Otherwise Engaged

Otherwise Engaged is a bleakly comic play by English playwright Simon Gray. The play previewed at the Oxford Playhouse and the Richmond Theatre, and then opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 10 July 1975, with Alan Bates as the star and Harold Pinter as director, produced by Michael Codron. Ian Charleson co-starred as Dave, a Glasgow lout. Michael Gambon took over from Bates in 1976, "playing it for a year, eight times a week." The play also had a successful run on Broadway, opening in February 1977 with Tom Courtenay as Simon and Carolyn Lagerfelt as Beth. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

The play revolves around a British publisher named Simon Hench. When we first see Hench, he has settled down in his lavish living room, and plans to spend a pleasant afternoon listening to Parsifal. However, Hench is repeatedly interrupted by his tenant, his friends, family and aspiring writers, all of whom want something from him.

First, he is visited by his tenant Dave, a penniless student. Later, Hench must deal with his brother, a money-strapped public school teacher with a large family to support. Later, Hench meets with a drunken journalist mate, and with that mate's girlfriend (an aspiring writer who is more than willing to flaunt her body to get a publishing contract from Hench). Later, Hench receives a call from a meek gentleman that Hench used to torment when they were schoolboys, and whose young girl friend Hench has been sleeping with.

Null Device

Null Device is an electronic pop band from Wisconsin, USA.

Band history

Null Device is an electronic band formed in 1995 by Eric Oehler, William Annis, and Tom Lawrence at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After the amicable departures of Annis and Lawrence, Dr. Eric Goedken joined as a full-time lyricist and producer. Named after /dev/null, the group was originally an informal project for members of the university's Undergraduate Projects Lab interested in the techno music of the burgeoning rave scene. Through connections to Stromkern's Ned Kirby and a variety of DJ's from local clubs, the project slowly became more focused on vocal-oriented industrial dance music, driven by Lawrence's experimental audio software. It was at this point that Goedken joined the band full-time and Null Device became a more melodic electronic pop act in the mold of Depeche Mode and New Order. After some local and underground success, they were signed to Nilaihah Records in 2002.

While their label debut and early works are straightforward synthpop, their more recent works have seen a broadening of influences, taking cues from breakbeat, trip hop, house music and drum and bass and incorporating a wide range of ethnic influences and instruments. Subsequent releases have seen the use of dumbek, dholak, duduk, cumbus, sitar, dilruba and violin, as well as guest vocals by Arabic and Carnatic classical singers. Null Device has also contributed to various projects with a number of other industrial, synthpop and electronic artists, including Armageddon Dildos, B! Machine, Blind Faith and Envy, Caustic, The Dark Clan, Distorted Reality, The Gothsicles, Epsilon Minus, Hungry Lucy, Stochastic Theory and Stromkern.

Road to ...

Road to ... refers to a series of seven comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. They are also often referred to as the "Road" pictures or the "Road" series. The movies were a combination of adventure, comedy, romance, and music. The minimal plot often took a back seat to gags, many of them supposedly ad-libbed by Crosby and Hope during filming.

Films in the series

Each film is not simply a comedic film, but a satire of some of the popular film genres of the day, including jungle, Arabian nights, Alaskan adventure, and high seas. The final film not only comes much later, but involves a newer genre; Hong Kong spoofs the spy films of the sixties.

In 1977, an eighth Road to ... movie was planned, titled Road to the Fountain of Youth; however, Crosby died that year of a heart attack.

In 1947, Astor Pictures released a compilation film of several of Crosby's Educational Pictures short subjects called The Road to Hollywood to evoke the series.

Road to Avonlea

Road to Avonlea is a Canadian television series first broadcast in Canada between January 7, 1990 and March 31, 1996, and in the United States starting on March 5, 1990. It was created by Kevin Sullivan and produced by Sullivan Films (later Sullivan Entertainment) in association with CBC and the Disney Channel, with additional funding from Telefilm Canada. The Disney Channel began airing the series in the United States on March 5, 1990, and continued airing it into January 1997.

The series was loosely adapted from a number of books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, primarily (at least initially) the books The Story Girl and The Golden Road, both of which feature the character of Sara Stanley, as well as the characters of Felicity, Felix and Cecily. However, these books, while set in Prince Edward Island, were not set in the village of Avonlea, and a number of the series' episodes and situations were adapted from stories recounted in Montgomery's Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea.

Short film

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. Although no consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". The term featurette originally applied to a film longer than a short subject, but shorter than a standard feature film.

The increasingly rare term short subject means approximately the same thing. An industry term, it carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short is an abbreviation for either term. Short films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals and made by independent filmmakers for non profit, either with a low budget or no budget at all. They are usually funded by film grants, non profit organizations, sponsor, or personal funds. Short films are generally used by filmmakers to gain experience and/or prove their talent in order to gain funding for future films from private investors, entertainment companies, or film studios.