The Island Weekly

Spring Fashion: Alice style featurette

Anne — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:37:24 +0000

Alice in Wonderland has a sumptuous look. After Snowgeddon, spring will be a blooming affair, so this stuff will surely go into it. An interview with costume designer Coleen Atwood has good language if you like talking about clothes. Words, in order of appearance:
costume designer, put it on, second fitting, coat, layers, silk, shear, burn off fabric, choke tie, bits of ribbon, embroider, pants, stitch, socks, they don’t match, waistcoat, pieces of fabric, they’re cut and sewn over, (re)mended, buttons, dress, embroidery, hem, layers, stripes, stockings, bloomers, sketch, neck(line), collar, wasplike middle, skirt. Words not mentioned: bodice, petticoat. Other interesting words: made to scale, curtains.

Expanding Alice

Anne — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:37:53 +0000

Come play a game:

Copy and paste the last version of the sentence into “Comments” and add a word or phrase to expand the sentence. You can also start a new sentence. Make each version meaningful. Don’t delete anything anyone else has written.

Alice in Wonderland.

Alice was in Wonderland.

Avril Lavigne: Alice (Underground)

Anne — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:16:36 +0000

The magic of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: All that wild “eat me”, “drink me” growing and shrinking. Mind-bending, awareness-raising, full of wonder, essential. Alice is entertained, but completely unphased: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” she says, and lands back in the safety of happy summmer days. In Through the Looking Glass she plays the backwards game of chess so well (through no skill of her own, just by taking it all) that she manages to become a queen herself. 19th century girl power. That’s where the new movie comes in.

Must make an Alice quiz. Come back tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to Chris Adam’s guest blog series on Bits n Bobs, Mirrors/Through the Looking Glass. He’s announced it today, and the series is to begin tomorrow.

Trippin out
Spinning around
I’m underground
I fell down
Yeah I fell down

I’m freaking out, where am I now?
Upside down and I can’t stop it now
Can’t stop me now, oh oh

I, I’ll get by
I, I’ll survive
When the world’s crashing down
When I fall and hit the ground
I will turn myself around
Don’t you try to stop me
I, I won’t cry

I found myself in Wonderland
Get back on my feet, on the ground
Is this real?
Is this pretend?
I’ll take a stand until the end

I, I’ll get by
I, I’ll survive
When the world’s crashing down
When I fall and hit the ground
I will turn myself around
Don’t you try to stop me
I, I won’t cry

I, I’ll get by
I, I’ll survive
When the world’s crashing down
When I fall and hit the ground
I will turn myself around
Don’t you try to stop me
I, and I won’t cry

song of the week englisch lernen mit liedern

Room full of testosterone

Anne — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:39:14 +0000

Looking for sitcom scenes for a grammar exercise on reported speech (yeah, really), I wound up spending the morning watching selections from “Two and a Half Men“. Didn’t find a scene that works perfectly for that purpose, perhaps because they’re all so good it’s hard to cut them short. The scene I’m using – it’s short, the situation is clear, the language is easy – is just a bit mysogynist: Thinking a woman doesn’t even know how to do a pregnancy test? Oh, come on, give me a break! But it’ll do. (And I’m still laughing.) The exercise is making a straightforward summary of the dialogue, viz: He told him that… He asked her what… She told him she was… He said she should… She said she was… He told her to… She said she couldn’t… etc. Should work.

But the series certainly isn’t misogynist overall. I’m a big fan. And in my video trawling session this morning I found this one scene that may be atypical, but it’s just so incredibly, unbelievably, extraordinarily good. Sean Penn, Elvis Costello and Harry Dean Stanton join Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer in a support group exclusively for burnt out tough guys, getting softer with age. For the aging tough guys in my life. You rock.

Kathryn Bigelow

Anne — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:12:47 +0000

The Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker won best picture on Sunday at the Oscars, and Kathryn Bigelow won best director. Kathryn Bigelow on filming her character studies: “Hurt Locker’s about humanity. It’s about friendship and comeraderie in an absolutely hellish environment, and I think that’s universal, that’s not necessarily gender specific. I’m making a movie about a conflict that is still ongoing. And I think it’s important to be as accurate and authentic and factual and reality-based as you possibly can.” She sounds very nice and clear-headed. Have any of you seen this film?

Grammar Guru: Ugh, renovation!

Anne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:58:46 +0000

I hate renovating, and try to avoid it every year. So both of these options are nothing I’d look forward to. But they might be necessary. Which one uses correct grammar?

If we were to renovate our flat, I’d have to take a week off.
If we would renovate our flat, I’d have to take a week off.

Do any of you have to make changes around the house this year?

OK Go: This Too Shall Pass

Anne — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:48:15 +0000

The new OK Go video doesn’t have them dancing. Instead, it’s all a fantastic machine of falling dominoes and rolling marbles and levers moving handles to open latches, tipping seesaws that release springs to shoot balls into the air that, falling, trigger further chain reactions, like water running through tubes and pouring into vessels that in turn drop to tug on strings that draw back curtains…. Is any human power at all going into the machine after that initial push? Do you like any specific parts of the machine especially? I love the final shot (hehehe). Thanks Christian (via Kai Müller/stylespion.de). 3.279.913 views at posting.

You know you can’t keep lettin’ it get you down
And you can’t keep draggin’ that dead weight around
If there ain’t all that much to lug around
Better run like hell when you hit the ground
When the morning comes
You can’t stop these kids from dancin’
Why would you want to?
Especially when you’re already gettin’ yours
‘Cause if your mind don’t move and your knees don’t bend
Well don’t go blamin’ the kids again.
When the morning comes
Let it go, this too shall pass
(You know you can’t keep lettin’ it get you down)
(No, you can’t keep lettin’ it get you down)

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs over the course of several months.

PS: Sorry, editing in the making of:

extra viral song video of the week – englisch lernen mit liedern