Britain seems to have great creativity — especially in the performing and visual arts.
Theatrical tradition
Theaters in Britain date back at least to the 16th century, and the most famous playwright is of course William Shakespeare. A company was founded in his name, with a stage at his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. It has trained generations of actors. In the 20th century, classical and more modern plays were also performed at many regional theaters, where actors and writers gained experience.
Film stars
The world of film-making has involved British creative talent from the beginning. Charlie Chaplin, born in poverty in London's East End, began as a child entertainer in music halls. He then became a pioneer of silent movies in Hollywood and created many black-and-white classics during the First World War. British actors, who were often classically trained in theater, Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness became house-hold names after the Second World War.
Supporting talent
Film-making creativity has been supported by two major studios. Productions at Shepperton have included Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and Ridley Scott's Alien. Pinewood's most famous products must be the James Bond films. Both theater and film have their own annual festivals, including one of the biggest festivals in Scotland's capital, Edinburgh.
Visual expression
The visual arts also show Britain's creative spirit, from Romantic Age painters like Turner and Constable to groups such as the Pre-Raphaelites and the modernist sculpture of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Today's famous artists — Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin — regularly show in the newspapers, and their works are sold at high prices.
Just as slang words, table manners, and other common customs vary greatly from nation to nation, so do rude gestures. The last thing you want to do when traveling to a new country is to offend (冒犯) the locals. Here are some hand motions you'll want to be careful about making in certain countries.
Iran
What might seem to Americans like a universally positive gesture is not, in fact, universal. "Unfortunately, in Iran and neighboring countries, the thumbs-up is the same as the middle finger!" explains Dana Hooshmand, an author for Discover Discomfort. In America, the middle finger is the one showing disrespect; in Iran, it's the thumb. So, bear it in mind to avoid making this sign to Iranians.
Malaysia
As a little kid, you may have been blamed that "it's not respectful to point with your index finger!" especially if you dared pair the gesture with laughter. This is especially true in Malaysia. As a result, employees at Disney parks are trained to avoid doing this. Instead, if they must, they use two fingers or, the common alternative is to point with your thumb (particularly the right thumb).
Thailand
In USA, patting someone's head can be a sweet gesture, and messing someone's hair is a playful one. But in Thailand, it can be a serious offense. The head "is considered the most sacred (神圣的) part of the body, " she explains. So keep your hands away from others' heads to avoid disrespecting.
Taiwan, China
According to the locals, pointing to the moon will offend the moon goddess. Her punishment for this is very specific: She'll cut your ear of, or at the very least cut it in Van Gogh-style. So if you're admiring a beautiful full moon in Taiwan, try your best to keep your hands by your sides.
Two women in their 50s stand beholding in front of Guanyin of the South China Sea, an ancient Chinese sculpture in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Over the past 20 years, they have been visiting the museum, describing the "mother Buddha" as "beautiful and tranquil, a symbol of religious traditions in China". Measuring 2.4 meters high, 1.68 meters wide and 1.1 meters thick, the larger-than-life sculpture was carved from the trunk of a single poplar tree, which has created a sense of calm and warmth in the hall.
Since its launch in 1933, the museum has been actively collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting works of Chinese art, ranging from ceramics to furniture, and from paintings to sculptures. And its Chinese art collection contains masterpieces in various historical stages.
An exhibition on the theme of Lively Creatures—Animals in Chinese Art was held at the museum, displaying tens of Chinese ancient paintings with images of animals in many art forms. The creatures on the paintings represented celebration, personal messages, and even political and religious agendas.
Organizers of the exhibition produced a set of cards, with images of animals on one side and their cultural meanings in Chinese artistic tradition on the other. The cards are provided for visitors for free.
"I find it very interesting, and the way that the things are drawn is very cool," says 17-year-old high school student Camden Lombard after visiting the exhibition. "I want to go to China someday to find more," he adds.
"It's kind of eye-opening and we're bringing the world together," says Makar, an educator with the school outreach and education programs of the museum. "There are so many similarities as well as beautiful differences, and we are just trying to understand and appreciate one another."
"We're in a moment when it's sometimes hard to look outside of your own personal viewpoints," says Howard, manager of volunteer engagement at the museum. "I think having access to seeing what other cultures have created, what they valued and appreciated, and what was important to them, is really important in building that understanding about all the people we share this planet with."
I travel a lot, and I find out different "styles" (风格)of directions every time I ask "How can I get to the post office?"
Foreign tourists are often confused(困惑的)in Japan because most streets there don't have names; in Japan, people use landmarks(地标)in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, "Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop. "
In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, "Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile. "
People in Los Angeles, California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance in time, not miles. "How far away is the post office?" you ask. "Oh," they answer, "it's about five minutes from here. ''You say, "Yes, but how many miles away is it?" They don't know.
It's true that a person doesn't know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, Sorry, I have no idea. But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers "I don't know. " People in Yucatan believe that "I don't know" is impolite. They usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!
Do you remember the first stop-motion movie， with a galloping（飞奔）horse? Eadweard Muybridge made it in 1872, and the funny thing is—the first stop-motion movie was made because of a bet. The question was∶ do all four of the horse's hooves （蹄）leave the ground at the same time at any point of the gallop? And Leland Stanford, the founder of the Stanford University, hired Muybridge to help him settle the bet.
Stanford claimed that, at some point of the gallop, all four of the horse's hooves are in the air. Some of his colleagues took a common stand that one foot is always on the ground. It was a popularly debated question of the time, and it was Muybridge's task to provide the answer using his photographic knowledge.
Now, you can imagine that cameras in 1872 couldn't really capture the things moving quickly. Movie cameras still didn't exist, so it was out of the question. So, Muybridge had to get creative. He experimented with a set of 12 cameras. He used them to photograph a galloping horse in a series of shots. His initial efforts seemed to prove that Stanford was right, but he still didn't have the process perfected.
In 1878, Muybridge raised his creativity and skill on a new level. He set twelve wired triggers （触发器）connected to shutters（快门）for cameras. He placed them evenly along the race track to capture the galloping horse. As the horse galloped the race track, it set off the triggers and made every camera take a photo with less than half a second difference.
The photos showed that Leland Stanford was right, and obviously, he won the bet. But this invention was a winning situation for all of us. Muybridge later invented a zoopraxiscope, which was a bit like the GIFs that people now post on social media and is considered an early device for displaying motion pictures. Thanks to photography and his invention, the cinema was born.
When asked in 1993 to comment on accusations that the movie In the Name of the Father distorts (曲解) contemporary British and Irish history, female lead Emma Thompson responded that she couldn't care less. Even since the premiere (首映) in 1915 of The Birth of a Nation, filmmakers have rewritten history to create top-dollar entertainment. The films are very persuasive: well-made movies hold your interest continuously, drawing your attention to "what happens next," and pulling you forward with no time to reflect on individual scenes until the final credits roll. The result: you don't remember much about a movie after watching it for the first time. For this reason, movies have extraordinary power - unmatched by any other medium - to leave you with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, who is bad and who is good, even though critical details presented in the movies may be false.
Well, so what? They're just movies. In fact they're not just movies. Millions of Americans are devoted history lovers, and they pack theatres every time new movies about historical figures or events come to town. Saving private Ryan and Titanic drew viewers and cash for months. Many high school teachers screen movies in the classroom. Clearly countless Americans get most of their history from television and the big screen.
Some of the industry's finest historical and period films premiered during the past decades. But the 1960s also saw a number of politically charged history-based movies full of factual distortions and, occasionally, outright lies. Today the trend continues on a larger scale: many movies released in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21*t century reflect lack of respect for solid, reliable history.
History Goes to the Movies is a source of information and, it is hoped, entertainment for everyone interested in the actual history behind a wide selection of movies grouped into twelve sections--11 covering historical periods and events and twelfth containing biographies and period films. Each movie review includes an essay on the history covered in one or more movies, and a brief plot summary. Star ratings (five stars: don't miss it) reflect each movie's historical accuracy and - to a much lesser extent — its power to amuse.
Obviously, expecting textbook accuracy from movies would be ridiculous-and producers have delivered a remarkable number of historically faithful movies. But some of them get too much of their history wrong. History Goes to the Movies is a guide, however imperfect, for readers and viewers aiming to get it right.
While Disney animations are successful in moving their audiences, their subsidiary (子公司) Pixar is expert at creating tear-jerking movies as well.
At first sight, it is remarkable that these movies make us cry—the main characters are cartoon characters, in most cases not even human beings, who do things that could evidently never happen in the real world: toys come to life, monsters are to scare sleeping children, and helium-balloon-powered houses travel the world. How can a story so unrealistic make us care so much about their animated main characters?
The Pixar creators explained that their stories often reflect their own personal lives. Whereas the animated characters are far from real, their lives are relatable. The magical ingredient is the realistic portrayal of the complex emotional lives of the characters.
As Pixar director Pete Doctor explains: "What you're trying to do, when you tell a story, is to write about an event in your life that made you feel a particular way. And what you're trying to do, when you tell a story, is to get the audience to have that same feeling. While this is true for storytelling in general, it is especially important in Pixar movies, given that the basic plots of their movies cannot happen in real life."
What makes Pixar's highly unrealistic stories believable is the fact that they address problems that are central to our own lives. Pixar addresses real human matters such as family, friendship, death, loss, and the highly realistic emotions that such events evoke in our life.
The effect of the story thus depends on the human capacity to empathize with others: to recognize which emotions others experience, and to understand why others feel how they feel. The fact that empathy is learned and developed through life may well be the reason why these movies are entertaining for kids but rather devastating and heart-crushing for adults.
Every Pixar movie has the moment when we cry. We learn and feel with the characters through the realistic portrayal of their emotional lives. The stories appeal to our deepest emotions and, thus, make us cry. Because, essentially, Pixar stories are about us.
The spiders have long scary legs. Some spiders even bite. But Spider-Man is another story. He might help people see spiders less negatively, a new study finds.
After Menachem Ben-Ezra, a proud fan of the Marvel films and also a psychologist, saw the movie Ant-Man and the Wasp (黄蜂), he walked out with a sudden scientific idea that he should measure people before they went into the theater, and afterwards to see if the fear of ants would be reduced or changed.
Ben-Ezra and his colleagues asked 424 people questions, about one-quarter of them about spiders, such as" Did you find them scary?" "Did seeing one make your hearts race and palms sweat?" A second group received similar questions, this time about ants. The last two groups got the same questions about other insects. Afterward, everyone watched videos. Group one got a Spider-Man movie. Group two saw Ant-Man and the Wasp. Groups three and four watched unrelated video--wheat waving peacefully in the breeze.
After viewing the movie, Ben-Ezra again asked the participants how they felt about spiders. ants or other insects in general—and found the ant and spider exposures seemed to make people insensitive and less afraid. Between3.5and6. 1 percent of people experience such a phobia (恐惧症) of spiders. Phobias can stop people from traveling, working and enjoying their lives.
Ben-Ezra hopes that their movie research might help people with phobias. But they caution that people with phobias shouldn't just run out and watch movies and expect their fear to go away. "What we did is only the first step in a very long road, "Ben-Ezra says. "We didn't say you'll be cured. We don't have evidence for that. "But eventually, presenting people's fears in a positive context—such as a superhero movie—might help people surmount their fear or disgust. After all, if spiders produce Spider-Man, maybe they're not so bad.
The Best Books of 2020
On Monday, the American Library Association announced the top children's books of 2020. Here are the winners.
Devotion
Author Clare Vanderpool took home the John Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children's literature for Moon over Manifest. The book is about a young girl's magical adventures in a small Kansas town, in 1936.
Vanderpool said that she was shocked to learn that she had won. "You grow up reading legendary authors like Madeleine L'Engle, but I never expected to be put in a category with her," Vanderpool told TFK. "It's fabulous."
Picture This
The picture book A Sick Day for Amos McGee won the Randolph Caldecott Medal. The book was illustrated by Erin E. Stead and written by her husband, Philip C. Stead. It tells the story of an elderly zookeeper and the animals that visit him when he's not well enough to go to work.
"I love drawing animals and I love drawing people and I love drawing the emotional connection between animals and people," said Stead.
More Honored Books
The Coretta Scott King award, given to an African-American author and illustrator of "outstanding books for children and young adults," went to Rita Williams-Garcia for One Crazy Summer. Set in 1968, the novel follows three sisters from Brooklyn, New York, who visit their mother, a poet who ran away years ago and lives in California.
The king prize for best-illustrated work went to Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave. The book, which was written by Laban Carrick Hill and illustrated by Bryan Collier, tells the story of a skilled potter who engraved his poems on the clay pots and jars that he made. The enslaved potter, known only as Dave, lived in South Carolina in the 1800s.
What will you do when one of the few bookstores in your neighborhood shuts down? If you're Latanya DeVaughn, you will make a new and improved one! The Bronx mom and writer has always dreamed of opening her own bookstore, so after watching yet another close its doors for good during the pandemic, she saw her chance.
While Latanya said every neighborhood deserved a bookstore, opening physical stores on every block simply wasn't an option. So she decided to bring the books to her neighbors, instead, by turning a bus into a bookmobile! With the help of her community, she raised money for her dream and, at the end of 2021, it came true! Bronx Bound Books rolled out in style as a bus with orange cube bookshelves. "People love the way it smells," Latanya added. "One woman said the wood smell makes her feel like she's at home."
Although the bookstore on wheels carries around 3,0000 new and used books, it has more room than you might expect! Latanya also makes sure to stock books with a range of diverse characters so all readers can see themselves in the pages. Of course, her collection also features works of renowned Black authors like James Baldwin and Alice Walker. "It's meant to be that way," she explained, "because I remember going to bookstores and having to look through books just to find someone that I felt I could resonate with (引起共鸣)."
Setting up her bookstore in a new spot each day, Latanya is doing her part to make sure that everyone in the Bronx has books to read. That's what Bronx Bound Books is open for. "I can't open up a bookstore on every corner, but I can probably pop up on a lot of different corners," she said.
Thanks to Latanya and Bronx Bound Books, the Bronx is becoming a heaven for book lovers day by day. I'm sure that the little bookstore will continue to develop quickly!
