Thor (soundtrack)

Thor is the soundtrack to the Marvel Studios film of the same name, based on the character created by Marvel Comics. The music was composed by Patrick Doyle, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Buena Vista Records announced the details for the soundtrack in March 2011. It was released in some European territories at the end of April and was released on May 3 in the United States.

Track listing

All music composed by Patrick Doyle.

Reception

James Christopher Monger of AllMusic stated that, "Composer Patrick Doyle, who brought a new-found boldness to the Harry Potter franchise in 2005 with his Goblet of Fire score, treats director Kenneth Branagh's big-screen adaptation of Marvel Comic’s iconic Norse superhero Thor with appropriate gravitas. The longtime Branagh collaborator (Henry V, Dead Again) sets the stage with “Chasing the Storm,” a tense and surging unveiling of the main theme, which sounds a bit like a cross between the James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer's Batman Begins cue and Zimmer's “CheValiers de Sangreal” theme from The Da Vinci Code, and like Zimmer, Doyle knows how to whip a circular melody into a frenzy. Elsewhere, the lovely and appropriately stoic “Sons of Odin” is awash in traditional fantasy elements, while the epic “Compound” unveils a more modern, sci-fi action approach, resulting in a score that’s wistful, heroic, and as grand as the fantastic realm of Asgard itself".

Jane Foster (comics)

Jane Foster is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as a supporting character of the superhero Thor. Created by writers Stan Lee and Larry Lieber, and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in Journey into Mystery #84 (Sept. 1962). For many years, Foster was a nurse employed by Dr. Donald Blake, Thor's first mortal host, before becoming a doctor herself. In 2015, Foster was revealed to be deemed worthy to wield Thor's hammer Mjolnir when the former is no longer able, adopting the name of Thor, the "Goddess of Thunder", and joining the Avengers.

Jane Foster has also appeared in various media adaptations of Thor, including the 2011 feature film Thor, and its 2013 sequel Thor: The Dark World, in which she is portrayed by Natalie Portman.

Publication history

Jane Foster first appeared in Journey into Mystery #84 (Sept. 1962), and was created by plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber and penciler Jack Kirby. Named "Jane Nelson" in her first two appearances, she went on to appear as the love interest of Dr. Donald Blake, the secret identity of the Norse god superhero Thor, in nearly every issue through #136 (Jan. 1967) of the title, by then renamed Thor.

Thor (sculpture)

Thor is an outdoor 1977 copper and redwood sculpture by American artist Melvin Schuler, located on the Transit Mall of downtown Portland, Oregon.

Description and history

Thor is an abstract outdoor sculpture depicting Thor, the hammer-wielding god of thunder in Norse mythology. Located at the intersection of Southwest 6th Avenue and Southwest Taylor Street in the Portland Transit Mall, the copper on redwood sculpture was completed in 1977, funded by TriMet and the United States Department of Transportation. It measures 7 feet (2.1 m) x 4 feet (1.2 m) x 4 feet (1.2 m). According to the Regional Arts & Culture Council, the agency which administers Thor, "This piece served as a excellent example of Schuler's work, which is characterized by large cubic and angular sculptures achieved by hammering copper onto carved redwood. This process creates a unique and recognizable finish to his sculptures." The sculpture was previously located at Southwest 5th between Washington and Alder.

Trousers

Trousers (pants in North America) are an item of clothing worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dresses).

In the UK the word "pants" generally means underwear and not trousers.Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower depending on the style of the garment. To distinguish them from shorts, trousers may be called "long trousers" in certain contexts such as school uniform, where tailored shorts may be called "short trousers", especially in the UK.

In most of the Western world, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower-body clothing for adult males in the modern world, although shorts are also widely worn, and kilts and other garments may be worn in various regions and cultures. Breeches were worn instead of trousers in early modern Europe by some men in higher classes of society. Since the mid-20th century, trousers have increasingly been worn by women as well. Jeans, made of denim, are a form of trousers for casual wear, now widely worn all over the world by both sexes. Shorts are often preferred in hot weather or for some sports and also often by children and teenagers. Trousers are worn on the hips or waist and may be held up by their own fastenings, a belt or suspenders (braces). Leggings are form-fitting trousers, of a clingy material, often knitted cotton and spandex (elastane).

Young Americans (album)

Young Americans is the ninth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released in 1975.

For the record, which showed off his 1970s "obsession" with soul music, he let go of the influences he had drawn from in the past, replacing them with sounds from "local dance halls", which, at the time, were blaring with "lush strings, sliding hi-hat whispers, and swanky R&B rhythms of Philadelphia Soul." Bowie is quoted describing the album as "the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey".

Because of the strong influence of black music on the album, Bowie used the term "plastic soul" (originally coined by an unknown black musician in the 1960s) to describe the sound of Young Americans. Although Bowie was an English musician bringing up touchy American issues, the album was still very successful in the US; the album itself reached the top ten in that country, with the song "Fame" hitting the No. 1 spot the same year the album was released.

Relative direction

The most common relative directions are left, right, forward(s), backward(s), up, and down. No absolute direction corresponds to any of the relative directions. This is a consequence of the translational invariance of the laws of physics: nature, loosely speaking, behaves the same no matter what direction one moves. As demonstrated by the Michelson-Morley null result, there is no absolute inertial frame of reference. There are definite relationships between the relative directions, however. Left and right, forward and backward, and up and down are three pairs of complementary directions, each pair orthogonal to both of the others. Relative directions are also known as egocentric coordinates.

Traditions and conventions

Since definitions of left and right based on the geometry of the natural environment are unwieldy, in practice, the meaning of relative direction words is conveyed through tradition, acculturation, education, and direct reference. One common definition of up and down uses gravity and the planet Earth as a frame of reference. Since there is a very noticeable force of gravity acting between the Earth and any other nearby object, down is defined as that direction which an object moves in reference to the Earth when the object is allowed to fall freely. Up is then defined as the opposite direction of down. Another common definition uses a human body, standing upright, as a frame of reference. In that case, up is defined as the direction from feet to head, perpendicular to the surface of the Earth. In most cases, up is a directionally oriented position generally opposite to that of the pull of gravity.