Smile

A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a "Duchenne smile". Smiles performed without the eye contraction can be perceived as "fake".

Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace. Although cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communication throughout the world, there are large differences between different cultures, with some using smiles to convey confusion or embarrassment.

Historical background

Primatologist Signe Preuschoft traces the smile back over 30 million years of evolution to a "fear grin" stemming from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless. The smile may have evolved differently among species and especially among humans. Apart from Biology as an academic discipline that interprets the smile, those who study kinesics and psychology such as Freitas-Magalhaes view the smile as an affect display that can communicate feelings such as love, happiness, pride, contempt, and embarrassment.

Smile! (novel)

Smile! is a children's book by Geraldine McCaughrean. In 2004 it won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Bronze Award.

References

Smile (The Beach Boys album)

Smile (occasionally typeset as SMiLE) was a projected album by American rock band the Beach Boys intended to follow their 11th studio album Pet Sounds. After the group's songwriting leader Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded between 1966 and 1967, the band recorded and released the dramatically scaled-down Smiley Smile album in its place. Some of the original Smile tracks eventually found their way onto subsequent Beach Boys studio and compilation albums. As more fans learned of the project's origins, details of its recordings acquired considerable mystique, and it was later acknowledged as the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music.

Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, Smile was composed as a multi-thematic concept album, existing today in its unfinished and fragmented state as an unordered series of abstract musical vignettes. Its genesis came during the recording of Pet Sounds, when Wilson began recording a new single: "Good Vibrations". The track was created by an unprecedented recording technique: over 90 hours of tape was recorded, spliced, and reduced into a three-minute pop song. It quickly became the band's biggest international hit yet; Smile was to be produced in a similar fashion. Wilson touted the album "a teenage symphony to God," incorporating a diverse range of music styles including psychedelic, doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, yodeling, early American folk, classical music, and avant-garde explorations into noise and musical acoustics. Its projected singles were "Heroes and Villains", a Western musical comedy, and "Vega-Tables", a satire of physical fitness.

Stole (song)

"Stole" is a song by American recording artist Kelly Rowland. It was written and co-produced by Dane Deviller, Sean Hosein and Steve Kipner and recorded for Rowland's solo album Simply Deep (2002). Generally well received by music critics, the lyrics of the track chronicle three different scenarios with young people, whose lives are drastically changed by the aftermaths of a suicide and a school shooting.

The record was released as the album's lead single in Australia, United Kingdom and North America in October 2002 and elsewhere in January 2003, following the worldwide success of "Dilemma", Rowland's number-one collaboration with rapper Nelly. It entered the top twenty on the majority of the charts it appeared on, reaching the top five in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where it remains her second highest-charting solo single to date, becoming her third most international successful single, behind "Dilemma" and "When Love Takes Over". An accompanying music video was filmed by Moroccan director Sanaa Hamri.

Stole (shawl)

A stole is a woman's shawl, especially a formal shawl of expensive fabric used around the shoulders over a party dress or ball gown.

A stole is typically narrower than a shawl, and of simpler construction than a cape; being a length of a quality material, wrapped and carried about the shoulders or arms. Lighter materials such as silk and chiffon are simply finished, that is, cropped, hemmed and bound; heavier materials such as fur and brocade are often lined as well.

A stole can also mean a fur or set of furs, (usually fox) worn as a stole with a suit or gown; the pelage or skin, of a single animal (head included) is generally used with street dress while for formal wear a finished length of fur using the skins of more than one animal is used; the word stole stands alone or is used in combination: fur stole, mink stole, the namesake of Dreamlander Mink Stole.

Lego

Lego (/ˈlɛɡoʊ/) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct objects such as vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Since then a global Lego subculture has developed. Supporting movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's "world's most powerful brand".

History

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based in part on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample that they received from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that Lego purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie (stylized as The LEGO Movie) is a 2014 computer-animated and live-action adventure comedy film directed and co-written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and starring the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, and Morgan Freeman.

It was the first film produced by Warner Animation Group since Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and is an international co-production of the United States, Australia, and Denmark. Based on the Lego line of construction toys, the film tells the story of Emmet (Pratt), an ordinary Lego minifigure prophesied to save the universe from the tyrannical Lord Business (Ferrell) as he gains different allies along the way.

The film was released theatrically on February 7, 2014, to positive reviews, with critics praising its visual style, humor, voice acting and heartwarming message. The film was also a commercial success, earning more than $257 million in North America and $210 million in other territories for a worldwide total of over $469 million. The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Animated Feature, and the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film. It was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. The film also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Everything Is Awesome".