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Educational channel devoted to learning English language. Channel in Russian: @violaschool VK: https://vk.com/violaschool Our chat: @violachat Feedback: @tonyprots
It was an irresistable temptation to post it. We did, as you see.
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Australia is "a bit" dangerous for newbees. Some jokes related to this "fact"...
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At night when people are driving, whether in a well-lit city or on a dark suburban street, their faces are surprisingly well lit. Next time you're out on the road after dark, check out the passengers in the front seat and see how easily you can make out their facial expressions. Then go home and watch a movie, and you'll notice that it's much easier. Why? Most often the solution is a light bar placed strategically on the dashboard pointing at the passengers, creating, once you notice it, a very artificial and inexplicable light source on the actors' faces.
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...Having worked on countless TV shows, movies and commercials, there are many things I've always found comical, even when I (sometimes) understand the reasoning. Here are ten of my favorites (but I could easily add ten more).
The first item is the easiest to understand, because the alternative is extremely difficult to pull off effectively, requiring the combined skills of the crew and the actors (though some directors, Robert Altman chief among them, have successfully pulled it off, or at least part of it). Most others... not so much.
Real conversations are nothing like most movie conversations. In real life we talk over each other, interrupt each other, go completely off track and have to be reminded (or not) what we were talking about. We stop and start and repeat ourselves and say "ah" and "um" and "so" and "you know" and "like" way more than characters do, and we take very long pauses while contemplating replies, or while (rudely) answering calls, checking emails or texts or surreptitiously sexting lovers. And unless those activities are germane to the plot or character development, you won't see them in a TV show or movie. In other words in real life we "waste" a lot of dialogue and time that would double the length (and cost) of a typical film.
To get an idea of how different they are, read a few pages of any screenplay from a Hollywood movie with a high-stakes trial, like A Few Good Men (easy to find online) and then read at a transcript from a real trial. Oddly the screenplay will be very easy to follow and understand while the transcript will be very difficult to read fluidly, or even to piece together without hearing it. Also, a lot of activity will be crammed into any page of a script, while a randomly selected page of transcript will be unlikely yield any discernible progression at all
When was the last time you hit the button for the elevator and the door opened within 3-5 seconds (at which point, if it doesn't, you angrily hit the button repeatedly and ask what's taking the damn elevator so long?). In general everything happens much faster in the movies, especially where technology is concerned. Test results that take weeks in real life take hours in movies, information that is extremely difficult to track down is readily available with a few clicks on a computer. Similarly, surveillance video in movies is much easier to track down and enhance—and is much more likely to yield crucial information—than it is in real life. Likewise with wiretaps and phone conversations, hours of which are usually required to yield potentially valuable evidence. You can only zoom in so far before you're staring at a mess of pixels, and that's assuming there was enough light or the subject is even remotely in focus.
Real people don't usually turn off the TV the moment the story about them is finished. They do this in movies because leaving it on would require additional production to appear on the TV, which is money not necessarily well spent. This is one I believe can easily be avoided by simply extending the news story long enough to allow the scene to cut away or leave us staring at the befuddled viewer, and the cost of having the fake anchors babble about fake news or the weather a few minutes longer would be nominal. Another option would be to simply record audio from the TV, which would be a good project for an intern and be just as effective if the camera pans away from the screen.
Phrasal verbs related with films are coming out.
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The reading week was full of captivating stuff, that's why it's quite hard to jump to any other topic. We will definitely return to books in the future.
However, it's time to start a new topic. It is COSMOS!
A great infographic by Jason Powers is attached!
Hey! We have found a great list of signs that prove that you are a book worm. Here you are:
1. You find yourself dropping character names into everyday conversation as if they're your friends.
2. You regularly say no to social engagements to read.
3. You've spent hours in a bookstore.
4. You are a member of two or more book clubs.
5. You're super tired at work because you stayed up way too late reading just one more chapter, and then another.
6. You're always making your partner or friends crazy by reading aloud lines from the book you're reading.
7. You can't wait for the weekend to have two days of uninterrupted reading time.
8. You look forward to long flights because you can get some good reading in.
9. You get more than a little defensive of your favorite authors.
10. You lug around paperback and hardcover books in your purse all day.
11 Reading causes you to miss your bus stop on a regular basis.
12 You've been late to work to finish a book.
13. You've slept on the couch to keep reading when your boyfriend wants to go to bed.
14. You know the book will be better than the movie before it's out.
15. You bring books to parties.
16. You've read more books than seen movies in the last month.
17. You've sunk into a state of depression after finishing a really good book (also called a "book hangover").
18. You avoid going to lunch with co-workers so you can read while you eat instead.
19. You've ended friendships over book disagreements.
20. There are literally piles of books in every room of your house.
21 You bring home way more library books than you can actually read before they're due.
22 You spend a majority of your vacation time reading, and that includes your honeymoon.
23. You will kick someone out of book club if they don't read the book.
24. You've made your love of reading permanent.
25. Your Pinterest boards are basically a visual library.
26. You always have at least two books ready to read once you finish one.
27. You get excited when a book you love is over 1,000 pages because you know it will last longer.
28. You don't want to reread books because they won't count toward your Goodreads goal.
29. Almost every day you think at one point "I'd rather be reading."
30. You literally wear your love of reading.
31 You start to ration your reading when a book you love nears the end.
32 You email publishers asking for advance copies of books.
33. You read in the car even if you get carsick.
34. Your friends know which bookstore is your favorite because you spend so much time there.
35. You spend more time on Goodreads than Facebook.
36. You won't give up your seat on the subway because you can't read if you're standing in a packed train.
37. You put your Kindle in a Ziplock bag so you can read it in the bath/swimming pool on vacation.
38. When the ending of a book is bad, you take it really personally.
39. You know that e-books will never replace real books.
40. Sometimes you sound like a broken record trying to convince your friends to read your favorite book.
41 Nothing beats when the books you've been dying to read are in stock at the library.
42 You will forget to eat, sleep, and breathe when you get to the climax of a book.
43. People try to tell you to "get out more." They just don't understand.
44. You have multiple editions and versions of your favorite books.
45. Your second-favorite activity after reading is organizing your bookshelves.
46. You ALWAYS have a book on you . . . just in case.
47. Reading while walking has caused some near disasters.
48. You've yelled at loved ones for bothering you while you were reading.
49. You've definitely fallen in love with characters in a book before.
50. When you complain about your arms being sore, people assume you've been working out. But you know the truth.
via http://www.popsugar.com/
Do you like stories? So do we. Here you are, this is the story "The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham in 1933).
The speaker is Death.
"There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said: "Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me". The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra".
So, what's it like to live in Australia?
On Quora.com Peter Baskerville, Australian citizen who lived there for over 50 years, answered it in this way:
"In my opinion, as a descendant of the European colonists, Australia today is a paradox that in isolation and due to the 'tyranny of distance' has created in the past 200+ years, a world of strange harmonious conflicts. Modern Australia is often misunderstood by the rest of the world but it makes perfect sense to us Aussies that live there.
Here what Australia is like to me ...
YOUNG yet OLD - for starters, while we are one of the youngest declared nations on earth, yet we inhabit its oldest land form and imbibe a heritage that is recognized as containing the world's oldest living cultural history
LARGE yet SMALL - also, while Australia is earth's largest island it is also the world's smallest continent
FLOOD yet DROUGHT - at the exact same time, a state of emergency can exist for raging floods in one part of the country and debilitating drought in another
SPACE yet CONGESTED - we have a huge land of 8 million sq km on which to build our homes, yet 85% of us huddle together in the south-east corner of the map and live in urban areas located less than 50 km from the coast with development only covering 0.3% of the land mass
CHAMPIONS yet UNDERDOG - we love our champions and world-winning sport teams and individuals yet we have a genuine soft spot for the 'underdog' and will support them in every contest
PROUD yet SUSPICIOUS - we are extremely proud to be Aussies yet we are inherently anti-authority, can't understand rampant nationalism nor patriotism and are suspicious of politician's motives who promote it zealously
RESPECT yet 'BOO' - we respect and honor our politicians when they are on the world stage yet 'boo' them as a tradition, when they choose to show their face at our sacred sporting events
VICTORY yet DEFEAT - our armed forced have won many gallant victories in global conflicts, yet we choose to celebrate and honor our greatest defeat - the ANZACs at Gallipoli
BUSH yet CITY - our identity is indelibly linked with the legends of the bush, yet 90% of us actually live in the cities and have never lived in the bush
MANY yet FEW - we call everyone mate even though we each only have a few
SINGLE yet MULTI - we consider Australians a single nationality, yet 20% of us were born overseas and 40% of us have mixed cultural origins
SERIOUS yet LAUGH - while we take ourselves seriously, it is each Aussie's 'god-given' job (or his best mate's) to declare with great merriment their own stupid acts
DEMOCRACY yet MONARCHY - 'we the people' democratically elect our government, yet we accept the fact that the Australian Head of State is a birth determined monarch who lives in another country
ENGLISH yet STRINE - we were blessed with an inherited global 'lingua franca' in the English language, yet we chose to develop our own peculiar 100,000 word lexicon in Strine that can only really be understood by people from this land down-under
LOSS yet WIN - two remembrance days at either end of the emotional spectrum stop the nation of Australia (1) honoring the loss of 8,000 young Australians on the beaches of Gallipoli on ANZAC day 25th April 1914 and (2) honoring the winner of a 150 year old horse race known as the Melbourne Cup which is run on the first Tuesday in November
DELICACY yet UNEATABLE - our national culinary delicacy and icon (Vegemite) is uneatable to most everyone else on the planet".
We have been thinking over a new topic for quite a while. There already have been such themes as music, films and reading. We are fed up with leisures and open the week of Australia!
Frankly speaking, Australians don't speak English - they speak Australian English.
Luckily, we have found a vocabulary list for you. Enjoy, and never mess those phrases up!
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words/british_australian_english.htm
Yeah, that was a long post. Cheer up, guys, next there will be only funny pics.
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To most people—at least in my world—"a drink" offered at someone's home or office doesn't mean a glass of whiskey in a rocks glass and take 6 seconds to produce. I could easily spend 15 minutes mixing even a vodka and tonic as I try to track down a fresh bottle of tonic, cut a lemon and eat some peanuts while talking. At a bar it's worse, as no one ever gets mixed drinks. It's "a drink" or "a beer", and I don't remember the last time I was with anyone under 60 who didn't specify what kind of beer he wanted, let alone a bartender who didn't rattle off the options. Again, I can think of many ways to improve this nonsense, number one being some valuable product placement and having someone order a Sam Adams, Jack and Coke or Grey Goose on the rocks. Or at least a vodka and tonic, gin and tonic or dark and stormy.
People who come to your house to visit in the movies are much more impatient than real people, ringing doorbells and knocking again after waiting about two seconds for someone to open the door.
Streets are always wet. Unless you're in the industry it's unlikely you've ever noticed this but in most big movies (and all car commercials) a large water truck is always on hand to spray down the streets that appear in the shot. Why? Dry streets look dull and dusty, while wet ones reflect light and shimmer. Obviously you don't see this in westerns, but watch a typical movie in an urban setting and pay attention to the streets. One can only assume it rains a lot more in movieworld, albeit not when the cameras are rolling.
The odds of highly defined shadows being evident on the sidewalk during a bad downpour are very low, unless of course the rain is coming from rainmakers placed off frame on an otherwise sunny day, as it almost always is in movies. Oddly, these shadows are generally muted by large scrims that mute harsh sunlight and serve to even the light and allow the cinematographer to direct the artificial lights where he wants them without interference by passing clouds or darkening skies. But when it rains, in most cases the scrims would have to be placed too high and be too big to be practical and so natural sunlight is allowed to rain down on the scene along with the fake rain, unless the cinematographer got lucky and shoots on an overcast day, which is very difficult to predict and plan for.
No one finishes a meal, at restaurants or at home. There are notable exceptions, like a Soprano's-type movie where gorging on big meals is key to the development of the characters. But watch a typical drama or family scene and notice how frequently people leave the table without coming close to finishing, and, if you really pay attention, how rare it is to see anyone actually eat and swallow anything. The reasoning here is simple and even comical. Assuming it takes 6 or 10 takes of a large dining scene—say Thanksgiving—no actor is capable of consuming 6 or 10 times an average serving. To remedy this, buckets are strategically placed beside each actor, and while they may take hearty bites of food and chew them realistically, the moment the director calls "cut", the food is spit into the buckets.
Next time you fly on a typical airliner, try to have a conversation with the person beside you without at least slightly raising your voice. And just for fun, place your iPhone in the seat beside you and record a few minutes of your dialogue. While the words might be discernible, much more prominent would be the noise generated by the deafening roar of the engines just outside the windows. Apparently in movieworld planes are much quieter.
Arkadia Getheren Moon from Quora tells us what some common illogical scenes that occur in films are.
Combat
If you punch someone in any area that contains bone, your hand is going to at least hurt. If you strike someone with a heavy object, momentum will be transferred. Combat training may improve your chances of landing or blocking a blow, but it doesn't make your bones stronger. And there's a limit to human stamina.
The distinct sound of cocking a pistol when any reasonable gun user would already have it cocked, especially in a situation where the sound of cocking a pistol is going to alert a target that you'd rather not be alerted. Bonus points for stupid if the pistol happens to be a semiautomatic.
People, portrayed as experienced gun users, who hold someone at gunpoint, being careful to remain in easy range of a duck-and-lunge. Hello? It's called a ranged weapon for a reason!
It's actually extremely rare that someone gets shot and proceeds immediately to a rapid and quiet demise, and if they do, it's either a heart/ascending aorta shot or a head/throat shot, both of which tend to splash about copious gouts of blood that somehow never appear on film. People who have been gutshot realistically take a very long, agonizing, bloody, hellish, screaming time to die. Reservoir Dogs portrayed this quite well.
Roving bandit gangs in post-apocalyptic thrillers that have numerous assault rifles in good working order, plus a worry-free attitude toward expending many cartridges. Clearly, their post-apocalyptic world includes a nearby factory, well-powered and well-stocked, churning out spare parts and ammunition.
Others
Water puts up more resistance the farther you drop before impact. Beyond about twenty metres, you may as well be dropping onto a solidly constructed wood floor. Also, attempting to swim while fully clothed is a bad idea — the wet clothes will weigh you down, slow you down, and wick heat away from your body, all very bad things when you're supposed to be swimming for your life.
When a man and a woman are lying in bed together, it always becomes clear that either the woman is terrifically modest about her breasts with a man she's just (by implication) had sex with, or the bed has some kind of special L-shaped sheet that comes up to a man's waist but a woman's armpits.
Somehow, bohemian art-school students always seem to live alone in very large apartments filled up with knickknacks. Generally, everybody in movies seems to have considerably more money than their visible means of support would cover.
We do our best so that you never have to walk out when our channel is concerned.
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We are starting a new topic.
It is FILMS!
Enjoy this great quote for now and we will share lots of incredible stuff later on!
@violaclub is doing its best to support you with high-quality English materials!
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Looks like the last post about Harry Potter got more than 4000 views. You are cute, guys, carry on!
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