第三週 (電影) 救救菜英文

Film Review: English Vinglish 

10/9/2012 by Lisa Tsering

Indian screen legend Sridevi triumphs in a gentle, but affecting, story of a woman’s awakening self-respect. 

Fans of Indian cinema need no introduction to Sridevi, the star of more than 200 movies: admired for her sparkling comic timing, dancing prowess and acting chops, “Sri” ruled the marquee from the mid-‘70s to the early ‘90s before settling down to raise two daughters with her husband, producer Boney Kapoor.

It took a very special project indeed to lure this very special talent back to the big screen, and English Vinglish is it.

Directed and written by Gauri Shinde, the film depicts the transformation of Shashi, a meek, put-upon Indian housewife who speaks only Hindi, into a confident citizen of the world, over the length of a four-week crash course in English.

The Eros release, which enjoyed acclaim (and according to reports, a standing ovation) at the Toronto International Film Festival, is up against strong competition from the satire Oh 

My God and India’s foreign language Oscar submission, Barfi!, but its universal message — conveyed with wit and heart — is persuasive enough to draw a sizable audience nevertheless. 

Indeed, a recent San Francisco Bay Area screening found the audience packed with families and young children, a heartening prospect given the film’s positive message encouraging diversity and tolerance.

STORY: India Chooses 'Barfi!' for Oscars Foreign-Language Entry

Shashi is a dedicated mother and gifted cook, the wife of a busy executive in the western Indian city of Pune. Her laddoos (a golden, sweet snack ball) earn raves and she even runs a small catering business, but her family treats her like a servant. Her teenaged daughter treats her with contempt, while the casually masked cruelty of her husband’s words (Adil Hussain) cut her to the core: “My wife was born to make laddoos!” he gloats.

When Shashi is called upon to fly to New York City — solo — to help her sister arrange a niece’s wedding, she is terrified (look for Amitabh Bachchan in a short, but memorable, scene onboard her flight). Once in New York, the Hindi-speaking Shashi is faced with ever-mounting humiliations, in a series of beautifully mounted, yet squirm-inducing scenes.

It is at this point that Shashi realizes that her lack of English skills is holding her back, and so when she spies an ad for an English class on a passing city bus, she decides to sneak out of her relatives’ house and navigate New York City’s subways and buses to get there.

Her fellow international students include a Pakistani cab driver, a South Indian engineer, a Mexican nanny and a smitten French man (Mehdi Nabbou), also a cook, who tastes her laddoos and tells her, “You are an artist.” Shashi retorts, “When a man cooks, it’s an art. When a woman cooks, it’s just her duty.”

It’s no surprise that by the end of the film, Shashi will conquer her fears, but the route Shinde takes to get her there is distinctively Shashi’s. The image of the newly confident Shashi striding down a Manhattan street, a takeout coffee in hand and a trench coat belted over her sari, will make you smile days after you leave the theater.

There is a growing body of work that shows Indian female characters flexing their muscles: Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham; Deepa Mehta’s Water; the late Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked: A True Story, starring Aishwarya Rai; and Amol Palekar’s Anaahat/Eternity, starring Sonali Bendre, spring to mind. And the work of Indian female filmmakers like Chadha, Mehta, Mira Nair and most recently Zoya Akhtar (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) is always worth a look.

With English Vinglish, female director Shinde — known for her documentaries and commercials — brings her own lifetime of experience into the picture. “It is my way of saying ‘Sorry’ and ‘Thank you’ to my mother, and a tribute to women,” Shinde writes in the film’s press notes.

Ultimately, what make English Vinglish memorable are the small, step-by-step choices Shashi makes to transforms herself. Yes, there’s grit there, but it’s tempered with compassion and dignity. The way the character has been crafted by Shinde, and interpreted by Sridevi, is gloriously feminine, and uniquely Indian.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/film-review-english-vinglish-377518

Structure of the Lead:

WHO        Shashi, a Indian woman
WHAT     How did she learn English
WHY        her husband and daughter ridicule her because she coudln't speak English
WHERE  India and New York
WHEN    not given
HOW      she joined a English class

keyword:

1. lure 誘惑

2 mounting 羞辱

3 sneak out  偷偷溜走

4 navigate 導航

5 striding down 大步向前

6(gloriously)feminine(光榮的)女人的

第二週 朴謹惠密友干政

Ex-South Korean president Park Geun-hye arrested in corruption probe

   30 March 2017 Asia

Ousted South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been arrested and taken into custody over a corruption scandal that led to her dismissal.

The 65-year-old was driven to a detention centre south of Seoul after a court approved her arrest.

She is accused of allowing her close friend Choi Soon-sil to extort money from companies, including Samsung, in return for political favours.

Ms Park, who was removed from office earlier this month, denies the claims.

She is the third former president of South Korea to be arrested over criminal allegations, Yonhap reports.

The Seoul Central District Court earlier issued a warrant to detain Ms Park while she is investigated on charges of bribery, abuse of authority, coercion and leaking government secrets.

It followed a nearly nine-hour court hearing on Thursday that Ms Park attended.
"It is justifiable and necessary to arrest [Ms Park] as key charges were justified and there is risk of evidence being destroyed," the court said in a statement.

Live television footage showed a black sedan carrying her to the detention facility from the prosecutor's office where she had been waiting.

Despite the early hour, some 50 supporters, waving national flags and demanding her release, were at the gate to greet her, the AFP news agency reports.

Ms Park can be held for up to 20 days before being formally charged.

If convicted she could face more than 10 years in prison.

Ms Park lost her presidential immunity and was dismissed from her post when the constitutional court upheld a decision by parliament in December to impeach her.

Ms Choi is accused of using her presidential connections to pressure companies to give millions of dollars in donations to non-profit foundations she controlled.

Ms Park is alleged to have been personally involved in this, and to have given Ms Choi unacceptable levels of access to official documents.

Judges had said the former president had broken the law by allowing Ms Choi to meddle in state affairs, and had breached guidelines on official secrets by leaking numerous documents.

Ms Choi and Samsung's acting head Lee Jae-yong, also involved in the scandal, are being held in the same detention centre to where Ms Park has been sent. They are also being tried separately.

Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is loyal to Ms Park, is now the acting president and an election is to be held by 9 May.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39449681

Structure of the Lead:

WHO         Ex-South Korean president
WHAT      She has been arrested and taken into custody over a corruption scandal that led to her dismissal.
WHERE   south Korea
WHY         She is accused of allowing her close friend Choi Soon-sil to extort money from companies, and she also be is investigated on charges of bribery, abuse of authority, coercion and leaking government secrets.
WHEN     not given
HOW       not  given

Keyword:

1. custody (n.)拘留 監禁(+in/into)

2. dismissal (n.)免職 解除

3. political favours  政治利益

4. allegations (n.) 申述；主張

5. coercion (n.)強迫；高壓政治

6. justifiable (a.)可辯護的 

7. detention (n.)滯留；拘留

第一週 菲國掃毒(28)

The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs

Rishi Iyengar / Manila

Aug 25, 2016

Just hours earlier, the Philippines’ new President, 71-year-old Rodrigo Duterte, had given his inaugural State of the Nation address, in which he repeated the vow that saw him elected by a landslide in early May.

“We will not stop until the last drug lord ... and the last pusher have surrendered or are put either behind bars or below the ground, if they so wish,” said Duterte.

The director general of the Philippine National Police (PNP), Ronald dela Rosa, told a Senate hearing on Aug. 22 that 712 people had been killed in police operations in the seven weeks since the crackdown began, and that another 1,067 had died at the hands of vigilantes. By one account, there is official pride in the death toll.

Nobody can claim to be surprised. The carnage is exactly what Duterte promised. “All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you,” he said before his election, in April. A month later, when he was President-elect, Duterte offered medals and cash rewards for citizens that shot dealers dead.

“Do your duty, and if in the process you kill 1,000 persons because you were doing your duty, I will protect you,” he told police officers on July 1, the day after his inauguration. He was speaking at a ceremony installing dela Rosa, his loyal henchman, as the nation's top cop.

“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,” he was quoted as saying to another crowd that day.

And so the killing time began.

The Philippines is hardly alone. Executing people for drug-related offenses, judicially or otherwise, is characteristic of the region. According to a report last year by drug policy NGO Harm Reduction International, the only countries other than Iran and Saudi Arabia known to have executed drug traffickers since 2010 are all Asian: China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia.

Thailand conducted its own war on drugs in 2003 under then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the events then — more than 13,000 arrests, over 36,000 cases of people surrendering to police, and nearly 1,200 deaths in its first month — will feel eerily familiar to Filipinos.

Two decades earlier, a wave of extrajudicial executions took place in Indonesia under its autocratic leader Suharto. They came to be known as the petrus killings after the Indonesian acronym for penembak misterius (mysterious gunmen) and had as their supposed aim a reduction in crime. Thousands were murdered in the period between 1983 and 1985.

Now, it’s the Philippines’ turn, and Duterte's war may turn out to be the most ferocious yet. “This fight against drugs will continue to the last day of my term,” he said.

That day is six years away.

“I don’t care about human rights, believe me”

Duterte got elected because he promised to be tough on crime. But how bad is crime in the Philippines, and is reducing it worth the summary massacre that is now taking place?

The Philippines is not listed in all columns of this U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey of global reported crimes from 2003 to '14. But comparisons can be made using figures from a 2015 report issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority.

There were 232,685 cases of crimes against persons involving physical injury reported in the Philippines in 2014, for a population of 98 million. By comparison, the UNODC says there were, in the same year, nearly 375,000 cases of assault in the U.K., which, with a population of 64 million, has far fewer people.

In 2014, there were 10,294 reported cases of rape in the Philippines. But there were more than 30,000 cases in the U.K.; 12,157 in France (which has a roughly similar population to the U.K. at 66 million); and 6,294 in Sweden, for a population of just 9.5 million.

That same year, there were 52,798 reported robbery cases in the Philippines. That's about as many as there were in Costa Rica (52,126 cases) but Costa Rica, with 4.7 million people, has less than a 20th of the population of the Philippines, so the Philippine rate is much lower. The total is also far fewer than the 171,686 cases reported in Belgium (population 11.2 million).

Neither is firearm ownership high in the Philippines. According to the University of Sydney's School of Public Health, which researches the number of privately owned firearms worldwide, there are 4.7 guns per 100,000 people in the Philippines, putting it at a lowly 105th place in a list of 179 countries. Finland has 45.3 guns per 100,000 people, Canada has 30, and Australia has 15.

Unsurprisingly, while the Philippines can be a deadly place, it is not especially so. According to World Bank data, the Philippine rate of 9 intentional homicides per 100,000 people in 2013 makes it only slightly more dangerous than Lithuania (7) or Mongolia (7), and puts it on a par with Russia (9). The U.S. figure is 4.

In the five years from 2010 to '15, PNP figures show that total murders across the nation's top 15 cities averaged 1,202 a year. But many more people have already died in the first seven weeks of Duterte's drug war.

Duterte once vowed to kill his own children, if he caught them using drugs. Now he sanctions the killing of other people's children, on the grounds that drug use is unforgivable moral laxity, robbing men and women of their rectitude, and the country of its silver. The overlords of the Philippine drug trade, he claims, are all in China — the ultimate destination, allegedly, of the grubby funds that furtively change hands on street corners across the land.

But how bad is the Philippine drug problem? According to UNODC data, the highest ever recorded figure for the prevalence of amphetamine use (expressed as a percentage of the population aged 15 to 64) in the Philippines is 2.35. That is a high figure, but then the equivalent figure for the U.S. is 2.20, and the world's real amphetamine crisis is among Australian males, where the prevalence is 2.90.

When it comes to illicit opioid use, the Philippine prevalence rate is just 0.05, compared to 5.41 in the U.S., and 3.30 in Australia. For cocaine, the Philippine figure is only 0.03. In the U.K., it is 2.40, in Australia 2.10 and in the U.S. also 2.10.

In other words, the statistics show what any visitor to the country may easily see: Filipinos are not degenerates, who need to be protected from themselves, but are mostly a nation of decent, sober, law-abiding and God-fearing people. The most revealing Philippine statistic is this: 37% of Filipinos attend church on a weekly basis. Less than 20% of Americans do.

Nonetheless, Duterte has succeeded in convincing large numbers of his people that drug use constitutes such an emergency that the very existence of the nation is threatened, and that only his rule can save the Philippines. It's the oldest autocratic trick in the book.

“We’re on a slippery slope towards tyranny,” Philippine Senator Leila de Lima tells TIME.

A week after he took office, a poll conducted by Philippine research firm Pulse Asia showed that an astonishing 91% of Filipinos had a “high degree of trust” in Duterte. Among them are people like Ray Antonio Nadiera, a 33-year-old maintenance worker in the country’s second largest city Cebu, who says that by the time Duterte's campaign is over, “all the addicts will be straightened out.” In 

Manila's Pasig Line district, local resident Jamie Co says, “The people killed are the dirt of society. What Duterte’s doing, his war on illegal drugs, is right. It’s good.”

“In the opinion of many Filipinos, law and order is a major issue and previous administrations weren't effective or dedicated in addressing it,” Richard Javad Heydarian, a professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University, tells TIME in an email. Duterte, he says, “has a lot of political capital to dispense with.”

But that was before the bodies began to pile up. Now, less than two months later, many others are appalled at the forces that have been unleashed. There is also deep shock at the drug war's financial implications: Duterte has given huge funding boosts to the police and military by slashing the country's health budget by 25%, and reducing expenditure on critical sectors like agriculture, labor, employment and foreign affairs. On the other hand, the budget for the presidential office has increased tenfold, and now includes a provision of $150 million for “representation and entertainment.”

“Whether it’s state-sanctioned or not, I would say at the very least all of these killings are state-inspired,” says de Lima.

http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/?iid=sr-link1

Structure of the Lead:    

WHERE  Philippine

WHAT    The Killing Time:Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs

WHEN    when he was President-elect

WHY      drug use is unforgivable moral laxity, robbing men and women of their rectitude, and the country of its silver.

WHO      all the people who took drugs

HOW      not given

Keyword:

1.drug lord                毒梟

2.vigilantes               治安維持者

3.inauguration          就職典禮

4.firearm ownership火器(槍枝)所有權

5.prevalence rate    流行率

6. on the grounds     以...為理由

on the grounds of + N/ on the grounds that + S + V

阿里辭世

Muhammad Ali Funeral 2016 Event of the Year

Muhammad Ali Funeral 2016 Event of the Year – On June 3rd of 2016 the world lost the “Greatest”, Muhammad Ali.

Dec 30 2016

Boxing’s greatest icon had passed and the boxing world mourned. Of course, there were memories of Ali’s marvelous in-ring career and his bombast as an athlete. Also remembered was how Ali transcended beyond boxing to become a cultural icon that helped to change the world in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Notable too was the sharing of many personal and touching moments from throughout Ali’s life from people from all walks of life, revealing more about the man who was already one of the most public figures in modern times.

Younger people who perhaps did not witness Ali at the pinnacle of all his powers may recall his poignant 1996 appearance at the Olympic Games in Atlanta where a fading Ali, already visibly suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, lit the torch during the opening ceremonies.

Ali’s appearance at the games was the last time the entire world watched Ali while he was alive, and to many it seemed almost like a farewell from Ali to the world. For the next 20 years he never stopped being Muhammad Ali, but the ravages of Parkinson’s saw him in public less and less.

Muhammad Ali Funeral 2016 Event of the Year

Ali’s passing was obviously met with tears throughout the boxing world but if anyone thought that too much time had passed since his heyday and that he was starting to be forgotten, Muhammad Ali’s June 10th funeral showed how the image of Ali still resonates on a world-wide level.

On June 10th, 2016 the entire world stopped to pay their final respects to Ali. Around the world billions stopped to view the solemn procession, and the ceremonies in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky was attended by the boxing world, by celebrities and even heads of state as well as throngs of ordinary, everyday people all pausing to pay their respects.

Young and old alike all paid their respects to a man many called simply “The Greatest” as Ali stopped the world one final time before taking his rest.

When the world said good-bye to Muhammad Ali is your 2016 Event of the Year.

http://www.boxingchannel.tv/muhammad-ali-funeral-2016-event-year/

Structure of the Lead:
WHO      Muhammad Ali
WHAT    the entire world stopped to pay their final respects to Ali.
WHERE  in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
WHY      He is Boxing’s greatest icon.
WHEN   On June 10th, 2016
HOW     Around the world billions stopped to view the solemn procession, and the ceremonies in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky was attended by the boxing world, by celebrities and even heads of state as well as throngs of ordinary, everyday people all pausing to pay their respects.

Keyword:

1 funeral 葬禮

2 marvelous (a) 不可思議 令人驚嘆的

3 Parkinson’s Disease 帕金森氏症

4 ravages (n) 蹂躪 摧殘

5 heyday 全盛時期

6 resonates (v)使共鳴

7 solemn (a) 莊重 莊嚴的

英國脫歐

David Cameron Says He Will Resign As U.K. Prime Minister After Brexit Vote

The resignation casts Britain into further uncertainty following its referendum to leave 

the European Union.

Jun 24, 2016

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced he would resign his post on Friday morning, after his country voted to leave the European Union, adding political leadership to the United Kingdom’s growing list of uncertainties. Cameron promised to stay in office until October and help “steady the ship” before a new leader is chosen.

“On questions about the arrangements for how we are governed, there are times when we should ask the people themselves,” the Conservative Party leader said outside his prime ministerial home, 10 Downing Street. “The British people have asked to leave ... their will must be respected.”

Cameron, in power since 2010, had called the Brexit referendum of his own accord after promising conservative factions of his party in 2013 that he would hold such a vote if he won re-election last year. Thursday’s referendum badly weakened Cameron and means Britain will be the first country to withdraw from the 28-member EU.

“Now the decision has been made to leave, we need to find the best way,” an emotional Cameron said. “I will do everything I can to help. I love this country and I feel honored to have served it. I will do anything I can in future to help this great country succeed.”

Cameron had spent months advocating that citizens vote to remain in the union, and warned a decision to leave would drastically harm the economy. Voters ultimately spurned his appeals, with about 52 percent favoring Brexit.

“I held nothing back, I was absolutely clear in my belief,” he said. “The British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path.”

Cameron’s dire economic warnings appear to have been founded. After the BBC called the referendum, the British pound plummeted to a 31-year low, pushing down global stock prices and bewildering investors.

The prime minister said he would meet with the European Council next week to explain the decision and begin the process toward the ultimate exit of the U.K. However, Cameron said such talks would be best undertaken by a new leader.

“I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination,” he said.

Cameron had pledged before the vote to stay in office whatever the results. He had considered stepping down if 2014’s independence referendum in Scotland was successful, but the Scottish people ultimately decided to remain in the U.K.

Cameron had previously led the Conservative Party to a hearty electoral victory during last year’s election, unseating political opponents in what The Guardian called probably “the biggest surprise in a general election since 1945.”

 This story has been updated to include remarks from David Cameron’s resignation speech.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-cameron-resigns_us_576ca4a9e4b017b379f583e5http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-cameron-resigns_us_576ca4a9e4b017b379f583e5

Structure of the Lead:
WHO       British Prime Minister David Cameron
WHAT     He Will Resign As U.K. Prime Minister After Brexit Vote
WHERE  British
WHY       He do not think it would be right for him to be the captain that steers their country to its next destination
WHEN   on Friday morning(after his country voted to leave the European Union)

HOW     not given

Keyword

1. Brexit 脫歐 (Bremain留歐) 

2 10 Downing Street 唐寧街10號

3 referendum 人民公投

4 withdraw(V.)離開.退出(+from

5 drastically(ad.)激烈的

6 dire(ad.)可怕的

7 plummeted to a (31-year) low  跌至(31年裡)最低

8 pledged(v.)保證 給予誓言(+to-v)(+that