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The National Engines
''Starlight Express'' is a 1984 British musical, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. It tells the story of a young but obsolete steam engine, Rusty, who races in a championship against modern engines in the hope of impressing a first-class observation car, Pearl. Famously, the actors perform on roller skates. ''Starlight Express'' is the ninth-longest-running West End show and the most successful musical in Germany, where it has been performed in a purpose-built theatre since 1988, holding the Guinness World Record for most visitors to a musical in a single theatre. Background ''Starlight Express'' has its roots in three abandoned projects: an animated TV series based on Thomas the Tank Engine, a novelty pop single, and an animated film based on Cinderella. In 1974, Lloyd Webber approached author Reverend W. Awdry about adapting Awdry's Thomas the Tank Engine stories as an animated TV series. Following the meeting, Lloyd Webber started composin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948), is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from '' Cats,'' "The Music of the Night" and " All I Ask of You" from ''The Phantom of the Opera'', "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from ''Evita'', and " Any Dream Will Do" from '' Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.'' In 2001, ''The New York Times'' referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him the "fifth most powerful person in British culture" in 2008, lyricist Don Black writing "Andrew more or less single-ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roller Skates
Roller skates, are shoes or bindings that fit onto shoes that are worn to enable the wearer to roll along on wheels. The first roller skate was an inline skate design, effectively an ice skate with wheels replacing the blade. Later the "quad skate" style became more popular, consisting of four wheels arranged in the same configuration as a typical car. Roller skating is a hobby, sport, and mode of transportation using roller skates. History While the first reported use of wheeled skates was on a London stage in 1743, the first patented "roller skate" was introduced in 1760 by Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin. They were hard to steer and stopping was difficult due to the fact that they did not have any type of braking mechanism and as such they failed to gain popularity. Merlin demonstrated his invention during a party in the city of Huy, during which he skated while playing the violin. In the 1840s, Meyerbeer's opera ''Le prophète'' featured a scene in which performers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydmonton Festival
The Sydmonton Festival is a summer arts festival presented in a deconsecrated 16th century chapel on the grounds of Sydmonton Court, the country estate of Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is in Hampshire, located approximately 85 kilometres southwest of London, and was established in September 1975. Its purpose is to introduce new works to a private audience of individuals connected with theatre, television, and film in order to determine their future potential and viable commercialism.Citron, Stephen, ''Sondheim & Lloyd-Webber: The New Musical''. New York, New York: Oxford University Press 2001. p. 15 Among the Lloyd Webber projects to receive their first public performances at the festival are ''Evita'', ''Variations'', ''Tell Me on a Sunday'', ''Cats'', ''Starlight Express'', ''Aspects of Love'', ''The Phantom of the Opera'', ''Sunset Boulevard'', '' Whistle Down the Wind'', ''By Jeeves'', ''The Beautiful Game'', '' The Woman in White'', ''The Likes of Us'', and '' Love Never Dies''. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'' (often colloquially known as ''Joseph'') is a sung-through musical with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the character of Joseph from the Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly; their first collaboration, ''The Likes of Us'', written in 1965, was not performed until 2005. Its family-friendly retelling of Joseph, familiar themes, and catchy music have resulted in numerous stagings. According to the owner of the copyright, the Really Useful Group, by 2008 more than 20,000 schools and amateur theatre groups had staged productions. ''Joseph'' was first presented as a 15-minute " pop cantata" at Colet Court School in London in 1968, and was published by Novello and recorded in an expanded form by Decca Records in 1969. After the success of the next Lloyd Webber and Rice piece, ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', ''Joseph'' received amateur stage productio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Development Hell
Development hell, development purgatory, and development limbo are media and software industry jargon for a project, concept, or idea that remains in development for an especially long time, often moving between different crews, scripts, game engines, or studios before it progresses to production, if it ever does. Projects in development hell generally have very ambitious goals, which may or may not be underestimated in the design phase, and are delayed in an attempt to meet those goals in a high degree. Production hell refers to when a film has entered production but remains in that state for a long time without progressing to post. The term can also apply generally to any project that has languished unexpectedly in its planning or construction phases, rather than being completed in a realistic amount of time, or otherwise having diverted from its original timely expected date of completion. Overview Film Film industry companies often buy the film rights to many popular nove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steam Whistle
A steam whistle is a device used to produce sound in the form of a whistle using live steam, which creates, projects, and amplifies its sound by acting as a vibrating system (compare to train horn). Operation The whistle consists of the following main parts, as seen on the drawing: the whistle bell (1), the steam orifice or aperture (2), and the valve (9). When the lever (10) is actuated (usually via a pull cord), the valve opens and lets the steam escape through the orifice. The steam will alternately compress and rarefy in the bell, creating the sound. The pitch, or tone, is dependent on the length of the bell; and also how far the operator has opened the valve. Some locomotive engineers invented their own distinctive style of whistling. Uses of steam whistles Steam whistles were often used in factories, and similar places to signal the start or end of a shift, etc. steam-powered railway locomotives, traction engines, and steam ships have traditionally been fitted wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overtone Singing
Overtone singing – also known as overtone chanting, harmonic singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and diphonic singing – is a set of singing techniques in which the vocalist manipulates the resonances of the vocal tract, in order to arouse the perception of additional, separate notes beyond the fundamental frequency being produced. From a fundamental pitch, made by the human voice, the belonging harmonic overtones can be selectively amplified by changing the vocal tract, i.e. the dimensions and shape of the resonant cavities of the mouth and human pharynx, the pharynx. This resonant tuning allows singers to create more than one pitch at the same time (the fundamental and one or more selected overtones), while usually generating a single fundamental frequency with their vocal folds. Overtone singing should not be confused with throat singing, in spite of the fact that many throat singing techniques comprise overtone singing. As mentioned, overtone singing involves the ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Television Pilot
A television pilot (also known as a pilot or a pilot episode and sometimes marketed as a tele-movie), in United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a television network or other distributor. A pilot is created to be a testing ground to gauge whether a series will be successful. It is, therefore, a test episode for the intended television series, an early step in the series development, much like pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity. A successful pilot may be used as the series premiere, the first aired episode of a new show, but sometimes a series' pilot may be aired as a later episode or never aired at all. Some series are commissioned straight-to-series without a pilot. On some occasions, pilots that were not ordered to series may also be broadcast as a standalone television film or special. A "backdoor pilot" is an episode of an existing series that heavily features supporting characters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Granada TV
ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its weekend counterpart. Granada's parent company Granada plc later bought several other regional ITV stations and, in 2004, merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc. Granada Television was particularly noted by critics for the distinctive northern and "social realism" character of many of its network programmes, as well as the high quality of its drama and documentaries. In its prime as an independent franchisee, prior to its parent company merging with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc, it was the largest Independent Television producer in the UK, accounting for 25% of the total broadcasting output of the ITV network. Granada Television was founded by Sidney Bernstein at Granada Studios on Quay Street in Manchester and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Cosgrove
Brian Joseph Cosgrove OBE (born 6 April 1934) is an English animator, designer, director, producer and sculptor, best known as the creator of the animated children shows '' Danger Mouse'' and ''Count Duckula''. In 2012 he won the BAFTA Special Award. Early life Born in Manchester, Cosgrove studied at Manchester College of Art and Design. It was there he met his future work partner Mark Hall. Career Cosgrove started his career by producing television graphics at Granada Television. He later joined Stop Frame Productions, which his partner at Granada Television, Mark Hall founded, where he worked on many public service films, commercials for companies like TVTimes and directed and produced animated shows such as ''The Magic Ball'' and ''Sally And Jake''. After Stop Frame Productions was shut down, Cosgrove and Hall founded Cosgrove Hall Films, where they produced some of the most well known animated children's shows and films in Britain, such as '' Danger Mouse'', ''Count ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reverend W
The Reverend is an honorific style most often placed before the names of Christian clergy and ministers. There are sometimes differences in the way the style is used in different countries and church traditions. ''The Reverend'' is correctly called a ''style'' but is often and in some dictionaries called a title, form of address, or title of respect. The style is also sometimes used by leaders in other religions such as Judaism and Buddhism. The term is an anglicisation of the Latin ''reverendus'', the style originally used in Latin documents in medieval Europe. It is the gerundive or future passive participle of the verb ''revereri'' ("to respect; to revere"), meaning "ne who isto be revered/must be respected". ''The Reverend'' is therefore equivalent to ''The Honourable'' or ''The Venerable''. It is paired with a modifier or noun for some offices in some religious traditions: Lutheran archbishops, Anglican archbishops, and most Catholic bishops are usually styled ''The Most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinderella
"Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. The protagonist is a young woman living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between around 7 BC and AD 23, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.Roger Lancelyn Green: ''Tales of Ancient Egypt'', Penguin UK, 2011, , chapter "The Land of Egypt" The first literary European version of the story was published in Italy by Giambattista Basile in his ''Pentamerone'' in 1634; the version that is now most widely known in the English-speaking world was published in French by Charles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
