Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
Posted by release.com | Filed under book
Why be content with availing yourself with today’s synonyms when you can reach into this treasure to employ a tasty historical adjective and rescue it from obsoletion.
The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary has been described by New Yorker as “the ultimate volume for the word-fetishist.”
It is a collection of all words in the Oxford English Dictionary, plus additional historical words, organised semantically. It has taken over forty years to produce the first edition and it was nearly lost, destroyed by fire in 1978.
The thesaurus eschews Roget's categorisation for its own ordering. Divided into three parts - the external, mental and social worlds, it has 354 major categories and more than 236,000 subcategories.
A sample page (PDF) demonstates the categorisation.
Listen to an MP3 of editor Christian Kay talk about the project.
Available from Amazon.com
Those with access to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary should start bugging their librarians to subscribe to the forthcoming online edition of the thesaurus.
For those, like myself unable to justify the expense of a copy, I recommend searching the catalogue of your local library, and again fervently suggesting it orders ...
Misfits. ASBO Super Heroes?
Posted by release.com | Filed under tv, dvd
A group of London teenagers thrown together by Community Service Orders find themselves with superpowers after a freak metrological event.
Rather than save the world they use their superpowers to help save themselves from their own personal histories and from the events that occur as a result of the phenomena that caused their empowerment.
Here’s a taste. NSFW.
DVD of the first series available from Amazon UK.
And yes a second series has been commissioned.
Swimming to Cambodia
Posted by release.com | Filed under laurie_anderson, spalding_grey, film, classic
Swimming to Cambodia is ostensibly a film about Spalding Grey’s experience in seeking and receiving an acting role within The Killing Fields. It is a deeply personal 360 degree observation roller-coaster. Ranging from comparisons of his WASP Boston background to the ferocity of inner city NYC life, to political and historical reviews of the US’s actions in Vietnam and Cambodia and the rise of the Khmer Rouge. About balancing his own goal of having a perfect moment, “best had alone”, against his relationship obligations with his partner Rene.
The film is directed by Jonathon Demme, who also directed The Killing Fields. It captures one of the monologue performances by Spalding Grey, using three cameras. Music is by Laurie Anderson.
I have watched this film many many times. I am still amazzed by the power of the monologue and how time after time my attention is completely captured.
“Except for the fact that the banana sticks to wall when it hits. Everything else is true.”
Unbelievably the film is currently unavailable. Second-hand copies of the DVD can be seen on Amazon, ranging between $200 – $1000. The book has been republished 