Conditionals

Conditionals from the article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/18/what-if-star-wars-never-existed 

-How would cinema have been affected had Akira Kurosawa made it as a painter and never made Seven Samurai? What if the 1998 best picture Oscar had gone not to Shakespeare in Love, but Gummo?(2 type)


-And, more particularly, how the next few months might look had the one movie that changed studio films forever not had the chance to do so. In short, where would we be now had there never been a Star Wars?(3/2 type)


-Harrison Ford, for example, would have stuck with his carpentry, turning out 34 years' worth of occasional tables and leaving Blade Runner to have starred, as was long mooted, Dustin Hoffman or Burt Reynolds.(3 type)


-Free of the dead hand of typecasting, meanwhile, Mark Hamill would have frolicked into the sunlit professional uplands and claimed roles in Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull.(3 type)


-In a Star Wars-less history, for instance, sci-fi and fantasy would never have so momentously interbred, the latter remaining the preserve of Krull and The Dark Crystal rather than some of the last two decades' most profitable franchises.(3 type)


-But even that's rivalled for impact by the disappearance from cinema of the man who by his own account would have stayed a truck driver without having seen Lucas's opus: James Cameron.(3 type)


- Because there is a school of thought that goes thus: had all that swords-and-sorcery-in-space not corrupted the average filmgoer, the golden second age of Hollywood that was the pre-Star Wars 1970s would have just kept on trucking, with Terrence Malick, Hal Ashby and Robert Altman dominating the screen into the 80s.(3 type)


- Without Star Wars, we wouldn't have all the faux-religiosity and Yoda impressions, but George Lucas wasn't the first mogul to milk a cash cow.(3/2 type)


-And the terrifying thing here is that, even without all the merchandising and fanboys, I wonder if the whole creaking edifice of cinema might not have come crashing down sometime between 1977 and now.(3 type)


-Indeed, it seems to me that the original Star Wars fans and their Comic-Con descendants would, without Lucas, have never come to the movies at all, drawn instead to a full-time relationship with comics and games – and that film, with all the wily survival skills of a survivor from the fag-end of the 19th century, evolved in order to take their money.(3 type)


-Without which, let's face it, the real alternate history may have been a sea of boarded up cinemas, and in the final analysis even less chance of catching a good movie than you'll have this summer.(3 type)

Vocabulary from "Pretty woman" (the restaurant scene)

Rumors : -information that is  passed from one person to another and may not be true

             -“Many rumors are flying around President private life”

Snails: -a small creature with a long soft body and no legs that has a round shell on its back

Delicacy: -a rare or expensive kind of food

                   “snails are considered a delicacy”

Sell off the pieces: -to sell things quickly and cheaply

                             -“the shop is closing and selling everything off at half price”

Shipyard: -a place where ships are built or repaired

Slippery:  -smooth or wet and difficult to hold, walk on etc.

                 -“a slippery mountain path”

Watch out: -to be careful and pay attention, because something unpleasant might happen

                   -“Watch out! You might cut yourself!”

Tear sth/sb apart: -to destroy something or someone

Napkin: -a small piece of cloth or paper, used for protecting your clother and cleaning your hands while eating

                           “Rich people throw their napkins a lot”

Relic: -an old custom idea or thing that still exists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkKviMfi24s&feature=related

Five minutes vision of "The Holiday":vocabulary

to rephrase: -to say or write something in different words so that its meaning is clearer
                  -"Let me rephrase the question"


to win sb over: -to persuade someone to support you, agree with you, or like you
                       - "The President managed to win over his critics"


to stand in line:-synonymous of "to queue"
                      -"I stood in line at FedEx to make sure she got her present on time"


to join a gym:-to become a member of a gym
                    -"It doesn't matter how many gym you join..."


to get over somebody:-to forget somebody who hurt you in the past
                                  -"So that's why you've joined here? You're getting over somebody?"

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnnHO6mgr7U

Mr Porter’s new theory

Michael Porter, a well known business man for his theories such as the “5 forces analysis” and his successful 18 books, exposes nowdays an idea which doesn’t seem very convincing : the one of the “shared values”.

It is undeniable that the three main points of this theory (the creation of market “ecosystems”, the need for firms to expand their value chains and the creation of new industrial clusters), can be useful to overcome the financial crisis we’re facing but it’s also true that if Mr porter isn’t going to work more on his idea it will probably keep a lot of flaws.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/18330445