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My usual English school (fiac) has terminated their CPE classes on saturday mornings. Five of us started the course, but in January only 3 went ahead with it… So, they claimed that they couldn’t keep up English lessons in this timetable, that we must move to another timetable. I have to say that I don’t like fiac a lot, in fact, it was the first year for years that I liked the teacher… Usually they were boring, but this year I had a very funny American one who wanted to teach English.

Well, if they have to stop teaching on saturday morning because there were 2 students less at class… Sorry, but they should learn something about economics and how to do the bookkeeping…

Anyway, it’s been four months without doing a single English exercise and I don’t want to give it up once I’m so close to my goal (CPE). So, I’ve decided to try at International House, where my girlfriend goes too, and take it up in order to try to pass PCE next year.

I did the exam, and reading part was OK, but grammar… Well… It seemed that I haven’t the foggiest… :’(! Very sad, this wasn’t my level but too much time without doing anything in English… Has taken its toll…

I will try to correct it with the oral and writing part. Oral part is tomorrow at 12.30 p.m. and I have to give in a composition too. I’ll write down my composition too, so if someone somewhere sometimes (haha) wanna read a CPE composition try, they could…

Write an answer to one of the topics bellow. Write between 300-350 words in an appropiate style.

1. Don’t like it.
2. You have recently seen a film version of a novel you have read. Write a review of the film for a media arts magazine and say what you think are the problems of making films based on books (note: It’s more or less the same as comparing the Da Vinci Code book <-> the DaVinci Code Film).
3. Don’t like it.

It’s clear. Let’s think about some film that has been adapted from a book… The Da Vinci Code.

I was really impressed with Da Vinci Code book. It has a lot of mystery and conspiracies in their pages, encryption, it is a clever book and so on. As an Engineering student, these are some of the things which I like most when I have to choose a book to read. This is why I selected The Da Vinci Code. I had read digital fortress too and I knew for sure that Dan Brown wasn’t going to disappoint me. And he didn’t. A few months after the release of the book, Ron Howard decided to make a film based on the book. It was a tremendous disaster!

Films directors must keep in mind that adapting a book for the screen can’t be done directly. First of all, they should extract the main information of the plot and think about how people would like to receive it. Otherwise, the film can get boring. And this was the most important error in The Da Vinci Code film. Ron Howard just reproduced the book and people who had already read it (most of the spectators) got boring with listening again and again to the same theories without a bit of action. When you read something you can imagine it as far as you are able to. This is one of the beautiful things about reading a book instead of just watching a film… So, the way to be impressed by a film which is based on a book goes through the ability to create a new atmosphere which you haven’t experienced yet. In our case, T he Da Vinci Code had a lot of things to say and to show to its spectators… But you could die waiting for it! Instead of talking with images and playing with your mind until you see the real reason of why everything had happened, the film just limited itself showing a simple vision of the characters arguing about what had happened. Very poor; it seemed that Ron Howard hadn’t the foggiest notion of how to make a film.

Summing up, I would not recommend the film to anybody who loves the book as I daresay that it will disappoint you as much as it did me. Furthermore, if you are planning to watch any other film based on a book, be sure that the adaptation has been done correctly!

… Samy*^20

–Corrected April/8/2008–

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