House (1995 film)

House is a Canadian drama film, released in 1995. Written and directed by Laurie Lynd as an adaptation of Daniel MacIvor's one-man play House, the film stars MacIvor as Victor, an antisocial drifter with some hints of paranoid schizophrenia, who arrives in the town of Hope Springs and invites ten strangers into the local church to watch him perform a monologue about his struggles and disappointments in life.

The original play was performed solely by MacIvor. For the film, Lynd added several other actors, giving the audience members some moments of direct interaction and intercutting Victor's monologue with scenes which directly depict the stories he describes. The extended cast includes Anne Anglin, Ben Cardinal, Patricia Collins, Jerry Franken, Caroline Gillis, Kathryn Greenwood, Nicky Guadagni, Joan Heney, Rachel Luttrell, Stephen Ouimette, Simon Richards, Christofer Williamson and Jonathan Wilson.

The film premiered at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival in the Perspectives Canada series, before going into general release in 1996.

Babes in Toyland (band)

Babes in Toyland is an American punk rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1987. The band was formed by Oregon native Kat Bjelland (lead vocals and guitar), with Lori Barbero (drums) and Michelle Leon (bass), who was later replaced by Maureen Herman in 1992.

Between 1989 and 1995, Babes in Toyland released three studio albums; Spanking Machine (1990), the commercially successful Fontanelle (1992), and Nemesisters (1995), before becoming inactive in 1997 and eventually disbanding in 2001. While the band was inspirational to some performers in the riot grrrl movement in the Pacific Northwest, Babes in Toyland never associated themselves with the movement.

In August 2014, Babes In Toyland announced that they would be reuniting.

History

Formation and early years (1987-1991)

Babes in Toyland formed in 1987, after frontwoman Kat Bjelland met drummer Lori Barbero at a friend's barbecue. Originally from Woodburn, Oregon and a former resident of San Francisco, Bjelland had moved to Minneapolis to form a band. Over the following months, Bjelland convinced Barbero to play drums and formed Babes in Toyland in winter 1987. In its initial formation in 1987, in addition to Bjelland and Barbero, the band included Kris Holetz on bass and singer Cindy Russell. It has been widely believed that, following the departures of Holetz and Russell, the band briefly recruited Bjelland's friend - and former bandmate of the band Pagan Babies - Courtney Love on bass. However, it is known that Love had lied to the press on multiple occasions about her involvement with the band. Love, who later went on to form the successful band Hole, only stood in Minneapolis a number of weeks before leaving as she was not in the band, but rather a roommate of Barbero's. She then stole money from the band and left Minneapolis. Bjelland, in an interview, once stated:

1790 House

Coordinates: 42°30′10″N 71°9′29″W / 42.50278°N 71.15806°W / 42.50278; -71.15806

The 1790 House, also called the Joseph Bartlett House or the Bartlett-Wheeler House, is a historic house located at 827 Main Street, Woburn, Massachusetts, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is close to the Baldwin House, with the Middlesex Canal running between them.

The 1790 House, originally on Main Street, has been moved closer to the canal to make room for a hotel. It now faces more south than its original facing of southwest.

History

The Federal style house was originally built in 1790 on the banks of the Middlesex Canal, for Woburn lawyer Joseph Bartlett. Shortly before completion it was purchased by Col. Loammi Baldwin, noted engineer, who hoped to convince expatriate scientist and inventor Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, to return to his home town. Although this idea never came to fruition, author Frances Parkinson Keyes, who later spent childhood summers in the home, refers to it repeatedly in her memoirs as the Count Rumford House. The house also features in her autobiography, Roses in December.

Silva

Silva (or da Silva or D'Silva) is the most common surname in the Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Portugal and Brazil. Its meaning is derived from the latin word 'silva' meaning "forest or woodland".

It is also widespread in regions of the former Portuguese Empire in America, Africa and Asia, including India and Sri Lanka. Movement of people has led to the name being used in many places; da Silva is the fifth most common surname in the French department of Val-de-Marne, outside Paris and it was the 19th most-common family name given to newborns between 1966 and 1990 in France.

Arts

Actors

Silva (film)

Silva is a 1944 Soviet musical film directed by Aleksandr Ivanovsky and starring Zoya Smirnova-Nemirovich and Sergei Martinson. It was part of a cycle of operetta films made in European cinema during the era.

Production

The film is an adaptation of the 1915 operetta Die Csárdásfürstin (also known as Silva after its title character) composed by Emmerich Kalman with a libretto by Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach. It was made at the Sverdlovsk Film Studios in Yekaterinburg.

Popularity

The film proved a major success with Soviet audiences, who during the later stages of the Second World War sought escapist entertainment and largely rejected films with war themes. The money it earned per copy of the film issued exceeded even that of the most popular films of the year Guilty Without Fault.

References

Bibliography

List of Shaman King characters

The manga and anime series Shaman King features several characters created by Hiroyuki Takei. As a result of being focused on shamanism the series' cast is divided between humans and spirits, the latter not being able to go the afterlife due to their alliance with the former.

The series primarily focuses on a teenager named Yoh Asakura, who reveals to his classmate Manta Oyamada that he is a shaman when fighting a group delinquents led by Ryu. Wishing to lead a peaceful life, Yoh has been training from an early age to become the titular "Shaman King", who will be able to change the world according to his will. During Yoh's training, Manta meets Yoh's demanding fiancee, Anna Kyoyama and Yoh's spirit partner, the samurai Amidamaru. In his journey to become Shaman King, Yoh also meets with a number of rival shamans who seek to become Shaman King for their own reasons and visions of the future, some who become his allies and others who become his enemies. The series' sequel, Shaman King Flowers, deals with Yoh's son, Hana Asakura, on his development as a shaman.

Races of StarCraft

Blizzard Entertainment's bestselling real-time strategy game series StarCraft revolves around interstellar affairs in a distant sector of the galaxy, with three species and multiple factions all vying for supremacy in the sector. The playable species of StarCraft include the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth who excel at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoids obsessed with assimilating other races in pursuit of genetic perfection; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. Each of these races has a single campaign in each StarCraft real-time strategy game. In addition to these three, various non-playable races have also been part of the lore of the StarCraft series; the most notable of these is the Xel'Naga, a race which features prominently in the fictional histories of the Protoss and Zerg races.

The original game has sold over 10 million copies internationally, and remains one of the most popular games in the world. One of the main factors responsible for StarCraft's positive reception is the attention paid to the three unique playable races, for each of which Blizzard developed completely different characteristics, graphics, backstories and styles of gameplay, while keeping them balanced in performance against each other. Previous to this, most real-time strategy games consisted of factions and races with the same basic play styles and units with only superficial differences. The use of unique sides in StarCraft has been credited with popularizing the concept within the real-time strategy genre. Contemporary reviews of the game have mostly praised the attention to the gameplay balance between the species, as well as the fictional stories built up around them.