My personal Hit-List of Disney movies

As I have recently written about the latest Disney movie, which sadly enough doesn't seem to be very successful, I thought of watching some of my personal favorites from my childhood again.



Here is my Hit-List of Disney movies which will always be nice to watch, no matter how old or young you are :)


The Lion King
The Beauty and the Beast
Toy Story
The little Mermaid
Finding Nemo
Mulan
Monsters
Mary Poppins
Robin Hood
Bambi
Dumbo
101 Dalmatians
Tarzan
Pocahontas
Winnie the Pooh
Ratatouille

... and many more :)

oh, and from the newer productions, my all time favorite:

Pirates of the Caribbean


 


To see the complete list of Disney movies, including the one's about to be released until 2015:
http://www.disneymovieslist.com/disney-movies.asp

Rabea

picture source:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/disney%20movies/StormyWolfBowler/DisneyMovies.png?o=11
http://www.tropical-paradise.net/pirate-of-the-caribbean.html

Movie flop to cost Walt Disney $200m

Walt Disney has said it expects to lose $200m (£126m) on its movie John Carter, This makes the movie one of the biggest flops in cinema history. 

 

The film deals with a military captain who is transported to Mars. The he discovers a wildly diverse planet whose main inhabitants are 12-foot tall green barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, who is in desperate need of a savior.

The film is based on a series of books written by the author of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The studio is now working on the second part of the trilogy, hoping that the next part will be more successful.

It is estimated that John Carter cost $250m to make and it is likely that Disney spent another $100m on marketing.

Mark Kermode, specialist who reviewed the film for bbc news said: "The story telling is incomprehensible, the characterisation is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it's a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long."

The film's director, Pixar's Andrew Stanton, had previously had great success with films such as Finding Nemo and Wall-E.

Personally I haven't seen this latest Disney production, but as the reviews are quite bad, I am not sure, if it is worth watching it now. As I myself somehow grew up with all those well known Disney classics such as Finding Nemo, The Lion King, Beauty and the beast, Toy Story, Mulan, Mary Poppins and, of course, Pirates of the Caribbean, it is sad to hear, that the newest movie doesn't seem to match the high standard Disney movies usually held. 

Hopefully the next movie produced by Disney will be as great as some previous ones were!

r.s.

picture source: 

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/movies-toto/2012/mar/9/john-carter-review/ 

Presentation in the American Corner of Siauliai Library

We 4 volunteers usually attend the English Club implemented by the American Corner of the Siauliai Public Library every Monday. At our last meeting, Merve and Ömer presented their home country, Turkey. Merve even cooked a traditional Turkish dish and we all enjoyed to drink Turkish tea together :)


 










Rabea

picture source:
http://www.savb.lt/amerikos-skaitykla/3162-angl-kalbos-klube-savanoriai-i-turkijos-pristat-savo-al

Who is the UK's best animated character of all time?

Paddington Bear has been elected to be the best animated character of all time in UK movie history.

Paddinton Bear

The cute bear was created by former BBC cameraman Michael Bond firstly for children books, and has now been announced to be the best animated character at the ninth British Animation Awards ceremony which took place in London.

The very first tale with Paddington was released in 1958 and until now the children books have been translated into 40 different languages and over 35 million copies have been sold all over the world. Only in 1978 it was, when the animated series of Paddintons adventures were first shown on TV.

And now in 2012 the cuddly bear  beat a shortlist of other distinguished characters including Super Ted, Aleksandr Meerkat and Wallace and Gromit to the title.

Wallace and Gromit

The Tale of the Three Brothers, part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, was awarded the best animated sequence in a film. 

The tale of the three brothers, part of a Harry Potter movie

Personally I am happy that the children story "The Gruffalo" has also won, as it is one of the favorite tales of my little sister. :)

The Gruffalo

 r.s.

picture sources:

http://www.kollewin.com/blog/read.php?3249&guid=0 

http://rebelescapades.blogspot.com/2011/04/adventure-5-there-like-paddington-bear.html 

http://sikufital.blogspot.com/2010/12/tale-of-three-brothers.html 

http://theoscarnominatedshortfilms.blogspot.com/2011/02/2011-nominated-short-gruffalo.html 

source of information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17382333 

Music overcomes borders

A Orchestra from North Korea has performed together with the Radio France Philharmonic in a concert in Paris. The concert itself was not more remarkable than any other concert played by any other high class orchestras, but the fact that a major part of the playing musician was from North Korea, one of the remaining dictatorships on this planet, is remarkable.
It is the first concert a North Korean Orchestra has ever played in Europe until now.

The concert is a remarkable cooperation between France, North and South Korean musicians

The cooperation of the French and North Korean orchestras was led by the South Korean conductor Chung Myung-Whun. 
He told the audience at the Salle Pleyel music hall that the concert featuring the Unhasu orchestra from North Korea and the Radio France Philharmonic from France showed that "music is bigger than borders".
In the first half of the concert, the 75 Unhasu musicians performed North Korean pieces, while in the following parts the joint ensemble performed works including Brahms's Symphony No 1 and Bizet's Carmen.

Chung, who is leading the Radio France Philharmonic since 2000, claimed that he is very proud and happy that he was able to realize this cooperation between the France and North Korea with him, citizen of South Korea as a conductor.

Speaking last week, Chung said he had been trying to organise such a concert - which comes as tensions remain high between the two Koreas - for 30 years.

"For practically all Koreans, outside the world of politics, there are not two Koreas - there's only one country, a family divided," he said.

r.s.

picture source:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/03/orchestras-from-north-korea-france-perform-concert-in-paris.html

for more information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-17379127 

e.

What is happening on the Costa Concordia now?

As I have written quite a lot about the sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia a few weeks ago, I was surprised when I came across strange news related to the Concordia again today which have nothing to do with the actual event of the sinking. Apparently, the ship bell, which became a symbol for the sunken cruise ship, has gone missing. Until a few days ago the bell with the engraved name "Costa Concordia", which weights around 30 kg, was still in the sunken vessel, around 8m deep in the water, has gone missing. 

It is likely that the bell of the Costa Concordia has been stolen

The Italian police has opened a case concerning the stolen or missing bell, and for now they announced that they see the possibility that one of the divers or a member of the technical staff working on the vessel has stolen the bell. 

The salvage of the cruise ship is still going on

 

If we don't take the mysterious disappearance of the ship bell into account, the salvage of the cruise ship has gone well so far. Specialist are still pumping out the fuel which the ship had on board and due to the good weather conditions there haven't been any major problems. 


More important than the missing of the ship bell is without doubt to find out what exactly led to the crash of the ship and who is responsible for it. The Italian police is still investigating and questioning the witnesses and consulting with experts. Apart from Captain Schettino, eight other ship's officers and Costa executives are currently officially under investigation.  



According to the latest information, there have been 4.229 people on the Costa Concordia at the night of the incident and 25 of them have lost their lifes. Sadly enough 7 of the passengers still could not be found and brought back to their families, which brings the total amount of victims to 32.




r.s.




picture source: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089052/Domnica-Cemortan-Was-Costa-Concordia-captain-Francesco-Schettino-trying-impress-ballerina.html 
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16155170 



more information:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/03/costa-concordia-captain-coastguards 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17317279

How to Become an International Correspondent for Student Publications

I have been looking for some news for our blog and I  found a very interesting web-site which gives high school students an opportunity to become international correspondents for student publications. So if you are high school student and you are interested in journalism this web-site is definitely for you.

worldyouthnews.org is a global online news project for high school students from all over the world. It is a project of iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) which is the world's largest non-profit network that supports collaboration between teachers and youth and enables them to use internet and other technologies in learning process.

The aim of this project is to help interested students to improve their skills in media field, to broaden their cross-cultural understanding providing and provide an important global youth perspective.

If you are high school student (14-19 years old) you can join this project as a reporter but first you need to complete (successfully) the World Youth News Reporter Certification Course. It's free of charge :)
[If you are interested in taking this course and getting involved in this project you can contact Anindita Dutta Roy at anindita@us.iearn.org and ask for more details.]

After completing the course your first story will be published on this website and you will receive a certificate from organizers.

I would definitely recommend to join this project.
For more information visit this website: http://worldyouthnews.org/ World Youth News

Manana