Mind your language

I came to know about this British Television series while having a casual conversation with a person from Bangladesh, whom I met through couchsurfing. We were discussing about the importance of mother tongue and all of a sudden he asked me what is the meaning of the word "POR FAVOR".

The topic came because I was sharing my professional experience as a Spanish speaker with various clients from Spain & Latin America. This guy recommended me to watch "MIND YOUR LANGUAGE".

Fortunately I found it on Youtube & watching the first episode pulled me completely into the funny humor of the script so much that I managed to complete episode 3 of season 3 so far within 2 weeks and will continue watching it.

Mr.Brown (played by Barry Evans)

This series starts with an English teacher Mr. Brown who is hired at a school to teach English to immigrants living in England. These students belong to various countries like India, Spain, Italy, Japan etc... The script of the episodes contains lot of humor & irony based on various cultural & multilingual backgrounds of immigrants. Here mostly non-native speakers as well as native speakers will enjoy watching these students learning and speaking their own accent of English that represent their origin & identity. As it sounds different than the native British accent, it is funny and entertaining to the audience. 

Juan Cervantes (played by Ricardo Montez), a Spanish student who speaks no English during the first few episodes other than counter questioning Mr. Brown por favor :p

Danielle (played by Françoise Pascal)

Danielle is a French student with french accent. She can be described as a center of attraction where all men are after her and guess what she is after her English teacher. Every character in this series is interesting as the bonding between all the students grows with every episode & the audience like me can expect something funny and sarcastic performance from everyone. 

Well the time was different during 1970's when it was made and the irony used to describe the history, politics, cultural difference etc. could be portrayed as racist nowadays in some countries as time has changed and political scenario is different. But this comedy show will be eternal as it was smartly scripted by writer Vince Powell without sparing the English people as well while having jokes with other non-native speakers.

Mr. Brown with Indian student Ranjeet & German student Anna

MYL-Full Cast

The best part of the series I feel is that every episode can make the audience laugh and be in a funny mood. Audience can learn a lot about the language, culture, history etc. of not only English but other countries through multicultural environment and strong sense of humor.

What's the capital of engLand? .... Start watching the episodes to find some funny answers that you will never forget :P

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La Ley de Herodes

Doesn't matter if we understand politics or not, we can't ignore it. We are all taught in schools that Corruption is bad but later this corruption becomes our reality. We move on by complaining against corruption or accepting it. But here we have an option to sit back and enjoy the satirical comedy of this Mexican film "La Ley de Herodes".

Somewhere around 1940s in an interior village of Mexico, Juan Vargas (played by Damián Alcázar) an innocent & well behaved janitor of PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional- a political party of Mexico) was elected as a mayor to bring development & justice to the people of this village. Now begins the main politics where director Luis Estrada portrays how the system of corruption can change a normal person to a beast.

None other than Damián Alcázar can bring the character of this newly elected mayor so much real & entertaining to the audience. The story unfolds how this man transforms into a gruesome person & he himself becomes the law of society.

People from any part of the world can relate to the basic corrupted culture of politics that has been shown in this movie as no country exists without corruption. Even the sense of humor used to criticize the then ruling party of Mexico (PRI) is stupendous. Here in one interesting conversation, Eduardo López Rozas who plays the character of a doctor, asks an american "Do you think democracy is the solution of Mexico?".

To know the funny & satirical response watch the trailer below:

A MUST WATCH!!!

Serial

With the advancement of technology & rapid changing life style, we are bombarded constantly with Television commercials, apps, news articles, social media etc. The only thing that remains stationary & existent is THE RADIO. Since its invention in 19th century, it has traveled through different time  and finally reaches our generation with the tradition of various programs including music, drama, stories, news etc. 

Recently I found out on the internet about this widely popular american radio podcast 'SERIAL' where a 15 year old homicide case was reopened for discussion by Sarah Koenig through broadcast on radio with different episodes. At first I thought of streaming the first episode & while listening to it, I couldn't stop downloading the rest of the 11 episodes ( I wish it could have continued more and more and more).

   

It's a real incident about an accused man of South Asian origin named Adnan Syed, born and brought up in America, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, when they were both teenagers studying in school in the year 1999. Now he is serving a life sentence in US. 

Well it's normal that an accused person who is guilty of taking life of another human being should deserve punishment. But what happens if he is convicted for lifetime based on some unclear facts & countless lies from the witnesses?  

Whether Adnan is guilty or not is the secondary issue because he is already serving life imprisonment for 16 years whereas the primary issue is based on what genuine facts he is convicted.

To know more about what happened on 13th January 1999, start streaming or downloading the episode 1 by clicking the link below where Sarah Koenig unfolds the mystery of this incident by having direct conversation with the accused Adnan Syed over the phone in prison and other witnesses.

http://serialpodcast.org/season-one/1/the-alibi

Un cuento chino

Imagine yourself being lost in an unknown place with no money, smartphone etc. where people speak in a different language you don't understand. So what you can do?

Un cuento chino

Before you start thinking in your mother tongue, here is an Argentine movie "Un cuento chino" that narrates the journey of a Chinese man who is lost after landing at the airport of Buenos Aires, where he doesn't speak nor understand Spanish language neither do the native people speak Chinese.

While watching the film I was imagining that if the audience don't speak Chinese & Spanish language, then watching it without subtitles would bring different interpretations. At the same time, this film has different point of view for the Chinese (mandarin speaking) audiences who can't speak Spanish.

Director Sebastián Borensztein has comically & emotionally created a bonding between the two countries of China & Argentina through a protagonist character Roberto (played by Ricardo Darín). He is a lonely man & owns a machinery shop. He maintains a strict daily routine & has a rare hobby of collecting bizarre news from the newspaper where coincidentally a Chinese story of a cow falling from an airplane & killing a lover on the boat was one among his favorite. One day he discovers a helpless Chinese man Jun (Ignacio Huang) near the airport, being robbed and left without anything except an address tattooed on his shoulder. 

Roberto (left) & Jun (right) sharing sign language

One cannot enjoy the movie with subtitles because it will ruin the real essence of this movie. Actor Ricardo Darín has taken the story to a different level by delivering the final interpretation to the audience. 

"Es una película para los amantes de idiomas" --- Those who don't speak Spanish, they can copy & translate this sentence in google. If you pause for a while & choose not to, then it will live for long just like the Chinese dialogues in this movie that I don't understand at all but it creates my own interpretation of human emotions.

Corazón de León

Love has no boundary, no language, no limitations. It is universal in a way that we can fall at any point of time. Whether we watch Hollywood movies of Woody Allen, Bollywood romantic movies or Bengali movies like "Devdas", we enjoy feeling it from our heart.

Every ambition has to pay, so does love. At some point of our life we all fall in love without thinking or judging much but rather we develop a feeling that comes from inside. Here Ivana Cornejo (Julieta Díaz) a successful lawyer, develops a feeling for León Godoy (Guillermo Francella) an architect, in this Argentine movie "Corazón de León".

Heart Of Lion

But what is so special about this couple?

Here the protagonist character, León, is un enano i.e. a dwarf & Ivana falls in love with him irrespective of their differences in height.

"Me fatlan 40 centimetros, pero es nada grave-- It lacks only 40 cm nothing much" says León on their first meeting at a restaurant. Ivana is surprised to meet him as she has created an imaginary portray of this man based on a telephonic conversation they had before.

Now the story outshines our common belief that we generally follow like- LOVE at FIRST sight, FIRST impression is the LAST impression, bla bla bla... At first it gives us a clear scenario where we can sense that nothing will work out between this mismatched couple. Dating is out of question. But the spectacular narration of this romantic comedy film by Director Marcos Carnevale, slowly unfolds the emotional feelings of Ivana for this man León. The more we enter into the film, the deeper we encounter the character of this man as a father, friend & lover surpassing his height. 

LOVE is like a dream. We don't realize it in the beginning until we wake up in the middle, not being able to complete the journey.

  

Love Sex aur Dhoka

Director Dibakar Banerjee introduce the shaky hand-held camera technique for the first time in India to make this film in 2010 with the help of security & spy camera before the arrival of selfie era that we are living now. We can find resemblance of these techniques in some Hollywood horror films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity & in the recent Spanish feature film "La Cueva". 

The title of this film gives the clear idea about what we are witnessing in our society among the youth. Here three different stories are being portrayed where each one of them goes through the journey of Love, Sex and betrayal.

The first story reminds me of a long lost & forgotten identity of Rizwanur Rahman in Kolkata where his mysterious death brought a terrible example in our society of committing a big error of being fallen in love with a girl of rich & conservative family.

First part- Rahul (middle), a film school student infatuated with the leading actress Shruti

The second story is the vital part of the movie where it connects the first & third part as the main plot. Here a guy Adarsh (Rajkumar Rao) tries to seduce an employee Rashmi (Neha Chauhan) of the store mall to have sex in front of the shop's security camera, so that he can make a lot of profit out of it. While playing he falls in love with her without even realizing it. So the conflict between greed & emotion starts developing until it ends with a decision at the final moment.

2nd part

The third part involves a journalist who is looking for a scandal story as a way of sting operation. He discovers an aspiring dancer Naina (Arya Banerjee) who is a victim of a Punjabi pop singer Loki Local. She was being promised to get launched in a music video with him but instead he was using her only for the purpose of sex. So the sting operation is to expose the casting couch with help of a hidden camera. Everything depends upon the trust between Naina & the journalist, whether the sting operation will be successful or not.

3rd part- Sting operation

The three different stories of the movie follow the same experience of love, sex and betrayal. Their paths somehow coincided along the way. If you are expecting a prime time entertainment from LSD, then it is more than that because the narration is the focus of all ENTERTAINMENT.  

TU NANGI ACHI LAGTI HAYE-- uncensored song

PADRE NUESTRO

This Spanish film is the directorial debut of Mr. Christopher Zalla, a Kenyan-born, Spanish speaking New Yorker. It is based upon an incomplete story of betrayal & identity theft that connects with very different characters.

PADRE NUESTRO

A 17 year-old Pedro (Jorge Adrian Espindola) who doesn't speak english, is starving & roaming around the deserted street of Brooklyn, where the lights of Manhattan's skyscrapers behind him blinks silently. He is searching for his father whom he had never met before. He was robbed on his way to New York when he was smuggled from his native land of Mexico. He was carrying a letter of his deceased mother along with his father's address and his photo.

While searching for his father, he strikes up an uncertain relationship with Magda (Paola Mendoza) a homeless prostitute and a drug addict, who agrees to help him locate his father in exchange of money.

The film starts with Juan (Armando Hernandez), a thug, fleeing from a local gang of Mexico before boarding a truck to be smuggled to New York city where he befriends with Pedro & robbed his personal belongings of his mother's letter along with his father's photo and address on the way while he was asleep. 

Juan, the impostor

The movie cuts back and forth between the two illegal Mexican immigrants-- One who is in search of his father Diego (Jesus Ochoa) an angry dishwasher and the other who manages to reach him with the stolen identity of Pedro.

At first Diego resists himself to believe Juan's lies but slowly it comes as a challenge for Juan to convince him with his charming & cunning behavior. The slow bonding between Juan & Diego creates an emotional mood like what a father & his son could experience where as Juan is after something else.

Pedro on his battle to earn daily wages with other illegal immigrants 

On one hand, Pedro who is the real son, is experiencing harsh reality on the shabbier street of New York city depending on a prostitute where as on the other hand, Juan is after something while discovering what a father could be like.

At any moment, the truth can destroy the house of cards, that are built upon numerous lies. One can find anything on this planet if he/she searches for it.

So what the final denouement would be like?? ... can't be guessed so easily