Изучение семантических особенностей медиа-текстов с тематической доминантой «Искусство» при обучении письменной речи на уроках английск

The exhibition alludes to the fact that London's private transport companies were the sponsors and often the creators of suburbia, extending their lines into open country, promoting the glories of the countryside, and then developing it out of existence. The most famous example was the Metropolitan Railway's Metro-Land, where stations which scrupulously reflected the rural context would presage the destruction of that rurality by the Metropolitan Railway's property development arm. The Underground, meanwhile, followed their special pleading on behalf of Golders Green with campaigns for the Northern Line's extensions to Morden and Edgware, where intensive development followed.

This is how suburbia developed everywhere, out of a combination of compromised idealism and big business, capitalising on the middle classes' yearning to get out – but not too far out – of the metropolis. Charles Tyson Yerkes, the American "robber baron" who ran the Underground between 1900 and 1905, pioneered the same approach in Chicago. What made London's outskirts different was the ambiguous modernist periphery created by one of Yerkes's successors, the much mythologised Pick. Like the planners of the garden suburb where he lived, Pick was both businessman and romantic socialist, although his partner Lord Ashfield was wholly the former. Pick, first as design director and then as vice-chairman, tried to impose the kind of civic cohesion aimed at in Hampstead Garden Suburb across the entire sprawl, with a network expressly planned as an integrated "work of art". Rather than atomised individuals tending their demarcated plots, a metropolis containing what Pick presciently called "a hundred towns divided one against the other", he hoped that an "intensified social solidarity" would be the result of the Underground's activities, though it might "lose in traffic" because of this.

Pick supported town planning, and supported the proposal for a green belt enclosing London – in short, supported everything that would seem to halt suburban expansion.

The Underground had to make a profit, and so expansion into open country continued. Yet while the stations of Metro-Land in north-west London expressly tried to blend in with their surroundings, under Pick they would quite deliberately stand out from their surroundings – first, through the extension of the Northern Line to Morden via glitzy cinema-esque kiosks, and then, as the Piccadilly Line stretched itself north and west, in a quietly original style Anglicising the Modernist architecture that Londoners supposedly disdained.

The tube continued expanding outwards, with the developers following suit. Yet this time, the stations ceased to claim to be in keeping with the past, stopped dressing themselves in 17th-century garb, and took on more metropolitan ambitions. London Underground's posters had been the most modern in Britain since the 1910s, with a motley group of Surrealists, Vorticists and Constructivists employed on the promotion of everything from suburban gardening to cup finals and trips to Dorking. But after nationalisation in 1933 the tube's ad campaigns encouraging Londoners to move to Morden and elsewhere ceased, with the imagery shifting to encourage suburbanites to use the city they already had, whether promoting museums, galleries or West End shopping.

Pick's stations implied that a modern suburbia would grow up around them, and today they look heroic and melancholic in the midst of what is still a mostly conservative landscape. The tube claimed to have created a better London – one vintage poster in the exhibition proclaims "new values have been created which stand to the credit of the Underground, though others keep the cash" – yet the imagery remained wishful. The Edgware posters invariably show a house or two in rolling fields, rather than row-upon-row of semis. A 30s poster such as Paul Nash's Come Out to Live redraws the commuter belt as the Bauhaus 'burbs. Suburbia shows how some property developers experimented with modernist architecture – take the ad for "moderne houses" in Wembley, proclaiming a flat-roofed semi to be "The House of To-Morrow that you live in To-Day", but the "solidarity" Pick dreamed of was seldom in evidence. The other images depict the traditionalist suburbia we know and love/hate, with an astroturf wall signifying gardening and in the middle, a model of a 30s bus stop, mainly being used for hide and seek by young children. In the exhibition "the sounds of the suburbs" are collected: you can listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Kinks, and notice that there are more pop records denouncing suburban boredom than there ever were complaining about tower blocks.

More than half of Londoners and 80% of the British population live in suburbs, but when people talk about "suburbia", they too often mean the same place – Metroland, London's outer reaches, developed between 1907 and 1939, as if nowhere else has suburbs, and as if they haven't continued. After 1945, however, there were no more speculative incursions of London Transport into the countryside. If anything, the order has been reversed. Once, public infrastructure preceded development, so Cockfosters or Morden were fields one year, burbs the next. Today, after Beeching and privatisation, densely suburban or urban areas lack the most basic public amenities. With the exception of the Tyne and Wear Metro, no other conurbation has an even remotely comparable public transport system, so suburbia outside of London invariably means the private car, making a nonsense of the alleged goal of "sustainable development". Most of that 80% doesn't resemble Metroland, and a term which conflates Broadwater Farm and Bromley has little continued relevance – the suburbs are as disparate as everywhere else. The exhibition claims that "yesterday's village is today's suburb", but fails to add that the day before yesterday's suburbia is today's gritty urbanism. An image of Sutton's BedZED eco-burb suggests possible other ways of living, but Suburbia is a (rather enjoyable) celebration of the outskirts as they are.

Expansion of public transport has mainly been a post-facto response to decline, with the Docklands Light Railway or the Jubilee Line extension reconnecting post-industrial east London with the centre. This has coincided with what the architect Richard Rogers, in a 1999 white paper, called the "urban renaissance" – the return of the middle classes to the inner cities, a phenomenon known as regeneration or gentrification, according to your politics. The main instance of Transport for London, the descendant of Pick's London Transport, dabbling in property development, was innercity – Dalston Junction station, due to open next year, partly funded through an 18-storey block by Barratt Homes, in one of the more controversial acts of Ken Livingstone's mayoralty.

Boris Johnson's election-swinging "Zone 5 strategy" successfully mobilised resentment on the part of congestion-charge payers in places such as East Finchley and Edgware. Rogers was an urban design adviser to the GLA; MI6 architect Terry Farrell is design consultant to the Tories' Outer London Commission. The success of the "Zone 5 strategy" parallels a revival of interest in suburbia – of which the mayor-sponsored exhibition is one part – after the innercity revival ended in an orgy of property speculation and thousands of empty "luxury flats".

Libertarians and Tories have criticised the "urban renaissance" as an attempt to force a suburban people into an architect's fantasy, as opposed to the apparently uncomplicated dream of house-and-garden. The return of the Tories may mean the return of the suburbs, leaving the inner cities to rot. At the end of the exhibition, there is a series of answers from the public to the question "What does suburbia mean to you?" It turns out it still means conservatism – "Daddy getting the train into town – they are very unreliable and expensive. Unions!" It means tedium, a place you come from but get out of as soon as possible ("Bland boredom – made my escape"). Yet more than this, it means somewhere melancholic, for all its strangeness – "a wonderful ideal long since lost".

East and West Come Together in 'Dragon House' Novel

Faiza Elmasry

The New York Times, 02 December 2009

In the crowded streets of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, American friends Iris and Noah try to help homeless children and find a higher calling for their lives.  The friends are fictional, characters in John Shors' new novel, Dragon House. But, the problem of homeless children is real, and through his novel, Shors gives readers a chance to help solve it.

American author lived in Asia. John Shors was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, far from any Asian influence. But after graduating from college, he spent a number of years in Japan, teaching

English and saving money to travel to China, Thailand and beyond. He says that's when he started to fall in love with Asia.

"I backpacked around the region for about a year and visited big Asian cities

like Bangkok, Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City], Katmandu, Delhi and so forth," he says.

"I had wonderful experiences, and I was so enamored with the culture, and the

people, the history, the food and the climate. I just love everything about that

part of the world. It's very dynamic and full of life."

Streets crowded with homeless children

It was during those trips, he says, that he noticed the almost constant presence of street children.

"Oftentimes these children are born into extreme poverty and their parents literally cannot afford to keep them," he says. "So they just abandon them. Or a family might be torn apart by drugs, or perhaps the parents have been killed. There is not the support system to take care of these children. So the children are out on the streets, at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, having to support

themselves," Shors says.

Survival tactics inspire characters in novel

Shors spent time talking and interacting with those kids, and says he couldn't

help but admire them.

"These homeless children were out hustling - selling fans, post cards, flowers at all hours of night and day to tourists," he says. "What impressed me about these kids is that they were incredible little entrepreneurs. They were not sitting on the corner with their hands out, they are hustling. If it's raining, they are selling umbrellas. If it's hot, they were selling Coca Colas. They are just amazingly resilient, witty and intelligent and hopeful kids. Every night in Thailand, I played 'Connect Four' with a little 7 or 8-year old boy. He would carry this game around with him and play tourists for a dollar a game. That's how he lived. I was so amazed by this little boy. He was brilliant." That little boy inspired one of the characters in Dragon House, Shors' new

novel. Most of the action takes place in Vietnam.

"I was lucky enough to go to Vietnam three times," he says. "There is definitely

still a legacy of war there. There are still thousands and thousands of

unexploded bombs in the jungle that blow up when kids run over them. So there

are a lot of legless children, farmers and so forth.  But having said that, I

think the Vietnamese people themselves have really kind of moved beyond the war.

It's a country that is full of hope and optimism and energy. I was welcomed with

open arms as an American," Shors says.

Premise includes Vietnam, Iraq war veterans

The book opens with Iris, the main character, preparing to go to Vietnam on a personal mission.

"Her father is a Vietnam vet. He goes back to Vietnam to try to open this center

to house and educate Vietnamese street kids," he explains. "He actually gets very, very sick, and at the beginning of the book, he is dying. Iris promises him that she is going to go to Vietnam to fulfill his dream, to open this center. Just as she is about to leave, she meets her childhood friend Noah, who had returned from the war in Iraq about 5 months earlier, where he lost part of his leg. He has a great deal of angst over that, and sorrow and misery and anger. He decides to go with her to Vietnam, not really thinking that's going to help him, but he doesn't have anything better to do," Shors says.

Connecting with the homeless kids on a very personal level brings a sense of satisfaction and hope to the lives of the two friends, especially Noah.

"Even though Noah has all this grief and resentment towards the war in Iraq, he starts to move past it, because he realizes that these children have it harder than he does," he says. "He ends up really putting himself in additional risk, in additional danger to try to help out these children."

Some profits will benefit homeless kids in Vietnam

Like the characters in his novel, Shors decided to help street children in reality. He encourages his readers to help too.

"I'm donating a percent of the royalties, of the proceeds from Dragon House to the Blue Dragon Children Foundation, a group in Vietnam that actually supports children," he says. "I partnered with this group, and if any of your listeners are interested, they can go to my web site, which is www.dragonhousebook.com and learn about the charity I'm helping. It's wonderful! My novel Dragon House has only been out for a short time now, but we've already raised enough money to

help about 250 Vietnamese street kids."

Dragon House is John Shors' third novel inspired by his Asian journeys. He says he hopes readers will enjoy reading it and come to the conclusion that, whether in the West or the East, people are more alike than different.

Tim Burton's Alice still in US box-office wonderland

Jean Nouvel

The Guardian, 11 March 2010

Disney's 3D extravaganza is the first 2010 release to cross $200m in North America, as latest MPAA figures show that 20 3D movies accounted for 11% of US box office last year

The              winner
Over the past 13 weeks all the hyperbole in box-office circles has been reserved for Avatar, so it would be remiss not to praise the achievements of Alice in Wonderland. After less than two weeks in release, Disney's fantasy has already crossed $200m (£133m) in North America, becoming the first 2010 release to do so. It is also single-handedly propping up the box office: thanks to Alice's commercial heft, box-office revenues are running about 9% ahead of the same period in 2009 – which, lest we forget, was a record year. Incidentally, combined with its international run, Alice has already amassed more than $420m worldwide.

8.        Alice in Wonderland

9.        Production year: 2010

10.    Country: USA

11.    Cert (UK): PG

12.    Runtime: 108 mins

13.    Directors: Tim Burton

14.    Cast: Alan Rickman, Anne Hathaway, Barbara Windsor, Christopher Lee, Crispin Glover, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Matt Lucas, Mia Wasikowska, Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry, Timothy Spall

15.    More on this film

Summit's decision to re-release its multi-Academy Award winner The Hurt Locker is paying small dividends. Because the movie has already completed its theatrical run and gone out on DVD, cinemas won't accommodate a wide release, ie more than 600 cinemas. However, nobody's grumbling about $828,000 from 349 venues. That puts Kathryn Bigelow's best picture winner on $15.7m. It's still the lowest grossing best picture winner since the dawn of time, but if it can get to $20m that would be a nice round number for financiers who think box-office grosses are all that matter.

The              loser
Universal executives were expecting more from Green Zone than the $14.5m debut in second place. You'd think that the potent combination of Paul Greengrass and his Jason Bourne star Matt Damon would muster more than this, but it was always going to be a tough weekend with Alice still so fresh and several other new releases to choose from. Green Zone is a thrilling ride, and even though the protagonist's Bourne-like antics in the second half beggar belief, it deserves to prosper. As the only action thriller in release for a while, Green Zone has a chance to gain momentum. This week will be crucial as the movie heads into the second weekend and either thrives or dies on word of mouth. And it's brutal out there. Summit's romantic drama Remember Me, with the distributor's Twilight hero Robert Pattinson, crept out in fourth place on $8.3m and will also do well to keep going in a significant way, but this has more to do with the quality of the script than anything else. Also, does Pattinson amount to much on screen without Kristen Stewart? Time will tell.

The              real              story
Each year, Hollywood's lobby group, the Motion Picture Association of America, unleashes a volley of statistics designed to tell us how cinemagoing is the most affordable and magnificent pastime anybody could possibly contemplate, yielding ever-increasing revenues and profits for the distributors. We-ell, as we all know, that's not really the whole story. If it's true that the market can expand to accommodate more episodes of Harry Potter and Twilight and a second Avatar movie, it's also true that consumers are choosing to watch movies in different ways.

And that's where the MPAA's annual Theatrical Market Statistics Report, published last week, fails to tell the whole story. It tells us that ticket sales in North America in 2009 reached a record $10.6bn, while international and global revenues reached new highs of $19.3bn and $29.9bn. We learn that the average US ticket price climbed 4.4% to $7.50 and there were 1.42bn admissions, the first rise in two years and the highest level since 1.5bn five years earlier in 2004. 3D screens are booming all over the world, and 3D movies accounted for $1.14bn or 11% of that $10.6bn North American box office, with 20 3D movies coming out in 2009, compared with eight in 2008.

Nowhere does the MPAA adjust the figures for inflation, and nowhere do we learn about levels of consumption on VOD, cable, DVD and online. We know that repeat visits by moviegoers will turn a humble blockbuster into a glistening titan like Avatar, and indeed the report notes that "frequent filmgoers", defined as people who visit the cinema once a month or more and who currently make up 10% of the population in the US and Canada, accounted for half of all tickets sold in 2009. What the report doesn't say is how they were seeing movies when they weren't at the cinema. That's important, because once they can agree that cinemas and cable and VOD etc are all viable ways of consuming movies, maybe the studios can start to talk openly about the data.This may be the era of high-fidelity viewing, but the overall picture is murkier than ever.

The              future
Next week brings an action comedy from Columbia called The Bounty Hunter, starring Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston – action comedies are notoriously difficult to pull off, so it's going to have to be very good indeed to stay afloat in the coming weeks. Fox has the comedy Diary of a Wimpy Kid, while Universal finally releases the action sci-fi Repo Men featuring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.

North American top 10, 12-14 March
1. Alice in Wonderland, $62m. Total: $208.6m
2. Green Zone, $14.5m
3. She's Out of My League, $9.6m
4. Remember Me, $8.3m
5. Shutter Island, $8.1m. Total: $108m
6. Our Family Wedding, $7.6m
7. Avatar, $6.6m. Total: $730.3m
8. Brooklyn's Finest, $4.3m. Total: $21.4m
9. Cop Out, $4.2m. Total: $39.4m
10. The Crazies, $3.7m. Total: $34.2m

Animated Film 'The Princess And The Frog' Features African-American Princess

Alan Silverman

The New York Times 27 November 2009

'The Princess and the Frog' is a tune-filled fairy tale created by hand-drawn animation

For more than a decade now, animated films have been dominated by computer-generated images; but Disney takes a big step back with its new feature: a tune-filled fairy tale created by hand-drawn animation, in the style studio founder Walt Disney used to make. It also presents the first African-American princess in Disney history.

"The evening star is shining bright, so make a wish and hold on tight. There's magic in the air tonight …and anything can happen."

That wish upon a star brings unexpected adventure for Tiana, a hard-working young woman in 1920's New Orleans. By day she serves up her delicious "beignet" sweet fried dough in her boss's hash house; but by night she dreams of opening her own gourmet restaurant. Tiana's road to her dream takes a strange turn, however, when a talking frog hops up and convinces her that if she kisses it he will become her handsome prince.

It seems a royal playboy visiting New Orleans wound up in the clutches of one of the Crescent City's shadowy street characters.

However, instead of her kiss breaking the spell, it transforms Tiana into a frog too and off the amphibian pair hops on an adventure into the bayou searching for a way to become human again.

Broadway stage star Anika Noni Rose is the voice of Tiana.

"This is something that I've always dreamed of doing. I didn't dream of being a princess. I could have been a dandelion and I would have been really happy. So this is like when your dreams take off and become bigger than what you had imagined. It's amazing," she says.

A devoted fan of the Disney animated musicals like "Snow White" and "Cinderella" when she was growing up, Rose is especially pleased that "The Princess and the Frog" brings back the tradition of those hand-drawn films."When you are watching a fairy tale you are not looking for reality. You are looking for softness and for an extension of your disbelief - something that