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Duma (2005 Film)
''Duma'' is a 2005 American family drama adventure film about a young South African boy's friendship with an orphaned cheetah, based on ''How It Was with Dooms'' by Carol Cawthra Hopcraft and Xan Hopcraft. It was directed by Carroll Ballard and stars Alexander Michaletos in his only film role, Eamonn Walker, Campbell Scott and Hope Davis. It was Carroll Ballard's final film before his retirement. The film was theatrically released on April 22, 2005, by Warner Bros. Pictures, Gaylord Films and C.O.R.E. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, but Warner Bros only gave the film a small release around the world (including a limited theatrical release in the US), resulting in earning $994,790 in worldwide box office. The film won the Family Feature Film at the Genesis Awards in 2006. Plot Set in the country of South Africa, the story begins with a cheetah cub being orphaned after his mother was killed by lions. The cub is found on the side of the road by a young b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carroll Ballard
Carroll Ballard (born October 14, 1937) is a retired American film director. He has directed six feature films, including ''The Black Stallion (film), The Black Stallion'' (1979), ''Never Cry Wolf (film), Never Cry Wolf'' (1983), and ''Fly Away Home'' (1996). Biography After serving in the United States Army, Ballard attended film school at UCLA School of Theater Film and Television, UCLA, where one of his classmates was Francis Ford Coppola. He made a well received student film called ''Waiting for May'' in 1964. His early credits include the documentaries ''Beyond This Winter's Wheat'' (1965) and ''Harvest (1967 film), Harvest'' (1967), which he made for the United States Information Agency, U.S. Information Agency. The latter was nominated for an Academy Awards, Academy Award. He directed a short subject called ''The Perils of Priscilla'' (1969), which was filmed from the point of view of a cat who escapes from home. ''Rodeo'' (1970) provided an intimate look at the 1968 N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrubland
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903. Shrubland species generally show a wide range of adaptations to fire, such as heavy seed production, lignotubers, and fire-induced germination. Botanical structural form In botany and ecology a shrub is defined as a much-branched woody plant less than 8 m high and usually with many stems. Tall shrubs are mostly 2–8 m high, small shrubs 1–2 m high and su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Sailing
Land sailing, also known as sand yachting, land yachting or dirtboating, is the act of moving across land in a wheeled vehicle powered by wind through the use of a sail. The term comes from analogy with (water) sailing. Historically, land sailing was used as a mode of transportation or recreation. Since the 1950s, it has evolved primarily into a racing sport. Vehicles used in sailing are known as sail wagons, sand yachts, or land yachts. They typically have three (sometimes four) wheels and function much like a sailboat, except that they are operated from a sitting or lying position and steered by pedals or hand levers. Land sailing works best in windy flat areas, and races often happen on beaches, airfields, and dry lake beds in desert regions. Modern land sailors, generally known as "pilots", can go three to four times faster than the wind speed. A gust of wind is considered more beneficial in a land sailing race than a favorable windshift. A similar sport, known as ice yachti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidecar
A sidecar is a one-wheeled device attached to the side of a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle, making the whole a three-wheeled vehicle. A motorcycle with a sidecar is sometimes called a ''combination'', an ''outfit'', a ''rig'' or a ''hack''. History Jean Bertoux, a French army officer, secured a prize offered by a French newspaper in 1893 for the best method of carrying a passenger on a bicycle. The sidecar wheel was mounted on the same lateral plane as the bicycle's rear and was supported by a triangulation of tubes from the bicycle. A sprung seat with back rest was mounted above the cross-member and a footboard hung below. A sidecar appeared in a cartoon by George Moore in the January 7, 1903, issue of the British newspaper '' Motor Cycling''. Three weeks later, a provisional patent was granted to Mr. W. J. Graham of Graham Brothers, Enfield, Middlesex. He partnered with Jonathan A. Kahn to begin production. One of Britain's oldest sidecar manufacturers, Watsonian, was fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okavango Delta
The Okavango Delta (or Okavango Grassland; formerly spelled "Okovango" or "Okovanggo") in Botswana is a swampy inland delta formed where the Okavango River reaches a tectonic trough at an altitude of 930–1,000 m in the central part of the endorheic basin of the Kalahari. All the water reaching the delta is ultimately evaporated and transpired and does not flow into any sea or ocean. Each year, about of water spreads over the area. Some flood waters drain into Lake Ngami. The area was once part of Lake Makgadikgadi, an ancient lake that had mostly dried up by the early Holocene. The Moremi Game Reserve, a national park, is on the eastern side of the delta. The delta was named as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, which were officially declared on 11 February 2013 in Arusha, Tanzania. On 22 June 2014, the Okavango Delta became the 1000th site to be officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Geography Floods The Okavango is produced by seasonal flood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Makgadikgadi Pan
The Makgadikgadi Pan (Tswana pronunciation ), a salt pan situated in the middle of the dry savanna of north-eastern Botswana, is one of the largest salt flats in the world. The pan is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikgadi, which once covered an area larger than Switzerland, but dried up tens of thousands of years ago. Recent studies of human mitochondrial DNA suggest that modern ''Homo sapiens'' first began to evolve in this region some 200,000 years ago, when it was a vast, exceptionally fertile area of lakes, rivers, marshes, woodlands and grasslands especially favorable for habitation by evolving hominins and other mammals. Location and description Lying southeast of the Okavango Delta and surrounded by the Kalahari Desert, Makgadikgadi is technically not a single pan, but many pans with sandy desert in between, the largest being the Sua (Sowa), Ntwetwe and Nxai Pans. The largest individual pan is about . In comparison, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swahili Language
Swahili, also known by its local name , is the native language of the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent litoral islands). It is a Bantu language, though Swahili has borrowed a number of words from foreign languages, particularly Arabic, but also words from Portuguese, English and German. Around forty percent of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including the name of the language ( , a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coast'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab slave traders and the Bantu inhabitants of the east coast of Africa, which was also the time period when Swahili emerged as a lingua franca in the region. The number of Swahili speakers, be they native or second-language speakers, is estimated to be approximately 200 million. Due to concerted efforts by the government of Tanzania, Swahili is one of three official languages (th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Michaeletos
Alexander Michaletos (born November 25, 1992) is a South African former child actor. Michaeletos (also credited as Michaletos) made his film and acting debut in the 2005 film ''Duma'', directed by Carroll Ballard. He stars as Xan, a twelve-year-old boy who has to let a cheetah called Duma go and acts with Eamonn Walker, Campbell Scott and Hope Davis Hope Davis is an American actress. She is known for her performances on stage and screen earning various awards and nominations including a Tony Award nomination, as well two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Award nominations. She .... External links * "Duma" Official Website"The Farm Inn" where Alexander lives South African male child actors Living people 1992 births People from Johannesburg South African male film actors {{SouthAfrica-actor-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genesis Awards
The Genesis Awards are awarded annually by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to individuals in the major news and entertainment media for producing outstanding works which raise public awareness of animal issues. Presented by the HSUS Hollywood Outreach program, the awards show takes place every March in California. The awards have honored such well-known personalities as Michael Jackson, Aaron Sorkin, Anderson Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Ellen DeGeneres, Jane Goodall, David E. Kelley, Paul McCartney, Arthur Miller, Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Jacques Cousteau and Ian Somerhalder, as well as journalists, film and documentary writers and producers, print and broadcast news outlets in the United States. Honorary awards include the Sid Caesar Award for television comedy, the Doris Day Award for music, the Brigitte Bardot International Award for non-American media, and the Gretchen Wyler Award for a celebrity using their fame to bring attention to animal issues. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reed Business Information
RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; decision-making tools; and organise exhibitions. It operates in 40 countries and serves customers in over 180 nations. It was previously known as Reed Elsevier, and came into being in 1993 as a result of the merger of Reed International, a British trade book and magazine publisher, and Elsevier, a Netherlands-based scientific publisher. The company is publicly listed, with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange, Amsterdam Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbols: London: REL, Amsterdam: REN, New York: RELX). The company is one of the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index, Financial Times Global 500 and Euronext 100 Index. History The company, which was previously known as Reed Elsevier, came into being in 1993, as a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variety (magazine)
''Variety'' is an American media company owned by Penske Media Corporation. The company was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added ''Daily Variety'', based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. ''Variety.com'' features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and features, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905. History Foundation ''Variety'' has been published since December 16, 1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater and vaudeville with its headquarters in New York City. Silverman had been fired by ''The Morning Telegraph'' in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50. As a result, he decided to start his own publication "that ouldnot be influenced by advertising." With a loan of $1,500 from his father- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
