| “There's something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell where they will take you. Mine took me here, where I belong.” |
Chip and Dale (also rendered as Chip 'n' Dale or Chip an' Dale) are two chipmunk cartoon characters created in 1943, at Walt Disney Productions. Their names are a pun based on the name of the famous 18th-century cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale. This was suggested by Bill "Tex" Henson, a story artist at the studio.
Chip is the logical schemer while Dale is the goofy, dim-witted one. Originally the two had a very similar appearance but, as a way to tell them apart, some differences were introduced: Chip has a small black nose (it looks a bit like a chocolate "chip") and two centered protruding teeth. Dale has a larger, dark red nose and it is his canine teeth that are exposed. Dale has a very strong sense of humor while Chip is more of the safe, focused one. Chip is also depicted as having smooth, short hair atop his head while Dale's is ruffled.
The term Chinese Chippendale in architecture is applied to a specific kind of railing or balustrade that was inspired by the "Chinese Chippendale" designs of cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. The infill between the top and bottom rails and the vertical supports is a series of interlocking diagonals, although rectilinear designs exist as well.
● Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, often referred to as just Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The action of Stoppard's play takes place mainly "in the wings" of Shakespeare's, with brief appearances of major characters from Hamlet who enact fragments of the original's scenes. Between these episodes the two protagonists voice their confusion at the progress of events of which—occurring onstage without them in Hamlet—they have no direct knowledge.
● Hamlet
Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called upon to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play seems to have been one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime and still ranks among his most-performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".
Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930) is a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham exposes the misguided social snobbery levelled at the character Rosie Driffield, whose frankness, honesty and sexual freedom make her a target of conservative propriety. Her character is treated favourably by the book's narrator, Ashenden, who understands that she was a muse to the many artists who surrounded her and who himself enjoyed her sexual favours.
Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavoured with ginger in one of two ways. The golden style is closer to the ginger beer original, and is credited to the American Doctor Thomas Cantrell. The dry style (also called the pale style) is a paler drink with a much milder ginger flavour, and was created by Canadian John McLaughlin.
The Holiday is a 2006 American romantic comedy film written, produced and directed by Nancy Meyers, distributed by Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures, filmed in both California and England, and starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as two lovelorn women from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, who temporarily exchange homes to escape heartbreak during the holiday season. Jude Law and Jack Black are the movie's leading men, with Eli Wallach, Shannyn Sossamon, Edward Burns and Rufus Sewell playing key supporting roles.
The Holiday (2006) Official Movie Trailer
Norman Dalziel Warne (1868 – 25 August 1905) was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co as an editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and in October 1902 published the book to great success. Norman Warne became Potter's editor and they worked together on several subsequent books and spinoffs such as soft toys and The Game of Peter Rabbit.
● The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. It was his third published novel, after The Collector (1963) and The Magus (1965). The novel explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist, Charles Smithson, and the former governess and independent woman, Sarah Woodruff, with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.
Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari was a Florentine woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova, and is also commonly identified with the Beatrice who appears as one of his guides in the Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia) in the last book, Paradiso, and in the last four cantos of Purgatorio. There she takes over as guide from the Latin poet Virgil because, as a pagan, Virgil cannot enter Paradise and because, being the incarnation of beatific love, as her name implies, it is Beatrice who leads into the Beatific vision.
A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to create suspense in a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started.
Foreshadowing or guessing ahead is a literary device by which an author hints what is to come. It is used to avoid disappointment. It is also sometimes used to arouse the reader.
A hint that is designed to mislead the audience is referred to as a red herring. A similar device is the flashforward (also known as prolepsis). However, foreshadowing only hints at a possible outcome within the confinement of a narrative. A flashforward is a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television, and other media. Foreshadowing is sometimes employed through characters explicitly predicting the future.
A preservative is a substance that is added to products such as foods, pharmaceuticals, paints, biological samples, wood, beverages etc. to prevent decomposition by microbial growth or by undesirable chemical changes. In general preservation is implemented in two modes, chemical and physical. Chemical preservation entails adding chemical compounds to the product. Physical preservation entails refrigeration and drying. They are used in foods, cosmetics, and many other products. Preservative food additives reduce the risk of foodborne infections, decrease microbial spoilage, and preserve fresh attributes and nutritional quality. Some physical techniques for preservation include dehydration, UV-C radiation, freeze-drying, and refrigeration. Chemical preservatives and physical preservation are usually combined.
Most artificial flavors are specific and often complex mixtures of singular naturally occurring flavor compounds combined together to either imitate or enhance a natural flavor. These mixtures are formulated by flavorists to give a food product a unique flavor and to maintain flavor consistency between different product batches or after recipe changes. The list of known flavoring agents includes thousands of molecular compounds, and the flavor chemist (flavorist) can often mix these together to produce many of the common flavors. Many flavorants consist of esters, which are often described as being "sweet" or "fruity".
● Babe
Babe is a 1995 comedy-drama family film, co-written and directed by Chris Noonan. It is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith's 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig, also known as Babe: The Gallant Pig in the USA, which tells the story of a pig who wants to be a sheepdog. The main animal characters are played by a combination of real and animatronic pigs and Border Collies.
Plot:
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A piglet named Babe is left orphaned after his mother is slaughtered, and is chosen for a "guess the weight" contest at a county fair. The winning farmer, Arthur Hoggett, brings him home and allows him to stay with a Border Collie named Fly, her mate, Rex, and their puppies in the barn. An eccentric duck named Ferdinand poses as a rooster to spare himself from being eaten and wakes the farm each morning by crowing. He persuades Babe to help him destroy the alarm clock that threatens his secret mission. Despite succeeding in this goal, they startle the Hoggetts' cat, Duchess, awake, and in the confusion that ensues, they all accidentally destroy the living room. Rex instructs Babe to stay away from Ferdinand (now a fugitive) and the house, or else. Sometime later, when Fly's puppies are put up for sale, Babe asks if he can call her "Mom". Christmas brings a visit from the Hoggetts' relatives. Babe is almost chosen for Christmas dinner but a duck is picked instead after Arthur remarks to his wife, Esme, that Babe may bring a prize for ham at the next county fair. On Christmas Day, Babe justifies his existence by alerting Arthur to sheep rustlers stealing sheep from one of the fields who immediately depart. The next day, Arthur sees Babe sort the hens, separating the brown ones from the white ones. Impressed, he takes him to the fields and allows him to try and herd the sheep. Encouraged by an elder ewe named Maa whom he had met previously on the farm, the sheep cooperate, but Rex sees Babe's actions as an insult to sheepdogs and confronts Fly in a vicious fight for encouraging Babe. He injures her leg and accidentally bites Arthur's right hand when he tries to intervene. Rex is then chained to the dog house, muzzled, and sedated, leaving the sheepherding job to Babe. One morning, Babe is awakened by the sheep's cries and sees three feral dogs attacking them. Despite managing to scare them off, Maa is mortally injured and dies as a result. Arthur arrives, thinking that Babe killed her because he has blood on his snout when he had nuzzled her, prepares to shoot him for doing so. Fly is so anxious to find out whether he is guilty or innocent that, for the first time in her life, instead of barking orders at the sheep, talks to them to find out what happened. They tell her that he is innocent and saved them. She barks to distract Arthur from shooting him, delaying him until Esme intervenes and mentions that feral dogs have been killing sheep on neighboring farms, whereupon he realizes that Babe was innocent. When Esme leaves on a trip, Arthur signs Babe up for a local sheepherding competition. The night before, it is raining, so Arthur lets him and Fly in the house. However, Duchess scratches him when he tries to speak to her, so Arthur immediately confines her outside. When she comes back inside later, she gets revenge on Babe by revealing that humans eat pigs. Horrified, he runs out to the barn and learns from Fly that this is true. The next morning, Fly discovers that Babe has run away. She and Rex alert Arthur, and they all search for him. Rex finds him in a cemetery and Arthur brings him home. However, he is still demoralized by Duchess' story and refuses to eat, despite encouragement from Rex, who has softened his attitude towards him. Arthur gives him a drink from a baby bottle, sings "If I Had Words" to him, and dances a jig for him. This restores his faith in Arthur's affection, and he begins eating again. Later, at the competition, Babe meets the sheep that he will be herding, but they ignore his attempts to speak to them. As Arthur is criticized by the bemused judges and ridiculed by the public for using a pig instead of a dog, Rex immediately runs back to the farm to ask the sheep what to do. They give him a secret password ("Baa-ram-ewe"[5]), first extracting a promise from him that he will treat them better from now on. He returns in time and conveys the password to Babe. When he recites it to the sheep, they follow his instructions flawlessly and he is wildly acclaimed by the crowd and unanimously given the highest score. He sits next to Arthur, who praises him, in his understated way, by saying, "That'll do, Pig. That'll do." |
The Academy Awards or the Oscars is an annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become better known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
The awards ceremony was first televised in 1953, and is now seen live in more than 200 countries. The Oscars is the oldest entertainment awards ceremony; its equivalents, the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theatre, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording, are modeled after the Academy Awards.
Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components. In an extended sense it can also signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role. Examples of initiation ceremonies might include Hindu diksha, Christian baptism or confirmation, Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a fraternal organization, secret society or religious order, or graduation from school or recruit training. A person taking the initiation ceremony in traditional rites, such as those depicted in these pictures, is called an initiate.
● Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and (frequently) as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and the overcoming of many obstacles, typically including much travel. The aspect of travel also allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures (an objective of the narrator, not of the character).
The Lake District, also known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests and mountains (or fells) and its associations with the early 19th century writings of William Wordsworth and the other Lake Poets.
Historically split between Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire, the Lake District is now entirely in Cumbria. All the land in England higher than 3,000 ft (910 m) above sea level lies within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. It also contains the deepest and longest lakes in England, Wastwater and Windermere.
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence on Emerson and American transcendentalism.
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity.
Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson.
● Lesbian
A lesbian is a female homosexual: a female who experiences romantic love or sexual attraction to other females.The term lesbian is also used to express sexual identity or sexual behavior regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction. The concept of "lesbian", to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation, is a 20th-century construct.
Sappho was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. She was born sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she died around 570 BCE, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost; however, her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
Lyric poetry is a form of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on a stringed instrument known as a lyre. The term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, dramatic and epic.
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making use of the voices of a narrator and characters as well; the entire story is usually written in metred verse. Narrative poems do not have to follow rhythmic patterns. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is usually well it normally dramatic, with objectives, diverse characters, and metre. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls, and lays.
Children’s literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes include comic books, picture books, fairy tales, fables, nursery rhymes, Fantasy, Adventure, realistic fiction, Bildungsroman or other genres. Children's literature can be traced to stories and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. There are certain characteristics detaching children’s literature from adult’s books. Thy are typical childhood experiences written from a child’s perspective, children or childlike characters, simple and direct plots that focus on action, a feeling of optimism and innocence, and a tendency towards combining reality and fantasy.
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A mischievous boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang, the Lost Boys, interacting with mermaids, Native Americans, fairies, pirates, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland. In addition to two distinct works by Barrie, the character has been featured in a variety of media and merchandise, both adapting and expanding on Barrie's works. These include an animated film, a dramatic film, a TV series and other works.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow, originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900. It has since been reprinted on numerous occasions, most often under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the popular 1902 Broadway musical as well as the iconic 1939 musical film adaptation.
The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone. The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale." Its groundbreaking success and the success of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.
Neverland is a fictional location featured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is the dwelling place of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys and others. Although not all people in Neverland cease to age, its best known resident famously refused to grow up, and it is often used as a metaphor for eternal childhood (and childishness), immortality, and escapism. It was first introduced as "the Never Never Land" in the theatre play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by Scottish writer J. M. Barrie, first staged in 1904.
● Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal society, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction (sometimes combined with, but distinct from apocalyptic literature) is the opposite: creation of an utterly horrible or degraded society that is generally headed to an irreversible oblivion, or dystopia. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other speculative fiction genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction.