Portal:The arts

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. In the process, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. (Full article...)

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is a large oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1825 and now in the National Gallery of Scotland. Inspired by the Elgin Marbles and intended by the artist to provide a moral lesson on "the beauty of mercy", it shows a near-nude warrior whose sword has broken, forced to his knees in front of another near-nude soldier who prepares to inflict a killing blow. A woman, also near-nude, clutches the victorious warrior to beg him for mercy. Unusually for a history painting of the period, The Combat does not depict a scene from history, literature or religion and is not based on an existing artwork, but is instead a scene from the artist's own imagination. (Full article...)

Squirm is a 1976 American natural horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman in his feature-film directing debut, starring Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, R. A. Dow, Jean Sullivan, Peter MacLean, Fran Higgins and William Newman. The film takes place in the fictional town of Fly Creek, Georgia, which becomes infested with carnivorous worms after an electrical storm. Lieberman's script is based on a childhood incident in which his brother fed electricity into a patch of earth, causing earthworms to rise to the surface. (Full article...)

"Sardines" is the first episode of the first series of the British black comedy anthology series Inside No. 9. Written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, it premiered on BBC Two and BBC Two HD on 5 February 2014. In the episode, a group of adults play sardines at an engagement party. Rebecca, the bride-to-be, finds a boring man named Ian in a wardrobe; he introduces himself as a colleague of Jeremy, Rebecca's fiancé. The pair are subsequently joined by family, friends and colleagues of Rebecca and Jeremy. As more people enter the room and step into the wardrobe, secrets shared by some of the characters are revealed, with various allusions to incestuous relationships, child sexual abuse, and adultery. The humour is both dark and British, with references to past unhappiness and polite but awkward interactions. (Full article...)

Be Here Now is the third studio album by the English rock band Oasis, released on 21 August 1997 by Creation Records. The album was recorded at multiple recording studios in London, including Abbey Road Studios, as well as Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey. Although most tracks retain the anthemic quality of previous releases, the songs on Be Here Now are longer and contain many guitar overdubs. Noel Gallagher said this was done to make the album sound as "colossal" as possible. The album cover features a shot of the band members at Stocks House in Hertfordshire. It is the last Oasis studio album to feature founding members guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs and bassist Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan as the two left in 1999. (Full article...)

The Hitler Diaries (Hitler-Tagebücher) were a series of sixty volumes of journals purportedly written by Adolf Hitler, but forged by Konrad Kujau between 1981 and 1983. The diaries were purchased in 1983 for 9.3 million Deutsche Marks (£2.3 million or $3.7 million) by the West German news magazine Stern, which sold serialisation rights to several news organisations. One of the publications involved was The Sunday Times, who asked their independent director, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, to authenticate the diaries; he did so, pronouncing them genuine. At the press conference to announce the publication, Trevor-Roper announced that on reflection he had changed his mind, and other historians also raised questions concerning their validity. Rigorous forensic analysis, which had not been performed previously, quickly confirmed that the diaries were fakes. (Full article...)

Cullen House is a large house, about 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) south-west of the coastal town of Cullen in Moray, Scotland. It was the seat of the Ogilvies of Findlater, who went on to become the Earls of Findlater and Seafield, and it remained in their family until 1982. Building work started on the house in 1600, incorporating some of the stonework of an earlier building on the site. The house has been extended and remodelled several times by prominent architects such as James Adam, John Adam, and David Bryce. It has been described by the architectural historian Charles McKean as "one of the grandest houses in Scotland" and is designated a Category A listed building. The grounds were enlarged in the 1820s when the entire village of Cullen, save for Cullen Old Church, was demolished to make way for improvements to the grounds by Ludovick Ogilvy-Grant, 5th Earl of Seafield; a new village, closer to the coast, was constructed for the inhabitants. Within the grounds are a bridge, a rotunda and a gatehouse, each of which is individually listed as a Category A structure. (Full article...)

"Lisa the Vegetarian" is the fifth episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on October 15, 1995. In the episode, Lisa decides to stop eating meat after bonding with a lamb at a petting zoo. Her schoolmates and family members ridicule her for her beliefs, but with the help of Apu as well as Paul and Linda McCartney, she commits to vegetarianism. (Full article...)

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (4 March 1901 or 1903 – 22 June 1937), born Joseph-Casimir Rabearivelo, was a Malagasy poet who is widely considered to be Africa's first modern poet and the greatest literary artist of Madagascar. Part of the first Malagasy generation raised under French colonization, Rabearivelo grew up impoverished and failed to complete secondary education. His passion for French literature and traditional Malagasy oral poetry (hainteny) prompted him to read extensively and educate himself on a variety of subjects, including the French language and its poetic and prose traditions. He published his first poems as an adolescent in local literary reviews, soon obtaining employment at a publishing house where he worked as a proofreader and editor of its literary journals. He published numerous poetry anthologies in French and Malagasy as well as literary critiques, an opera, and two novels. (Full article...)

Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. Gilbert and Sullivan went on to become the most famous and successful artistic partnership in Victorian England, creating a string of enduring comic opera hits, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. (Full article...)

The Hearst Tower is a building at the southwest corner of 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, near Columbus Circle, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. It is the world headquarters of media conglomerate Hearst Communications, housing many of the firm's publications and communications companies. The Hearst Tower consists of two sections, with a total height of 597 feet (182 m) and 46 stories. The six lowest stories form the Hearst Magazine Building (also known as the International Magazine Building), designed by Joseph Urban and George B. Post & Sons, which was completed in 1928. Above it is the Hearst Tower addition, designed by Norman Foster and finished in 2006. (Full article...)

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often shortened to Captain Scarlet, is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company Century 21 for ITC Entertainment. It is the sixth Anderson series to be filmed using a form of electronic marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation" combined with scale model special effects. Running to thirty-two 25-minute episodes, it was first broadcast on ITV regional franchises between 1967 and 1968 and has since aired in more than 40 other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. (Full article...)

A Beautiful Crime is a 2020 crime fiction novel by the American writer and editor Christopher Bollen. It is Bollen's fourth novel and was written in 2018 during a residency in Paris. The novel was first published in the United States by Harper on January 28, 2020. (Full article...)

Hellraiser: Judgment is a 2018 American horror film written and directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, based on the characters created by Clive Barker. The tenth installment in the Hellraiser film series, the film stars Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris, Heather Langenkamp, and Paul T. Taylor, and centers on three police detectives who, investigating a series of murders, are confronted by the denizens of hell. The film expands the fictional universe by introducing a new faction of hell: the Stygian Inquisition. While the Cenobites offer sadomasochistic pleasures to humans that enter their dominion, the Inquisition processes the souls of sinners. Tunnicliffe plays the Inquisition's auditor, a prominent role in the film. (Full article...)

"Greatest Hits" is the 21st episode of the third season of Lost and 70th episode of the series. It was written by co-executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and directed by supervising producer Stephen Williams. The episode first aired on May 16, 2007, on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada. "Greatest Hits" was viewed by 12 million Americans and was well received by critics. Lost's editors received a Golden Reel Award nomination. (Full article...)