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1. Cycle Contents

2. Cycle Vocabulary
   1. Week 1
      1. Session 1
   2. Week 2
      1. Session 1
      2. Session 2
   3. Week 3
      1. Session 1
      2. Session 2

3. Reading Sections
   1. “Reality Show Fever” [Upstream Unit 5 SB, P:84, Week 1 Session 1]
   2. “The Magic of Pantomime” [Upstream Unit 5 SB, P:90, Week 2 Session 1]
   3. “Solitude, sunshine and sanctuary in The Secret Garden” [The Guardian (By: Aida Edemariam), link, Week 3 Session 1]
   4. “The Martian review – Matt Damon shines as stranded astronaut” [The Guardian (By: Mark Kermode), link, Week 3 Session 2]
   5. “The Lion King review – resplendent but pointless” [The Guardian (By: Mark Kermode), link, Week 3 Session 2]

4. Extra Reading
   1. “Great Maytham Hall, Kent: the most famous garden in literature” [The National Garden Scheme, link, Week 3 Session 1]

5. From Grammarway 4
   1. Unit 6

Cycle Content

Week 1

1. Upstream:
   1. Unit 5: Modern Living { Reading: “Reality Show Fever” [Upstream Unit 3 SB, P:84] }

2. Writing Academic English:
   1. Part 3: Sentence Structure, Chapter 11: Using Parallel Structures and Fixing Sentence Problems

3. Some online resources

Week 2

1. Upstream:
   1. (continue) Unit 5: Modern Living { Reading: “The Magic of Pantomime” [Upstream Unit 3 SB, P:90] }

Week 3

1. New Hello:
   1. Unit 7: Living Abroad
   2. Unit 11: What a performance

2. Grammarway 4:
   1. Unit 6: The Passive - Have Something Done

3. Some online resources

** All online resources can be found in the cycle file.

Cycle Vocabulary

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Reading

“Reality Show Fever” [Upstream Unit 5 SB, P:84, Week 1 Session 1]

The attraction of the genre is hard to explain. But perhaps it could be that reality TV seems to tell stories of "ordinary" people with real lives, real emotions - people like us. And often, thankfully, people unlike us. Whether it is delighting or sympathising in the pain of others, everyone loves watching a tragedy played out, don't they? We review the top six tabloid headline grabbing shows here.

A) I’m a celebrity - get me out of here!

ITV’s show scored its highest ratings last night as almost 7 million viewers tuned in. The stress of spending nearly a week in close contact with other minor celebrities in almost constant rain in the Australian jungle is beginning to show, with comedienne Rhona Cameron falling out with almost all the fellow participants.

Ratings rose to just over 8 million after 10 pm as more viewers tuned in to see Uri Geller being chosen to take the daily challenge of eating worms! In this show viewers vote to send someone home every three days.

B) Big Brother

Big Brother is a new series in which ten volunteers spend up to two months in a house in an environment where every single activity is monitored on camera. Their lives are screened 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the web, every weekday on Channel 4, with a finale each Friday where one or two participants, chosen by their housemates, are ceremoniously thrown out of the game if they lose viewers' votes. Their lives and personal moments become the property of all!

The Big Brother formula includes camera work, video, chat-rooms to discuss the latest issues and updates through phones and e-mail. It is set to become the most intense live experience ever seen on the web.

C) Fame Academy

In this particular show the contestants sing in order to be allowed to stay in a mansion which is heavily guarded, working 17-hour days. The luxurious residence hosts the BBC's new multi-million pound show Fame Academy which is the latest in a wave of talent shows that has flooded our screens in the last eighteen months. The show features a group of hopeful popstars under the watchful eye of TV cameras around the clock. Viewers vote for one contestant to remain in the academy, while two other contestants then choose which one of the remaining contestants is shown the door.

D) Survivor

Survivor brings us reality TV with some particularly weird contestants, one of whom was caught smuggling meat onto the island in his clothing! In fact, out of the sixteen people marooned on the South Sea island competing to win the prize money, there wasn't one you would feel completely safe sitting next to!

The programme is actually all the better for it. Unless there is a sudden wave against reality TV, it should be a great hit. With swooping helicopter shots and timelapse photography, the millions spent on the series is evident. The large budget, however, might not be to its advantage as the glossiness detracts from what should be a down-to-earth show about life on a desert island.

E) American Idol

This show is the US version of the huge British TV hit, Pop Idol. Simon Cowell, in his role as judge, has been up to his old tricks with contestants, fellow judges and the show’s presenters. Mr Nasty is a hit with viewers after delighting and horrifying the American public with his ironic sense of humour.

Nine out of the ten finalists have now been chosen, leaving Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul to make the final choice for the tenth place by selecting one of the twenty-one unsuccessful contestants. A spokeswoman for ITV said American Idol underlined the global appeal of big entertainment events combining the drama of live performance with interactive participation.

F) Popstars

Popstars returns to television screens tonight, aiming to bring fame to another group of potential stars. Tonight's new Popstars show will begin the process of narrowing down more than 10,000 hopeful youngsters in order to create a boy-band and girl-band of ten members each. Viewers will then vote for five to leave each group, leaving two bands that will race to reach number one in the charts.

The show should produce huge profits through the usual formula of tears, tempers and endless put-downs from judges working in show business. The producers will be taking a share of telephone call charges from viewers’ votes and are sure to make even more money through the sale of singles and albums as well as merchandising.

“The Magic of Pantomime” [Upstream Unit 5 SB, P:90, Week 2 Session 1]

The Christmas season in the UK would be nothing without the traditional ‘Panto’. These funny musical plays date back to the Middle Ages and are based on a combination of Italian comedy and British Music Hall.

Comedians, singers and dancers perform in hilariously exaggerated ways. The shows are mostly aimed at children and are based on popular fairy stories and folk legends. The most popular stories tend to be Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin.

Pantomime has become big business in the UK. Large theatres are in competition with each other for the best fairy stories as well as star performers who will help bring in large crowds to cover expenses.

Pantomimes can often run for six to eight weeks. This obviously means they provide much-needed profits for theatres up and down the country. Over the years, it has combined many different features of theatre and so, in adapting, has managed to avoid extinction of a kind. The novelty aspect too has always been important to its survival. Traditional pantomime, in order to remain popular, had to keep up-to-date with events and new trends. In doing so, it remains one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the country.

To be described as traditional, a pantomime needs to have a strong story line and include all the important elements of ‘good’ battling against ‘evil’, with the good guy always being the winner. Even today, the pantomime ‘baddie’ is always the first to come in stage from the dark side, followed by his competitor, the ‘goodie’ from the right side.

Song and dance are also important to support the traditional plot, with influences from Italian comedy and characters performing various situations to delight audiences. These comic chases and situation have come to be known as ‘Slapstick’ comedy. This form of comedy takes its name from a device that was carried by a pantomime character and used as both a weapon and a magic wand. It made a loud ‘slapping’ noise when used, for example by the star comedian, in order to create a more theatrical effect when hitting fellow actors.

The most famous of those pantomime clowns was Joseph Grimaldi, making his first appearance in 1800. He had such an effect on his audiences that they would leave the theatre singing his songs. Pantomime now had its first real star. The elements of comedy, song and slapstick that have become the basic ingredients of successful pantomime had been established.

Grimaldi also succeeded in setting up another tradition. The tradition of cross-dressing, where men play female roles and women play male roles. This comes from the early days of theatre, when it was not acceptable for women to become actresses. Another example of this role reversal is the all-important pantomime dame, a comic old lady, played by a male actor, which was a role created during the Victorian era. Audiences love seeing their favourite comedian playing the part. The dame is warm and comic, but never plays dirty tricks. Often the costumes are used to good effect by copying different fashions in an exaggerated way.

The other element of pantomime during the first and second world wars was, in contrast, the role of the ‘principal’ boy traditionally played by a girl. By the 1950s, famous male actors began playing the part followed by pop stars until finally ladies began, once again, to return to the role. Pantomime has always tended to adapt to the times by taking on the ‘popular’ stars of the day as well as other famous groups of performers. Pantomime could not survive, of course, without one particular chorus of dancers. Today, for reasons of economy, the average group can number between six or eight dancers. Some have as few as two or four professional dancers with ‘extra’ youngsters known as ‘babes’.

Despite the general competition from other forms of entertainment, traditional pantomime has survived and a visit to a show may be a child’s first experience of live theatre. If that experience is magical enough, it may leave a lasting impression. In a world where children are surrounded by computer games, DVDs and television, a visit to a pantomime could well change their view of theatre. It is hoped that this unique tradition will continue long into the future, with actors shouting, “Oh no it's not!” and children in the audience responding “Oh yes it is!” as loudly as ever.

“Solitude, sunshine and sanctuary in The Secret Garden” [The Guardian (By: Aida Edemariam), link, Week 3 Session 1]

From its interrogation of the ways illness changes and defines us to the tranquility found in nature, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book is a story for our times

If the last time you encountered Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden was in childhood, you probably think of Mary, a sour little girl, waking up in a house in India to find herself orphaned and alone; a vast wind-buffeted house on the Yorkshire moors, and the sound of crying; a robin, a key, and a hidden garden; the transcendent scene in that garden, one of the most famous in children’s literature, in which Colin, a previously bedridden child, stands and learns to walk. So far, so magical. But rereading the book in adulthood reveals that it is also a story about neglect, remiss parenting and mental illness; a book that, for all its light, is underpinned by darkness. In fact, the novel offers such practical ways of coping, and even of healing that it was once suggested it should be prescribed on the NHS.

When Burnett wrote The Secret Garden – “a sort of children’s Jane Eyre”, as one of her friends described it, a characterisation that has been taken to heart by the latest film adaptation, directed by Marc Munden and starring Colin Firth, Julie Walters and Dixie Egerickx – she was 61, and had been a famous author for more than 40 years. She was so famous that, as her biographer Gretchen Gerzina notes in Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unpredictable Life of the Author of The Secret Garden, she crossed the Atlantic 33 times and on nearly every arrival was met by reporters. Oscar Wilde (who of course wrote his own story about children and a garden, “The Selfish Giant”) came to see her in Washington, where at one point one of her gloves was auctioned; in London she lived on Park Lane and was friends with Henry James. We do not read them much now, but – apart from Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) – she was known mainly for her books for adults. The Secret Garden in fact started life, in 1910, as a serial in a grown-up magazine called the American.

Burnett began writing for publication because her family was very poor; her mother could not make ends meet after her husband’s death, and emigrated with her five children from Manchester to Tennessee when Frances was 15. By 18 Frances was the main breadwinner, and remained so for the next 56 years, her 52 books and 13 plays further supporting two husbands (after divorcing Swan Burnett she married Stephen Townsend in 1900), two children, grand houses on both sides of the Atlantic, and a highly developed dress-buying habit. The contrast between rich and poor in, for instance, A Little Princess (1905), is deeply felt; the details that appealed to children were those that Burnett had personally observed.

Independence, while satisfying, was unmitigatedly hard work, and lonely. Burnett was often ill, frequently with depression; it became particularly bad after her second pregnancy, through which she worked and cared for her small son. In 1884 she suffered what Gerzina describes as a full-blown nervous breakdown and, by the age of 35, a friend wrote of her that “she was like something mended that can never be used as if it had not been broken”.

Burnett is brilliant, in The Secret Garden, on the tyranny of the ill and those who are seen as weak. She vividly captures how an entire household fears Colin’s rages and dances attendance on him; the way he uses something overheard (that he won’t live until adulthood) as both identity and threat: “I’m not as selfish as you, because I’m always ill … And I am going to die besides.” Mary refuses to be cowed. “You just say that to make people sorry. I believe you’re proud of it.”

Colin turns out to suffer what we might now describe as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, symptoms planted in his mind by a hunchbacked father who fears his son will be the same, then nurtured by a weak and overattentive doctor. Mary has little truck with this: “It was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics make lumps,” she snarls at Colin. But while Colin is portrayed, in the main, as a spoiled brat, there is also a deep understanding and sympathy at work. Burnett was a veteran of long periods of enforced bed rest, and she came to believe it was actively harmful. She also thought that there was nothing on earth more potent than the human mind, and that its healthiness, or otherwise, was written on the body. Earlier in her life she had attempted (like Louisa May Alcott, who had also suffered burnout) the Boston “mind cure” , which emphasised the healing power of positive thought. She had read Hindu philosophy and been swayed by Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and eventually came to her own conclusion: that a sanguine mind, trained, moreover, to look outside itself and to care for others, could make a person well.

Late in The Secret Garden she writes: “Mere thoughts are as powerful as electric batteries and as good for one as sunlight. To let a sad thought or a bad one into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever get into your body.” There are obvious issues with this belief, not least those that Barbara Ehrenreich has so trenchantly observed in our present-day attitudes to cancer: the patient who “fights bravely” and positively should get well, while decline and disease are equated with moral failure. No amount of positive thinking could stop Burnett’s son dying of tuberculosis in his mid-teens – though perhaps the degree to which she came to insist on her credo merely reflects how much she wished it could have. Thankfully, in The Secret Garden, her close observation of detail and psychological insights tether her ideas to believable processes: Colin is taken outside, into the fresh air. He exercises, and develops an appetite. His mind begins to heal.

He also begins, at the end, to develop a relationship with his father. Burnett is in no doubt as to what is at the root of Colin’s ills. Both Colin and Mary have absent parents. The children are indulged, given every material comfort, but are unloved. As Dickon, the brother of a housemaid at the grand house, tells Mary: “Mother, she says that’s th’ worst thing on earth to a child: them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives.” Dickon is a model of emotional balance and quiet confidence. We might these days couch such thoughts in terms of self-esteem and attachment – Dickon is as securely attached as Colin and Mary are insecure, with the behaviour, and in Colin’s case the illnesses, to match. The Secret Garden can be read as a sophisticated study of the varieties of both intentional and unintentional emotional neglect. “She sets that up to be the root cause of illness and trauma,” Gerzina says. Though “I don’t think she would have admitted it to herself.”

Burnett had a complex relationship with motherhood. When her own two boys, Lionel and Vivian, were small they played quietly under the table as she worked. “Being good – somehow there is something sad in it to me,” she wrote to a friend. Later, when she was ill, the boys tried to help and protect her; even though they were very young, they nursed her and hid their own troubles, in Lionel’s case, both TB and serious depression. As she became more famous and her relationship with their father, Swan Burnett, began to break down, she spent months at a time in England without them. When her son Lionel died, Gerzina writes, Burnett “wandered Europe for months” (as Archibald Craven does in The Secret Garden), writing journal entries about Lionel, or addressing him directly in letters he would never read.

In 1897, at the age of 48, Burnett walked into Maytham Hall, in Kent, and felt at once at home, in the house, but especially in the gardens. Digging, pruning, planning, caring, watching, she began to find a calm that had eluded her for years; and in the book she wrote more than a decade later she gives this tranquil garden and a robin she befriended to Mary, Dickon and Colin. The Secret Garden is movingly accurate about the quotidian raptures, the feeling of wellbeing and purpose that can be made possible by a day of weeding. Lockdown has brought many of us to the idea of what Sue Stuart-Smith, in her recent book, called the “well-gardened mind”. The Secret Garden carefully and vividly evokes the benefits; we can almost feel Burnett’s garden working on us too. When spring arrives, in a burst of sunshine after weeks of rain, Mary, who at 10 has finally learned to dress herself, wakes early and lets herself out into the dawn. She runs to the garden, where crocuses are pushing up out of the earth, the robin is building his nest, and a green film cloaks the grey trees. “Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” Mary cries to the boy, who is already there. “I’m so happy I can scarcely breathe!”

“The Martian review – Matt Damon shines as stranded astronaut” [The Guardian (By: Mark Kermode), link, Week 3 Session 2]

Director Ridley Scott makes the most of an excellent script and a first-rate star for a scintillating sci-fi trip to the red planet

Proving conclusively that it really is all about the writing, Ridley Scott’s most enjoyable film in years reassures us that the creakiness of Prometheus, the cack-handed contrivance of The Counsellor and the sheer stodginess of Exodus: Gods and Kings were genetically rooted in their respective screenplays. Scott may not have the best eye for a decent script (he thought A Good Year read like a charming Russell Crowe vehicle), but when the right words are on the page he can visualise them like no other. From the creative back and forth of Hampton Fancher and David Peoples on Blade Runner, through the genius of Callie Khouri’s Thelma and Louise screenplay, to this terrifically crowd-pleasing adaptation of Andy Weir’s book by The Cabin in the Woods creator Drew Goddard, Scott’s greatest debt has always been to his writers. The director may have earned a justified reputation as a “world-building visionary”, but his audiences always demand a good story and that’s exactly what they’ve got here.

Left for dead on the red planet following a scientifically anomalous but narratively necessary windstorm, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon, giving Cast Away-era Tom Hanks a run for his money) must hunker down for the long haul, knowing that any rescue mission is years away. Luckily, he is quite literally “the best botanist on the planet”, and after declaring that he’ll have to “science the shit” out of his Robinson Crusoe situation, he discovers that it is indeed possible to grow potatoes in his own poo.

This is just the first of many self-help survivalist discoveries that find Watney entertainingly facing up to the challenge of “not dying”. Armed only with recordings of Happy Days and his captain’s collection of old-school floor-fillers (like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Martian takes great delight in its anachronistic retro-pop stylings), our lonely starman pitches his skills against the inhospitable elements, counting the solar days (“sols”) until help arrives even as mission control fight their own battles, practical and geopolitical.

The film revels in the sheer absurdist pleasure of watching human beings outwit the universe with Sellotape and string

Lifting underlying riffs from Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running and third-act visuals from Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, with coincidental hints of Interstellar (Damon is once again stranded on a distant planet, a world away from Jessica Chastain – what are the chances?), The Martian delivers on both intergalactic spectacle and feet-in-the-soil character drama. Like Duncan Jones’s Moon, much of the film’s running time finds its leading man basically talking to himself, with video diaries and delayed digital communications providing a handy dramatic framework for his quip-filled soliloquies. Damon makes the most of this “me time”, engaging our interest, winning our sympathy and teasing our anxieties about his perilous predicament. Meanwhile, his former crewmates wrestle with the guilt of his unexpected survival (Jessica Chastain does a very practical line in understated angst and heroic mutiny), while on Earth, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig et al argue the whys and wherefores of bringing him home.

Crisply shot by Ridley regular Dariusz Wolski, who also photographed this week’s other eye-catching release, The Walk, The Martian keeps its visual palette positive, the ochre sands of Jordan’s Wadi Rum blending with vast Budapest soundstage interiors to provide a glowing backdrop for the space-suited action. With its seductive blend of hi-tech Nasa chic and Apollo 13-style DIY, the production design creates a lived-in feel that echoes the industrial environments of Alien. For all its technical liberties, the pop science convinces just enough to be both credible and intriguing – younger viewers in particular will be sent away with renewed (if slightly skewed) interests in chemistry, biology and astronomy, the latter further boosted by last week’s real-life Martian news stories, providing the kind of publicity of which PR androids can only dream.

Most important, however, is just how much fun Scott seems to be having with The Martian.. Whether forthcoming projects such as Alien: Paradise Lost or the proposed Blade Runner sequel will be half as entertaining remains to be seen, but for now let’s just be thankful that there is plenty of life on Mars.

“The Lion King review – resplendent but pointless” [The Guardian (By: Mark Kermode), link, Week 3 Session 2]

Jon Favreau’s photorealistic copy of the classic 1994 animated feature is a virtual triumph – but why go to the effort?

Disney’s money-spinning mission to recycle its animated back catalogue with “live action” remakes continues apace. In the past few years we’ve had Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo, Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast and Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin. Coming up are Niki Caro’s Mulan, Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid, and many, many more.

Although consistently profitable, the reason for these reboots’ existence remains questionable. Did Emma Watson make a better Belle than the drawn star of Disney’s 1991 animation just because she’s “real”? With this new (and peculiarly faithful) version of The Lion King, however, the question is not whether a “live action” remake can improve on an animated classic. Rather, it’s what we should call an animated movie that eerily mimics reality while featuring no “live action” whatsoever.

Anyone who’s enjoyed an effects-laden 21st-century superhero movie will know that entire sequences (and indeed characters) are effectively hi-tech animations. Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s 2016 remake of The Jungle Book was billed as part of Disney’s “live action” slate, but beyond the figure of Neel Sethi’s Mowgli, almost nothing in the film was “live”. For The Lion King, which features no human characters, Favreau has simply taken things to their logical conclusion, using cutting-edge technology to create something that looks absolutely real while remaining absolutely unreal.

We open with a carnival of bewilderingly lifelike creatures (from “the crawling ant to the leaping antelope”), merrily gambolling through the Circle of Life. Remember that sense of wonder you felt seeing the majestic herds of dinosaurs for the first time in Jurassic Park? I got that same sensation gazing at these frolicking beasts, as they follow the familiar story of a young lion’s struggle to live up to his idolised father, wondering whether I should be applauding the animators or animal trainers. While Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia movies may have shimmered with an air of digital artificiality a decade ago, Mufasa’s mane looks so natural you feel you could reach out and stroke it.

As for the savanna landscapes, their apparent tangibility seems perfectly suited to the phrase that echoes throughout The Lion King: “everything the light touches”. It’s as if cinematographer Caleb Deschanel had physically ventured into another world, bathed in the honeydew glow of an everlasting “magic hour”. Equally well evoked are the haunting hues of the expedition to find the elephants’ graveyard, and the barren landscapes of the post-Mufasa pride lands, “heavy on the carcass”.

All these settings were designed within a game engine, then rendered as virtual environments through which a “camera crew” could move, mimicking the angles and imperfections of live-action shooting. The effect is impressive, lending an apparent human touch to a computer-generated world, creating the reassuringly physical illusion of happenstance.

There are problems with this format. It’s one thing seeing a cartoon lion sing, but watching photorealist recreations of animals speaking and bursting into song is altogether harder to swallow. As ever, the mouth movements are an issue, but the main stumbling block is conceptual rather than technical. Does photorealism actually serve such an inherently fantastical narrative? On stage, The Lion King became a huge hit because the theatrical techniques used to tell this sturdy story required the audience to use their imagination. There’s little space left for that kind of collaborative experience here, as every detail is filled in, down to the very last pixel.

In the voice cast, Donald Glover and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter make the roles of Simba and Nala their own, while John Oliver takes over from Rowan Atkinson as news-reading hornbill Zazu. Once again, Scar’s inherent wickedness is signalled not only by his lanky gait but by the fact that he’s played by a British actor with impressive Shakespearean credentials – Chiwetel Ejiofor giving Jeremy Irons a run for his money in the evil uncle stakes. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner have fun as warthog Pumbaa and meerkat Timon, respectively, reminding us that Hakuna Matata is basically The Bare Necessities with bells on as they teach Simba to chill out and eat grubs, concluding that life is not a self-sustaining circle but a “meaningless line of indifference”. Meanwhile, original star James Earl Jones retains his title as Most Trusted Voice in the World in the role of Mufasa, delivering industrial-strength words of syrupy wisdom about our ancestors looking down from the sky.

New songs augment the old favourites, while Hans Zimmer’s score doesn’t so much rewrite the original as subtly reconfigure its architecture. I’m still not sure what the point of it all is, but it does offer a vision of a future in which the traditional distinctions between live action and animation have dissolved into nothingness.

Extra Reading

“Great Maytham Hall, Kent: the most famous garden in literature” [The National Garden Scheme, link, Week 3 Session 1]

From Grammarway 4

Unit 6