My Science School

The year 2012 spelt the best of times for Charles Dickens fans. Celebrations were held across the world in honour of the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth on February 7. Legacy projects, festivals and exhibitions commemorated the author’s life and works were scheduled throughout the year. The Museum of London showcased rarely seen manuscripts including Bleak House and David Copperfield – written in the author’s own hand.

The Museum of London will showcase paintings, photographs, costumes and objects that “illustrate themes that Dickens wove into his works, while rarely seen manuscripts including Bleak House and David Copperfield – written in the author’s own hand – will offer clues to his creative genius,” the museum’s Web site states. The exhibit details how Dickens's childhood experiences in London, “working in a blacking factory while his father was locked away in a debtor's prison, were introduced into the stories he wrote. The great social questions of the 19th century, including wealth and poverty, prostitution, childhood mortality and philanthropy, will also be examined.” Also featured will be an audio-visual experience and a commissioned documentary film that explores similarities between London after dark today and during Dickens’s day over 150 years ago.

 

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The potter saga ended with the final confrontation between Voldemort and our young bespectacled hero. And so did the eight-part film series, which it inspired. The last installment of one of the most successful film franchise in history, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II released on July 15, 2011 in India to packed houses and teary-eyed audiences. While most of the fans had already bid adieu to Hogwarts when the seventh book by J.K. Rowling came out in July 21, 2007, they couldn’t resist meeting their magical friends – the faithful companions of their childhood – one last time on the silver screen.

Voldemort, thinking Snape is the master of the Elder Wand because he killed Dumbledore, kills Snape. While viewing Snape's memories, Harry comes across the stunning realization that Harry himself is an unintended Horcrux and that he must die for Voldemort to die. Voldemort "kills" Harry, but he only destroyed the Horcrux in Harry. Harry and Voldemort have a fight, during which Neville kills Nagini, also a Horcrux. Harry uses Malfoy's wand in the duel against Voldemort, and since Malfoy is the true master of the Elder Wand (he disarmed Dumbledore before he was killed by Snape), Harry is now the Elder Wand's master. When Voldermort tries to kill Harry with the Elder Wand, it backfires and kills Voldemort. Harry snaps the Elder Wand in two. We then cut to nineteen years later where an adult Harry and Ginny, along with Ron and Hermione, are sending their kids off to Hogwarts.

 

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Based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels, Game of Thrones, a HBO series, cemented its place as one of the most popular television series this decade. Here’s a brief timeline to jog your memory: The first season came out in April, 2011. The swordfights, the intrigue and the edgy plot twists, including Jon Snow’s death and swift resurrection, kept the fans hooked for eight seasons. But the show’s finale, which aired on May 19, 2019, was admittedly disappointing.

The fact that the well-crafted and complex character of Martin’s work is brought to the screen in HBO’s Game of Thrones undoubtedly accounts for its popularity to some degree. The writing is intelligent as a rule and the acting is also at a high level: sometimes it is excellent as in the case of performances by Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf outcast from the powerful ruling Lannister clan, and Lena Headey, who plays Tyrion’s sister, the scheming queen Cersei Lannister.

There are also supernatural and mystical elements. Daenerys Targaryen has fire-breathing dragons at her command. An invasion by telepathically manipulated undead from the frozen north threatens the more civilized lands to the south. Assassinations may be carried out by evoking evil spirits. A boy merges with animal and tree spirits and becomes clairvoyant. The dead come back to life.

These features, cast within a generally medieval social order, fit into the popular artistic genre known as high fantasy or epic fantasy, pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th century by writers such as William Morris and Lord Dunsany. Its most popular and gifted exponents in the aftermath of World War I were J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White. High fantasy has an appeal to many viewers, although there are many people who avoid the genre because of its non-rational and semi-religious elements.

 

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Love him or hate him, you cannot ignore Justin Bieber. The Canadian singer rules the pop world for most of the decade. And it all began in 2010 when he became the youngest solo male to hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album My World 2.0, helped him climb to the top.

And when his first concert in India, was held in Mumbai, all hell broke loose! On May 10, 2017, over 56,000 fans crammed into Mumbai’s D.Y. Patil Stadium to watch the singing sensation. However, hearts were broken when Bieber seemed unenergetic and lip-synced for most of the performance.

To promote the album, Bieber appeared on several live programs including The View, the 2010 Kids' Choice Awards, Nightline, Late Show with David Letterman, The Dome and 106 & Park. Sean Kingston appeared on the album's next single, "Eenie Meenie". The song reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the top-twenty of most other markets. On April 10, 2010, Bieber was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. On July 4, 2010, Bieber performed at the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular in New York City. The following single from My World 2.0, "Somebody to Love", was released in April 2010, and a remix was released featuring Bieber's mentor Usher. On June 23, 2010, Bieber went on his first official headlining tour, the My World Tour, starting in Hartford, Connecticut, to promote My World and My World 2.0. In May 2010, Bieber featured in Soulja Boy's song "Rich Girl". In July 2010, it was reported that Bieber was the most searched-for celebrity on the Internet. That same month, his music video for "Baby" surpassed Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" (2009) as the most viewed, and also the most disliked, YouTube video ever. However, Taylor Swift's video for her single "Blank Space" (2014) surpassed its number of views in 2015. In September 2010, it was reported that Bieber accounted for 3% of all traffic on Twitter, according to an employee of the social-networking site.

 

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James Cameron’s 3-D spectacle Avatar, featuring the blue-skinned inhabitants of the spectacular Pandora, won big at the Golden Globes in 2010 with three Oscars for Cinematography, Visual Effects and Art Direction. A seamless blend of live action and computer-generated images, the film was meant to be viewed on the biggest screen possible – and for most of us it was our first introduction to IMAX. Following its release in December 2009, it became the highest-grossing movie in the world till it was surpassed by Avengers: Endgame.

Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora's jungle, a motion-capture stage or "volume" six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors' faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers. According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts. Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance. A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them.

 

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