The New Babylon

The New Babylon ( alt. title: ) is a 1929 silent historical drama film written and directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. The film deals with the 1871 Paris Commune and the events leading to it, and follows the encounter and tragic fate of two lovers separated by the barricades of the Commune.
Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first film score for this movie. In the fifth reel of the score he quotes the revolutionary anthem, "La Marseillaise" (representing the Commune), juxtaposed contrapuntally with the famous "Can-can" from Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld".
Footage from "The New Babylon" was included in Guy Debord's feature film "The Society of the Spectacle" (1973).
Kozintsev and Trauberg found some of their inspiration in Karl Marx's "The Civil War in France" and "The Class Struggle in France, 1848-50".
Background.
As one of the directors, Leonid Trauberg, later admitted, the film as it stands is a little difficult to follow. Its subtitle "Assault on the Heavens: Episodes from the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, 1870-71" makes it fairly obvious that it is a principally a political film, and not a love story. Some background knowledge of the Paris Commune is needed to understand what's going on around the two lovers.
As Fiona Ford remarks, "Both "New Babylon" and Eisenstein's "" are episodic in structure and require an intimate knowledge of their relevant historical periods (the Paris Commune of 1871 in the case of New Babylon) to better appreciate the directors' intentions and often simply to follow the diegesis."
After the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the victorious Prussian forces briefly surrounded Paris, cutting it off from the rest of the country, while a civil war was waged between the right-wing bourgeois-backed government backed by the tattered remains of the defeated French army (caps with a regimental number on a light stripe), and the left-wing workers and their National Guard (dark caps). One of the scenes in the film features the old bronze cannons of the National Guard, which had been paid for by public subscription.
The defeated nationalist government fled in disarray to the old royal Palace of Versailles some fifteen miles outside Paris. The workers took over large areas of central Paris and organised a Commune under the red flag, the world's first attempt at communist government.
Synopsis.
The film is set in the spring of 1871 during the time of the Paris Commune, immediately after the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Louise is employed as a salesperson in a wholesale store in Paris named "The New Babylon". She is involved in the Commune, against which Jean, a young man from the countryside with no political affiliations, has to fight as a soldier in the army controlled by the French government. Louise and Jean are in love with each other although they are on opposing sides, but their love has no place in a time of political turmoil. At the end of the film, Jean is ordered to dig a grave for Louise, who has been sentenced to death by the court.
Production.
"The New Babylon" was staged with members of the "Factory of the Eccentric Actor" (FEKS) - an avant-garde artists' association founded by Kozintsev and Trauberg in 1922 that sought to create new paths in the performing arts. FEKS first began as a theater group, but in the following years, many of its members shaped the Russian-Soviet film history when working as actors, outfitters, and cinematographers. They wanted to get away from the naturalism and empathy aesthetics of bourgeois art, and saw Eccentrism (as laid out in Trauberg's "Eccentric Manifesto") as a new direction within the avant-garde that sought to find a place between Futurism, Surrealism and Dadaist Constructivism.
FEKS were influenced by street art and their cinematic preference was D. W. Griffith and Chaplin, not German expressionistic cinema of the early 1920s. "Yesterday: salons, obeisances, barons. Today: yells of newsboys, scandals, policeman's truncheon, noise, scream, stomping, running," declared Kosintsev and Trauberg in their "Manifesto of the Eccentric Actor".
Like Kosintsev and Trauberg, twenty-two year old Dmitri Shostakovich was a member of the film group of "FEKS", dedicated to the abolition of the borders between theater, film, circus, music hall and opera. In his musical score he used various musical forms: dance and operetta melodies as well as French folk music and revolutionary songs: "Ça ira", "La Carmagnole" and "La Marseillaise"; it served as a leitmotif for the reactionary bourgeoisie and was used in various forms, such as can-can, waltz or gallop.
The score, which bears the Opus number 18, was lost shortly after the premiere, and was only discovered again shortly after Shostakovitch's death in 1975.
The Russian premiere of "The New Babylon" took place on 18 March 1929 in Leningrad.
The score was of unprecedented complexity, and closely followed the fast cross-cuts of the film. Shostakovich himself performed the original solo piano score for two industry preview screenings. But the Sovkino censors ordered over 20% of the film to be removed, and attempts to re-edit the complex orchestral version of the score proved disastrous, with orchestras struggling to perform it. A copy of the piano score, originally intended for smaller cinemas, was rediscovered, and had its first live public performance on 25 March 2017 at the Barbican Centre in London.


The Yes Man

The Yes Man () is a 1991 Italian drama film directed by Daniele Luchetti. It was entered into the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.


Self-portrait (Hans Holbein the Younger)

The Self-portrait is a small drawing by the German Renaissance artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger, completed around 1542–1543, and housed in the Uffizi, Florence. The gold background was added later by a different artist. According to art historian John Rowlands, "Although this drawing has been enlarged on all sides and heavily reworked, enough of it still shows to allow the assumption that the original work was executed by Holbein. The inscription, also a later addition, evidently records an even earlier one, of which slight traces remain.
Copies of the drawing exist, including one by Lucas Horenbout, in which the left-handed Holbein is holding a paintbrush. Art historian Stephanie Buck notes that Holbein's direct gaze suggests he was looking into a mirror. Holbein died not long after completing this self-portrait, probably of the plague.
The work was acquired in London for Gran Duke Cosimo III de' Medici in 1681. As in other works by Holbein, there is much attention given to details, such as the hair strands, which were painted one-by-one.


Six-Guns

Six-Guns is an open-world action-adventure video game developed by Gameloft. It was released in 2011 for iOS devices, on March 17, 2012 for Android devices, and on September 4, 2013 for Microsoft Windows and Windows Phone.
Gameplay.
"Six-Guns" is a wild-west styled open-world, action adventure third-person mobile game. The player may roam about on foot or by horse to complete missions as a man named Buck Crosshaw across two game maps, Arizona (with deserts and mesas) and Oregon (featuring forests and mountains). An in-game store and currency system allow for upgradable clothing items, weapons, and horses, with optional microtransactions available for additional or premium credits. As missions are completed, the player is rewarded with coins and experience points, unlocking access to higher tier items from the store. The main storyline and campaign follows Crosshaw's discoveries of the happenings and fate of his lost wife, while a multiplayer mode features online team deathmatches and capture-the-flag.
The Windows 8 version had support for touch controls, keyboard and mouse, and a gaming controller. The game could also cloud save to a linked account, such as Game Center on iOS or Xbox Live on Windows.
Plot.
Buck Crosshaw, a lone and amnesiac outlaw, awakens in the Arizona desert and heads west in search for the nearest settlement. Nearing a ranch, he sees a woman and her ranch being attacked by bandit raiders. After fending them off, the lady offers Buck a horse for his troubles. As he rides away, the lady suddenly triggers Buck's memory of his wife mysteriously dying. Unsettled, Buck heads to town to drink and repress further memories of his wife.
As he enters town, the sheriff recognizes Buck as an outlaw and holds him at gunpoint, but a large group of raiders arrive and start to plunder the town. Proving his honor, Buck helps the sheriff fight the bandits, who then turns a blind eye to let Buck escape. Buck slowly gains back more of his memory, and instead decides to visit her grave to pay his respects. At the graveyard, Buck witnesses a group of grave robbers digging out and stealing his wife's corpse, prompting him to further investigate into her death. He tracks the bandits down and discovers they are hired guns employed by a local barman. After a confrontation, the barman confesses and reveals a ruthless gang of criminals who forced him into their work after kidnapping his son. Buck makes a deal with the barman to go up against the gang in exchange for information on the whereabout of the gang's leaders. After tracking down and defeating the gang leaders, a mysterious monster hunter known as the Exorcist confronts Buck and reveals the true nature of the gang.
The Exorcist explains that the barman is actually the founder of the gang, and that he never had a son but was instead cut from the gang. The Exorcist further explains that this gang is a secretive cult bent on performing a powerful ritual to summon supernatural entities and the devil himself into the world. In addition, Buck's wife was a powerful witch in the cult, and it was Buck who shot her upon realizing her witchcraft intentions. The Exorcist reveals that the witch survived, and that he needs Buck's help in stopping her from conducting the ritual.
Discouraged, Buck resumes his drinking habits, becomes intoxicated, and is imprisoned for his rowdy behavior, but escapes shortly after. He overhears and follows the barman and his men to an abandoned mining town, renewed in his quest to stop the barman and the witch. Within the mine, Buck finds the barman with Buck's wife, where the barman reveals that he is infatuated with Buck's wife and intends to be in "unholy matrimony" with the witch, before he starts to cough blood and quickly dies from the witch's poison. The witch declares that Buck never really loved her, and that she had to use love potions to get Buck to love her, but this use of witchcraft only enticed her to the devil for empowering her. The witch then advances towards Buck to kill him but is suddenly shot by the Exorcist. Enraged, the witch turns and attacks the Exorcist, fatally wounding him. Buck fights the witch and is stabbed with a ritual knife before defeating her. Buck succumbs to the puncture wound from the knife and is abruptly teleported to a mystic, etheric dimension, standing before the devil incarnated as a shadowy form of Buck.
The devil unveils that it was he who temporally took over Buck's body so he could shoot his wife, using Buck's drunkenness' to cause him to forget the details surrounding his wife's death. After a fierce battle, Buck and the Exorcist's spirit finally defeat the devil, and Buck emerges out of the mine before burying the Exorcist's body. Standing in front of the Exorcist's grave, Buck dedicates himself to ridding the land of the rest of the demonic entities in honor of the Exorcist.
Reception.
"Six-Guns" received mixed reviews, scoring a 59 on Metacritic. Many critics praised the graphics and audio of the game, but criticized the repetitive and simple gameplay.
Some also felt that the controls were poor on touchscreen devices.


The Hidden One

The Hidden One () is a 1956 Mexican drama film directed by Roberto Gavaldón. It was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.


John Taylor (painter)

John Taylor ( 1585–1651) was an English artist who has been put forth as the most likely painter of the Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare. No other painting by him is known.
Taylor was probably a child actor with the Children of Paul's in the late 1590s. Though there was certainly a boy actor of that name with the troupe, it cannot be proved that this was the artist. The connection is based on George Vertue's assertion that the artist was also an actor. It is possible that confusion has arisen with the well-known actor Joseph Taylor, who also began his career as a child actor. Vertue also says that Taylor was an "intimate friend" of Shakespeare's.
By the 1620s Taylor was a member of the Painter-Stainers' Company, having at least six apprentices between 1626 and 1648. Taylor became a significant figure within the company, rising to the positions of Renter Warden (1632–33), Upper Warden (1635–36) and Master (1643–44). A portrait of Taylor in his official capacity as Warden is in the collection of the company.


Teito Monogatari

 is an epic historical dark fantasy/science fiction work; the debut novel of natural history researcher and polymath Hiroshi Aramata. It began circulation in the literary magazine "Monthly King Novel" owned by Kadokawa Shoten in 1983, and was published in 10 volumes over the course of 1985–1987. The novel is a romanticized retelling of the 20th-century history of Tokyo from an occultist perspective.
Widely regarded as the first novel to popularize onmyōdō and fūsui mythology in modern Japanese fiction, the work was a major success in its native country. It won the 1987 Nihon SF Taisho Award, sold over 5 million copies in Japan alone, inspired several adaptations as well as a long running literary franchise. Likewise its influence can still be felt to this day.
Overview.
The work is a re-imagining of the 20th century of Tokyo as influenced by the occult. Most of the subject matter builds upon references to classic Japanese and Chinese folklore, although the centerpiece of the mythology is the legend of Taira no Masakado, a 10th-century warlord and ferocious onryo who was placated into a guardian kami through centuries of worship.
The plot features many characters, both historical and fictional. Most of the narrative revolves around the cryptohistorical actions of Yasunori Katō, a mysterious former lieutenant of the Imperial Japanese Army who is himself a vengeful oni; a descendant of the people who rebelled against the Japanese Empire in ancient times. With an incredible knowledge of the supernatural and allies in China, Korea and Taiwan; Katō dedicates his life to crippling Tokyo, the seat of power of the modern Japanese Empire. His ruinous ambitions bring him into conflict with some of 20th century Japan's greatest minds including industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa, onmyoji Abe no Seimei's descendant Yasumasa Hirai, authors Koda Rohan and Izumi Kyoka; physicist Torahiko Terada, and author Yukio Mishima. The resulting conflict, involving science, magic and politics; spans 90 years of Japan's history.
The story begins near the end of the Meiji period and ranges through the rest of the century. It reinvents major events such as the Great Kantō earthquake, the founding of Japan's first subway, the February 26 Incident, the firebombing raids, the signing of the 1960 US Security Pact, and the ritual suicide of Yukio Mishima. The narrative finally reaches its climax in 1998, the 73rd year of a fictional Shōwa period.
List of characters.
The historical characters who play primary or supporting roles in the story include:
Volumes.
The tenth volume of the novel, published in 1987, was originally intended to be the final volume. However, when the novel was republished in 1987-1989, additional eleventh and twelfth volumes were also written to supplement more of the story around 1945, the end of World War II. When the novel was republished in 1995, volumes 11 and 12 were inserted in the chronologically appropriate spot between volumes 5 and 6.
Concept and creation.
The novel originally served as a minor side project for Hiroshi Aramata who, at the time, was focused on gathering materials for an upcoming natural history book he planned to publish. He was asked by the editor in chief of Kadokawa Shoten, Hiroshi Morinaga, to produce a fantasy themed work for their periodical "Monthly King Novel". At that time, Aramata had never written a fictional novel before. The initial idea for the story came from the legend of Taira no Masakado. Aramata was fascinated by the legacy of his spirit and its superstitious impact on modern Japan.
In addition, while participating in the creation of "Heibonsha World Encyclopedia", Hiroshi Aramata was inspired by discussions with anthropologist Komatsu Kazuhiko about sources of the strange and the mysterious in Japanese folklore. Around the same time, Aramata also read Murayama Shinichi's non fiction history of onmyodo "Nihon Onmyodoshi Sosetsu".
Legacy.
"Teito Monogatari" is widely credited with establishing many esoteric topics in Japanese popular culture such as onmyodo, shikigami, kodoku, shijie, gohō dōji and Kimon Tonkou. Many of these topics are taken for granted in contemporary fantasy media. The novel also contributed to a surge of mainstream interest in feng shui across Japan. Baku Yumemakura, widely regarded author of the bestselling "Onmyoji" novel and manga series, has often cited "Teito Monogatari" as a significant inspiration and credits it with the beginning of the Abe no Seimei/onmyoji boom in popular media. Other similarly themed franchises which emerged in the wake of the novel's success include Clamp's "Tokyo Babylon" manga series, and Natsuhiko Kyogoku's "Kyōgokudō" (京極堂) series.
Professor of Human Geography Paul Waley cites "Teito Monogatari" as a catalyst for reminding a generation of Japanese readers about Tokyo's former status as an Imperial Capital. Dr. Noriko T. Reider, associate professor of Japanese Studies at Miami University, credits "Teito Monogatari" with raising "the oni's status and popularity greatly in modern times". In 2009 Higashi Masao, a notable authority in the field of Japanese weird fiction, wrote an article entitled "The Impact of "Teito Monogatari"" where he discussed the novel's influence on contemporary Japanese supernatural fiction. Akira Okawada, a specialist in Japanese science fiction literature, wrote a similar article in 2010 discussing the work's influence on that respective genre.
Analysis.
In her essay "Oni and Japanese Identity", Dr. Noriko T. Reider argues that the work is a heterotopic inversion of classical oni mythology heavily influenced by the supernatural configuration brought about by World War II. She describes the novel as a "...heterotopic site where...contemporary representations of oni reflect past representations, where oni of the past are not simply superimposed upon the present but both act as extensions of each other in an odd continuum". The character of Yasunori Kato is intended as a homage to classic heroes from Japanese folklore such as Minamoto no Raiko (an imperial soldier related to oni) and Abe no Seimei. Whereas those heroes were ardent defenders and valuable servants of the Empire though, Kato is presented as its worst possible enemy. This inversion is also reflected in the character of Taira no Masakado, whom at the beginning is demonized by the narrator and the Japanese government as a national rebel and a threat. However, the story unfolds with him in the role of Tokyo's benevolent guardian deity worshiped by the various protectors of the city. The negative association becomes a positive one. Another example is found in the novel's fictional version of Emperor Hirohito. In pre-war Japanese culture, the Emperor was regarded as a divine figure incapable of human failing. In "Teito Monogatari" however, the Showa Emperor is presented as a frail figure who prolongs his life by unwittingly ingesting a nostrum made from human organs. This practice of cannibalism effectively puts him on the level of oni, a major paradox since the Emperor's divine status and the status of oni are incompatible with each other. If even the Emperor of Japan has the potential to become an oni, then when is an oni not an oni?
Adaptations.
Stage.
A humorous stage adaptation of the novel was performed by the Tokyo Grand Guignol Theater in the mid-1980s. It is most notable for introducing the talents of its star Kyūsaku Shimada, the actor who would become most associated with the image of the protagonist Yasunori Kato in future film adaptations.
Film.
In 1988, a , adapting the first four volumes of the novel, was released by Toho Studios. The film received positive critical reception and was a commercial success, becoming one of the top ten highest grossing domestic movies of that year. The movie was eventually distributed to Western markets under the title "
The success of this adaptation prompted the production of a sequel, " (1989), loosely based on the 11th book, "Great War in the Capital".
In 1991, the first cinematic adaptation was remade into a four-part OVA anime of the same name produced by Madhouse. The anime was adapted to the US by Streamline Pictures under the title "Doomed Megalopolis" in 1995. Although the plot of the anime loosely parallels the original story, the production is renowned for being darker and more provocative than its source material or any other adaptation preceding it.


Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones

Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones is a British documentary television series broadcast on BBC One in 2009. In this five-part series Griff, joined by his dog Cadbury, explores some of Britain's most well known rivers. It was created by Rhys Jones own production company Modern Television. "Rivers" was the top programme in its slot in terms of viewing figures reaching 4.7 million viewers. The programme was featured on the cover of the "Radio Times".


John Thomas Barber Beaumont

John Thomas Barber Beaumont (1774–1841) was a British army officer, painter, author, and philanthropist. He was successful in the insurance business, and projected a settlement in South America.
Life.
Born John Thomas Barber on 21 December 1774 in the parish of St Marylebone, London, he assumed in 1812, for unknown reasons, the additional name of Beaumont (which was retained by his descendants) and was often known as "Barber Beaumont".
Artist.
An accomplished painter, Barber Beaumont focused on history painting and miniature painting. He had his works displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was appointed miniature painter to the Duke of Clarence, the future king William IV of Great Britain. His pupils included Henry Thomas Alken.
Rifle corps.
In 1803, when Napoleon threatened to invade England, Beaumont raised a rifle corps named The Duke of Cumberland's Sharp Shooters. His troops were reported to be such accurate shots that on one occasion he held a target in Hyde Park, London while the corps fired at it from a distance of 150 yards. In 1835 the corps changed its name to Royal Victoria Rifle Club and then later became Queen Victoria's Rifles.
In business.
Beaumont established in 1806 the Provident Institution and Savings Bank in Covent Garden. In 1807 he founded the County Fire and the Provident Life insurance offices. In 1816–8 he took on Thomas Bignold of Norwich Union in a costly publicity war. Beaumont was a supporter of Caroline of Brunswick in her long-running dispute with George IV, and had the County Fire office in Regent Street decorated with lamps to celebrate her tactical victory over the royal divorce bill in 1820. He resisted a fraudulent claim made on the fire company in 1823 by Thomas Thurtell, and ultimately secured the committal of Thurtell and associates to Newgate Prison. John Thurtell, the brother of Thomas, took up the quarrel, and made an attempt to murder Beaumont, which failed. Beaumont also took an active part in the exposure of a fraudulent insurance office, the West Middlesex, writing a letter to "The Times" about it in 1839.
Beaumont, an investor in South America and supporter of its independence from colonial rule, knew Bernardino Rivadavia, during his stay in London, and set up the Rio de La Plata Agricultural Association, with shares held also by Rudolph Ackermann. In 1825 British emigrants sailed to what is now Argentina, settling at Entre Ríos and San Pedro. The Cisplatine War, between the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the Empire of Brazil, intervened to make further settlement and even communication difficult. The troubled affairs of the intended colony were described in an 1828 book "Travels in Buenos Ayres" written by John Augustus Barber Beaumont, son of Barber Beaumont, who had tried to help the remaining colonists.
In 1825 Beaumont fought against the Board of Stamps, which charged his company with defrauding the Inland Revenue, and came off victorious. In 1835 he founded the Provident Institution or Bank for Savings in London's Covent Garden district.
Death.
Beaumont was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and of the Geological Society. He died on 15 May 1841 at his residence in Regent Street.
Works.
In 1802 Beaumont published an illustrated "Tour throughout South Wales and Monmouthshire". In 1803 he wrote articles on sharpshooters and defence; and set up a periodical, the "Weekly Register".
In 1816 he published an essay on "Provident or Parish Banks"; and in 1821 an "Essay on Criminal Jurisprudence".
Legacy.
In 1839–40 Beaumont founded the Beaumont Philosophical Institution, in Beaumont Square in Mile End, E1, in London's Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Square was part of the Beaumont Estate, a housing development, and the Institution was on the north-west corner of the square. It was created for the welfare and entertainment of people in the neighbourhood. The opening was on 29 October 1840, with a temperance meeting led by Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope. The Institution comprised a museum, reading-room, and chapel. When Beaumont died in 1841 he left £13,000 for the maintenance of the institute. In 1844 the museum offered geology, mineralogy, and conchology, and there were singing classes and concerts. Initially the chapel was used for broad-minded services, where the ministers were Philip Harwood, and Thomas Wood of the Brixton Unitarian congregation, and using a liturgy by Robert Fellowes. By 1851 the "moral lectures" required by the founder for Sunday mornings had been transferred to weekday evenings, and the income of £400 per annum went mainly on concerts.
The Institution was administered by the Beaumont Trust: the initial trustees were Fellowes with Henry Churchill, John Elliotson, Alexander Henderson, Charles Hennell, and Henry B. Kerr. In its original form it closed down in 1879. Its successor, the People's Palace, was opened in 1887; it was built by the Trust on the Mile End Road site of the old Bancroft's School, under the influence of Walter Besant, and to a design by Edward Robert Robson. It later came under the control of East London College. In 1931 fire damage necessitated the construction of the New People's Palace on an adjacent site; it was opened in 1937.
In the longer term the Institution was one of the organisations leading up to the founding of Queen Mary, University of London, which now has a Barber Beaumont Chair of Humanities, currently occupied by Quentin Skinner.
Family.
Beaumont's descendants include the ruling family of Sark. One of Beaumont's grandsons was William Spencer Beaumont, who served in the 14th King's Hussars. In 1887 he published a private account of his grandfather's life, "A Brief Account of the Beaumont Trust, and its founder, J. T. B. Beaumont". Beaumont's great grandson was Dudley Beaumont, who married Sibyl Collings, later Dame of Sark. Beaumont's great-great-great grandson is Christopher Beaumont, the 23rd Seigneur of Sark.


Dragon Harvest

Dragon Harvest is the sixth novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1945, the story covers the period from 1938 to 1940.


Medici (board game)

Medici is a German-style board game by Reiner Knizia. Players buy cards in an auction and match in series and in sets to end up with most points from those formations.
Before he was a game designer, Reiner Knizia was a quantitative analyst, a profession that manages and attempts to price risk for banks. This is fitting as the Medicis were bankers and traders who improved accounting standards and as such would have built their financial empire on judging risks. In this tradition, Medici the board game is based on the pricing of risk: each lot of commodities has an uncertain future value based on how cards are drawn from the deck, what other players buy, and other factors. In order to play the game well, players must judge and price the risk attached to each lot of cards, buying them for a price appropriate to their expected value and the riskiness of the investment.
"Medici" placed 5th in the 1995 Deutscher Spiele Preis.


Philipp Rupprecht

Philipp Rupprecht (4 September 1900 – 4 April 1975) was a German cartoonist best known for his anti-Semitic caricatures in the Nazi publication "Der Stürmer", under the pen-name Fips.
Career.
Born in Nuremberg, Rupprecht immigrated to Argentina in 1920 after World War I, where he worked as a waiter and a cowboy on a cattle ranch. He returned to Nuremberg around 1924, and was hired by the "Fränkische Tagespost", a newspaper linked to the German Social Democrats. When he was dispatched to cover the second Luppe-Streicher trial with instructions to draw a caricature of Julius Streicher, he instead drew caricatures of Nuremberg's mayor, , who was also involved in the trial. The cartoons were published by "Der Stürmer" in December 1925, and Rupprecht was hired by the paper.
With the exception of 1927, he was "Der Stürmer"s sole regular cartoonist under the pen-name of "Fips" until February 2, 1945, when the last edition of "Der Stürmer" appeared, drawing thousands of anti-Semitic caricatures. His style changed during the course of his career, but his caricatures always depicted Jews as short, fat, ugly, unshaven, drooling, sexually perverted, bent-nosed, and with pig-like eyes. One depicted a despondent mother smoking while neglecting her child in a lonely rooming house, with a picture of her Jewish seducer on the floor, with the caption: "Everything in her has died. She was ruined by a Jew." The caption "Two kinds of children; two kinds of human beings" juxtaposed dark-haired, overfed, and greedy Jewish women and children by fair-haired children playing with less extravagant toys.
Among his other works were illustrations for two anti-Semitic children's books published by Stürmer Verlag: "Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid" ("Don't Trust a Fox in a Green Pasture Or a Jew Upon His Oath", 1936), and "Der Giftpilz" ("The Poisonous Mushroom", 1938).
At the beginning of World War II, Rupprecht served in the Kriegsmarine, but was released from service because of his value to wartime Nazi propaganda.
Post-war career.
Rupprecht’s career came to an end with the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. He was put on trial in 1945 and sentenced to ten years hard labour. On 23 October 1950, he was released from the prison in Eichstätt. Until his death, he lived and worked in Munich and Starnberg as a painter and decorator. He died on 4 April 1975 in Munich, aged 74.
Rupprecht married twice: from 1921 on to Erna Blom (one son and two daughters), and from 1930 to Berta Stöcklein (one son).


Chaplin (2006 musical)

Chaplin: The Musical, formerly titled Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, is a musical with music and lyrics by Christopher Curtis and a book by Curtis and Thomas Meehan. The show is based on the life of Charlie Chaplin. The musical, which started at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2006, debuted at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2010, and then premiered on Broadway in 2012.
Productions.
English Language Productions.
The musical originally ran at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2006.
The musical was next produced at the La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, California, from September 19, 2010 to October 17, 2010. Direction was by Warren Carlyle and Michael Unger, with scenic design by Alexander Dodge, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Paul Gallo, projection design by Zachary Borovay, and sound design by Jon Weston. The music director was Bryan Perri and the orchestrator was Douglas Besterman. The cast featured Rob McClure (Charlie Chaplin), Ashley Brown (Oona), LJ Benet (Young Sydney), Jenn Colella (Hedda Hopper), Eddie Korbich (Karno), Brooke Sunny Moriber (Mildred), Ron Orbach (Mr. Chaplin), Roland Rusinek (Alf), Jake Evan Schwencke (Young Charlie/Jackie), and Matthew Scott (Sydney). The cast also included Aaron Acosta, Courtney Corey, Matthew Patrick Davis, Justin Michael Duval, Sara Edwards, Ben Liebert, Alyssa Marie, Jennifer Noble, Kürt Norby, Carly Nykanen, Jessica Reiner-Harris, and Kirsten Scott.
The musical premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on August 21, 2012 in previews and officially on September 10, 2012, with direction and choreography by Warren Carlyle. Scenic design is by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Amy Clark and Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design by Ken Billington, and projection design by Jon Driscoll. The cast features Rob McClure as Chaplin, Jim Borstelmann as Alf Reeves, Jenn Colella as Hedda Hopper, Erin Mackey as Oona O'Neill, Michael McCormick as Sennett/ McGranery/Emcee, Christiane Noll as Hannah Chaplin, Zachary Unger as Young Charlie/Jackie and Wayne Alan Wilcox as Sydney Chaplin. The musical closed on January 6, 2013, after 24 previews and 136 performances.
"Chaplin!" received its first regional production in the United States in Henderson, Kentucky. Produced by Brilliantly Different Productions, the show featured direction by J. Farley Norman, choreography by Alexa Callaham, music direction, technical direction, and scenic design by Collin Mayes, and costume design by Colleen Ohler. The production ran for three performances, August 5–7, 2016, and featured a cast of 17 performers, all of whom were under the age of 25. In honor of the production, August 1–7, 2016 was declared ""Chaplin the Musical" Week" by the City of Henderson.
"Chaplin" received its first High School production in the United States in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was produced by The Albuquerque Academy, and performed at the Simms Center for the Performing Arts.
Other Languages.
A Russian production of "Chaplin" premiered on September 13, 2013, and closed on December 30, 2015, at the Musical Comedy Theatre in St. Petersburg. Starring Yevgeniy Zaitsev as Chaplin, this Russian-language replica production featured lyrics translated by Constantine Rubinsky. The show won three awards out of the four nominations it received at the 2015 Golden Mask: Yevgeniy Zaitsev for best actor in a musical/operetta, Maria Lagatskaya for best actress in a musical/operetta, and the musical itself for best musical/operetta.
A non-replica Brazilian production made major changes to the set and costume designs of the original Broadway production. It featured a new script and 7 new songs. The show premiered in Brazil in 2015 and the run was extended 5 times.
A Dutch Production played in Belgium and in the Netherlands with Nordin de Moor as Charlie Chaplin.
Directed by Stanislav Moša, a non-replica version premiered in the Czech Republic at the City Theatre Brno in January 2017.
The Israel production of Chaplin is a collaboration of Haifa Theater and Tel Aviv Theater and premiered in July 2019.
Musical numbers.
The musical numbers from the 2016/2018 new version are as follows:
Reception.
In its review of the La Jolla production, the "Los Angeles Times" reviewer wrote: "The songs sauté this simplistic summary in a light and lemony schmaltz... The most that can be said is that the cast is marshaled efficiently and the clichés are greeted with a tip of Chaplin's bowler and a clown's forgiving smile... the schematic production... offers up Chaplin's early years as an explanation for everything but his notorious penchant for underage women... The production moves swiftly on Alexander Dodge’s versatile set that is at its lively best when Zachary Borovay’s projections usher us back to the cinematic past... The score hurtles us along with sufficient cheer and generic good will." The "Variety" reviewer wrote: "The enormous career of film legend Charles Chaplin has resisted numerous chronicling efforts... The latest casualty is "Limelight," a La Jolla Playhouse collaboration between freshman tunesmith Christopher Curtis and vet librettist Thomas Meehan ... that has its moments but falls into the usual trap of trying to cover too much ground. In the process, the tuner turns glib and superficial."


Philip Hermogenes Calderon

Philip Hermogenes Calderon (Poitiers 3 May 1833 – 30 April 1898 London) was an English painter of French birth (mother) and Spanish (father) ancestry who initially worked in the Pre-Raphaelite style before moving towards historical genre. He was Keeper of the Royal Academy in London.
Life.
Calderon was born in Poitiers, France. His father, the Reverend Juan Calderón (* in Villafranca de los Caballeros; † in London) was a professor of Spanish literature and a former Roman Catholic priest who had converted to Anglicanism. Calderon planned to study engineering, but he became so interested in drawing technical figures and diagrams that he changed his mind and devoted his time to art. In 1850, he trained at Leigh's art school, London, then went to Paris to study under François-Édouard Picot in 1851. His first successful painting was called "By the waters of Babylon" (1852), which was followed by a much more popular one called "Broken Vows" (1856). From the beginning he was inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, and some of his work showed the detail, deep colors, and realistic forms that characterize the style. The artist Henry Stacy Marks was his friend and brother-in-law, and Calderon exhibited his portrait at the Royal Academy in 1872.
Calderon became a leading member of the St John's Wood Clique, a group of artists interested in modern genre and historical subjects who were inspired, both artistically and socially by the Pre-Raphaelites. Historical, biblical, and literary themes were common in Calderon's later work. Many of his pieces show women wearing rich, silky clothing in gently colored landscapes. His "Morning" (1884) features a copper-haired maiden watching a sunrise.
His "Juliet" (1888) shows Shakespeare's Juliet seated on her balcony gazing at the stars. His later paintings adopt a more classical style, comparable to Edward Poynter, which resulted from his close relationship with Frederic Leighton, then-President of the Royal Academy. Calderon became Keeper of the Royal Academy in 1887, and from then on worked to support the teaching of anatomy based on nude models at the Royal Academy Schools. His 1891 painting
"St Elizabeth of Hungary's great act of renunciation" was secured by the Chantrey bequest for the national collection, and is now located in Tate Britain, but caused considerable controversy because of its perceived anti-Catholic message. It depicted the saint bending nude over an altar watched by monks.


Willem Reuter

Willem Reuter (c.1642 in Brussels – 1681 in Rome) was a Flemish painter of cityscapes, genre paintings and history paintings who was primarily active in Rome, where he was known as Guglielmo Reuter. He was part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bamboccianti' and were known for their scenes depicting the lower classes in Rome.
Life.
Very little is known about Reuter’s early life in Flanders. He trained with the Brussels painter Michiel Sweerts. Sweerts had lived in Rome for ten years where he had moved into the circle of Flemish and Dutch genre painters around Pieter van Laer who are commonly referred to as the ‘Bamboccianti’. The Bamboccianti brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy and generally created small cabinet paintings or etchings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.
It is not clear when Reuter travelled to Rome where he resided in the "casa dei pittori fiamminghi" near the Piazza del Popolo. The first documentary proof of his presence in Rome is the registration of his marriage to the local woman Anna Previtali in 1672 but he must have arrived in the city some years earlier.
Like his master Sweerts, he linked up with the Bamboccianti genre painters in Rome. He may also have become a member of the Bentvueghels, an association of mainly Dutch and Flemish artists working in Rome. His wife died in 1678 and the next year he joined the 'Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon', with the Dutch Bamboccianti painter Dirck Helmbreker acting as his sponsor. The Congregazione counted among its members many important artists who left their mark in Rome.
Work.
Only a small number of paintings have been ascribed to Willem Reuter with any level of certainty. His chronology is difficult to determine as he never dated his work. His paintings usually depict market scenes or processions in Roman piazzas and occasionally historic or religious events set in landscape settings. An example of a depiction of a historical event is the "Celebration on the Piazza di Spagna", which probably depicts the birth of the Spanish infant Don Carlos in the year 1661 (in the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna in 1992).
Willem Reuter’s Roman panoramic market scene dated 1669 referred to as "A Roman market" (Norton Simon Museum) is an example of his bustling market scenes. The picture is built up of many different scenes and anecdotes such as a commedia dell’arte performance, a beggar receiving alms and an overturned cart carrying fragile crockery. The carefully orchestrated composition of the work makes each event clearly legible. In particular, the vertically-oriented buildings provide a stable backdrop for the loosely arranged groupings of people placed on the piazza's background to foreground. A strong light helps clarify the figures and their interactions.
His work, although superficially similar to the Bamboccianti in the use of Roman settings populated with many figures, can be distinguished from the paintings of this group of genre painters, as Reuter did not adopt the typology of the Bamboccianti and represents the cityscape more in the form of a veduta. Unlike other Bamboccianti, Reuter paid more attention to the precise rendering of nature. He borrowed from his master Sweerts (who was in turn influenced by Caravaggio) the use of chiaroscuro and a preference for the use of red tones. Like Sweerts, Reuter was able to convey a tranquil mood by catching his figures engaged in their daily activities in sharply angled light. His work also shows classicist tendencies, with statuesque figures placed in architectural settings or idealized landscapes, and this was probably the reason why one of his works was formerly attributed to Nicolas Poussin.
He influenced Peeter Bolckman.


David Garrick as Richard III

David Garrick as Richard III is a painting dating from 1745 by the English artist William Hogarth.
The painting shows the actor and stage manager David Garrick in the role of Richard III in Shakespeare's play "Richard III". It depicts a dramatic moment in the play on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth (1485). The king, who had been asleep in his tent on the battlefield, has just woken from a dream in which he has seen the ghosts of the opponents he had previously murdered. Hogarth was a friend of Garrick, who had gained a degree of fame through his portrayal of Richard III at the Drury Lane Theatre in London. The painting shows the actor with fear and concern, one arm raised and with a shocked expression on his face.
Hogarth, best remembered for his satirical prints on social themes, was also a skilled painter and portraitist. This painting, much more than just a portrait, shows the subject at a key time in history, and also in theatrical pose. It falls between the commonly accepted genres of portraiture and historical painting. The pose used by Hogarth was similar to other that used for other portraits of actors, especially those by Zoffany. Having compared Hogarth's painting with those of Garrick by Reynolds, Gill Parry concludes that Hogarth had helped to establish a new subgenre within portraiture, that of the theatrical portrait. The pose adopted by the actor was described by Hogarth as "the serpentine line"; he saw it as "being composed of two curves contrasted". In his 1753 treatise "The Analysis of Beauty" he suggests that this is a particularly beautiful shape which "gives play to the imagination and delights the eye".
The painting is in oil on canvas and measures by . It is owned by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and was purchased by the gallery in 1956 with help from the National Art Collections Fund.


Shark Wranglers

Shark Wrangler is an American reality television series on History. The series debuted on July 1, 2012.
A similar series first aired on the National Geographic Channel, first as "Expedition Great White" in 2010, and then as "Shark Men" a year later.


Wired (book)

Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi is a 1984 non-fiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the American actor and comedian John Belushi. The hardcover edition includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos, front and back.
Interviews.
Many friends and relatives of Belushi, including his widow Judith Belushi Pisano, Dan Aykroyd, and James Belushi, agreed to be interviewed at length for the book, but later felt the final product was exploitative and not representative of the John Belushi they knew. Pisano wrote her own book, "Samurai Widow" (1990) to counter the image of Belushi portrayed in "Wired".
Reception.
In 2013 Tanner Colby, who had co-authored the 2005 book "" with Pisano, wrote about how "Wired" exposes Woodward's strengths and weaknesses as a journalist. While in the process of researching the anecdotes related in the book, he found that while many of them were true, Woodward missed, or didn't seek out, their meaning or context.
For example, in Woodward's telling, a "lazy and undisciplined" Belushi is guided through the scene on the cafeteria line in "Animal House" by director John Landis, yet other actors present for that scene recall how much of it was improvised by the actor in one single take. Blair Brown told Colby she was still angry about how Woodward "tricked" her in describing her and Belushi preparing for a love scene in "Continental Divide". Colby notes that Woodward devotes a single paragraph to Belushi's grandmother's funeral, where he hit a low point and resolved to get clean for that film, while diligently documenting every instance of drug abuse he turned up. "It's like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which all the stats and scores are correct, but you come away with the impression that Michael Jordan wasn't very good at playing basketball," he concluded.
Dan Aykroyd denounced "Wired" publicly. Interviewed on television by Bobbie Wygant for NBC 5 in 1984, Aykroyd responded to the question of whether Woodward had interviewed him before writing the book:
Film adaptation.
The book was later adapted into a critically panned 1989 feature film also called "Wired", in which Belushi was played by Michael Chiklis and Woodward was played by J.T. Walsh.


Everest (opera)

Everest is a one-act opera by Joby Talbot to an English-language libretto by Gene Scheer. It was composed in 2014 and premiered on January 30, 2015, at the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House of Dallas Opera. The content deals with the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
History.
"Everest" was commissioned by Dallas Opera. Talbot composed it in 2014. The libretto by Gene Scheer deals with a real event, the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which several mountaineers died after a change in the weather. It is based on interviews with survivors and shows in two strands the slow death of Rob Hall and Doug Hansen as well as the emotional world of Beck Weathers, which – already weakened – had been left behind and could be saved by severe frostbite.
At the world premiere on 30 January 2015 at Margot & Bill Winspear Opera House in Dallas Sasha Cooke (Jan Arnold), Julia Rose Arduino (Meg Weathers), Andrew Bidlack (Rob Hall), Craig Verm (Doug Hansen), Kevin Burdette (Beck Weathers), John Boehr (Guy Cotter) and Mark McCrory (Mike Groom) sang. The musical direction was by Nicole Paiement. The production was directed by Leonard Foglia, the set design by Robert Brill (Betty Award), costume design by David C. Woolard and projection design by Elaine J. McCarthy (Betty Award)
On 5 May 2017, on the occasion of the Opera America Conference 2017, there was a concert performance at the Winspear Opera House under the direction of Emmanuel Villaume. In November 2017 the original staging of the opera was performed by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and again in 2019 at Calgary Opera.
The European premiere took place on 5 May 2018 at the Theater Hagen in a production by Johannes Erath under the baton of Joseph Trafton. Stage and costumes came from Kaspar Glarner. The leading roles were sung by Veronika Haller (Jan Arnold), Musa Nkuna (Rob Hall), Kenneth Maltice (Doug Hansen), Morgan Moody (Beck Weathers), and Elizabeth Pilon (Meg Weathers). According to dramaturge Corinna Jarosch, instead of realistically depicting the mountain world, an attempt was made "to make the hallucinations of the mountaineers visible". The plot was moved to a mountain sanatorium in reference to Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain". There the choir, which in the production of the premiere still had a commentary outside the plot, took over the role of the sick and also staged the psychological conflicts of the main characters. A further point of reference was that Mann's novel was published only three months after the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition by George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, which was also referenced in the opera and was also fatal.
Plot.
The opera takes place on May 10 and 11, 1996. Due to the bad weather, several expeditions are trying to reach the summit of Everest at the same time. Due to a bottleneck at the Hillary Step the ascent of the group of Rob Hall is delayed. He leads his customer Doug Hansen, who had already failed on the mountain last year, to the summit despite the exceeded time mark. Another member of his group, the pathologist Beck Weathers, is already severely weakened. Because his eyes cause him problems, he has given up and waits for the return of the two.
"1. Prologue: "Is this how it ends?"". At the beginning only the crackling of the shortwave receiver can be heard. As the orchestra slowly begins, the heights of Everest gradually appear in the fog. Beck lies unconscious in a snowdrift. The Everest Dead Choir wonders if these are his last breaths.
"2. Everest Summit – 2.30 p.m.". Rob reaches the summit and enjoys the beauty of the mountain. He wants to follow the other members of his group who have already started the descent as soon as Doug has reached the goal. The choir reminds us how dying begins – up here every second counts because light and oxygen are limited.
"3. Beck's barbecue". Beck wakes up. He realizes he's lost a glove. The choir warns him to leave immediately. He hallucinates from a barbecue with his little daughter Meg.
"4. Doug's ascent". Rob helps the weakened Doug with the last steps to the summit. The choir reminds of the advancing time. Doug collects his last forces. He thinks about his motivation for the tour (aria: "One more step"). Rob takes a photo.
"5. photos of Jan". A flashback shows Rob's wife Jan in her colonial house in New Zealand. They take souvenir photos. Jan has also climbed Everest as a doctor on a joint expedition. This time she couldn't travel because of her pregnancy. She has to think about how Ruth Mallory waited in vain for her husband George to return in 1924. The flashback ends. Doug has breathing problems and needs Rob's help.
"6. Doug collapses". At 16:15 Rob pushes to leave. But Doug is too weak for the descent. Rob tries in vain to reach the base camp by radio to get help and oxygen.
"7. Beck clicks out of the line". Beck hallucinates again. You see Meg jumping the rope. Beck stares at the rope without noticing his daughter. Even when she addresses him directly, he doesn't recognize her. He takes the rope and straps himself to it. Back to consciousness, he realizes that Rob and Doug are overdue. He hardly understands why this expedition was so important to him that he left his wife and children behind. Nevertheless, this is the place he wants to be. The choir repeats his thoughts like an echo. It begins to snow and the sunset is approaching. Mike Groom, another expedition member, finds him and urges him to descend, as you can't wait any longer for Rob and Doug. He begins to abseil Beck. A storm breaks out.
"8. The storm hits". During the storm you see Jan talking to the base camp. She realizes that the situation is critical for her husband. Rob also tries to get help from the camp. Finally, Guy Cotter reports, but he can't give him any hope. Rob's only chance is to leave Doug behind. Nevertheless, Rob tries to overcome the Hillary Step with Doug. The storm now reaches its greatest strength
"9. The huddle". The members of the expedition, closely crowded in the storm, receive the confused Beck. He can no longer distinguish between individuals in the crowd and thinks he can see the organelles on the microscope slides in the different colors of their suits during his work as a pathologist. While Jan waits for the next call, Rob continues to try to bring Doug down the Hillary Step. All four recognize how close death is (quartet: "Too easy to die", "Allegro dondolante").
"10. The south summit". Rob ropes Doug down onto a small ledge where he immediately collapses. Rob climbs behind him and tries to secure his position. When he is finished, he realizes that Doug is dead. He reports to the base camp via radio and informs Guy about the situation. He tries to hold out until the next day. Guy tells him that they want to establish a direct connection with Jan via the satellite phone. Rob asks for help to be sent to him the next morning. The choir echoes his words.
"11. The phone call". The choir announces the time: 2 o'clock in the morning. Rob's end is near. One after the other the members of the expedition leave. They leave Beck, who they already think is dead, unconscious. The telephone connection between Rob and Jan works. The two agree on the name "Sarah" for their unborn child and assure themselves of their love.
"12. The cavalry's not coming". The choir members gather around Rob and Doug to welcome the two into their community of the dead. Jan's last words don't reach Rob anymore. While a projection shows the names of the Everest dead so far, the choir lists the different causes of their deaths. Bob and Doug join in their singing. Beck hallucinates how his daughter calls for him in the distance. He realizes that he has to dare the descent alone to save himself. No help will come. With his last strength he reaches the camp.
Structure.
The plot is not told linearly, but is composed of individual report fragments and flashbacks. In addition, there are always interjections from the choir in the form of comments, questions, echoes or time information. At the end of the opera it becomes clear that the choir is composed of the souls of the many victims of the mountain who are waiting for "another name". The mountaineers' motivation always remains in the dark. Thus the authors avoided developing a kind of "heroic epic". The event does not take place in real time, but refers to the mountaineers' feelings.
The music sounds contemporary modern, but is nevertheless based on traditional harmonics and emotionally shaped. The orchestral sound fabric ties in with the Minimal music after John Adams. At the same time there are references to Giacomo Puccini, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten or Igor Stravinsky. There are numerous sound effects due to the large drums and the electronics involved, for example the crackling of the shortwave receiver, the radio conversations of the mountaineers or the howling of the wind. There is a focus on rhythm and the spectrum of timbres The orchestra as a whole has a leading role. The mountain itself has its own voice, which is mainly produced by the low wind instruments and the percussion. Talbot got his inspiration from the slow cracking movements of glacial masses over the rocky ground. Nevertheless, there are moments of melodious sound. When Rob desperately tries to reach the base camp after Doug's death ("Can anyone hear me?"), the orchestra falls silent completely. The listener already knows at this point that Rob will also die.
In the vocal parts, Talbot refers to traditional forms by means of indications such as "aria" or "quartet". Surprisingly, there are also some elements of dance music that have been particularly considered in the 2018 Hagen production. The emotional climax of the opera is Rob's last telephone conversation with his pregnant wife Jan, in which it is clear to both of them (unspoken) that Rob will not survive. Also here the orchestral accompaniment is reduced to a minimum.
Instrumentation.
The instrumentation consists of:


Behold the Sun

Behold the Sun, Op. 44, is an opera in three acts and 10 scenes by Alexander Goehr with a libretto by John McGrath and the composer. It was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. Titled Behold the Sun – Die Wiedertäufer, it was premiered there in German in 1985, and published by Schott Music. It was aired in English by the BBC in 1987. The opera has also been called Die Wiedertäufer and The Anabaptists.
History.
The opera was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and Duisburg. The libretto by John McGrath and Goehr is focused on the "Wiedertäufer" (anabaptists) and set in Münster in 1543, when two Dutch anabaptists, Jan Matthys and John of Leiden (or Jan Bokelson) tried to transform the town to a "City of God" in expectation of the Second Coming of Christ. The libretto was translated to German by Bernhard Laux.
Goehr, who was born in Berlin but grew up and worked in England, worked on the composition between 1981 and 1984. Titled "Behold the Sun – Die Wiedertäufer", the opera was premiered in Duisburg on 19 April 1985, conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi, and staged by Bohumil Herlischka in a set designed by Ruodi Barth. It was played in an abridged version, which cut about 50 minutes of Goehr's score.
The opera was first presented in English by the BBC, aired on 1 October 1987. This time, the complete music was played, conducted by John Pritchard. It was published by Schott Music.
An aria from the opera, Op. 44a, was recorded as part of a collection of the composer's works, with soprano Jeanine Thames and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Oliver Knussen.
Music.
Goehr said about his opera that the people are the protagonists, and the focus of the music is their turbae chorus sections. He combined 20th-century harmonies with baroque features such as figured bass and prelude and fugue.


Chapter 3 (House of Cards)

"Chapter 3" (or "Episode 103") is the third episode of the first season of the American political thriller drama series "House of Cards". It premiered on February 1, 2013, when it was released along with the rest of the first season on the American streaming service Netflix.
Plot.
Frank (Kevin Spacey) is in the middle of negotiating the education bill with Marty Spinella (Al Sapienza), head of a teacher's union, when he learns that a 17-year-old girl has been killed due to texting while driving in his hometown of Gaffney, South Carolina, while being distracted by the Peachoid, a water tower shaped like a peach that Frank had advocated to keep standing. County administrator Oren Chase (Murphy Guyer), a Republican rival of Frank's who wants his congressional seat, urges the girl's parents to file a lawsuit against him.
Despite Linda (Sakina Jaffrey) and Spinella's protests, Frank leaves for Gaffney. There, he meets the girl's parents and delivers a eulogy at her funeral, offering a settlement of $150,000 and promising to sponsor billboards warning against texting while driving. When the parents don't seem satisfied, he asks Reverend Jenkins (Bill Phillips) to arrange the following morning's service to give him the pulpit. Meanwhile, Claire (Robin Wright) tries to recruit Gillian Cole (Sandrine Holt), the head of a competing environmental nonprofit, but is refused. Unfazed, Claire follows Gillian home and, noting that she can't afford treatment for her chronic illness, promises her health insurance.
Zoe (Kate Mara) makes numerous media appearances as a result of her leak of Durant's (Jayne Atkinson) nomination for Secretary of State. Her off-the-cuff comments during interviews lead to a rift with Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver), who suspends her for a month. Meanwhile, Russo (Corey Stoll) starts making efforts to put his life back in order to maintain his relationship with Christina (Kristen Connolly), who is considering taking a job with House Speaker Bob Birch. He gets rid of his drug stash and tells Christina that he doesn't want her to leave.
In South Carolina, Frank continues negotiating the education bill via conference call. After phoning Claire, he sends flirtatious texts to Zoe, leading to intimate conversations. During the service he demonstrates how his oratory skills helped him rise in Washington, and gives a passionate old-school sermon around the "idea of hate", going so far as to yell, "I hate you, God" in front of a South Carolina congregation. He's then able to connect to the parishioners by making them equals, saying they've all done this before when feeling soul-crushing loss, and two among them are feeling that today.
Frank invites the parents to lunch, where discussions get heated with Underwood asking them if they want him to resign. He ends up on good terms with them, announcing a Furman University scholarship in their daughter's honor. In order to take Oren down, he finds out that the responsibility for guardrails is the county's—but none have been built. Along with the mayor, Frank visits Oren and confronts him with that responsibility: "If there were guardrails the car wouldn't flip three times and the county administrator didn't build those guardrails and now she's dead." He also tells Oren that the planned power lines that the mayor has blocked because they would fall on Oren's property can go up this year if he claims it as eminent domain.
Cast.
Following is the list of billed cast.
Reception.
The episode received positive reviews from critics. Ryan McGee of "The A.V. Club" said, "the episode traversed in those soon-to-be-forgotten tales, even if the impact of them will be felt for the rest of this series."


City of the Sun (Maio novel)

City of the Sun is a novel by Juliana Maio, published by Greenleaf Book Group in March 2014. The novel, which blends historical fiction with spy fiction and romantic fiction, is set in Cairo, Egypt in 1941 during the North Africa Campaign of World War II. Though a work of fiction, it centers around true historical events and "connects the root of much of today's turmoil in the Middle East with the Axis-Allied struggle for control of the Suez Canal and the early history of the Muslim Brotherhood."
The author was born to a Jewish family in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo. Her family was expelled in 1956 during the Suez Crisis, when she was three years old. Maio grew up and was educated in Paris, France before her family emigrated to the United States.


In the Palace of the King

In the Palace of the King is a 1923 American silent historical romantic drama film based on the novel of the same name by F. Marion Crawford. Directed by Emmett J. Flynn, the film stars Blanche Sweet, Pauline Starke, and Edmund Lowe.
A previous silent version had been made and released in 1915 by the Essanay company and starred Richard Travers and Nell Craig. Prior to the films, the novel was adapted into a Broadway in 1900 starring Viola Allen and her father C. Leslie Allen.
Preservation.
With no copies of "In the Palace of the King" located in any film archives, it is a lost film.


The Blackguard

The Blackguard () (1925) is a British-German drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Jane Novak, Walter Rilla, and Frank Stanmore.
Premise.
Against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, a violinist (Rilla) saves a princess (Novak) from execution.
Production.
The film was a co-production between Gainsborough Studios and UFA initiating a decade-long series of co-productions which ended with the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1930s. The film was based on the 1923 novel "The Blackguard" by Raymond Paton, and shot at Studio Babelsberg, in Potsdam near Berlin, the first time a Gainsborough film was shot abroad. The film was one of a number of films made in this genre during the 1920s, the most successful of which was the American film "The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg" (1927).
While working on the film, Alfred Hitchcock was able to study several films being made nearby, including "The Last Laugh" (1924) by F. W. Murnau, which were a major influence on his later work.


Boot Hill (video game)

Boot Hill is a shooter arcade game released by Midway in 1977. It is a sequel to the 1975 video game "Gun Fight", originally released by Taito as "Western Gun" in Japan. It was released under license from Taito, as "Boot Hill" is another version of "Western Gun".
Description.
A classic one or two-player western gunfight game. Each player uses a small joystick to move their cowboy up and down the play area, while a second, much larger joystick is used to aim the pistol and shoot - this larger stick also has a trigger button. The game's single goal is to shoot the other player situated on the opposite side of the game area with the allocated 6 bullets. Wagons move up the middle and cacti litter the play area, both providing temporary cover from the opponent's gunfire and disintegrate when shot. The player may play against the machine or another person in two player mode.
Reception.
On the US "Play Meter" arcade chart, "Boot Hill" was the 14th highest-grossing arcade game of 1977.
It was listed in the book "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die".


Plan for Destruction

Plan for Destruction is a 1943 American short propaganda film directed by Edward Cahn. It looks at the Geopolitik ideas of the ex-World War I professor, General Karl Haushofer, who is portrayed as the head of a huge organisation for gathering information of strategic value and the mastermind behind Adolf Hitler's wars and plans to enslave the world. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.