Sean Lock
Sean Lock (22 April 1963 – 16 August 2021) was an English comedian and actor. He began his comedy career as a stand-up comedian and in 2000 he won the British Comedy Award, in the category of Best Live Comic, and was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show '' 8 Out of 10 Cats'' from 2005 to 2015, and on '' 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown'' from 2012 until his death in 2021. Lock frequently appeared on stage, television and radio. His routines were often surreal and delivered in a deadpan style. He also wrote material for Bill Bailey, Lee Evans and Mark Lamarr. Lock was voted the 55th-greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's ''100 Greatest Stand-Ups'' in 2007, and he was upgraded to 19th in the updated 2010 list. He was a frequent guest on other panel shows, including BBC's '' Have I Got News for You'', '' QI'' and '' They Think It's All Over''. Early life Lock was born in Chertsey, Surrey, on 22 April 1963. His ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Hexagon
The Hexagon is a multi-purpose theatre and arts venue in Reading, Berkshire, England. Built in 1977 in the shape of an elongated hexagon, the theatre is operated by Reading Borough Council under the name "Reading Arts and Venues" along with South Street Arts Centre and Reading's concert hall. Architecture The theatre was built in 1977 by Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall (RMJM), who also built the adjacent Civic Centre. The original design featured a proscenium but no fly tower. Upon opening, the venue was comparable to Derby's Assembly Rooms—which also opened in 1977—but the Hexagon was described as architecturally and acoustically superior. As the building was designed to operate as a multi-use venue, the arena-style seating was used to avoid limited visibility. This proved useful for sports such as snooker or boxing, but rendered a number of seats unusable during performances that utilised the proscenium. A review of the Hexagon's architectural design in a 1979 e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lee Evans (comedian)
Lee John Martin Evans (born 25 February 1964) is an English film and television actor stand-up comedian, musician, singer, and writer. He co-founded the production company Little Mo Films with Addison Cresswell, who was also his agent prior to Cresswell's death in December 2013. Evans became one of the United Kingdom's most popular stand-up comedians, with his ''Roadrunner'' tour grossing £12.9 million. He made his cinema debut with the Jerry Lewis comedy ''Funny Bones'' (1995), earning the Paris Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and went on to appear in the Hollywood films ''The Fifth Element'' (1997), '' Mouse Hunt'' (1997), '' There's Something About Mary'' (1998), ''The Ladies Man'' (2000), and '' The Medallion'' (2003). He lent his voice to Zippo the Troodon in the Emmy-nominated miniseries ''Dinotopia'' (2002) and made a notable departure from comedy with a leading role in the Irish thriller film '' Freeze Frame'' (2004). In 2008, the DVD of Evans' ''Big – Live ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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English Studies
English studies (usually called simply English) is an academic discipline taught in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in English-speaking countries; it is not to be confused with English taught as a foreign language, which is a distinct discipline. An expert on English studies can be called an Anglicist. The discipline involves the study and exploration of texts created in English literature. English studies include: the study of literature (especially novels, plays, short stories, and poetry), the majority of which comes from Britain, the United States, and Ireland (although English-language literature from any country may be studied, and local or national literature is usually emphasized in any given country); English composition, including writing essays, short stories, and poetry; English language arts, including the study of grammar, usage, and style; and English sociolinguistics, including discourse analysis of written and spoken texts in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science-fiction Film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema, when Georges Melies' ''A Trip to the Moon'' (1902) employed trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature length in the genre) was the film ''Metropolis'' (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick's landmark '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968), the science fiction film genre was taken more seriously. In the late 1970s, big-budget science fiction films filled with special effects became popular with audi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky ( rus, Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films explore spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory. Tarkovsky studied film at Moscow's VGIK under filmmaker Mikhail Romm, and subsequently directed his first five features in the Soviet Union: ''Ivan's Childhood'' (1962), '' Andrei Rublev'' (1966), '' Solaris'' (1972), ''Mirror'' (1975), and ''Stalker'' (1979). A number of his films from this period are ranked among the best films ever made. After years of creative conflict with state film authorities, Tarkovsky left the country in 1979 and made his final two films abroad; '' Nostalghia'' (1983) and '' The Sacrifice'' ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched (starting on 21 April 1964), and from 1 July 1967, Europe's first television channel to broadcast regularly in colour. It was envisaged as a home for less mainstream and more ambitious programming, and while this tendency has continued to date, most special-interest programmes of a kind previously broadcast on BBC Two, for example the BBC Proms, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Art House Films
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content". Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films". These qualities can include (among other elements): a sense of social realism; an emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director; and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar David Bordwell describes art cinema as "a film genre, with its own distinct conventions". Art film producers usually present their films at special theaters (repertory cinemas or, in the U.S., a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Woking
Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in northwest Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'' and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Saxon landowner. The earliest evidence of human activity is from the Paleolithic, but the low fertility of the sandy, local soils meant that the area was the least populated part of the county in 1086. Between the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries, new transport links were constructed, including the Wey and Godalming Navigations, Wey Navigation, Basingstoke Canal and South West Main Line, London to Southampton railway line. The modern town was established in the mid-1860s, as the London Necropolis Company began to sell surplus land surrounding Woking railway station, the railway station for home construction, development. Modern local government in Woking began with the creation of the Woking Local Board of Health, Local Board in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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County Armagh
County Armagh (, named after its county town, Armagh) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the southern shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population of about 175,000. County Armagh is known as the "Orchard County" because of its many apple orchards. The county is part of the historic province of Ulster. Etymology The name "Armagh" derives from the Irish word ' meaning "height" (or high place) and '. is mentioned in '' The Book of the Taking of Ireland'', and is also said to have been responsible for the construction of the hill site of (now Navan Fort near Armagh City) to serve as the capital of the kings (who give their name to Ulster), also thought to be 's ''height''. Geography and features From its highest point at Slieve Gullion, in the south of the county, Armagh's land falls away from its rugged south with Carrigatuke, Lislea and Camlough mountains, to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cullaville
Cullaville or Culloville ( or McCulloch's ville or town is a small village and townland near Crossmaglen in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It is the southernmost settlement in the county and one of the southernmost in Northern Ireland, straddling the Irish border. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 400 people. The village is on a busy crossroads on the main Dundalk to Castleblaney road (the A37 in Northern Ireland and N53 in the Republic); three of the roads lead across the border and the fourth leads to Crossmaglen. History Events On 29 March 1922, during the Irish War of Independence, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers ambushed and shot dead two Royal Irish Constabulary men (Patrick Earley and James Harper) at Ballinacarry Bridge, Cullaville. Cullaville, along with the rest of South Armagh, would have been transferred to the Irish Free State had the recommendations of the Irish Boundary Commission been enacted in 1925. On 2 September 1942, during the Northe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Building Industry
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and comes from Latin ''constructio'' (from ''com-'' "together" and ''struere'' "to pile up") and Old French ''construction''. To construct is the verb: the act of building, and the noun is construction: how something is built, the nature of its structure. In its most widely used context, construction covers the processes involved in delivering buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities and associated activities through to the end of their life. It typically starts with planning, financing, and design, and continues until the asset is built and ready for use; construction also covers repairs and maintenance work, any works to expand, extend and improve the asset, and its eventual demolition, dismantling or decommissioning. The constructi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |