Set Pieces Research Articles

"A Sack of Bananas": As I Lay Dying and Hemispheric Plantation Modernity

"A Sack of Bananas":As I Lay Dying and Hemispheric Plantation Modernity David A. Davis (bio) When Anse arrives to introduce the new Mrs. Bundren to his children at the end of As I Lay Dying (1930), Cash describes the ridiculous scene of "Dewey Dell's and Vardaman's mouth half open and half-et bananas in their hands" as they stare in shock at the duck-shaped woman (260). The obvious surprise in this scene is that Anse has quickly procured a new wife, complete with a Graphophone, mere hours after burying the wife he and his family spent days carrying to Jefferson in a mock-epic journey. At face value, the bananas seem like a banal comic set piece reflecting the absurdity of the situation. They do not have the obvious symbolic portent of other food signifiers in the text, such as the fish that Vardaman confuses with his dead mother, which becomes a psychosexual signifier for maternity, death, and communion. Looking at the banana closely, however, reveals a profound set of connections between the text and colonialism, capitalism, and postcolonial literature. Far from banal, the banana is, in fact, one of the most politically and culturally important commodities of the twentieth century. The half-eaten banana situates As I Lay Dying within an elaborate transnational system of plantation labor exploitation, modernist infrastructural development, consumerist commodity consumption, and hemispheric protest literature.1 The banana's presence in Jefferson indicates a network of production and consumption routes connecting the United States with Latin American countries in a set of corporate and political entanglements that resulted in decades of puppet regimes, military incursions, and popular unrest in Latin America. In the novel, the banana also illustrates the Bundren family's role within a rapidly developing system of commodity colonialism based on modern infrastructure that made perishable consumable goods from the tropics available nationwide. Faulkner's [End Page 135] banana further resonates with the work of a generation of Latin American writers who used the banana to symbolize the corruption and oppression of El Pulpo—the United Fruit Company—an octopus of capitalist power emanating from the United States that subjugated entire nations in order to produce commodity fruit for global markets. Thinking about the banana as a material object within a network of exchange that spanned the hemisphere reveals the hidden nuances of the modern plantation system, and reading the banana as a cultural signifier places it in context with a much larger system of resistance through literature. Banana Plantation Modernity The banana's availability for purchase in Jefferson, Mississippi, is the result of a vast system of plantation modernity in the Americas. As an agricultural commodity, bananas combine New World colonialism with modernist modes of production and distribution. By the end of the nineteenth century, the pattern of New World colonial production was well established. Since the 1500s, Europeans claimed land in the Americas and either subjugated natives or imported slaves to produce agricultural commodities for transnational markets. This system undergirded the slave trade, the sugar trade, the cotton trade, and the tobacco trade, and it led to the European colonization of the globe, the industrial revolution, and the political development of North and South America. One might think that the system would have been played out by 1900, and to an extent, it was. Slavery had been abolished throughout North and South America, most of the New World states had achieved independence, and most international commodity markets had reached a stable equilibrium. But in the late nineteenth century, the United States emerged as an industrial power, and it joined the developed nations of Europe in the global grab for raw materials and exploitable labor. Concentrating on its own hemisphere, the United States began a campaign of invading, occupying, manipulating, influencing, and using the nations of Latin America as colonial territories, initiating a new era of hemispheric colonialism. Yet the United States did not expand its influence in the region intending to cultivate bananas. They were an unexpected product of American imperialism. Bananas were presented to the people of the United States at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, where they were exhibited alongside other harbingers of modernity...

The Firebird Song by Arnée Flores

Reviewed by: The Firebird Song by Arnée Flores Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Flores, Arnée The Firebird Song. Bloomsbury, 2021 [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781547605125 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781547605132 $11.89 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 In the kingdom of Lyrica, ruling queens long used the Feather and sung the Fire-bird Song to summon the Firebird and ensure its ascendancy over the Demon in a battle of cosmic forces. Then, twelve years ago, the Feather was stolen, the last queen died, and the evil Spectress and her army of ash golems seized power. In the present, Prewitt the Bargeboy and Calliope the princess—hidden and raised in secret and isolation by Prewitt’s father—join forces to find the Feather, fulfill a prophecy, and enable Calliope to sing the Firebird Song to restore the kingdom. The story has many inventive elements and effective prose, but the mythic background and the action are missing the connective tissue they need to really hang together. Intriguing set pieces such as the Halcyon Glade and its giant Guardians and warrior girls, or the fantastical Queen’s Barge and hereditary Bargeman position, command attention but are only nebulously accounted for in the world building. Nevertheless, readers may be drawn to the evocative settings and adventure quest and be inspired to seek out more firebird and fire demon lore. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

María José FerradaHow to Order the Universe by Elizabeth Bryer

0 María José Ferrada How to Order the Universe Trans. Elizabeth Bryer. Portland. Tin House. 2021. 180 pages. WHEN SHE GOES TO SCHOOL, which isn’t often, the seven-year-old protagonist of this terrific novel is reminded that she has atypical interests. Let her classmates scribble rhyming verse about blue skies. She’d rather write paeans to pairs of pliers. M, as she’s called, is never far from her father, D, a traveling hardware salesman who thinks formal education is overrated. Each day, they drive around Chile’s hinterlands , persuading store owners to stock his hammers and wrenches. D neglects to tell his wife that their daughter accompanies him on daylong sales trips, but M is a vital partner. When she stands by his side, adorable and vaguely sad, shopkeepers tend to order more stuff. A successful author of children’s books, Santiago-based María José Ferrada has set How to Order the Universe, her first novel for adults, in the 1970s, when Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship jailed and murdered countless law-abiding Chileans. M’s mother—she’s not part of M and D’s secret society, so we never learn her name or initial —knows these facts too well. Her first love, a regime opponent, disappeared without explanation. Her pain is renewed when D befriends a photographer who knew her missing ex. The photographer is driven to document the junta’s crimes, a quest that imperils all who enter his orbit. Narrated decades later by an adult M, this is a short book with ambitious goals. Ferrada wants to honor those who suffered under fascist rule while also spinning a comic yarn full of workplace absurdities and domestic intrigue. She accomplishes both with enviable grace. Why doesn’t M’s mother realize she’s skipping school? Because D and his daughter have concocted “a false booklet of parent-teacher communications.” Though her mother seems withdrawn, in truth, “she was simply sad,” M says, “and her sadness meant she couldn’t pay attention to details.” At heart, this is an appealing ode to eccentric forms of resistance in the face of brutal repression. Ferrada’s portraits of D and his colleagues are entertaining. All are liars—one claims he triggered a woman’s heart attack by delivering too many sewing needles, another that he accidentally drove his sedan into a river and floated to safety on a car door—but they’re endearingly so. Their apocryphal tales take on a mournful hue when viewed as coping mechanisms, a way to make sense of life and loss in a country run by a murderer. M, meanwhile, learns to organize her thinking by shadowing her sweet, misguided father, carefully taxonomizing his wares (everything from screwdrivers to peepholes), the stores he supplies (mom-and-pops in varying states of disorganization), and his expenseaccount -padding scams (falsified restaurant checks, pilfered tollbooth receipts). As it chugs toward a tense third-act crisis, this bighearted story, skillfully translated by Elizabeth Bryer, offers a host of memorable set pieces. Hitched together by this multitalented writer, they make for an outstanding novel. Kevin Canfield New York David Diop At Night All Blood Is Black Trans. Anna Moschovakis. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 160 pages. IN THE BLOOD-MIRED trenches of World War I, an unwilling soldier ascends to an agent of death. Though David Diop anchors At Night All Blood Is Black in the plight of Senegal, the historical context of the novel is hushed by an examination of the psychological duality of conflict. A recollection of late childhood and carnage, Diop’s prose is less of the fever dream sometimes associated with similarly grotesque subjects and more an organic, direct recount of destruction years at a remove à la Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence. His early illustrations of violence in the novel are abrasive even when compared to most notorious contributions to realistic wartime fiction, but Diop skirts dwelling in such memory in favor of understanding the fractured life that inevitably follows. Alfa is a young Senegalese man with academic aspirations outside of Africa. Unfortunately, he and his best friend, Mademba, are recruited for the French war WORLDLIT.ORG...

Diachronic analysis application for the detection of soccer performance standards: a case study

Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyse the interactions established by Gerard Piqué, one of the world’s top defenders, within the general context of the team. The type of interactions (prospective and retrospective) that the player establishes with his team mates and opponents; the parts of the pitch where his actions are set in motion and later finished; his preferred skill or technical moves and finally his influence on set pieces are taken into account. His output throughout the 2012 UEFA Euro, where he played 100% of the game. The instrument of observation proposed by Maneiro & Amatria (2018) has been used. Polar coordinate analysis, a powerful tecnique capable of reducing the amount of data without compromising its analytical capacity, was used. The results showed significant interactions with players from the same and different lines thanks to technical actions of control, pass and carrying of ball. The analysis of the player’s interactions within the general context of the team will provide other teams with tactical alternatives and allow themto organise special training programmes.

Technical performance of soccer teams according to match outcome at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to examine the technical performance variables between teams which won and lost matches during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament. The sample consisted of 48 games played during the tournament. Data were obtained from the InStat Scout platform. Results showed that winning teams performed significantly (p < 0.05) better than losing teams in terms of technical performance variables such as total passes, passing accuracy, ball possession, shots, shots on target, aerial challenges, ball recovery patterns, and set piece indicators. Losing teams made more tackles, lost the ball more often, and received more yellow cards than winning teams. The findings of the current study may assist soccer coaches in structuring their team tactics and coaching sessions to improve the chances of winning in women’s international soccer competitions.

Narrative Variation and the Mood of Freedom in Fear and Trembling

Abstract Kierkegaard is famous for his use of narrative set pieces to illustrate and make vivid his ideas to his reader. Less famous is his use of narrative variation, a technique deployed twice in Fear and Trembling, in which he takes a given narrative and introduces a series of variations on the narrative to explore the possibilities of selfhood made available to the narrative’s protagonist. In this paper I explore this technique, help determine the ends it serves, and then apply this understanding to the use of the device in the text to see how it functions to advance its argument.

Differentiating African Teams from European Teams: Identifying the Key Performance Indicators in the FIFA World Cup 2018.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Despite this global popularity, European teams in contrast to African ones, have dominated the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup tournaments for many decades. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the performance indicators that differentiated between African and European teams in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Thirty matches played by five European (n = 15) and five African teams (n = 15) from the group stages of the World Cup were analysed using the InStat video system. The results showed that European teams had higher averages than African teams on the following performance variables: total shots, shots on target, goals scored from open play and set pieces, ball possession, short passes, medium passes, total passes, accurate passes and corner kicks. Therefore, soccer coaches should take note of these findings as they could serve as a benchmark for African teams to set trends and improve their performance at FIFA World Cup tournaments.

Winking at the Nun's Priest

Abstract The Nun's Priest's Tale is often read as a metapoetic commentary on medieval literary traditions. This article argues that through the Nun's Priest Chaucer navigates much of the theories of characterization found in medieval treatises on poetic composition known as the artes poetriae. What Chaunticleer calls “winking” is an exploration and critique of the selective mode of poetic vision produced by medieval rhetorical-poetic theory. As part of this investigation of rhetorical doctrine, Harry's descriptio of the Nun's Priest revises the well-known rhetorical set piece of the descriptio feminae, or the top-down depiction of a prototypically beautiful woman, in novel and unexpected ways. The impetus for such a revision grows from the spirit of modernitas characteristic of the artes poetriae.

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

The normalization of the populist radical right in news interviews: a study of journalistic reporting on the Swedish democrats

ABSTRACT Focusing on the salient case of news interviewing, this paper investigates the role of journalism in the normalization of radical right-wing politics and the discourses of nationalism and nativism. Normalization is related to transformations in the socio-political landscape, the discursive strategies of political actors, the professional norms of journalism, and the discursive positioning of political views in news reporting. Data include news interviews with the leaders of the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Swedish Democrats. A discourse- and conversation analytical approach is applied to analyze the discursive representations and positioning of political views in four different contexts of interviewing: routine news events, political scandals, live two-party interviews, and set piece interviews. The study shows an overall tendency to normalize and legitimize the political views and language of the radical right. Distinctive practices and mechanisms are identified. The study highlights the challenges of journalism, related to the normalizing implications of the restricted forms of impartiality applied in news journalism.

Analysis of Goal Scoring Patterns in the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The aim of this study was to analyse the goal scoring patterns during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. All goals scored during the tournament were analysed using the InStat video analysis system. The results showed that 169 goals (open play: 60.9%; set play: 39.1%) were scored during the competition. While 85 goals (82.5%) were scored from elaborate attacks, 18 goals (17.5%) came from counter attacks. A chi-square test indicated that there was a significant difference in the type of possession (χ2 (1, n = 103) = 43.58, p = 0.00). The highest number of goals was yielded from the final third (35%) as compared to the first (33%) and middle (32%) thirds. The results also indicated that most goals accounted from short passes (69.9%), while 13.6% of goals came from long passes and 16.5% from mixed passes (χ2 (2, n = 103) = 62.12, p = 0.00). Soccer coaches should incorporate set pieces in their training sessions in view to improve goal-scoring opportunities.

Richard Potter: America's First Black Celebrity by John A. Hodgson

Reviewed by: Richard Potter: America's First Black Celebrity by John A. Hodgson Kristen E. Wood (bio) Richard Potter: America's First Black Celebrity. By John A. Hodgson. (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2018. Pp. 352. $29.95 cloth) John A. Hodgson's biography of Richard Potter traces the life of the Black celebrity who was once known nearly nationwide for his virtuosic ventriloquism, magic tricks, and set pieces. The son of an African woman and white man, Richard Potter lived as a Black man in the Black community of Boston, but he sometimes described himself as having West Indian or Indian background. The combination of his variable self-description, appearance, gentlemanly manners, and virtuosity left some white people in doubt about his racial identity. [End Page 336] This ambiguity, combined with his excellent showmanship, enabled Potter to travel not only in New England and Canada but also through much of the South, captivating audiences and earning both good reviews and significant amounts of money in the process. In addition to exploring Potter's skills, his audiences' responses, and the operations of racism in shaping his career, Hodgson pays close attention to Potter's family life and woes. As a celebrity, Potter was an undoubted success. As a man of business, husband, and father, he was less so. While Potter did not end his days in abject poverty or disgrace, neither was he able to provide his family with the financial and social security that was the goal of his exhausting touring schedule. He faced debts and lawsuits, his wife Sally's intemperate drinking, a disappointing son, and a white neighbor's ability to sexually abuse and impregnate Potter's young daughter with no legal consequences. Hodgson observes that Potter bore partial responsibility for some of these troubles: his frequent travel surely took a toll on his family and a significant share of his legal and financial troubles arose from performing without a license. In short, Hodgson is a fair-minded, careful biographer, neither claiming to read Potter's mind nor being a cheerleader-in-chief. For historians of American performers, Hodgson's biography will probably be most useful for its details about how performers trained, collaborated, and organized their tours. Hodgson excavates Potter's youth with great care, tracking down both his childhood years and how Potter began to learn his acrobatic skills in Europe, most probably from the Italian Signior Manfredi, how he met and began to tour with John Rannie, the Scottish ventriloquist, and how he shared billing with other performers, whether as a supernumerary or as the star attraction. Hodgson thus provides significant insight into the trans-Atlantic business of performance. In an invaluable appendix, Hodgson traces Potter's performances across two decades, noting location, venue, dates, co-performers, and sources. Historians of Black life in the early republic will value not only Potter's own unusual story but also the details Hodgson relates of Black life in and around Boston and Andover, New Hampshire, including [End Page 337] the workings of Boston's Black Masonic society. Hodgson also shows how Black New Englanders formed enduring connections, sometimes against their will, with whites. The Potter family's many connections to white families in the area included chattel slavery, employment, patronage, and something rather like friendly acquaintance. Hodgson largely eschews any theories and interpretation that looks past Richard Potter's life and the main actors therein. In his preface, he writes: "I think I serve Richard Potter (and scholarship generally) best" by sticking with "the facts and the story of his life" (p. xvi). This selfimposed limitation—a characterization Hodgson might well dispute—may frustrate some readers who wish for a richer contextualization of Potter's life. To call New England in 1830 "a religiously conservative society," for example, is to prompt the question, in comparison to what? (p. 197). We see little or nothing here of the uneven transformations that the Second Great Awakening wrought in New England and New York, for example. The treatment of family, dependent children, and sexuality also lacks some depth. The law's view that the rape of an underage child represented a crime against her father did not make...

"Journeys of Adventure among Its Far-Flung Debris": Three Theories of the Blockbuster Explosion Spectacle

Existing critical accounts of the blockbuster explosion spectacle cast it as a cynically commercial bid for spectatorial sensation. This article, however, argues that the optico-social, aesthetic, and political affordances of the effects-oriented explosion spectacle are far more radical than these accounts allow. To advance this argument, I shuttle between reappraisals of the work of three key early film theorists—Benjamin, Epstein, and Eisenstein—and close analyses of the celebrated "Quicksilver" explosion set piece in X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer, 2016). In the process, I seek both to enrich our understanding of this culturally ubiquitous and critically neglected blockbuster microgenre and to draw attention to the value of early film theory as a resource for blockbuster studies.

Lights behind Thick Curtains: Images of Fear and Familiarity in Tolkien

Lights behind Thick Curtains:Images of Fear and Familiarity in Tolkien Bo Kampmann Walther (bio) Introduction This article looks into the landscape of tropes, figures, and themes in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Its main hypothesis is that the author is strongly in the habit of using metaphors and symbols to signify both fear and familiarity at one and the same time. Often, these imaginings are the result of a distressing and inauspicious geography. They are settings so stunning as to leave the observer speechless. When Frodo first lays eyes on Lothlórien his perception seems to be in a simultaneous state of shock and rebirth. Tolkien's descriptions are perspectives of an individual subject on the ground, as in the case of Frodo and Sam approaching the land of Mordor; and they are worlds slightly out of time and space seen through magical devices, like Galadriel's enchanted mirror. Clearly, Tolkien's imagery does not always work solely through similes or candid metaphorization, but rather, and more delicately, through animated, sensuous energies, agencies, and carefully naturalized personifications. Famously rejecting the putative allegorical constitution of his own sub-creation—and especially how it should be interpreted, the allegoresis—he relies instead on the symbolic function of writing, notably in his descriptions of nature (see Agøy).1 Goethe's dictum (in Maximen) that poetic language should at once be manifesting a literal authenticity and referencing an inner, deepened, and transferred meaning, and that it should also avoid any subtextual dependency (i.e., allegory), is very much that of Tolkien. However, as we shall see in the passage on Frodo's roused, sub-creative powers when entering Lothlórien for the first time, the rhetoric of Lord of the Rings becomes ars imitatio, a set piece designed in accordance with the classical topos of the locus amoenus, the paradisiacal site. Here, the text is constituted by an allegory (the literary subtext of the locus amoenus) but speaks of the desire of symbolization. The following will proceed very much in the footsteps of Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring. We begin at the creepy but also familiar site of Bree, move on to picturesque Lothlórien and the [End Page 117] alarming gates of Mordor, and, finally, we stand before the Cracks of Doom. Each scene invites a close reading of rhetorical depth and tension, of fear versus familiarity, and of the sublime and the perceptible. The article concludes tentatively with a reading of the illustrious 'Tower and the Sea' dream, once again logging the dynamics of fear and familiarity and furthermore pondering a potential poetological nerve in Tolkien's fiction, a fiction about his own fiction. Inns and Mirrors During the first book of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins and three companions travel eastward from their home, the restful Shire, and arrive in Bree, an assembly of communities which house both hobbits and men. Samwise Gamgee is at first suspicious about Bree's eerie otherworldliness. He pictures "black horses standing all saddled in the shadows of the inn-yard, and Black Riders peering out of dark upper windows." Even from the outside the inn looked a pleasant house to familiar eyes. It had a front on the Road, and two wings running back on land partly cut out of the lower slopes of the hill, so that at the rear the second-floor windows were level with the ground. There was a wide arch leading to a court-yard between the two wings, and on the left under the arch there was a large doorway reached by a few broad steps. The door was open and light streamed out of it. Above the arch there was a lamp, and beneath it swung a large signboard: a fat white pony reared up on its hind legs. Over the door was painted in white letters: THE PRANCING PONY by BARLIMAN BUTTERBUR. Many of the lower windows showed lights behind thick curtains. (FR, I, ix, 164) Note the implicit expansiveness to a wider world in allusions like "black horses," "Black Riders" (obviously from Mordor far, far away), and the dim...

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

Henry VI

Reviewed by: Henry VI Anna Hegland Henry VIPresented by the Globe Ensemble at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London. 11 5, 2019- 01 26, 2020. Directed by Sean Holmes and Ilinca Radulian. Designed by Grace Smart. Music composed by Ellie Wilson and directed by Thom Ashworth. Fight Direction by Philip d'Orléans. With Sarah Amankwah (Eleanor/Cade/Edward), Philip Arditti (Warwick), Nina Bowers (Suffolk/Young Clifford/Elizabeth), Jonathan Broadbent (King Henry VI), Leaphia Darko (Salisbury/Northumberland/Rutland), Steffan Donnelly (Queen Margaret), Matti Houghton (Somerset/Prince Edward), Colin Hurley (York/Hastings), John Lightbody (Gloucester/Old Clifford/George), and Sophie Russell (Richard). Continuing a history cycle that extended over multiple seasons in 2019, the Globe's Henry VIabridged Shakespeare's three early collaborative plays into one, cutting part one and adapting parts two and three into a three-hour production that saw the return of the 2019 Globe ensemble, last seen in the summer season's 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. This sustained engagement by the same group of actors (bar two replacements) meant that the cast appeared to have gelled as a unit, and, from my perspective having seen all five shows (including Richard III, performed in repertory with Henry VI) in the two-season cycle, felt extremely tight-knit. A sense of trust and subsequent willingness to just go with each other permeated the whole piece, and their individual and group performances were strong enough to compensate for a few flaws in the productions themselves. For Henry VI, the biggest of these flaws was consistency of pacing. While the majority of the production charged forward, giving an appropriately dizzying feel to the changing allegiances and brutality of war, some moments were overly rushed and lost their impact. Jack Cade (Sarah Amankwah), for instance, was treated as a scary figure, with hooded, anonymous characters wearing animal face masks appearing at the Playhouse's windows behind the audience, rallying around Cade's cry of "we [are] Jack Cade." But owing to the compression required to condense two plays into a single production, Cade's scenes were cut so that the rebellion never hit its stride or became a real danger to king and country, and the unseen crowd of commoners protesting Humphrey's death felt far more threatening. Some of the blocking in the first act also felt disconnected, despite using one major set piece to tie things together. Grace Smart's design [End Page 302]changed the indoor theater into a Georgian palace, with the black and gold backdrop of the Wanamaker painted a pale blue, and a large marble rose motif covering the floor. Dominating the center of the space was a bright red chaise longue, around which the first act based a series of tableaux featuring the nobles dressed in modern suits of red or white. The chaise became a throne big enough for not only King Henry (Jonathan Broadbent) but also, at the beginning of the play, both Humphrey (John Lightbody) and his wife, Eleanor (Amankwah). Eleanor was quickly replaced by Queen Margaret (Steffan Donnelly), while York (Colin Hurley) and Suffolk (Nina Bowers) also sat next to the monarch in turn. The chaise became a touchstone during the first act, as the ensemble came back to this image regularly. The throne provided a large obstacle onstage, which anchored and hindered the action in equal parts. Some of the actors became blocked behind it, unable to move, while others were able to break away and move around it for soliloquies and pointed commentary on the rest of the court. The tableaux were often helpful, especially in terms of illustrating the shifting power dynamics that set up the civil war of acts two and three. Other moments were effective even without much movement, such as when Suffolk and Margaret plotted the removal of their enemies literally behind Henry as he sat on the throne, and even started making out over his head. However, such stationary blocking also flattened the action, and meant that much of the first hour was static. Many of these issues were fixed after the first act, however, and the second and third acts felt clearer. While the...

Examining the key performance indicators of all-star players and winning teams in elite futsal

ABSTRACTPurpose: to identify the key performance indicators that discriminate all-star from non-all-star players; and to differentiate winning from drawing/losing teams during the Euro Cup 2018 Futsal (Slovenia). Methods: the sample consisted of all matches (n = 20) played by 12 teams (87 players). Differences between both players and teams were calculated using the Mann–Whitney U and student-t tests and the binary logistic regression (assessing the relationship between all-star players or winning teams and several match- and contextually based variables). Results: minutes per match, goals, assists, ball recoveries, % shots on target, % key pass accuracy, and % challenges won discriminated all-star from non-all-star players. However, only minutes per match (OR: 1.329), goals (OR: 13.547), and ball recoveries (OR: 2.136) per time played were determined to differentiate all-star players. Regarding the team analysis, the following variables discriminated winning from losing/drawing teams: goals, assists, % counterattack success, and % set pieces success. However, only goals (OR: 2.035) and % set piece success (OR: 1.076) predicted the match outcome. Conclusions: the current findings can help coaches to a better understanding of which key performance indicators are important out of all data available, contributing to defining priorities when training and managing competition in elite futsal.

Daily Changes of Resting Metabolic Rate in Elite Rugby Union Players

Preparation for competitive contact sport has been extensively researched. There are, however, limited data to guide players as to how the demands of their sport affect the energy requirements of recovery. We aimed to provide novel data on changes in resting metabolic rate (RMR) in contact sport athletes and relate these to the physical demands of training and competition. Twenty-two elite professional Premiership Rugby Union players were recruited to the study. Indirect calorimetry (Vyntus CPX canopy; CareFusion) was used to measure RMR each morning of the competitive game week, in a fasted, rested state. External loads for training and game play were monitored and recorded using global positioning systems (Catapult Innovations, Australia), whereas internal loads were tracked using rate of perceived exertion scales. Collisions were reviewed and recorded by expert video analysts for contacts in general play (breakdown and tackle area) or the set piece (scrum or maul). There were significant (P = 0.005) mean increases in RMR of approximately 231 kcal the morning after (game day [GD] + 1) and 3 d after the game (GD + 3), compared with the day before the game (GD - 1). The players were exposed to internal and external loads during the training week comparable to that of a match day; however, despite the equivocal loads between training and game play, there were no significant increases in RMR after training. The collisions experienced in rugby match play are likely to be responsible for the significant increases in RMR at GD + 1 and GD + 3. Consequently, the measurement of RMR via indirect calorimetry may provide a novel noninvasive measure of the effects of collisions. This study provides a novel insight to the energy requirements of recovering from contact sport.

Disney’s Final Package Film: The Making and Marketing ofThe Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad(1949)

As the last of Disney’s package films in the troubled decade of the 1940s, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) has acquired the reputation of an awkward ‘marriage of convenience’ of two separate stories based on well-known literary properties, one American and one British: Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. This article, by reconstructing the gestation of the film over eight years, demonstrates the degree to which the stark contrast between the two halves was not only inevitable but deliberate. This is especially visible in the handling of the narrative – action set pieces for Toad and a full-fledged musical for Ichabod – as well as the art direction, which favors realism for Toad and stylization for Ichabod. An analysis of the marketing campaign shows that the film was presented as a facsimile of the standard double bill of the period, with an A picture and a B picture. In lauding its new cast of sympathetic Disney characters and stories that stimulate a full range of emotional responses, some film critics in Britain and the US compared Ichabod and Mr. Toad favorably to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo and the Silly Symphonies, calling the film a harbinger of a Disney renaissance – a revival that would be fully realized with the premiere of Cinderella in 1950.

Attacking Profiles of the Best Ranked Teams From Elite Futsal Leagues.

This study aimed to (i) explore the discriminatory power of the task-related variables and the context in establishing differences in the elite futsal leagues of Portugal, Spain, and Russia and (ii) understand how these variables vary according to the match outcome. Methodological issues concerning efficiency (goals and shots), offensive organisation (positional attack, counterattack, set pieces, or 5vs4+Goalkeeper), 1st goal scored during matches (home or away team), match type (balanced or unbalanced), and match outcome (winner, loser, or drawer) were discussed. Archival data were obtained from the 2017–2018 season of Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian professional futsal leagues for all play-off matches. Crosstabs analysis was conducted to establish the significance relationship between the elite futsal leagues and the situational variables. Afterward, discriminant analysis was used to identify the task-related variables that maximise mean differences between different league teams for defining offensive profile, and the variations found when the condition of the winner, loser, or drawer is taken into account. The results allowed to understand that the Portuguese and Russian teams used the positional attacks more, and less the counterattacks and set pieces than the Spaniards, who present a more balanced offensive profile. Overall, winners were better discriminated by goals scored, whereas 5vs4+Goalkeeper strategy discriminated loser teams. Coaches should be aware of these different offensive profiles in order to increase control over the match planning and decrease predictability against opposing teams.