrato, how to improvise some jazz or how to hold a violin without a shoulder-rest. It's not only for advanced players like me. It's also for people who think I think I want to learn how to play violin. If you're this person, Fiddlerman can help you chose a nice, not so expensive instrument for you, how to use it and how to care about it. Then, in a few simple and short videos he'll make you play! It's really wonderful to learn it for free. Besides tutorials he adds many of his own performances of numerous known and unknown pieces. I strongly recommend this channel!

3) Cracked - this is not actually a channel for learning, althought you can find out many facts about actors, movies, books and everything which is connected with contemporary popculture. The Cracked team produce many videos like "What if..." or "Did you know that..." etc. They make also their own gags, sketches and parodies (ex. a parody of Harry Potter's universe). Some of this videos are really mind-blowing. Like this one:

In case you don't know what to do during your free time - look above and enjoy :)

Some party board games.

Lately I was at the housewarming party in my friend's new home and I decided to bring some board games, just for fun. It was actually a great idea! I brought 3 games which I totally want to recommend. Their rules are simple, easy to get even if you have never played in any game but Monopoly or Scrabble. 

Firstly I want to introduce something for your creativity, imagination and capability to make associations. Dixit is actually a french card game which won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2010. The gameplay is simple. Each person is given 6 random card. One of you is a Storyteller, who make an association to one of his cards. He say his association and put his card backwards in the middle of the table. The rest have to match the card which will describe this association in the best way and also put it on the table (obviously among their own 6 cards). Then the Storyteller mix all of cards from the table and put them in order. The rest have to choose the first card, picked by Storyteller, by the secret vote. If the association was too easy and everyone has picked the right card, the Storyteller loose. Also, if the association was too hard and no one has picked the right card, the Storyteller loose. He wins only if there was someone who picked his card but there was also people who didn't do that. After this round the new Storyteller is the gamer sitting on the left from the previous Storyteller. We score when: we gain points as a Storyteller (3 points), someone picked our card even if it wasn't the right one (1 point for 1 vote) or when we guessed correctly which card is the right one (also 3 points). The end is when someone gained 30 points. 

Second game is one of my favourites: Time's Up! This game really easy check your knowledge about famous historical, contemporary or imaginary characters. You have to pick a deck with about 40-45 cards (depends on the number of gamers) with yellow characters on the top and blue characters on the bottom. Firstly you have to choose which colour you're going to play. When the number of gamers is even, you split in pairs. If the numbers isn't even, you gain points with your 2 neighbours - one from the left and one from the right. It's a bit more complicated, but I don't want to walk into details. The game has 3 rounds. 1 - you have to describe in the best way you can the character from the card so your partner can guess who's on the card. You have one minute for guess as many as you can. 2 - the same cards, one word - one answer. This time you can go on if you or your partner made a mistake. 3 - pantomime. You're allowed to use onomatopoeias, althought you can't hum "da-da-da-daaaa" if you have Ludwig van Beethoven on your card. You can also go on to the next card in case of mistake. The winner is of course the pair who guessed the most. 

The last game is Party Time (known before as Party Alias). It's also the game for teams (at least 2 person in each, at least 2 teams). You have 5 types of quests:

-alphabet - all the team have to give 20 words on the letter from this card

-celebrity - one gamer from the team has 5 cards, gameplay is like in the first round of Time's Up.

-rhymes - one gamer has 5 cards, he have to compose a line which ends with the word from the card, the rest from the team have to finish by giving second line which rhymes with the first one

-pantomime - one gamer has 2 cards, he has to pantomime an animal or a job from the card (he can tell if it's an animal or a job)

-black cards - one gamer has 6 cards, it's like celebrity but here you have just different words

For each quest you gain a proper number of points. The winner is the team who reaches the finish as first.

I hope I've encouraged you to game. If you want to play or borrow any of this game, I recommend GOSU once again. Enjoy!

End-of-term Exhibition - The University of Arts in Poznań.

My roommate studies architecture at UAP and she does many crazy THINGS during all the academic year. Projects, models, sketches, performances... I always wondered what they do with all this stuff after exams, and... I finally know! Every year the students of all faculties at the University of Arts create an exhibition, which is the effect of their whole year's work. In 6 different buildings we can see a countless amount of paintings, sculptures, posters, photos, designs and many others forms of artictic expression. This year the exhibition takes place from 2 to 6 June, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more practical infos I refer you to event's Facebook page. And now I'd like to share my opinion.

Today I was only in buildings A and E and I didn't have so much time to consider every single work from every possible point of view. In the first building I saw many paintings and sketches, especially nudes. Below is the photo from one of the studios of Painting and Drawing Faculty.

My favourite was this painting almost in the middle, with a bald girl with a gas mask. There was also a lot of posters made by students from Faculty of Graphic Arts and Visual Communication. Despite really strange topics (overwhelming gender, woman with a beard etc), they created many interesting things, like this:

Then I visited bulding E. It was a very short, but intensive visit. First, I watched projects of costumes made by students of stage desing.

Later I came across an interesting project of board game...

...and weird Jellyfish Project.

There was even more shocking, beautiful or puzzling works, but I didn't have much time to watch it all. I'm thinking about revisiting the exhibition on Thursday, because I'm very curious about all this stuff I passed by.

Coldplay - Ghost Stories

I decided to spare some money to invest in my cultural life. Each week I try to buy a book, go to the cinema, buy a ticket to opera etc. This week I bought the new album of british rock band, Coldplay. I always liked this group, but after a slightly disappointing CD Mylo Xyloto I didn't know what to expect. Fortunately, Ghost Stories finds out to be really refreshing. The album has 9 songs which make a great combination together. Let me introduce them.

1. The opening song is Always In My Head (I just realised how funny that sounds). Begins with a choir part, then a light guitar solo, so typical for this group. The three-bar's rhythm is a background for the whole piece, which sometimes create a blurred feeling with the vocal part.

2. Magic - You can catch this beat just from the beginning and stay with it to the end. Nice and soft piano parts mixed with this stiff rhythm... Simple, but pleasurable. One of my favourites on this CD.

3. What can I say about Ink? The music makes you think about the summer, holidays... Sounds like a very positive song, even despite lyrics. 

4. Next one among bests - True Love. Strings in background - this is just a little thing which make this song so magical. And the moment almost at the end - guitar solo missed the main rhythm... Just like I said - little things.

5. Mignight - starts like from outer space and keep going this way. Totally good song to read some science-fiction.

6. You can dive in first few notes of Another's Arms without a fear. Even though the song is sad, this sadness makes it beautiful.

7. Oceans - another enormous blue picture on our way. It reminds me the old, good one Coldplay, with this simple acoustic guitar. You can even hear waves spalshing on the stone beach and the burble mixed with ringing bells at the end. 

8. Quick jump to A Sky Full Of Stars - the energetic one with dynamic piano part and typical dance beat. So different than previous song, but still with the same marvelous vocal of Chris Martin.

9. O - another on my personal list The Best of Coldplay with another great piano part. A song with a lot of o's in lyrics, which make a very nice linking between words. 

In general, the whole album is quite calm, soft and very rhythmical. On the one hand it's like a journey back to the old style, but on the other hand it's new and fresh. I hope I encouraged you to listen and to chill out with the newest Coldplays masterpiece.