Nepenthe

A new film suggests Shakespeare and Cervantes met in Spain and gave each other literary help. Did Shakespeare work as a Catholic spy during his 'missing years', between 1586 and 1592? Or did he simply lie low and teach in a Welsh school for a little extra money? Perhaps, as one school of thought has it, he joined a troupe of travelling players, or even enjoyed a prolonged holiday in Italy. Each of these rival theories has been proposed by historians and academics over the last decade alongside another serious proposition: that Shakespeare spent this time working for the English embassy in Spain. A new Spanish film has developed this solution to the biographical mystery and come up with a plotline that the producers argue is entirely feasible and will also shed fresh light on the playwright's creative process. William and Miguel, to be released in Britain later this year, stars Will Kemp, the British actor and former classical ballet talent, in the role of Shakespeare. The s...

Não perca OS MELHORES SKETCHES DOS MONTY PYTHON. Estreia dia 18 de Setembro no Auditório dos Oceanos no Casino Lisboa. Os Monty Python abriram os sentidos do mundo não só para a comédia, mas também para alguns temas importantes para as sociedades modernas: como trocar papagaios mortos; piadas enquanto armas mortíferas; canibalismo em agências funerárias; a presença de cangurus na Última Ceia. A UAU , o Casino Lisboa e os actores José Pedro Gomes, António Feio, Miguel Guilherme, Bruno Nogueira e Jorge Mourato prestam a devida homenagem aos génios que lhes ensinaram boa parte daquilo que sabem sobre comédia, sobre o lado bonito da vida e sobre a arte de evitar ser esmagado por um pé gigante vindo sabe-se lá de onde, numa sucessão imparável de sketches clássicos dos Monty Python, traduzidos e adaptados por Nuno Markl . O MELHOR DOS MONTY PYTHON!! (Nota: Este espectáculo não contém alces. Um responsável da UAU tentou incluí-los à força, mas já foi despedido.) Auditório dos Oceanos...

Four Italian management consultants have come up with a novel way to get ahead in business - read fewer textbooks and watch more films. In a new book, Cinema for Managers, the four consultants recommend 50 films they say showcase good business practice and highlight major issues. Editor Francesco Bogliari says all good films teach lessons about behaviour. Stephen Spielberg's The Terminal and Pedro Almodvar's film Volver are among those singled out by the authors. The four consultants, Francesco Bogliari, Sergio Di Giorgi, Marco Lombardi and Piero Trupia say that executives learn little from books. High-quality films, though, can offer lessons about problem-solving and teamwork as well as focusing on issues such as globalisation and diversity, Mr Bogliari said. Success stories Among the films on the consultants' list is Volver, the latest critically-acclaimed film by Spain's top director Pedro Almodovar. In the film self-made businesswoman Raymunda, played by...

The tribulations involved in the purchase meant our arrival was not as euphoric as it could have been. But on October 20 2006, my 76-year-old mother, my brother Duncan, my wife Katherine and I, and our children, Milo, aged six, and Ella, four, finally moved in. Though once a grand, 12-bedroom mansion, our new house, with its peeling paper and dodgy plumbing, needed urgent redecoration. But outside, looking out across seven miles of sunlit hills to the sea, we allowed ourselves a few big smiles. In the parkland around us were our new neighbours: five Siberian tigers, three African lions, nine wolves, three big brown European bears, two pumas, a lynx, four Asian short-clawed otters, two flamingos, quite a lot of owls and a Brazilian tapir called Ronnie. We also had vervet monkeys (who were fighting), several emu, some deer, a llama, a small reptile collection, including some large boa constrictors, and a tarantula. It was hard not to feel excited. (...) Tesco and Sainsbury's feed ...

The fax machine on 76-year-old Editor-in-Chief Syed Fazlulla's crowded desk is by far the most sophisticated technology in the room. It whizzes and burps forth a stream of scribbled notes from a correspondent in New Delhi. Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin. Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs -- writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art. India's News Calligraphers Do It on Deadline "I write because I love the language," says Rehaman Hussein, a m...

= £ 80, $ 161, € 118 See more of the gallery at The Guardian

Some 450,000 people pass through Dracula's castle in Transylvania each year, and now people not only have the chance to see it but also to own it. Prince Vlad the Impaler, the violent warlord who inspired Bram Stoker's "Dracula" character, is rumored to have stayed one night in his family's castle, officially called Bran Castle, back in the 1400s. It's been running as a museum per an agreement with the Romanian government that expires in 2009. The castle went up for sale on Monday, and although it's expected to go for upwards of $135 million it won't be sold to just anybody, as only buyers who "will treat the property and its history with appropriate respect" will be considered. And those who don't mind seeing bats flying around the ramparts at twilight, of course. Interested?

On the city streets of America, buses have been displaying a strange ad. No art, just white print on black, a slogan stranded between English and gibberish: "Yippee Ki Yay Mo—." Although the line is not spelled the way it's pronounced, it's still recognizable as the first half of a well-known action-movie one-liner. The ad is teasing the June 27 release of Live Free or Die Hard . Since the Die Hard franchise, and its catchphrase, have been absent from the screen for 12 years, a question arises: do the words "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" still matter? And why did they resonate in the first place? First heard in the original Die Hard in 1988, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker," is one of the many one-liners that have graced the action film, a body of work not known for its strong verbal tradition. Indeed, the delivery of the one-liner ranks among the most cherished rites of this ritualistic genre. Whether a quip, catchphrase, or callback to an earlier i...

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[The amount of time this took to get here...] How Brad Bird became the Stanley Kubrick of Animation , a SlideShow from Slate Magazine A Rat With a Whisk and a Dream FOR someone who works in a restaurant, watching a rat try to become a chef might seem like just another day at work. For movie audiences, a rat with culinary aspirations might be more appealing. Especially if it’s a rat that the chef Thomas Keller helped teach to cook. The rat is Remy, the animated French star of “Ratatouille,” the summer offering from Pixar Animation Studios that opens June 29. While earlier Pixar projects centered on child-friendly subjects like bugs and monsters, this one takes viewers deep into the world of French haute cuisine. The story is a classic underdog tale that leans heavily on Cyrano de Bergerac. Remy, a food-obsessed rat with an exceptional sense of smell, dreams of becoming a chef. To get there, he teams up with Linguini, a clueless garbage boy at Gusteau’s, a once-great Parisian restaur...

Hopper's defining screen moments Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Hopper was mostly in the background, as a member of the gang that plagues James Dean. But, in his first film role, he displayed his unnerving ability to be in the frame wherever the zeitgeist was playing loudest. Easy Rider (1969) His career faltered in the early 60s, but Hopper's 1969 counterculture classic came from nowhere to usher in New Hollywood. His debut direction - all contraband New Wave dislocation - was a call to arms. It's a shame everyone was so bombed that no one could agree who wrote it. Apocalypse Now (1979) The Last Movie (1971) shattered his career for 20 years. But Hopper was still apt to play the addled warm-up man to Brando's Kurtz, with a similar line in wayward monologues. Blue Velvet (1986) Post-rehab, his screen persona hardened, with Blue Velvet's Frank Booth a convincing audition for the ID parade of psychotics he went on to play. His S&M assaults on Isabella Rosselini made...

Test your knowledge The quiz, part one Was Amelie based on a Hollywood movie, or was it Alphaville, or even The Beat that My Heart Skipped? The quiz, part two Was Dear Diary or Django banned in the UK for extreme violence? The quiz, part three Was the "echo game" played in The House of Wax or House of Flying Daggers? The quiz, part four Was Bob Geldof in Quadrophenia or Pink Floyd: The Wall? The quiz, part five Which 'wild' movie is not about bikers?

in front of my window, a pedestrian area, brave and strong creatures that have their own stress, I'm sure, from neighbours walking their dogs. Urban rabbits!

Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don’t trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one. W.H. Auden, The Ascent of F6 To evacuate a warren is a tremendous business. Some refuse to go. (…) At the best, you’ve got a big bunch of hlessil trailing round in the open, probably with does and kittens tacked on. (…) - Of course, I never sat down and thought – said Fiver. – (…) I simply had the screaming horrors. (…) I shall never forget it – that and the night I spent under the yew tree. There’s terrible evil in the world. - It comes from men – said Holly. – All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed th...

A vigência desta obra literária é a premissa fundamental do documentário que penetra na obra, na vida e no tempo em que foi escrita. O que significavam na época os livros de cavalaria? Porque Cervantes não gostava de tais obras? O que é um fidalgo? Quem é Sancho Pança e o que representa exactamente no livro? Qual é o segredo do sucesso desta obra? Qual é o significado actual de D. Quixote? Estas são algumas das perguntas que constituem a trama principal deste documentário, que conta com a participação de intelectuais, escritores, historiadores e especialistas da obra, da vida e do tempo de Cervantes, tais como, Martín de Riquer, José Saramago, Günter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean Canavaggio, Felipe González, Carme Riera, Luis Rojas Marcos e Francisco Rico.