New Zealand is a unique country, so it’s not surprising that its national day is unique too! New Zealand’s nearest big neighbour, Australia, is more than 4000 kilometres away. Because it is so isolated, it has some unique plants and animals, like the kiwi, a bird that can’t fly. People from New Zealand are often … Continue reading “Waitangi Day in New Zealand”
Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple was extremely unusual for having an almost entirely African-American cast. (Alice Walker, whose 1982 novel it is based on, was the first ever African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.) The film is an enduring classic, and the musical-theatre version of the story is now hitting … Continue reading “The Color Purple Returns”
While the Cartoon Museum in London is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the classic Aardman Animations film The Wrong Trousers, starring the inimitable Wallace and Gromit, a sequel to Chicken Run was released by Netflix on 15 December. A good opportunity for teachers to work on stop-motion animation films and familiar characters. Vocabulary and grammar … Continue reading “Wallace, Gromit and Chicken Run 2”
Bristol-based Aardman Animations made their reputation with short films and adverts using plasticine models brought to life with stop-motion animation. In 2000, they released Chicken Run, their first full feature-length film, a gargantuan task and a huge success. Twenty-three years later, they made a sequel! Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget picks up where the … Continue reading “Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget”
Poor Things, adapted into an award-winning film from the novel by Alasdair Gray, imagines a female Frankenstein’s monster who is fundamentally human, and her creator, who much like Dr Frankenstein, is perhaps more monstrous himself. Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous films such as The Lobster and The Favourite were far from mainstream, even if The Favourite won … Continue reading “Poor Things: Frankenstein Revisited”
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his leadership of the African American civil-rights movement. The Nobel committee has published a series of videos and a lesson plan for using them in class. Perfect for Martin Luther King Day, 17 January this year. You can download the lesson … Continue reading “Videos for Martin Luther King Day”
The West Side Story production that has just finished in Paris will be touring to Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen and Nantes in February and March. A full stage production, it is in English with French surtitles. The musical comedy by Bernstein, Sondheim and Robbins is a reworking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the Capulets and … Continue reading “West Side Story on Tour Around France”
The new Netflix TV series The Fall of the House of Usher is inspired by the famous Edgar Allan Poe story but in a pretty tangential way. The horror mini-series keeps the Usher twins Roderick and Madeline but far from being the last members of a dying family they are the heads of a family … Continue reading “Edgar Allan Poe 21st Century Reboot”
Gertrude Stein is probably best known for her “salon” in Paris where she nurtured artistic talents as diverse as Matisse and Braque, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. But her experimental, minimalist writing has been highly influential on generations of creatives right up to today, as is shown in the Gertrude Stein and Picasso: … Continue reading “Gertrude Stein Multi-talented”
The Boston Tea Party wasn’t a social event. It was an act of rebellion and it helped start the movement for the U.S.A. to become independent from Britain. In 1773, Boston was the capital of Massachusetts, one of 13 British colonies in the future United States. For several years, the British government, in financial trouble, … Continue reading “Starting a Revolution with Tea in Boston”
