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周一的作业哦！
【速度】
【time ONE】
Hollywood Celebrates Holidays With Great Films
Lights, Camera, Action. Hollywood often puts out its best work to celebrate the holidays and to prepare the stage for the Oscars. From action-packed thrillers, to rich classics, and larger-than-life fables, these films transport audiences for a few hours into far away and fantastical worlds.
Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, based on the Tolstoy novel, is a quintessential holiday production. It offers rich costumes, enchanting music, and stellar actors.
Keira Knightley, who plays the doomed Karenina, “The rules of a period film have been completely broken. Anna Karenina is a story that has been done a lot. What is the point in doing a safe adaptation?”
Keira Knightley is a married woman of social stature, who falls in love with cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Their affair goes against the grain of a seemingly virtuous society and Anna pays the consequences.
In his film, Wright emphasizes the pretense of 19th century Russian aristocracy. He stages Anna Karenina’s world in a controlled space that is lavish, but claustrophobic, and tragic.
Life of Pi, about survival and faith, is more upbeat. It's also adapted from a book, and it requires a willing suspension of disbelief. For the shots in the boat, the production team created a digital tiger. Oscar winning director Ang Lee enchants us with his other-worldly cinematography.
Those who like an intelligent plot have hailed Argo, a spy drama. Tony Mendez, a CIA operative, undertakes to smuggle six American diplomats out of Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis.
The film is directed by Oscar winner Ben Affleck, who also stars as Mendez. It's based on a true story that is so unbelievable it feels like fiction.
The Hobbit, also coming out this holiday season, is a fantasy. With this prequel, director Peter Jackson promises a spectacle for the millions of fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and J.R.R. Tolkien's novel.
【316】
【扩展阅读】
The holiday films will be capped by the musical Les Miserables, directed by Oscar winner Tom Hooper. Unlike Anna Karenina, Hooper's adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic is traditional and sticks close to the book.
The famous cast - including Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman - doesn't skip a note of the original score. The film, about brotherly love and redemption, reflects the holiday spirit.
These movies - and more - not only have the ingredients for a lucrative season at the box office. They also raise the curtain on January's Academy Award nominations.
【93】
【speed TWO】
Students Dress for Success in School and Life
MANASSAS, VIRGINIA — Each Monday at Mayfield Intermediate School in Manassas, Virginia, you'll find boys dressed in suits with ties and girls wearing dresses or skirts and blouses.
It's a far cry from the usual jeans and sweatshirts common in American classrooms.
Almost 700 students at Mayfield participate in the "Dress for Success" program, which educators believe can enhance students’ behavior and, they hope, achievement in school and in life.
Diana Otero, 10, is one of those students.
“What am I going to wear to school today?” is what she asks herself each morning, but not on Mondays. That’s when she puts on a nice outfit that makes her feel "important and confident.
At school, Diana and the other well-dressed students attend their regular Monday classes and their activities as usual.
This is Diana’s first year in the "Dress for Success" program. “I thought it would help me improve my grades.”
Doing better in school is also what attracted Shawn Arrigeo.
“If you, like, feel good and you're, like, sitting and it's comfortable, you’re not going to have any problems focusing,” Shawn says, adding he does better in class when he’s dressed up. “It makes me feel more mature.”
It also makes him look like one of his role models, school principal Jeff Abt, who introduced the program three years ago.
“I think it presented a climate where the students say, ‘I’ve worked hard, I’m dressed in my best and I’m going to do my best on this day,’” Abt says.
【261】
【time THREE】
Erika Redler, a teacher at the school, sees a big difference in student behavior on Mondays.
“The kids who dress for success are already in that, like, head-up, shoulder-back, good-morning kind of mood," she says. "They start the day off right. When they have that attitude, their behavior is usually better for the rest of the day.”
Redler sees the program as an opportunity to encourage students to take themselves seriously and improve their grades.
“When you’re taking yourself more seriously, then you’re probably going to be doing what you’re supposed to be doing in class, which means you’re going to be doing better at school," Redler says. "But I think we’re still working toward that goal.”
That’s why there are "Dress for Success" posters throughout the hallways, encouraging students to join the program. Abt says dressing up on Mondays doesn't require new or expensive clothing.
“Our kids come from different economic backgrounds," Abt says, "so if they wear a collared shirt, that will be considered Dress for Success."
Abt hopes the lessons students learn through this program will help them make better decisions in high school and after graduation.
“If you go to an interview, you’re normally looking at your closet saying, ‘What’s the best thing in there to show that person I’m the best person for the job?’” he says.
His students are getting plenty of practice answering that question now, while they have fun dressing up and feeling like adults.
【247】
【time FOUR】
Drinking Tea Was Once Considered an Irresponsible, Reckless Pursuit for Women
[这里文章节选，不是全文~]
Poor Irish women who drank tea in the 19th century might as well have been chugging a bottle of whiskey. Critics viewed the provocative kettle as stifling to their country’s economic growth and the tea-chugging habit as reckless and uncontrollable. Tea was a waste of time and money, luring working girls away from their never ending husband and home-tending duties.
Here are some “improvement pamphlet” messages from the time (circa 1811-1826), delivered to poor households and warning about the horrors awaiting if a damsel dared drink for the pot:
Lady Seraphine, the improving landowner, comments on the absence of tea cups in the kitchen of a peasant cabin, to which the woman of the house replies: ”We never were used to tea, and would not choose that our little girl should get a notion of any such thing. The hankering after a drop of tea keeps many poor all their lives. So I would not have any things in the cabin which would put us in mind of it.”
In response to her friend Nancy complaining about not being allowed a cup of tea by her mistress, her friend Rose replies: ”I think you are very much obliged to your mistress for not giving you such a bad fashion. What would you do in a house on your own? And you could not afford to drink tea, and you would be hankering after it, when you got the way of it.”
For example, Nanny will have it twice a day, if she can; and you are also to take into account the time spent about it. A poor person’s time is his treasure; how much is lost at it- how much is lost running to the grocer’s for it: and now you may see whether such a one as Nanny Ward is not able to beggar her family.
The Irish were not alone in their tea turmoils. The English—known now as perhaps the Western world’s most fond drinkers of tea—also worried that tea, or specifically, poor women drinking tea, might threaten the wholesome diet of British peasants, overturn hierarchies and be at the root of a secret revolutionary society. The reformers and worriers were, not surprisingly, mostly males from the middle- to upper-class.
Women were also banned from coffee shops throughout Europe during this time, where men would frequently partake in serious conversations, probably revolving around scheming more ways to prevent women from drinking tea and other caffeinated beverages.
【412】
【time FIVE】
The penis : Anatomy of a seminal work
God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis. By Tom Hickman. Square Peg; 234
THE problem with penises, as Richard Rudgley, a British anthropologist, admitted on a television programme some years ago, is that once you start noticing them, you “tend to see willies pretty much everywhere”. They are manifest in skyscrapers, depicted in art and loom large in literature. They pop up on the walls of schoolyards across the world, and on the walls of temples both modern and ancient. The Greeks and Japanese rendered them on statues that stood at street corners. Hindus worship the lingam in temples across the land. Even the cross on which Jesus was hung is considered by some to be a representation of male genitalia.
Yet the penis has also been shamed into hiding through the ages. One night in 415BC, Athens’s street-corner statues were dismembered en masse. Stone penises were still causing anxiety in the late 20th century, when the Victoria and Albert Museum in London pulled out of storage a stone figleaf in case a member of the royal family wanted to see its 18-foot (5.5-metre) replica of Michelangelo’s “David”. Nothing, save the vagina, which is neither as easy nor as childishly satisfying to scrawl on a wall, manages to be so sacred and so profane at once. This paradox makes it an object of fascination. Tom Hickman, a Sussex-based writer and journalist, tells the story of its ups and downs with enthusiasm and a mostly straight face in “God’s Doodle”, a biography of what the dust jacket calls man’s “most precious ornament”.
Mr Hickman examines his subject from various angles: its physical attributes, its role in society, its vulnerabilities and the “violent mechanics” of its fundamental purpose. Referring to sources that range from parliamentary records to Howard Stern, Mr Hickman goes, like so many men have gone before, where the penis takes him, and in the process answers a number of questions. Did Shylock want to castrate Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice”? Possibly. Is ingesting semen harmful? Quite the opposite. Mr Hickman claims it could protect against breast cancer. Where does Viagra get its name? Through the fusion of “virility” and “Niagara”, as in the falls. “God’s Doodle” is a seminal work.
【359】
【越障】
Same-sex marriage： Marriage in the dock
Dec 8th 2012, 22:49 by T.N. | LOS ANGELES
EVER since a district court overturned California's ban on gay marriage in 2010, it has seemed likely that the issue would reach the Supreme Court. And since that day court-watchers have tried to identify the historic case they think most resembles this one. For opponents of gay marriage, Roe v Wade (1973) is the relevant example. Were the Supreme Court to impose gay marriage on a divided nation, runs the argument, they would poison American politics for a generation, just as abortion has. Better to let states, and ideally voters in states, settle the matter, case by case. (Perhaps uncoincidentally, until last month, gay marriage had lost virtually every time it had been on the ballot.)
Advocates for same-sex marriage, on the other hand, preferred the precedent of the happily named Loving v Virginia (1967). That case overturned bans on inter-racial marriage, which at the time were on the books in 16 states, and did so without triggering much of a backlash. The justices' verdict looks far-sighted when you consider that contemporary public opinion was still very much opposed to inter-racial marriage, although it was changing quickly. (The court had declined to hear a similar case a decade earlier.) Backers of gay marriage like this case because it treats marriage as a civil-rights issue; as something that should be left to courts, not voters.
We are now a little closer to finding out who's right. Yesterday afternoon the Supreme Court agreed to hear two of the same-sex marriage cases that had been presented to it. The first involves a section of the federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) which declares that any instance of the term "marriage" in federal law applies only to heterosexual unions. The case the justices will hear involves an elderly woman from New York landed with a gigantic inheritance-tax bill when her wife died. Lower courts have found this part of DOMA unconstitutional, and the Obama administration no longer bothers to defend it, leaving the task to congressional Republicans.
The second, and potentially more consequential, case deals with California's Proposition 8, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2008 that overturned gay marriage in America's largest state. The measure has been scrapped by two lower courts, and so its backers sought redress from the nine justices (had they declined to hear it, the last court's ruling would have come into effect and same-sex marriage instantly restored to the state).
Almost all observers expected the justices to take up one of the DOMA cases. Whatever their verdict, it will not affect the marriage rights of anyone, nor the rights of states to pursue their own course. It's the second case, which many predicted that they would decline, that gives the justices most scope to shape policy. Although the case was brought by the backers of Prop 8, some of their opponents may be happy to have their day in court. Why? Because the justices could, if they are so minded, strike down Prop 8 far more thunderously than the lower courts did by effectively granting that there is a constitutional right in the United States to same-sex marriage. (If this happens, a Prop 8 backer warned me the other day, "you can get ready for a whole new culture war".)
They could also scrap Prop 8 in a narrower ruling that would apply only to California. Or they could agree with its proponents that it is entirely legitimate for a state's voters to restrict the meaning of marriage the way the measure does. Or, as the reliably excellent SCOTUSblog points out, they could annoy everyone by refusing to hear the case on its merits on the grounds that Prop 8's backers do not have the right to argue it in the first place (they do not have "standing"). A ruling in both cases is expected by next June, with hearings scheduled for March.
Polls show that roughly half of Americans support gay marriage. But they also show that that number is growing quickly - and among virtually every demographic segment you can think of. Ensconsed in their Washington fastness, the nine justices of the Supreme Court are not supposed to pay heed to the views of the unwashed. But that is one of the great potent myths of American democracy. The danger for backers of same-sex marriage is that the court (or, more specifically, Anthony Kennedy, who is assumed to be the swing vote) decides that the recent successes for gay marriage at the ballot-box show that politics is taking care of this issue just fine. No need for judges to interfere with its workings.
Still, even with the recent rapid changes in public opinion it's going to take an awfully long time for a majority of voters in, say, Mississippi to be won round to same-sex marriage. Most people expect a comprehensive Supreme Court ruling overturning gay-marriage bans at some point in the future. With luck, it'll cause as little a ripple as Loving v Virginia did.
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发表于 2012-12-9 23:12:14
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还有atonement最爱啊！Pi同学也很爱，我也是在电影院贡献了些眼泪的说！现在就等着圣诞的Les Miserables出来啦！！！
