Sweetness

Sweetness is one of the five basic tastes and is universally regarded as a pleasurable experience, except perhaps in excess. Foods rich in simple carbohydrates such as sugar are those most commonly associated with sweetness, although there are other natural and artificial compounds that are sweet at much lower concentrations, allowing their use as non-caloric sugar substitutes. Examples of foods that may be used as non-sugar sweet substitutes include saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, xylitol, erythritol, and stevia. Other compounds, such as miraculin, may alter perception of sweetness itself.

The chemosensory basis for detecting sweetness, which varies between both individuals and species, has only begun to be understood since the late 20th century. One theoretical model of sweetness is the multipoint attachment theory, which involves multiple binding sites between a sweetness receptor and a sweet substance.

List of minor Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an American franchise which spans several media and genres. It began in 1992 with the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, written by Joss Whedon and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, and was resurrected as the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997. The show's popularity caused it to spawn a multitude of Expanded Universe tie-in material such as comic books, novels, and video games, as well as a spin-off program entitled Angel. In 2007, four years after the television series' seventh and final season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was officially continued in the comic book Season Eight. The following is a list of minor recurring characters who appear in the franchise.

A

Aluwyn

(a.k.a. Saga Vasuki)

Amanda

Amanda is a Potential Slayer who appears in Season Seven, played by Sarah Hagan. A Sunnydale High student and member of the swing choir, she first appears in the episode "Help" as part of the seemingly-random stream of students showing up at Buffy's guidance office. Amanda was sent to Buffy for beating up another student who was picking on her. In the later episode "Potential", it is revealed that Amanda is in fact a Potential Slayer, and she aptly slays a vampire who threatens her and Dawn. Afterwards, Amanda moves into the Summers' residence, where she trains and becomes friends with her fellow Potentials. In the final episode of the show, "Chosen", Amanda is activated as a Slayer along with the other Potentials and battles against an army of Turok-Han vampires. She is last seen falling to the ground dead after her neck was snapped by a Turok-Han. She was the first Potential to kill a vampire and the first one to kill a Turok-Han.

Sweet (Ken Mellons album)

Sweet is the fourth studio album released by American country music artist Ken Mellons. Released in 2004, it contains the song "Paint Me a Birmingham", which was also recorded by Tracy Lawrence and released as a single. Mellons's rendition was also released shortly before Lawrence's. "Smack Dab" was previously recorded by George Jones on his 1998 album It Don't Get Any Better Than This.

Track listing

Block Buster!

"Block Buster!" (also sometimes listed as "Blockbuster!") is a 1973 single by The Sweet. Written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, and produced by Phil Wainman, "Block Buster!" was the band's sole UK No. 1 hit. Released in January 1973, it spent five weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart, and also made #1 in the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Austria and Ireland, and #3 in Finland, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway. Outside Europe it fared less well as it peaked at #29 in Australia and at #73 on the American Billboard Hot 100.

Music and lyrics

Its riff was considered markedly similar to fellow RCA act David Bowie's "The Jean Genie", released shortly before, but all parties maintain that this was pure coincidence.

TV performances

Some controversy rose after the band's performance of the song on the British television program Top of the Pops at December 25 1973. In this performance, Sweet's bassist Steve Priest wore a Swastika.

References

Blockbuster (book)

Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer is a 2004 non-fiction book by British film critic Tom Shone published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, ISBN 0-7432-6838-5.

Based on interviews with leading Hollywood filmmakers, actors and production staff it examines the revolution in Hollywood movies brought about by Jaws, Star Wars, Alien and other summer blockbusters and how they became a global phenomenon.

The tone and approach of the book is not one of film criticism as such but rather an analysis of how the blockbuster era came into being, and the processes which drove the producers, directors and film executives concerned from 1975 to 2004. It sets itself firmly on the side of the audience and values entertainment and thrills rather than high culture, and does not shy away from equating creative success with commercial success.

In the book Shone considers that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's reinvention of blockbusters as fast-paced entertainment reinvigorated the American film industry and deserves greater artistic and critical recognition. These two filmmakers are the most prominent of the many interviewed for the book and receive the most coverage. Director James Cameron is also featured extensively but was not directly interviewed.

Blockbuster (entertainment)

Blockbuster, as applied to film, theatre, and sometimes also video games, denotes a very popular or successful, usually big budget production.

Origin of the term

In film, a number of terms were used to describe a hit. In the 1970s these included: "spectacular" (The Wall Street Journal), "super-grosser" (New York Times), and "super-blockbuster" (Variety). In 1975 the usage of "blockbuster" for films coalesced around Steven Spielberg's Jaws and became perceived as something new: a cultural phenomenon, a fast-paced exciting entertainment, almost a genre. Audiences interacted with such films, talked about them afterwards, and went back to see them again just for the thrill.

Blockbuster films

Before Jaws set box office records in the summer of 1975, successful films, such as Quo Vadis, The Ten Commandments, Gone With the Wind, and Ben-Hur, were called blockbusters based purely on the amount of money earned at the box office. Jaws is regarded as the first film of New Hollywood's "blockbuster era" with its current meaning, implying a film genre. It also consolidated the "summer blockbuster" trend, through which major film studios and distributors planned their entire annual marketing strategy around a big release by July 4.