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Josh Bell
Neighbors Onscreen: The Palm Springs International Film Fest's Local Spotlight Was Admirable, Even If the Films Were a Mixed Bag
Love for the Coachella Valley was a running theme during the Local Spotlight series at the Palm Springs International Film Festival—whether it was expressed by filmmakers who live in the area, or by the onscreen showcases of local landmarks and institutions.
The three Local Spotlight films come from different perspectives and have different goals—but all of the filmmakers involved clearly have a passion for the community.
Co-directors (and married couple) P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes joked about the surprisingly strong turnout for a 7:30 p.m. screening in Palm Springs at the festival debut of their documentary House of Cardin, a tribute to legendary fashion designer Pierre Cardin. Palm Springs residents for the past five years, Ebersole and Hughes developed a love for Cardin's work thanks to the prevalence of his designs in midcentury modern furniture, setting them on a journey that culminated in the first authorized biography of the notoriously particular fashion icon.
Once Cardin agreed to participate in the film, that opened doors to celebrities including Naomi Campbell, Sharon Stone, Dionne Warwick and others. House of Cardin is a comprehensive look at Cardin's prolific career in fashion, home furnishings and branded items of all kinds. (Ebersole and Hughes themselves own the Cardin AMC Javelin featured in the movie, shown in a distinctively Palm Springs driveway.) The movie is slick and informative—the kind of thing you could easily imagine streaming on Netflix—and it conveys just how massive the Cardin brand was at its height.
Cardin—still working at the age of 97!—has been involved in so many projects in so many phases of his career that the movie can be a bit unwieldy as it attempts to encapsulate his entire life. For viewers who know nothing about Cardin, the movie offers a sense of the scope of his work and his desire to encourage ethnic and economic diversity in fashion. It's also relentlessly positive, and can feel a bit overly promotional, especially in the brief sections about Cardin's personal life that gloss over his complex relationships. Still, the filmmakers could only include as much as they were allowed access to, and as a love letter to the Cardin empire, the movie succeeds.
Director Leo Zahn's Iconicity (which had its world premiere at the festival) is also a love letter to artistic achievement, in this case to the many quirky art movements in the Coachella Valley and the Mojave Desert. Zahn, who's lived in Rancho Mirage since 2010, previously made two other documentaries dealing with the cultural history of the Coachella Valley—2016's Desert Maverick (about architect William F. Cody) and 2018's Sinatra in Palm Springs—and Iconicity rounds out what he refers to as a loose trilogy. It's a travelogue of sorts as Zahn visits artists in places including Joshua Tree, Borrego Springs and the Salton Sea's Slab City and Bombay Beach, chatting with artists in each place, many of whom create unconventional, location-specific works.
Zahn has a clear enthusiasm for the art and artists he features in the movie, and his passion for the material carries the unevenly structured film. Zahn devotes nearly half of the running time to Bombay Beach, which has been extensively transformed by the artists who have colonized the town in recent years. Bombay Beach and its Biennale art festival are fascinating enough subjects that they could easily support their own feature, and Zahn simultaneously takes on too much and not enough by trying to incorporate multiple art communities and movements in the film. At the same time, the movie succeeds in creating a desire to learn more about the artists and their work—and it continues Zahn's efforts to bring local culture to a wider audience.
The third movie in the Local Spotlight section, Christopher Munch's The 11th Green, doesn't have much in common with House of Cardin or Iconicity … or any other movie, for that matter. It's a narrative film from the writer-director behind cult movies including The Hours and Times and Letters From the Big Man, and while it was mostly shot in Palm Desert and the surrounding areas, it's not specifically about the Coachella Valley. It's tough to say what the movie actually is about, since it feels like it was crowd-sourced from conspiracy-theory message-board posts about a government cover-up of UFOs.
Campbell Scott plays a journalist who investigates his late father's involvement in the alien conspiracy, while staying in his family's sprawling Palm Desert mansion and working/sleeping with his father's former assistant (Agnes Bruckner).
Meanwhile, Barack Obama (Leith M. Burke), on vacation in Hawaii, convenes on the astral plane with the ghost of Dwight D. Eisenhower (George Gerdes) to learn about the history of alien involvement in human affairs and decide whether to reveal the truth to the American people. (The movie takes place during Obama's presidency.) These two completely bonkers storylines never quite fit together, although they sort of converge toward the end of the movie.
Munch takes advantage of the beauty of Palm Desert, shooting in plenty of picturesque outdoor spaces and setting scenes at local businesses, but the location is incidental to the plot. Veteran performers Scott and Bruckner do as well as they could with the absurd storyline, but the best this baffling oddity can hope for is a sort of ironic cult following, along the lines of movies like The Room and Neil Breen's Fateful Findings.
As far as local culture goes? It's in a class entirely of its own.
Worldwide Stories: As Always, the Palm Springs International Film Fest Highlighted the Movies on the International Oscar Short List
As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has kept tinkering with the way the nominees for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film (recently renamed from Best Foreign Language Film) are selected, the initial shortlist of selections has gotten longer.
That's a good thing for the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which has become the destination where film-goers can see the largest number of submissions for the award. This year, the festival programmed 51 of the record 93 submissions, including all 10 movies that ended up on the shortlist. The final five nominees were announced Jan. 13, on the last day of the festival.
Several of the shortlisted films were among the festival's hottest tickets—I got stuck sitting in the front row for two of them—and there's a general sense of excitement among attendees about seeing these movies before their big awards spotlight. Two of the shortlisted movies, Bong Joon Ho's Parasite (from South Korea) and Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (from Spain), already enjoyed pretty extensive theatrical releases before the festival, garnering plenty of attention and prior awards (and deservedly so; they each made the Oscar nominee cut, too). But the other eight were all genuine discoveries, even if they've been making the festival rounds for several months now.
The category is still dominated by World War II and WWII-adjacent narratives, and three of this year's selections (Russia's Beanpole, the Czech Republic's The Painted Bird and Hungary's Those Who Remained) take place in the immediate aftermath of the war. Beanpole and The Painted Bird are both bleak, often-punishing stories about despair and cruelty, while Those Who Remained is warmer and more optimistic, albeit still tinged with darkness.
Beanpole features a haunting lead performance from Viktoria Miroshnichenko as the title character, a tall, pale, soft-spoken young woman working as a nurse in Leningrad after fighting in the war. Miroshnichenko's Iya is so traumatized by the war that she suffers paralyzing seizures, one of which leads to a horrible tragedy as she cares for the 3-year-old son of her friend and wartime companion Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina). The dire future prospects of the two women are balanced a bit by their strong emotional connection, and Beanpole embeds a tender, well-acted story of queer intimacy in its exploration of postwar misery (although the misery usually wins out).
There's nothing but misery in Václav Marhoul's deeply unpleasant adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 novel The Painted Bird, which follows a young Jewish boy's odyssey across an unnamed Eastern European country in the final days of World War II. At nearly three hours long, the movie is an unrelenting parade of grim torture, as young Joska (Petr Kotlar) drifts from one horrific ordeal to another, taken in by a series of adults who beat, rape, abuse and enslave him, without even a sliver of kindness until the very end. Rather than illuminating the inherent cruelty of human nature, The Painted Bird just wallows in sadism, and its lurid acts of violence quickly become laughable. The black-and-white cinematography is sometimes gorgeously composed, but like the periodic appearances from famous faces (including Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel and Barry Pepper), it's just superficial gloss on deep, abiding ugliness.
The gentle Those Who Remained is almost the exact flip side of The Painted Bird. It is a sweet story about two traumatized people forging a connection after losing nearly everything. Set in Budapest in 1948, Those Who Remained walks a fine line between heartwarming and uncomfortable in its story of a teenage girl and a middle-aged doctor, both of whom lost their entire immediate families in the Holocaust, connecting with each other in what could be a surrogate father-daughter relationship … or something more. Director Barnabas Toth pulls off a tough balancing act, keeping both main characters sympathetic while subtly questioning whether their relationship is appropriate. Those Who Remained is a quiet and contemplative movie, sometimes to its detriment, when characters' motivations are unclear. But it points to the possibility of hope in the darkest times, without coming across as treacly or disingenuous.
Moving away from World War II, other shortlisted films grapple with equally serious issues, often in stark and harrowing ways. My favorite of the entire slate is the Polish religious drama Corpus Christi, which takes a seemingly contrived premise (an ex-con poses as a Catholic priest) and uses it as a meditation on the nature of faith and forgiveness. Bartosz Bielenia (who received the festival's FIPRESCI Prize for Best Actor in a International Feature Film) gives a fantastic performance as a genuinely devout young man whose criminal record prevents him from attending seminary. When he's mistaken for a priest in a remote small town, he embraces the chance at a new start both for himself and for the town's residents, who are still healing from a devastating car accident that killed multiple local teens. What could be a story about a criminal taking advantage of trusting small-town residents is instead a celebration of compassion and forgiveness. It was deservedly one of the five Oscar nominees.
That's more optimism than you'll find in any of the other selections, although each has its positive moments. The French drama Les Miserables, also one of the five Oscar nominees, is not yet another adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic novel, but it does feature many Hugo references in its story of tensions between police and residents of one of Paris' poorest neighborhoods. A thriller with elements of Training Day, Do the Right Thing and landmark French film La Haine, Les Miserables finds room for sympathy on both sides, while still depicting police power as largely destructive. It's tense and chaotic, although a little thin on characterization and narrative structure.
Class differences are also central to the Senegalese magical-realist fable Atlantics, which is already available to a wide audience on Netflix. Mati Diop's debut feature pits poor workers against exploitative capitalists in the form of a supernatural romance of sorts. A group of construction workers who drown on a dangerous journey across the Atlantic to Spain looking for work return as spirits to torment the rich businessmen who denied them fair wages at home. The core of the story, though, is young Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), whose longing for her drowned boyfriend grounds the political story in identifiable emotions.
Estonian historical epic Truth and Justice is the stodgiest and most old-fashioned movie on the shortlist, and the one likely to generate the least amount of interest from critics and audiences. Based on the first volume of a five-novel series that is considered Estonia's defining national work, it's a slow-moving period drama about rival farmers, spanning nearly 25 years of bitterness between rural neighbors in 19th-century Estonia. It's handsomely crafted (with some sweeping vistas) but mostly dramatically inert, and while it's become the biggest box-office success in Estonia's history (recently toppling James Cameron's Avatar for that position), its appeal is unlikely to transcend borders.
The biggest outlier on the list is Honeyland, a documentary from North Macedonia that also made the shortlist for documentary feature (and was nominated in both categories). Documentaries aren't usually submitted in the foreign language/international category, although Honeyland does offer a distinctive representation of rural Macedonia in its portrait of an aging beekeeper and her clashes with a neighboring family who disrupt her time-honored honey-gathering techniques. It's the kind of perfectly encapsulated conflict between tradition and modernity that makes you question how the filmmakers simply stumbled onto it, and it unfolds with the deliberate (and sometimes tedious) pace of a naturalistic drama, leading to an ambiguous but dramatically poignant conclusion.
Maybe it belongs on this list after all.
- palm springs international film festival
- psiff
- best foreign language film
- best international feature film
- oscars
- parasite
- pain and glory
- the painted bird
- those who remained
- beanpole
- corpus christi
- les miserables
- atlantics
- truth and justice
- honeyland
- academy of motion picture arts and sciences
- academy awards
PSIFF: Palm Springs' Film Fest Is Especially Good at Spotlighting Foreign Films on the Oscars Short List
As more and more countries submit official selections to the Oscars' Best Foreign Language Film category, the showcase for those submissions at the Palm Springs International Film Festival has taken on greater prominence within the festival.
This year's recently concluded event featured 43 of the 87 submissions, including all nine movies that have progressed to the shortlist for nominations. (Five films will be ultimately be nominated; nominations will be revealed Tuesday, Jan. 22.)
Some of those shortlisted movies have enjoyed relatively widespread release in advance of their potential nominations, including Alfonso Cuaron's Roma (the submission from Mexico), which is available to anyone with a Netflix subscription and has played in theaters across the country. Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War (from Poland), Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters (from Japan) and Lee Chang-Dong's Burning (from South Korea) have also been making their way to audiences, at least in art-house movie theaters, over the last few months.
Eight of the nine filmmakers (all but Pawlikowksi) appeared at the PSIFF: Cuaron and Kore-eda were both on-hand for in-depth discussions of their films, and Kore-eda joined the other six filmmakers for the panel "Eyes on the Prize: Foreign Language Oscar Directors in Discussion." Audiences probably didn't need to be prodded to see Roma, but the festival still performed an important service by playing Cuaron's expansive family drama on the big screen, where its lovely black-and-white cinematography, meticulous shot composition and immersive sound design can be most effectively appreciated.
Cold War also features lovely black-and-white cinematography and meticulous shot composition, but its constrained, boxy Academy ratio provides a contrast to Roma's enveloping wide-screen images. Both movies tell deeply personal stories inspired by their directors' family backgrounds, and both are clearly delivered with passion and care.
Veteran directors Kore-eda and Lee returned to familiar themes with their latest films, with Kore-eda once again tenderly exploring the idea of makeshift families in his affecting drama Shoplifters, and Lee delving into the darkness of human relationships in his Haruki Murakami adaptation Burning. Shoplifters follows an extended family of grifters who turn out to have dark secrets in their past, but it's mostly about how people neglected by the system can come together to support each other. Burning is a bit more inscrutable, with its ominous love triangle among young people in Seoul, but it also highlights the way that lonely people latch onto each other for support (in this case, with disastrous results).
The other five movies on the Oscar shortlist have yet to reach American audiences as extensively, but some of them will be worth seeking out when they do. The Danish selection The Guilty and the Colombian selection Birds of Passage, both unconventional crime dramas, are the best of the lower-profile movies on the shortlist, with fresh approaches to familiar genre material.
Made on a shoestring budget, Gustav Möller's The Guilty is set entirely in a small office and focuses almost exclusively on star Jakob Cedergren, who plays a police officer recently demoted to working as an emergency-services operator. When he gets a call from a woman who says she's been kidnapped, he takes increasingly dangerous risks to do what he believes is necessary to help her. What at first seems like the story of a man determined to do the right thing, no matter what the consequences, eventually reveals itself as a character study of someone who is so desperate to prove himself that he's willing to put other people in danger. Möller manages to build consistent tension via nothing more than a series of phone calls, and Cedergren, who's onscreen for nearly every second of the movie, is captivating as the morally compromised cop.
Birds of Passage, co-directed by Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, also offers a fresh perspective on a familiar crime narrative, with its real-life-inspired story of indigenous Wayuu families who get involved in Colombia's drug trade in the 1960s and '70s. Structurally, the movie hits nearly every beat of the well-worn rise-and-fall crime-lord story, as the ambitious Rapayet (José Acosta) builds an empire selling marijuana, first to Colombians and later to Americans. There are the clothes and houses and cars that get fancier and fancier; there's the long-suffering wife whose function is mainly to bear children and worry; there's the escalating bloodshed leading to inevitable tragedy; there's even the screw-up brother-in-law whose idiotic actions get people killed. What makes Birds of Passage stand out is the way it combines a naturalistic study of indigenous culture with the grittiness of something like Goodfellas, highlighting universal human tendencies toward greed and pride, as well as the unique qualities of Wayuu life that influence their building of a criminal enterprise.
Both Sergey Dvortsevoy's Ayka (from Kazakhstan) and Nadine Labaki's Capernaum (from Lebanon) are less successful at portraying marginalized people in a way that draws in the audience. Instead, both movies are essentially unrelenting parades of misery, putting their destitute main characters through an endless string of misfortune.
In Ayka, the title character (Samal Yeslyamova) is an immigrant from Kyrgyzstan living illegally in Moscow, and the movie opens with her abandoning her newborn baby at the hospital. Things only get bleaker from there, as Ayka attempts to secure meager employment, runs from a loan shark's enforcers, suffers the health consequences of leaving the hospital too early, and tries to stay one step ahead of immigration authorities. Shot in a series of often nauseating hand-held close-ups, Ayka is thoroughly unpleasant without being illuminating or transcendent, and its treatment of its lead character feels more sadistic than sympathetic.
Capernaum has more visual beauty, and even moments of levity, but it too spends most of its running time torturing an innocent protagonist. In this case, that's 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), who runs away from his abusive home only to end up facing more poverty, starvation and mistreatment. In an absurd framing device, Zain is in court suing his parents for giving birth to him, with an argument that comes dangerously close to advocating for sterilizing the poor. Labaki relies on the cuteness of her lead actor (as well as an even cuter baby that Zain sort of adopts in the movie's second half) to elicit cheap sympathy, and throws in a stream of plot developments that get more melodramatic as the movie lurches forward to its overwrought present-day courtroom showdown.
The final movie on the shortlist is the most old-fashioned, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's three-hour-plus German historical epic Never Look Away, loosely inspired by the life of renowned artist Gerhard Richter. The film fictionalizes Richter as Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), and he's a bit of a cipher as his life and career parallel the development of Germany from just before World War II through the erection of the Berlin Wall. Von Donnersmarck, who also directed the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others, seems more interested in the evolution of German politics than he is in art, using Kurt as a point-of-view character to explore Nazi atrocities, Communist repression and capitalist decadence, as the character moves from one regime to another. The filmmaker also invents a rather cartoonish villain, a Nazi-affiliated doctor played by The Lives of Others' Sebastian Koch, who torments Kurt in every phase of his life, as a sort of avatar for the darkness of the German character. The stately, slow-moving film is the opposite of the daring art produced by its main character.
It's also unlikely to take home an Oscar, as one of the higher-profile movies on the shortlist is all but guaranteed to be the winner. (Really, Roma is pretty much impossible to beat.) But there's more to foreign cinema than lavish productions from major directors financed by huge corporations—and the PSIFF does a great job of letting audiences discover that.
- psiff
- palm springs international film festival
- best foreign language film
- roma
- alfonso cuaron
- cold war
- pawel pawilowski
- shoplifters
- hirokazu koreeda
- gustav moller
- the guilty
- birds of passage
- ciro guerra
- cristina gallego
- ayka
- sergey dvortsevoy
- nadine labaki
- capernaum
- never look away
- florian henckel von donnersmarck
- burning
- leechang dong
Your Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Preview: Musings on the Eight Films Up for the Academy Award Shown at the PSIFF
One of the highlights of the Palm Springs International Film Festival is its extensive program of films submitted for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar—giving audiences a taste of the best movies from around the world (or, well, at least what government agencies around the world have decided are the best movies).
This year's festival featured 43 of the more than 80 Best Foreign Language submissions for the upcoming Oscars—including eight of the nine movies on the Academy's shortlist. The five nominees, as well as the nominees in all the rest of the categories, will be announced tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 24.
The nominees in the category generally tend toward the middlebrow, with serious historical dramas—often focusing on World War II—reliably taking up a few spots each year.
Such is the case this year—three of the eight shortlisted movies shown at the PSIFF deal with World War II and its aftermath: Denmark's Land of Mine, about young German POWs forced to clear land mines in Denmark after the war; Norway's The King's Choice, about the first days of Germany's invasion of Norway in 1940; and Russia's Paradise, about a Russian resistance member in Nazi-occupied France.
Of these three, Paradise is the most artistically successful, doing more than just dramatizing sections from a history textbook. Shooting in black and white, in the constrained Academy ratio, director Andrey Konchalovskiy combines dreamlike imagery and magical-realist plotting with stark, clear-eyed depictions of life in a concentration camp, and the balance of power between Nazi officers and prisoners. The movie's conceit of "interviews" with three main characters after their deaths is sometimes a bit heavy-handed, but it allows for poetic moments and quiet reflection that more straightforward historical dramas often lack.
Both Land of Mine and The King's Choice take a more straightforward historical approach, and while they tell stories that have been underrepresented in historical accounts (at least outside their native countries), they only intermittently bring those stories to life. In Land of Mine, a group of young (most appearing to be in their early teens) German soldiers are kept as POWs in Denmark following the war, and are forced to clear the tens of thousands of land mines along the Danish coast. The movie offers a welcome perspective in which the Germans are sympathetic, scared young men who don't necessarily understand the consequences of their actions; it's the often vindictive Danish military personnel are the villains. But the young characters are nearly interchangeable; their eventual emotional connection with their Danish commander is predictable; and the suspense built around periodically exploding kids seems a bit exploitative.
The King's Choice doesn't have any exploding kids, and it's a bit dry in its ploddingly procedural account of the few days between the time when Germany invaded Norway, and when the country's King Haakon VII made an historic break with Parliament and refused to surrender to Germany. As director Erik Poppe explained before the screening, the king's actions are an important part of Norwegian history, taught in schools—but without that inherent Norwegian pride, it's hard to get worked up over this fairly minor military aspect of the war, or to get invested in the principled stands of a pampered (if likable) royal family.
After war movies, the next most-popular genre for the Foreign Language Oscar is possibly the intense domestic drama, represented by Canada's It's Only the End of the World and Iran's The Salesman, both from acclaimed international auteurs. It's Only the End of the World was adapted from Jean-Luc Lagarce's stage play by prolific filmmaker Xavier Dolan, and despite its cast of French superstars (Gaspard Ulliel, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Nathalie Baye), it remains stagebound and claustrophobic, with the characters tediously talking in circles during a tense family gathering over the course of a single day. Dolan is known for bold, visually inventive films, but here, he sticks mostly to uncomfortable close-ups and stands back as his actors chew the scenery.
The Salesman, from A Separation Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi, is more restrained, even as its subject matter is darker. It's a slow burn about a married couple whose relationship is strained when the wife is attacked in their apartment, and her husband becomes consumed with finding the perpetrator. But this isn't some action-packed revenge thriller; it's a contemplative story about responsibility and empathy, a rumination on the value of vengeance and a look at how seemingly strong relationships can be destroyed in a moment. The lead performances from previous Farhadi collaborators Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti are very good, and while the connection to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (a production of which the couple star in during the events of the movie) is a bit tenuous, both are thematically rich family dramas with satisfyingly downbeat endings.
Thanks to the creation of an additional executive committee several years ago, the selections for the Foreign Language Film Oscar category have gotten a little more diverse, and a few of this year's shortlisted films fit less neatly into familiar genres. Sweden's A Man Called Ove, Germany's Toni Erdmann and Switzerland's My Life as a Zucchini are all lighter than their fellow shortlist selections, with more emphasis on unique artistic visions. Ove is the most conventional, a feel-good dramedy about a grumpy old man who comes to appreciate life thanks to the efforts of his friendly neighbors. It's the kind of crowd-pleasing, gentle movie that could star Tom Hanks if it came from Hollywood, and while star Rolf Lassgård makes for an appealing curmudgeon, the flashbacks slowly illuminating his tragedy-filled past eventually tug way too hard on the heartstrings. But Academy voters seemingly love to have their heartstrings tugged, and with its mix of the heavy and the heartwarming, Ove comes across as typical Oscar bait.
The most critically acclaimed movie on the shortlist, Toni Erdmann, is the frontrunner to win the Oscar, and it's certainly the strangest and most challenging film of the eight shown at the festival. Running nearly three hours, Maren Ade's film is a combination of cringe comedy, family drama and sociopolitical commentary, with plenty of strange detours along the way. The title character is the alter ego of Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), an eccentric, lonely old man who wants to reconnect with his corporate go-getter daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller). It takes almost an hour for Toni to emerge, as Winfried follows his daughter to her work assignment in Romania, and the movie unfolds at a meandering pace, with dry corporate meetings next to uncomfortable scenes of Winfried's attempts to insert himself into his daughter's life. Many have found the film moving, funny and profound, but for me, it was like listening to a long, rambling joke with no punchline.
The best of the eight shortlisted movies I saw at the festival is also the unlikeliest selection, the Swiss stop-motion animated movie My Life as a Zucchini. It's also eligible for the Best Animated Feature award, but it's a bit of a dark horse in both categories. That's a shame, because director Claude Barras' film is utterly charming, beautiful to look at and sweetly affecting. It's the story of a young orphan (who goes by the name Zucchini) adjusting to life in a group home and eventually finding a makeshift family. The material isn't groundbreaking, but the hand-crafted animation gives it a wonderfully skewed perspective, while the dialogue is funny and realistic, and the characters are very likable.
It was the last movie I saw at the festival—and it ended my experience on a high note. Hopefully Oscar voters will feel the same way.


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>"Simon Fell" <firstname.lastname@example.com> writes: > >Yes, the references across NSs always have to be QNames. I believe > >telling whether a name is a QName or an NCName is simple- just see > >whether there's a colon or not. > > but an unprefixed value, is still a valid QName. Isn't it a QName with a null namespace URI? Is there a difference between that and an NCName?? > It sounds to me like its just making it more complex, not less. Stick > with QNames and make it clearer in the prose. That would be my own personal preference too! Sanjiva.Received on Monday, 15 April 2002 06:59:19 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Friday, 17 January 2020 23:06:21 UTC

subset: commoncrawl


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Often there are not enough seats to go round - so I spend some of my journey standing up, which is absolutely fine by me.Follow @CultureEffect Tweet
There are always others in greater need of seating - the elderly, those with injury or disability, families trying to sit together.......but most of the time I give up my seat for a lady.
Not because I'm sexist or believe women to be the weaker sex, but because I think it's a nice, polite thing to do.
If I was travelling with my Wife, I would not sit down and let her stand - so I find it weird that some men will sit down and watch women standing when they wouldn't dream of letting their girlfriends, wives or mothers do the same.
This is not a generational thing - yesterday I saw an elderly gentleman give up his seat for lady on the tube, a teenage girl did the same on the mainline train. In both cases, many more women were left standing by seemingly fit, able bodied men.
I realise that women have to bear some of the blame here - for decades fear has been instilled into men that by offering kindness to women they may be instantly labelled sexist and publicly humiliated - but I'm pretty resilient to that kind of nonsense so here are my top tips if you feel like developing some manners today.
If you cannot make eye contact first (while standing and gesturing at the now empty seat), then stand up, walk over the person you want to give you seat to, smile and say "There's a seat there if you'd like it".
Almost always, they will say "Thank you" and take it.
If not, the two most common objections are "No thank you, It's OK" or "I'll be getting off at the next stop"
Here are some things you can say in that situation......
On mainline trains this usually means you'll be spending the rest of the journey at the end of the carriage, with a bunch of other people who cannot work on their laptops or spend all their time buried in their smartphone.
An unexpected bonus of this behaviour is that you may find you've started a conversation in the near silence of the modern morgue/library environment of the public transport system - and the journey will pass much more quickly.


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Working paper series - Preventing Mass Atrocity Crimes: The Responsibility to Protect and the Syria Crisis
Paul R. Williams (American University – Washington College of Law), Trevor Ulbrick, Jonathan Worboys
Available on Social Science Research Network
1 November 2012
The Responsibility to Protect ("R2P") is a complicated and "evolving norm" of international law that seeks to provide a means for the international community to prevent mass atrocity crimes occurring within the boundaries of a sovereign state. Since its emergence in 2001, in the wake of humanitarian tragedies in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, R2P has been hailed as a means to deal with what one commentator called the "problem from hell." Under R2P, however, the use of force is reserved for actions within the UN Charter's Chapter VII framework. As has been highlighted by the Syria crisis, this position continues to hinder efforts by the international community to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes.
In view of the Syria crisis, this article argues that when peaceful measures have been exhausted and the Security Council is deadlocked, R2P's third pillar should allow the use of only those low intensity military options, such as no-fly zones and humanitarian safe havens, that are focused on protecting populations. This approach would advance R2P's development by establishing specific criteria that allow for the limited use of force when the Security Council fails to act. In doing so, R2P will be able to fulfill its primary purpose of preventing mass atrocities within a sovereign state, thus preventing future tragedies similar to those that have been seen in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and now Syria. (…)
Download full paper.


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The main industrial fish species
In the seas and oceans of our planet are populated with over 21000 species of fish. About ten percent of them belong to the industrial types. Breeding allows you to obtain not only the fish as a commodity, it is the raw material for the production of medicines, fertilizers, pet food. Industrial fish are divided into freshwater and marine.
Freshwater species are fish that inhabit the ponds, lakes, rivers. The main industrial freshwater fish species are catfish, carp, perch. To artificial breeding of well adapted to black bass, trout, carp, Amur, silver carp. Such kinds of fish as pike, perch, catfish, carp, crucian carp, bream, take the first place in terms of industrial production in our country.
Particularly valuable of freshwater species of fish are:
sturgeon and stellate sturgeon, Beluga, sturgeon, this species of fish has a very tasty and fatty meat, and from them collect valuable Beluga caviar;
salmon – humpback salmon, chum salmon, Steelhead, these fish species are given, in addition to high demand of red caviar, delicious meat.
Marine fish accounted for 87% of all fish in the diet of a person. A cold-water species are found in the Northern seas, these include groupers, flatfish, cod, herring. In teplichnoye live and breed heat-loving species – syrevye, jacks, Tunas, mackerel.
Herring is the most famous and popular among the consumers of fish products, and fish. Easily recognized by its blue-purple back and a silvery abdomen and sides. The main food for herring is plankton. Herring which are found in the Atlantic and Pacific ocean that looks very similar, but the biology of these fish is significantly different.
Another well-known sea fish, cod. Cod is a predatory fish. Fishing and breeding of cod is one of the important crafts of Europe and America. Cod liver is a delicacy. This fat product, rich in vitamin A. the meat of this fish is low-fat, because the fat accumulates in the liver. From cod liver oil produced fish oil, which is a valuable food Supplement.
Great importance for the industrial cultivation of fish are flatfish species. It is a bottom fish, the body flat, fully adapted for life on the bottom. Body colour, white or yellow. Both eyes are located on top.
The shores of warm seas and inhabit such industrial types of fish as mackerel, horse mackerel, anchovy. Sardines inhabit the warm waters of the Japanese and the Mediterranean sea, and the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.
Anchovies – small fish. Their length does not exceed fifteen centimeters. A large number of these fish are bred at the shores of the Azov and the Black sea.


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The media industry is facing significant changes in 2016 as media companies and brands double-up their efforts to adjust to digitally savvy consumer needs. These shifts will pave the way for new advertising services and partnerships, as well as foster greater creativity focused on delivering more innovative content to consumers.
The industry has already seen this impact with Procter & Gamble's recent announcement that it plans to move the bulk of its North America media buying and planning business to Omnicom Media Group. P&G said improved data analytics, innovation and talent were the primary drivers behind its decision, adding that to connect with today's consumers, brands need to be able to reach consumers at the right place at the right time with the right message.
While there has been much written in the North American and European markets on how digital, mobile and social media have disrupted the traditional media landscape, the industry has trailed behind the consumer's level of digital sophistication for years. This dynamic is rapidly changing. Next year will be the year that the media industry responds to new consumer behavior with new business models, improved measurement and more dynamic content partnerships.
Look for three key drivers of this change in 2016:
Bundling of media buying and measurement services to spark an international wave of analytics company acquisitions
As digital advertising begins to overtake linear television spend, a larger portion of brands' overall media strategy and budget, bundled services that manage the full lifecycle of the ad, from placement and tracking to impact measurement are emerging.
Many of these new offerings will be created through acquisitions, both in North American and European markets, as buyers rush to establish greater analytics capabilities. As a result of these capabilities providing better information about a campaign's impact on consumer behavior, the value of digital inventory will rise.
Quality digital advertising measurement is the next milestone in the media industry, and 2016 will see many strides in that space. Marketers will increasingly change their view of how to value the media inventory available to them. They will no longer focus on spot price and programs. Instead, they will look at the value of the results. The more accurate buyers can be in measuring outcomes, the more highly valued their services will be.
Odd couple brand partnerships to spread as the industry adjusts to new consumer behavior
The new year will see a surge in the number of non-traditional partnerships between brands, celebrities and media companies. Brands will increasingly choose delivering experiences over taglines in order to capture customers and secure brand loyalty.
One example of this kind of partnership is outerwear company Moncler's sponsorship of Italian explorer Michele Pontrandolfo's trek to the South Pole, which is helping to promote its winter 2015/2016 collection. Another example can be seen with GoPro Workouts, which enables users to follow their favorite professional athlete's daily workout routine.
Brands are starting to internalize that a big part of capturing a digital audience's attention is delivering meaningful experiences in a non-commercial sense, a story with a central narrative, dramatic structure and character arch. This is especially true with social media, where engaging content can go viral at any moment.
Digital audiences are much less likely to pardon brands for their interruption. To attract and keep audiences, brands must deliver compelling content and be comfortable with their products living in the subtext.
Advertising agencies to shift focus to creative and strategy as programmatic technology and fee scrutiny squeeze margin out of media buying
For the past two decades, marketers have placed a premium on their agencies' ability to buy media efficiently. Agencies' buying capabilities often determined whether they won or lost business.
With the rise of digital media, however, advertisers are fighting harder than ever before for media placement relevance.
This coming year the rise of programmatic technology and scrutiny over agency media buying fees will move agency value propositions back to campaign strategy and creativity.
While buying has become increasingly commoditized and media channels have grown exponentially, capturing and engaging audience is more challenging than ever before. Agencies and marketers will turn to creative strategy, new partnerships and integrated cross-channel strategies to break through the cluttered marketplace.
The key is having sharper insights and more creative thinking.
In 2016, we will see brands shifting their priorities and seeking to work with the most innovative thinkers in the agency world.
TO MAINTAIN their competitive edge, marketers will also have to be deliberate about incorporating emerging tactics into their campaigns and overall strategies. This includes calculated risks that do not have the luxury of long deliberation.
While these trends may present their fair share of obstacles and challenges, the companies that face them head on will be well positioned to connect with customers in a more meaningful way, which will undoubtedly translate into stronger brand loyalty and healthy revenue growth.


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David Berstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says the American Bar Association plans to require law schools seeking its stamp of approval (which is essential for any law school) to maintain racial, gender and ethnic diversity in admissions and hiring. That's not surprising.
But it is surprising - no, actually its shocking - that the ABA says that "the requirements of a constitutional provision or statute that purports to prohibit consideration of gender, race, ethnicity or national origin in admissions or employment decisions is not a justification for a school's non-compliance...." In other words, our nation's national organization of lawyers is telling law schools that they better get their racial and gender numbers in order (actually, this is all about race; gender disparities disappeared in law schools a long time ago) and, if they have to ignore the law to do it, well, there's never been an omelette made without breaking some eggs.
This reminds me why I refuse to belong to the ABA.


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For our latest survey of creative talents around the world, we go down under to find the most celebrated Australian contemporary artists that stand out in a very versatile and rich art scene of the continent. Australia's more serious engagement with the contemporary arts movements worldwide had only started in the late 1970s, with their first ever participation at the Venice Biennale, and a series of initiatives which resulted in many international projects during that decade and beyond. Among the most common, and most recent topics in their art, Australian contemporary artists mostly deal with the concepts of identity and the human body, as well as the relationship with their land and culture, much like their neighbours from New Zealand.
Recently Widewalls spoke to 19 Karen's Terri Law who helped us to better understand the latest trends of contemporary Australian artists and allowed us a glimpse into her world. This world is just one of many which decorate the eclectic nature of Australian art. Most recently a boom of interest towards off-centers of the art world, turned the eye towards Australia whose artists are attempting to reconcile with issues at home, and to place themselves with the global art world. Witnessed is a larger number of art centers and off-space which result in a more competitive feeling within the community. And as we know, once the battle starts, all gloves are off. This time, such a battle works for us, as the art produced is more vibrant, and more challenging, yet at the same time continues to be respectful towards the heritage of the continent. This time, we are bringing to you some of the most important and internationally celebrated names of Australian artists, so please continue reading.
Editors' Tip: On Dialogue: Contemporary Australian Art
Sydney Biennale is an event of interest and most expected place one will look for reflection and information about Australian art. Yet, this time, the authors of the book decided to turn their eyes towards important art cities and events that are not the mentioned international happening. The contents of the book are arranged as comprehensive and educative essays about the local and regional art since 1960's. Written by some of the leading Australian theorists whose focus was placed on the research into creative events within Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney, the book features important Australian artists and explores what else the continent has to offer.
The winner of Australia's most lucrative portrait prize, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Ben Quilty is a painter whose canvases often carry thick layers of paint and depict dark subjects made of blocks of color. His own past filled with alcohol and drugs sometimes serves him as an inspiration to create the distinctive portraits wrapped in a veil of anguish that dig deep into the despair of the human soul and psyche. Ben Quilty is also known as the official war artist in Afghanistan during 2011, an experience which resulted in a series of haunting portraits of soldiers, and for the Rorschach paintings he made by pressing a painted canvas onto a blank one.
One of the icons of popular culture in art, Ben Frost is known for using famous images from advertising, politics and entertainment for his controversial and often criticizing art. The Sydney-based artist seems to have no usual compassion for the cartoons as the rest of us, and his merciless use of the characters often causes scandal. In fact, all of this may be the effect caused by his childhood fear of Ronald McDonald, for example - a fact the artist revealed in his interview for Widewalls earlier this year. Ben Frost likes to hit the society where it hurts the most, with its own guns, to reveal the hypocrisy and the fake reality we're so getting used to.
Working in a wide range of media covering painting, video, sound, installation and digital prints, Patricia Piccinini is perhaps best known for her peculiar sculptures. They're not for everybody, but if you're interested in weird looking, perfectly executed human-animal hybrids or warped vehicles that make you feel like you're in a sci-fi movie, then this lady is gonna be your favourite artist, if she isn't already. The winner of 2014 Melbourne Art Foundation's Award for the Visual Arts, Patricia Piccinini explores the evolution of nature and the inevitable changing of all living organism in most wonderful ways. Many of her sculptures and installations are public artworks commissioned by the official authorities.
Inspired by the digital culture and the immense influence that the internet era is having on us, artist Michael Staniak creates paintings and sculptures that are both thought-provoking and the carriers of a clear message. At first sight, his two-dimensional works seem flat, printed out, but in fact they have physical depth, created with acrylic paint and digital processes like the UV pigmentation or 3D scanning. He names his files in an anonymous way, evoking the habits of photoshop masters, in forms like IMG_687 or PSD_692. Abstract and stunning at first sight, the artworks of Michael Staniak get an incredible and unique added value when they're explained.
Having been part of the 2015 Venice Biennale as the representative of Australia, Fiona Hall is certainly one of her country's leading contemporary artists. Working with mediums like photography, sculpture and installations, she explores the notions of topics like history, globalisation and ecology - perhaps best incorporated in her trophy-like, military-camouflaged sculptures of endangered species. Much of her latest work involves military uniforms and guns. Fiona Hall's exhibition in Venice, entitled Wrong Way Time, features 1000 works in a sort of a "cabinet of curiosities", a project which addresses the political and environmental issues of today.
An often guest of our Street Updates, Australian street artist Fintan Magee is well-known on an international level, having painted the walls and participated in urban art events and exhibitions around the world. Branded Australia's Banksy, the artist creates murals and paintings inspired by pretty much everything around him: nature, architecture, advertising, and very often he makes these topics interact with each other by mixing their physical elements. In his work, Fintan Magee often depicts human characters in different situations, without a particular message in mind, almost always covering large surfaces of buildings or walls in urban areas everywhere.
Australia's master of photography and film, Tracey Moffatt has had as much success at home as abroad, with more than 50 solo exhibitions worldwide. Her groundbreaking 1989 series Something More brought her national fame, and her experimental films have been screened at festivals like Cannes. In her work, Tracey Moffatt often recalls her childhood and references history of art and photography, drawing attention to the issues of race, gender, sexuality and identity. Her images, both still and moving, are characterized by an extraordinary ability to narrate, accompanied by an impeccable artistic style.
For almost fifty years, Julie Rrap has been involved in performance art and the experiments with the body and its representation. Deeply rooted in feminism, her work questions the portrayal of women and the female body, through the means of painting, photography, sculpture and video as well. Often depicting bodily mutations and visual transformations, the imagery of Julie Rrap is direct and disturbing, addressing the impossible standards of beauty imposed specifically to the females. Her most famous work, the 2002 photograph Overstepping, represents a critical answer to the aesthetic requirements and poses ethical questions of pressure on individuals.
Smug, or Smug One, is one of the few street artists out there who creates photorealistic artworks. Highly stylised and large in size, the works of this Australian-born, Glasgow-based creative cover an array of topics - from playful, chubby children to famous movie characters and masterfully executed portraits of gangsters, badass ladies, shiny skulls, old-school lowriders, angry animals and much more. While we don't know much more about this mysterious artist, we can get to know him through his majestic street works, so incredible that sometimes it's really hard to believe that what we're looking at isn't a photograph, but an artwork created from a spray can.
Born in Singapore, Simryn Gill is a multi-media artist, but also an art collector. Her systematic way of doing art reflects most in her encyclopaedic series which document modern society and culture. Through photography, objects, texts and unusual materials such as banana skins or termite mound soil, the artist examines certain events and customs in Australia, Malaysia and India, among others, revealing "slippages in culturally-defined identities." Simryn Gill too represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, in 2013, with a site-specific project which dealt with the problems of inhabitation, a recurring topic in her art.
Recipient of the Gallery Barry Keldoulis Grant for Emerging Artists and the Dinosaur Designs Prize just upon her graduation from the UNSW COFA in 2010, Rosie Deacon has dedicated her practice to the research of the realism of the absurd and the spectacle of the obsession. Her sculptures and installation pieces resemble fictional geography spaces which the artist fills up with hand-made animal objects. Through the symbolic nature of animals, and high elements of kitsch, craft, and folk art practices, the artist explores deeper issues and comments on the exaggerated obsessions and the duality of control and freedom. Her attempt is to represent the wild side of unleashed and uncontrollable creativity by referencing the relationship between humans and animals. In the time where the relationship between humans and nature is highly controlled, Deacon tells her own tales of domesticated and free animals.
Known for his work with architecture, modernism, and the emotional and social impact of built spaces, Callum Morton is more often than not, considered as one of the most important Australian artists. Aided by the use of technology, most of Morton's works explore the questions about identity, expanding the focus from the personal to the global identity of the world and the spaces which dictate and govern our own lives. One of his latest projects The Other Side, created for the occasion of the 19th Sydney Biennale, explores the notions of virtual reality and the nature of the classical ghost train rides of amusement parks. Taking the audience, literally on the ride, Morton continues to push boundaries of what is art and as a Head of Fine Art at the MADA, is influential in the shaping of the new and rising stars of Australian creatives.
With influences in pop culture, cartoons and illustrations, James Reka aka Reka One's style is known for its fusion of high and low art cultures. Bringing together the precision of graphic design works, echoes of his background as a logo designer, and his love for graffiti art, create a certain paradox evident in his creations. For the production of his large-scale mural paintings, Reka One pays much attention to details and choice of color. His created images are dream-like creators and motifs which bring together the styles of Surrealism art and abstract fantasy, along with experimentation and exploration of geometrical art and its basic shapes. Recently Reka One's work became part of the permanent collection of National Gallery of Australia cementing his place as one of Australia's most respected contemporary street artists.
As one of the important representatives of the Aboriginal art of Australia, Jorna Newberry is considered a rising star. The abstraction of her work, along with the traditional dotting style of color application, corresponds with her Aboriginal heritage and the need to perceive the most indigenous cultural stories as hidden. The layering of her abstract paintings need to be seen as hidden messages available to only a few, yet without knowing what they represent we are glued to her work. Absorbing inspiration from her land, especially the country Irrunytjy in the Western desert, Newberry explores the most spiritually important places. The production of Aboriginal art for the identity of Australia's continent is viewed by many as one of the most important art productions that continent offers to a wider audience.
Another of the contemporary Australian artists working in the field of urban and street art is Anthony Lister considered by many as one of the best. Over a decade ago Mr. Lister created his own expression mark which he implements both outside and inside some of the most prestigious galleries around the world. His use of various different techniques, and the application of different layers of spraypaint, ink, and brushwork allow his paintings to have that celebrated row look and also help to create a feeling of a delicate undercurrent in his images. His comic-like images of bad tempered masters and villains continue to amaze not just in Australia but across the globe as well.
Most famous for her rhythmical depictions of the rushing movement of the falling leaves, Gloria Petyarre is considered as the most significant and most famous living female Aboriginal artist. Her trademark style of production, which incorporates colors of close tonal value, flat background, and rhythmical brushstroke, most evident in her celebrated series Bush Medicine, adopted by various other Aboriginal artists, is considered to be the most significant stylistic development of Aboriginal production. Her connection to nature and the idea of Dreamtime is deeply rooted in her heritage, which this artist continues to celebrate with her paintings.
The artwork painted on the rooftop of one of Paris' museums is only seen from the sky, Eifel Tower, or Google Earth. The author of this magnificent piece is none other than the Australian Indigenous artist Lena Nyadbi. The world of dreams and of animals where Aboriginal people see all knowledge springing from, Nyadbi transforms into simplified marks and dots. Upon seeing her work from the top of the Eifel Tower, and witnessing the existence of her barramundi scales, the artist stated that it 'almost made me cry'. Her production, much celebrated in the world is quite possibly the best Australia offers.
Bianca Hester's often ephemeral public sculptural interventions research the spatial relationship, social contexts, and architectural spaces and attempt to comment on how one occupies and engages with different places. Through her multidisciplinary approach, which incorporates site-specific interventions, video art, open-ended situations and events, Hester was one of the participants at the 19th Sydney Biennale. Her most recent projects are moving deeper into the research of the relationship between the subject and object, and often with minimal tools, attempts to understand the inner workings of a specific place or a specific city.
Recognized as one of Australia's pre-eminent artists, Mike Parr's production spans across various art disciplines such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, film, and performance. Emerging from the background of conceptual art of 1970's his word works and interrogatory poems, escalated into provocative performance art for which Parr received international acknowledgment. The personally demanding process of his creation produces a sense of catharsis in his work, most evident in his painting production while his performances challenge the boundaries of his own body and deeply influence the audience. Deeply rooted into the investigation of the identity and of the self, Parr has created over thousand works of his self –imposed Self Portrait series in a range of different mediums that include film, photography, drypoint, performance, painting, and installation.
If you ever wondered what it would be like if some of the creators of fairy tales came to life, then the craft of Heather B Swann is what you need to acknowledge. Famous for her large wearable sculptures which come to life during performances, Swann's creativity exists at a crossroad of dreams and reality, beasts and the human body, surreal and subconscious, bending the edges of this world and unknown realm. Her multidisciplinary approach to art has gained her some of the most prestigious awards such as Paul Guest Drawing Prize at the Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo in 2014 and participation in some of the Australia's most important art events, such as Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art in 2016.
All images used for illustrative purposes only.
Miami, United States of America
Chicago, United States of America
Berlin, Germany


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All the latest products for 4wdriving, caravanning and camping, fishing and more – all in the one place. Australia's biggest 4WD and Adventure Shows has the latest gear, plus family entertainment and attractions. Engel Bush Camp, fishing stage, Fourby Forum info stage, special guests, 4WD Test Track, recovery demos, adventure motorbike demo area, Isuzu Team D-Max stunt rides and the Land Rover Terrapod. Perth 4WD & Adventure Show, 6-8 November 2020 at McCallum Park.
Fri 6th Nov 9am-6pmSat 7th Nov 9am-6pmSun 8th Nov 9am-5pm
McCallum Park, Victoria ParkShow MapGetting to the showParking
Adults $20Concession $16Children $10Family $452-day and 3-day passes available
Design by JAZ


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Printing is available in the library from any of our PCs through the use of our print system. To pay for your printed pages, you must purchase a print card from a vending machine in the Reference area using dollar bills. The cost of the empty card is $1.00, which after purchase may be loaded in $1.00 increments. Each printed page will deduct 15¢ from the amount on your card, which may be reloaded at any time. Pages are retrieved using your print card and your library card. For information or assistance, please inquire at the Reference Desk.
Printing is also available on laptops or mobile devices, either from inside the library or remotely through an internet connection. Via the PrinterOn service, printed items may be sent from anywhere directly to our printer, where you can pick them up with your print card. Items will be saved at our print terminal for up to 48 hours for your convenience. For more information, follow the above link or inquire at the Reference Desk.
The Allentown Public library offers outgoing fax service. The fee is $1.00 per page faxed. A cover letter form is available for use free of charge. Incoming fax service is not available.
Photocopying in both color and black and white is also available. The cost is $.15 for black and white and $.25 for color pages. The copy machines take dollar bills or non penny coins.
We also provide a scanning service for documents or images. For $.50 per page scanned, you can have any image or document saved in .pdf, .jpg, or .txt format and e-mailed or saved onto a flash drive.
Any questions regarding either of these services, please contact the reference department at 610-820-2400 x2, or visit us on the first floor of the library.


text: The ladies at my church got together for a prayer breakfast last weekend, and I brought a mini version of these. I've baked a few times already this year, but so far it's been all old recipes, explaining the lack of new posts. I'm pretty sure my schedule will continue to be tight until the wedding – I'm traveling for work for a couple weeks, and there's a lot left to do before the wedding. Good news is, I'm not stressed! Neither is Tim. We've gotten so many comments on how it doesn't seem like we're getting married in under two months – we seem too calm for it to be that soon. I think we're both just not losing focus on what's important. At the end of March 8, we'll be married regardless of the little details, so we make it a point not to sweat the small stuff. Yes, I know I'm saying this now.. I just hope I can still keep my cool in March.


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This song cycle was composed in 2017 for soprano LaToya Lain and pianist Casey Robards. The text is drawn from the poetry of Elizabeth Browning and was adapted and edited by Aiden Kim Feltkamp. A version for tenor and piano for Joshua May is currently in progress. There are seven songs in the cycle:
- Insufficiency I
- Inclusions
- The Lady's Yes
- A Musical Instrument
- A Reed
- Life and Love
- Insufficiency II
Download the score: A Dream of Fabled Lands


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ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund Growth
- 7.98%
- (+0.17)42.94
Start your investment
Min amount: ₹100
Calculate Returns
- Fund Summary
- More about Fund
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- FAQs
Fund Summary
|Returns(per year)
|10 Years
|5 Years
|3 Years
|1 Year
|6 Months
|Fund Details
|Moderately High risk
|Fund Type
|Exit Load
|1% for 365 Days
More about this fund
|Top Holdings
|Infosys Ltd
|HDFC Bank Ltd
|Reliance Industries Ltd
|ICICI Bank Ltd
|Bharti Airtel Ltd
|Axis Bank Ltd
|Housing Development Finance Corp Ltd
|SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd
|Hindustan Unilever Ltd
|ITC Ltd
About ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund
Being an open-ended equity scheme predominantly invest in large-cap stocks. During turbulent economic conditions the scheme turns to be a good investment option by seeking growth and stability to an investor portfolio.
Pros and Cons of ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund
Investors seeking to invest in this fund can find: 1. This scheme is the market leader in their respective industries. 2. This is a long term wealth creation investment. 3. The scheme has given 10% to 15% returns whereas 10% to 13.7% returns are given by its benchmark Nifty 100 TRI.
Fund Information and Statistics of ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund
i) Inception / Launch date
ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund was launched on April 2008 by ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund.
ii) Risk level
Risk investing in this fund is moderately high as investing in large-cap stocks are more safe than small stocks. Being an open-ended fund there is a possibility of loss of the principal amount invested.
iii) Redemption
The units of the unit holders can be redeemed as of the date of receipt of the redemption request and the transaction will be processed as per the Net Asset Value. Within a maximum of 10 business days the redemption payment is released.
iv) Fund Manager
Mr. Rajat Chandak and Mr. Anish Tawakley are fund managers of ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund.
v) Entry / Exit load
The entry load is not applicable in this scheme. Exit load of 1% of NAV is applicable upto 1 year of allotment, more than 1 year is not applicable.
Tax benefits of investing in ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund
Long Term Capital Gains ("LTCG"), in excess of Rs 1 lakh, are taxed @ 10% without indexation if units are held for more than 12 months. Short term capital gains ("STCG") are taxed @ 15% if units are held for less than 12 months. Investors do not pay any tax on dividends received but a Dividend Distribution Tax ("DDT") is deducted by the fund house at source.
About ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund
ICICI Prudential Fund is one the leading mutual fund companies of India. It is the largest asset management company caters primarily to retail investors. The schemes of ICICI Prudential mutual funds are convenient and fulfill long term as well as short term financial goal.
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This is one of the greatest archaeological place of Bogra. It is an excavated mound in the village of Gokul. On top of this 5 metre high podium you can see a square temple with a porch. Actually its a Buddhist temple, and it was built for the prayer. This medh fully covered green grass and it looks very beautiful. During the Summer season, nice view from the clouds of sky. Local people believe that this was the "bashor ghor" of Behula Lakkhindar. People come here to see architecture of ancient Bangladesh.
Behular Bashor ghor
- Location Gokul, Bogra
- Climate Annual average temperature maximum 38° C and minimum 10° C; annual total rainfall 1610 mm.
How to get there
Have to go Bogra first from Dhaka by road, and there are many bus services.
From Bogra town can go to Mahasthangarh by rickshaw, auto-rickshaw or bus.
Where to stay
Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation runs a very modern and luxurious Motel with restaurant in Bogra town.
Can stay at Archeological department rest house.
Can also find a number of private hotels and restaurant to stay and have food in Bogra city.
Entry Permits/Fees
Free to all
Condition apply *


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Your kerbside bins
Information on the services for the collection of waste and recycling at the kerbside across Perth and Kinross.
To check the waste and recycling collections your household receives, or to print off your collection calendar(s), please use our household collection date finder.
Green bin
Your green (non-recyclable general waste) bin should only be used to collect those items that cannot be recycled at the kerbside.
Brown bin
Recycle your cooked and uncooked food waste together with your garden waste
Blue bin
Recycling your household paper, cans, cardboard, cartons and rigid plastic packaging couldn't be easier! Follow the steps below to find out how your dry mixed recycling is collected and sorted before it goes to the recycling market.
Assisted lift collections
The assisted lift service is only provided for people who, due to their age or disability are unable to present or retrieve their own bin(s), and have no other means of support to do this.
Preventing contamination
A guide to the problem with putting the wrong materials in your kerbside recycling bins, and the issues it can cause.


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The rapid spread of the printing press, after its invention by Gutenberg around 1450, still stands as one of history's most remarkable examples of technological transformation. Jeremiah Dittmar, an American University professor who has been studying the economic consequences of the early diffusion of printing technology, provides a striking visual representation of the print explosion, showing how, over just 50 years, printing presses spread from a single city – Gutenberg's Mainz – to more than 200 cities throughout Europe:
What makes the diffusion of printing so remarkable is not just that it began in the late Middle Ages, when news, ideas, and people moved exceedingly slowly (by today's standards), but also that printing encompassed a complex system of devices and processes – not only the press itself but metallurgy, the design and casting of typographical symbols of standardized size, the creation of new oil-based inks, the expertise required to set type and work the press, and so forth – and that the inventions were very much treated as trade secrets. It seems clear that the desire for the products of the press was overwhelming.
There has, up to now, been a lot of uncertainty and controversy surrounding the economic ramifications of the printing press. Dittmar's new paper, Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press, sheds some new light on the question. He studied the relative growth of the cities that were the sites of early presses. He found that the cities that had print shops by the end of the 15th century "grew at least 20 percentage points – and as much as 78 percentage points – more than similar cities" over the course of the next century. That suggests that "the impact of printing accounted for at least 18 and as much as 68 percent of European city growth between 1500 and 1600." The printing press appears to have had profound economic and demographic effects as well as cultural ones.


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5 Women Who Inspire Me, by James Beard Foundation President Susan Ungaro
"Along the way I've had the joy of working with some very inspiring women in my role at JBF," says James Beard Foundation President Susan Ungaro. Here are just a few of them.
F&W's #FOODWINEWOMEN series spotlights top women in food and drink in collaboration with Toklas Society. Follow the hashtag on Twitter (@foodandwine).
- Who: Susan Ungaro
- What: President of the James Beard Foundation
- Where:jamesbeard.org; @SusanUngaro
This year will be the 25th anniversary of our James Beard Awards, which are often called the Oscars of the food world. Since I joined the Foundation, it's been so exciting to see the growing number of women winning over the past several years.
Watching chef Nancy Silverton receive the Outstanding Chef Award last May was so exciting, because it was the fourth time a woman has won. And seeing chef Barbara Lynch honored with the 2014 Outstanding Restaurateur Award, just one year after Maguy LeCoze was the first woman to win in the same category, was a wonderful sign that the great talent of women in our restaurant industry is being recognized in a major way. Celebrating the importance of women in all aspects of leadership in America has been a passion of mine ever since I became an editor of Family Circle. Leaving the publishing industry for the James Beard Foundation has been both an honor and an adventure. Along the way I've had the joy of working with some very inspiring women in my role at JBF. Here are just a few of them.
1. Dorothy Cann Hamilton, founder of the International Culinary Center
I like to say she had the smarts to hire me as president of JBF, even though I had not worked in the food industry, when she took over as chair of our foundation's Board of Trustees. Her incredible energy and passion for celebrating the importance of a culinary education and the role of America's great chefs in making a difference is positively contagious. She never stops! Dorothy is serving as the president of the USA Pavilion at the World Expo in Milan this year and was just honored with the French Legion of Honor—félicitations, Dorothy!
2. Chef Emily Luchetti, chief pastry officer of Big Night Restaurant Group
She became chair of the James Beard Foundation a few years ago and has been instrumental in helping our foundation highlight the important role chefs can play in helping Americans care about not only fine dining but eating right. She served as president of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs in the late 1990s and has always been a charismatic leader focused on the importance of chefs' contributions to our food world. She recently launched a #dessertworthy campaign to help all of us watch our sugar intake but also enjoy the sweet life.
3. Chef Nora Pouillon of Restaurant Nora, Washington, DC
She has often been called the "godmother of organic food," a description that doesn't nearly do her justice. When I met Nora several years ago, I was struck by her determination to make our food world a better, healthier place. Her energy in all matters organic is thrilling to watch. She was clearly a woman way ahead of our time when through grit and determination she created the first certified organic restaurant in America. Restaurant Nora just celebrated its 30-year anniversary. Who couldn't be more inspired by her pioneer spirit!
4. Restaurateur B. Smith
A longtime friend from the publishing world whom I have always admired. From being the first African-American model to grace the cover of a woman's magazine to opening her eponymous restaurant featuring the first Southern/soul food-inspired menu in Midtown, she has been an amazing and talented trailblazer. I've always appreciated that whenever I've asked her and her wonderful husband, Dan, to do anything for our foundation, they always say yes. She recently went public with the news that she has Alzheimer's. The Daily News wrote, "The B used to be for beautiful, now it stands for brave." I couldn't agree more.
5. Deb Eschmeyer, co-founder of Food Corps
Deb is another woman who makes me smile. I first met Deb when our foundation honored her with our Leadership Award in 2011 for her work creating an "AmeriCorps-like" program focused on improving nutrition and food knowledge in our nation's schools. She comes from a family of Ohio farmers, so she knows food from the soil up. I was so delighted to hear she was just appointed as executive director of Michelle Obama's Let's Move and senior policy adviser for nutrition policy. She is a fresh voice for solving the obesity epidemic in our nation. And I love the fact that there is a female farmer in the White House!


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Iran Hangs Rebel Leader
Iranian state media reported the execution of Sunni rebel leader Abdolmalek Rigi for his role in a series high profile attacks last year. Video Courtesy of Reuters.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... Eremein state media reports the execution of the rebel leader CDO earlier this year ... convicted over a series of deadly attacks in two thousand and nine ... as a member of the Sony Muslim rebel group joined the law of two Mallick Rekhi claimed responsibility for the attacks ... whose victims included senior military officers ... local media reported the execution a hanging ... took place before some family members of the attacks victims ... Iran says wrties jumbo law has ties to locate a ... book using the U S and Britain ... of backing the group to sow instability in the region ... both countries who are cause with Iran over its neck of the program ... denied the accusations ... and Iranian lawmaker is planning a lawsuit against the US and Britain ... based on Red's supposing Confessions of their support ... Reade's death comes as mainly Shia Muslim Iran struggles with religious tensions in the country's south east ... classes here between security forces and Sunni insurgents have increased in recent years ... David Auntie ... Reuters age ...


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This recipe comes together quickly and proves you don't need meat to make a hearty chili.
How to Make It
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and next 3 ingredients; sauté 5 minutes. Stir in cumin and next 7 ingredients; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add 1 1/2 cups water, tomato paste, chickpeas, and tomatoes; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes. Stir in cilantro and juice.
Chef's Notes
Bottled minced garlic is a time-saver in the kitchen, but if you have the time, mince your own from fresh garlic cloves for a fresher flavor. One small clove will yield about 1 teaspoon of minced.
Cooking Light Gluten-Free Cookbook


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The World's Tallest Closet Shows off a Lifetime of Clothing
Showing the Problem Makes a Much Bigger Impact
It's true. Showing a problem rather than just talking about it, does make a much bigger impact when it can touch your emotions.That's exactly what social impact designer Laura Francois and visual engineer/photographer Benjamin Von Wong did to communicate the scale of the World's Fashion consumption problem. They took five- 20 hour days to create the World'sTallest'Closet. #TallestCloset
World's Tallest Closet displays a lifetime of clothing worn:
- Currently on display at the Mall of Arabia in Cairo, Egypt
- A 3 story art installation made from recycled steel, aluminium, wood and wire.
- Greenpeace says the average person buys 60% more items of clothing and keeps them for about half as long as 15 years ago. North Americans are the largest fashion consumers
The entire spectacle of the World's Tallest Closet shows how wasteful we can be. But it does have something redeeming attached to it. Teaming up w / Refuge Eygpt taking clothing donations to give to refugees in need. Another play on our emotions in a good way. Keeping clothing from being a waste, but something that is truly needed by others.
The World's Tallest Closet's message:
Von Wong ..."We buy more than we need, and we can be more generous with what we have. If we can get one person to buy less ... then there's one less item going into their closet."
Things to think about when cleaning out your closet. "Can I still use it?... Do I need to get something else to replace it? ...Can I donate to help others? " Feel good about helping others and Mama Earth at the same time! Big 1THING WIN all around!