“From Book to Box Office: 3 Classic Fictions Fit for ... - Associated Content” plus 3 more |
- From Book to Box Office: 3 Classic Fictions Fit for ... - Associated Content
- ACO: The End of Time - SOUNZ
- Volvo S80 DRIVe: Torque of the town - Daily Telegraph
- Undeterred by factual reality, Birthers plot march on ... - DAILY KOS
| From Book to Box Office: 3 Classic Fictions Fit for ... - Associated Content Posted: 28 Apr 2010 10:19 AM PDT Since the dawn of Hollywood, books have been turned into film. Hundreds of books have made the journey from novel to screenplay, from book to film, yet many more hundreds sit on the shelf, waiting to be brought to the silver screen. A wealth of classic American literature remains untapped by screen writers for use in film. Only the most popular works of the great American writers have been turned into films. Here are a few books from Pulitzer Prize winning writers that have been overlooked when it comes to turning books into films. Each book has a contemporary appeal in addition to being given original voice by writers Ernest Hemingway, Robert Penn Warren, and Saul Bellow - three of the most renowned American novelists of the 20th century. Flood - Robert Penn Warren As a town awaits its demise in the form of a planned flood, a screen writer and native son, Brad Tolliver, arrives on assignment. Tolliver is to help director Yasha Jones concoct a screenplay based on the last days of the town. Tolliver soon finds himself sucked into a deeper tale, one of murder, intrigue, and a convicted criminal, days away from being put to death, who refuses to receive absolution from the church. The convict sits on death row refusing to repent of his crime. Poised on the brink of permanent destruction, the town's people cannot understand how a man in his position can deny salvation freely offered. The people of the town see themselves in the convict, though they wish they didn't. He is a metaphor that stands for all of them. This is why they hate him. This is why Brad Tolliver also is drawn to the man on death row and why the story is so compelling. Somehow, everyone is on death row and everyone wants to be forgiven, except the guy who is actually going to die. Flood is a gripping read with many inter-connections and revelations of plot and, beyond that, revelations of the human spirit. Instead of acting as a screen writer, Tolliver becomes an investigator working to uncover the facts of what really happened to the convict so that he can understand the man sitting in the cell, turning away forgiveness. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2010 12:35 PM PDT Olivier Messiaen completed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps in a prisoner of war camp where it had its first performance. This piece is considered by many to be one of the great greatest ensemble works of the twentieth century. It speaks of intense spirituality, ecstasy, apocalypse and throughout it Messiaen's love of bird song. Performers on this occasion will be the New Zealand Chamber Soloists: Lara Hall (violin), Peter Scholes (clarinet), James Tennant (cello) and Katherine Austin (piano). Prior to the musical performance, Waikato University lecturer and composer Martin Lodge will give a presentation titled Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time': facts and fictions. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Volvo S80 DRIVe: Torque of the town - Daily Telegraph Posted: 28 Apr 2010 09:58 AM PDT The late Michel Foucault might have approved of the Volvo S80 DRIVe. That French philosophe and intellectual fancypants defined power as "a complex strategic situation in a given social setting" - a description which fogged students for decades until the S80 DRIVe came along and fulfilled it to perfection. The S80 DRIVe is a big car in the classic Volvo mould (mobile living-room, armoured for security like a rhino, as style-conscious as an M & S cardigan) with an engine about the size of a motor mower's. In any previous age, its 1.6-litre turbodiesel engine with 108bhp would have been thought a little less than adequate if it was driving a Matchbox toy. Anybody who knows the first thing about cars would have scoffed at the idea that a car 4,851mm long and weighing 1,586kg could be propelled faster than a milk float by such a puny power plant. "Bet that car puts on a howling performance in the traffic light grand prix," the saloon bar nitwits would have jeered. "When you put your foot down, it must feel as if you're towing Mont Blanc." The quiet laughter you hear, however, is actually the sound of self-satisfaction among S80 DRIVe owners who are enjoying the pleasures of a large and comfortable car that returns astonishing fuel consumption around 60mpg and is, at the very same time, effortlessly capable of holding its place in flowing traffic, whether on motorways or country roads. A top speed of almost 120mph and acceleration from 0-60mph in 11 seconds is all the performance that anybody would ever need who never watches Top Gear (that is, 97 per cent of the entire population and 99.9 per cent of women). How is this miracle achieved? We return to Prof Foucault's opaque observations on power and its capacity to take different forms in different circumstances (if that is what the old dear was driving at). Ever since Henry Ford was in short trousers, the car industry has been preoccupied with raising the power output of engines measured in brake horsepower (or propulsive force against inertia, as it might be termed). This resulted in the production of streams of ever-faster cars overflowing with pointless powers that could not be legally brought into use anywhere except on racetracks and autobahns. There is, however, another form of automotive power that goes by the name of torque. It is a complex topic in mechanical engineering but, in car terms, torque can best be thought of as pulling power. It is by making the most of torque that the S80 DRIVe produces its gratifying performance. To say that the engine generates 240 Newton metres of torque may mean less to you than a formula for collateralised debt obligation but, in practice, it means that this S80 pulls effortlessly away from rest and can accelerate promptly even at low speeds. In other words, that little engine produces more than enough oomph to shift that mighty lump. The S80 DRIVe is far from being the first car to take this approach. Vauxhall's Insignia Ecoflex, Ford's Mondeo Econetic and VW's Passat BlueMotion all share comparable power-optimisation technology and fuel-saving benefits. But the Volvo is the one which advances this "complex strategy" to its highest art so far and, in the latest version of the S80 DRIVe, CO2 emissions have been reduced below 120g/km for the first time in such a large and luxurious car, placing it alongside little urban runabouts in Band C for Vehicle Excise Duty which costs just £35 a year. Even if, therefore, the CO2 thesis on climate change should turn out to be the most bogus of all the ideologically driven fictions foisted on the world by the Sixties generation, it will still have made the world a better place because the legislation and social pressure that grew out of the global warming scare forced carmakers to come up with fuel-saving cars like the S80 DRIVe that are also a pleasure to drive. Their rethink on the nature of power was, unquestionably, determined by the social setting of our peculiar time. Price (as tested): £25,763.83 Power: 108bhp 0-60mph: 11 seconds Top speed: 118mph Average fuel consumption: 57.7mpg CO2 emissions: 119g/km Insurance group: 18E Rating: 4 stars The Rivals Vauxhall Insignia Ecoflex Price (as tested): £21,515- £27,750 For: looks like a Jaguar Against: drives like a Vectra Rating: 3 stars VW Passat Bluemotion Price: £20,900-£23,970 For: Passat is an ignorable name Against: but BlueMotion is unthinkable Rating: 4 stars Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Undeterred by factual reality, Birthers plot march on ... - DAILY KOS Posted: 28 Apr 2010 04:29 AM PDT Since the election of Obama, we have seen a tsunami of racist nutjobs all over the TV, at political events armed to the teeth, and holding their own protests as rallies, such as they have been, and entertaining us all with their illiterate signs. We have teabaggers - I refuse to call them 'tea partiers' because I simply cannot respect what message they seem to have - emerge as a vocal if not terribly organized "force', and we have seen the rise of the Birthers, not necessarily all teabaggers, but the overlap must be massive. A year and a half into the Obama presidency, these twits are STILL clinging to what has to be one of the bigger fictions of our times: the idea that Barack Obama somehow fooled federal election officials and (then) (somehow) won the election, tricking almost all Americans. Except them, of course. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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