Video games culture

Maybe once in your life you have heard about video games and how they entertain the people. You may think this is just for kids and teenagers, well, your are wrong. This entertainment is made for everyone, and so adults play with them, but why is it so difficult to hear an adult playing a video game? The answer is simple, they are too busy in their quest to be "happy" earning money, and they loose their life on it. In video games we could say you loose your life but... in a different way, deppending on the type of game you bought you will waste your life in a good way. For example, if you try a sandbox video game you will "visit" new worlds, of course you won't experience it like in real life, but it will be a great sensation, because you can do whatever you want, in the way you want, of course there are some limitations.

If you have changed your idea of video games, you might be wondering where do I start, and how. Some consoles are too expensive, and the games are too, especially if it is new. You could start with a Play Station 3, nowadays it is cheap, but if you could afford a HD televison and a good and updated console, you could buy a Play Station Pro, or maybe a X Box one, both have incredible games. If you want to start with a shooter game you can buy Call of Duty 3 or maybe Far Cry 4, the last one is a sandbox too. If you want a sport game there are multiple games, for example FIFA 17 or Madden NFL 17. There are a lot of games you will find, but you have to remember that video games aren't going to be  good for your health, at least once you have to stop and go to exercise and socialize with other humans, not from video games, real humans.

Those magic times…

(If you haven’t seen the old Beauty and The Beast movie of Disney, maybe you should not be reading this…)

All of us, at least should have listened about the new live action of the Disney’s The Beauty and the Beast, directed by Bill Condon, and starring Dan Stevens and the famous Emma Watson. This version was recently released on equadorian cinemas and I went to watch it past saturday. I must say...I really love it. And I do principally because I have an history with Beauty and the Beast, it was the first movie that I saw on the cinema, I don’t remember very well but my mom told me that I was astonished with it, and when seeing it I reconnected with that feelings.

I grew up with Disney movies, Alice, Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Belle, Mulan, Pocahontas and others were like my first referents, but when I grew up I think that some of the magic get lost. Seeing again that Beauty and the Beast, almost exactly like the first movie that I saw, reconnect me with that little girl on the cinema, captivated by the colors and the purity of that love story. I must say, I don’t consider myself a romantic person and I don’t like typical and cheesy love stories fan, but, that movie really made me “fangirl”, it really moved. I think that this is because Beauty and the Beast has always been a untypical love story, and also because the reinforcement of Belle’s personality.

In the animated movie was a simple, intelligent, kind and independent girl but the “princess and perfect” that is common in the Disney princess movies always remain in her. In the new movie it was also something like that Belle was too much perfect...but it’s a fairy tale of the type “They lived happily ever after”, we can’t do much about it. But, much of the princess ways were let aside and more on the strong and independent personality went out, and this is positive. Other positive think that I saw was that in the movie were light winks about actuality themes, marriage, the concept of family, the appearances and superficiality, and of course the most polemic of all: LGBTI, the positive thing that I see is that the presence of this theme was so natural that you just don’t really see it in the moment, they just give you slightly signals and let the rest be speculation, I like that.

The other things that I like, and they are more physical, were the clothes, the places, the music, the decorations, the colors and the characters. Referring to the clothes and the places I can say that all, and I say all, of them were just…”princess type”, what I mean with this is that all of them were just too “fashion” and bright for just a small village on the mountains in the England of the XVI century, but, this is not bad, this type of clothes with the decoration and the colors in general of the movie, transmit more the ‘innocent fantasy’ style that I perceive in Disney movies, in other words, it really makes you feel in a fairy tale and not in the real world. In contrast with movies like the new “Alice in Wonderland”, the new “Snow White and the Hunter” the Beauty and the Beast in more in the new “Cinderella” and “Malefic” style, more fanciful. Of course it has their dark tones, specially when we see the beast, and the castle on ruins in the winter, but I say it again: it is surprisingly like the movie. If we remember the movie it was the same, the contrast between the outside that is snowy, dark, dangerous, and with a uncomfortable decoration and the inside, which is bright, gold, warm, safe and filled with books and magic, of course after the poor servants cleaned it (Maybe it can be related with the message of the story?).

And the music...other element that transport us to the first movies. The soundtrack was in charge of the same person that make the soundtrack in the original Disney movie: Alan Menken (who has also made other Disney movies soundtracks). Alan used the songs that were on the first Disney version but he composed another four songs for the movie. This is the detail that I appreciated the most…the music in the Disney movies is something that is unique and I believe that every Disney fan (or loving parents) had found themselves humming or singing one of them in the most unexpected moment. From my little experience with musicals in real life I believed that I would never like it (I have a really bad experience with a musical movie…), for me, seeing a musical with real persons just made me feel overwhelmed by the quantity of the songs and how unnecessary for the history are. But La La Land and Beauty and the Beast make me see another face of musicals, that I believe that are more like “musical movies” than a musical itself. I make this difference because to me movies like La La Land and The Beauty and the Beast use the singing and dancing resourse to make more deep the feeling of the movie, it is necessary to the history, is harmonious and they don’t make me feel overwhelmed.

Concluding: The Beauty and the Beast is a movie that I really love because it was so similar with the original one that I saw when I was very little, and at the same time has the actuality influence and it make polemic themes seem natural. I don’t believe that this is a “Movie Of The Year”, nor even a transcendental movie, but I really enjoy it and made me feel the magic and carefree of fairy tales again.

I must say, I am not an expert on musicals and movies, I’m just talking from my experience and my feelings about the movie, and in the same way I want to know your opinion: What do you think about The Beauty and The Beast? Have you gone to see it already? If you don’t what were your expectatives? (without spoilers please!)    

-SPOILER ALERT-

Another detail that I love is the part where Belle and the Beast travel with the magic book. To discover more about Belle’s past and why her mom was not with her closed a lot of questions that some of us were curious about when little, and to share the pain of discover the truth about her mother’s dead and how painful was for her father with the Beast was a very good way to develop more the relationship between them. Beast knows the pain of losing a mother and, I think, that through this both of them could connect better with their own and with the other feelings.

I recently watched a movie called "Silence". It took place in 1600 when the Christian missionaries went to Japan, in this process they gathered people that was willing to turn their faith and become Christians. 

After some time, Japan started showing what a swamp the country actually is: it prove itself as a place where nothing could ever grow, besides  what it already had. However, Christianity is a religion that requires for it's people to expand the faith, and that is what they did. 

Japan's authorities started looking, and killing if necessary, any trace of Christianity. The foreign religion was persecuted. If any person was found with a religious element of Christianity, they would be forced to deny their God, otherwise they would be taken as prisoners and tortured. 

This movie not only shows us the violence that is part of the history of the interaction between two religions, it also shows us the dependence that human beings have in religion. 

This missionaries weren't any Christians, they were fathers. This means that they were the ones able to baptize, marry, (people in Japan, didn't quite understand how the foreign religion worked, because they thought that when a person was baptized or went through any of the Christian traditions, that person already had a place in heaven, therefore, they mainly looked for what any religious believer looks for: salvation) and perform other religious traditions. Among those, they were the ones hearing people's confessions, giving them forgiveness.

As I said before, the movie shows us the dependence of human beings in something superior. There is a character that shows us the eternal look for forgiveness that Christians in general go through during their life. This character spends the entire movie denying the Christian God --in which he believed in-- and asking the father for forgiveness. Maybe he understood his religion, because, as it is said in the movie: we can never know if the god those converted Christians in Japan believed in was the same God that the Spanish and Portuguese fathers believed in, maybe those people in Japan only believed in the same God they did before, but with another name, rules and traditions. After all, religion is part of our culture, and culture determines the way we understand life. Whoever, maybe Christianity offered something that other religions didn't: a direct connection with God, and even more important, a process by which God is able to forgive us. Maybe Christianity opens the door for impunity, and with it, it comes hope, a kind of hope that allows you to keep living with your, so called, "mistakes".

So, basically, watch the movie if you can, it's an interesting way of understanding religion. But if you really want to understand something, don't look for it at blogs, just let us introduce you to interesting things.