题目内容
Chinese audiences watching Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon will recognize more than just the alien robot stars from the previous movies. In the latest blockbuster sequel, which opens on Thursday, household Chinese brand names loom large as part of an unprecedented product placement push. Sam, the protagonist played by Shia LaBeouf, appears in a T-shirt from Meters/bonwe—a mid-level clothing retailer well known to many young Chinese and one of the four Chinese brands to appear in the film. The Chinese branding campaign is the largest so far in any single Hollywood movie, highlighting Chinese companies’ determination to go global and also use global marketing techniques to raise their domestic profiles. "The main motivation is to expand their brand recognition in foreign markets, but for others the focus is on the domestic market because the effect with foreign movies is better," says Didi Zhang at advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather Beijing, which worked with Lenovo on Transformers 3. The robots have also been given the Made-in-China touch. Brains, a spiky-haired robot with bulging fluorescent blue eyes, transforms itself out of a Lenovo Edge computer, sold by China’s largest PC maker. A TCL flatscreen television also makes a brief appearance. One Chinese brand even makes it into the script when a scientist tells Sam that he has to finish his Shuhua Low Lactose Milk—a product of Yili, one of the China’s largest dairy companies. Chinese marketing experts believe that their nation’s products will quickly become more visible in global media. Meters/bonwe is pushing large-scale product placement in Plants & Zombies, a computer game. "Transformers 3 will quickly speed up the trend," said Ms. Zhang. The Chinese brand that makes it into the script of Transformers 3 is______.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Steven Paul Jobs was born in Los Altos, California, in 1955, the (31) child of a Syrian professor of political science and a US speech therapist. He was (32) by Paul and Clara Jobs, a hard-working couple of moderate means. Though devoted to them, he always retained a sense of baffled anger that he had been rejected by his (33) parents, according to friends. He was (34) among people who worked closely with him as an inspiring but difficult leader who could deflate subordinates who did not live (35) his demanding standards with withering anger. Jobs, a perfectionist (36) it came to his company’s products, insisted on having the final (37) over the technology, design and marketing of everything that was stamped with the Apple’s name. His journey to the (38) of the computing industry began when he was in high school, working for the summer at Hewlett-Packard. There he met Steve Wozniak, an HP engineer who would be Apple’s other (39) . Jobs later (40) out of Reed College, Oregon, and in 1974 went to India in search of (41) enlightenment. He once said that his rival, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, would have (42) from similar experiences. Jobs retained the 1960s bohemian spirit throughout his life, usually dressing in the "artist’s" (43) of black turtleneck sweater and jeans. Back home, he and Wozniak (44) a simple computer, the Apple I, in Jobs’ bedroom. They sold the machine for $666 and took in $774,000 in sales. That was followed, in 1977, by the Apple II, which was aimed at ordinary consumers rather than just hobbyists and featured circuitry for connections to a colour (45) , a dramatic (46) at the time. The success of the Apple II made Jobs a rich man. When Apple went (47) in 1980, its market (48) hit more than $1 billion. In 1983. however, IBM, at the time the world’s largest computer (49) , introduced its own personal computer. The IBM brand legitimized the PC in the business marketplace and (50) the Microsoft operating system as the industry standard.
At the end of last week, Bodega Aurrerá, a Mexican subsidiary of the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, opened a new store in the village of San Juan Teotihuacán, just north of Mexico City. Normally, such an event would cause little stir. Wal-Mart is already Mexico’s biggest retailer, too. And its shops seem to go down very well with its millions of bargain-hungry customers. But this particular opening was, in fact, the culmination of months of protests, legal actions, hunger strikes and hyperbole by those determined to stop it. The reason is the location. Just 2.5 km (1.6 miles) away is the ancient city of Teotihuacán, probably Mexico’s most famous archaeological site. Amongst other attractions, it boasts the third- largest (by volume) pyramid in the world. For many Mexicans, the ancient site, abandoned by its mysterious inhabitants centuries before the Spanish conquerors arrived, remains the ultimate symbol of Mexican identity and nationhood. Thousands troop up to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun to celebrate the summer solstice. To them, the idea of having a Wal-Mart next door is abhorrent. In the words of Homero Aridjis, a writer and one of the leading opponents, "it is like driving the stake of globalization into the heart of old Mexico." The controversy is only the latest in a string of protesters’ attempts to save Mexican culture from what they see as a creeping menace. They won a famous victory by blocking a McDonalds restaurant from opening in the main square of the pretty southern colonial town of Oaxaca. But this time they were on much thinner ground. For a start, Wal-Mart went through all the appropriate regulatory hoops, even getting permission from the Paris-based International Council on Monuments and Sites, which judged that the store would cause no harm to the nearby ruins. A small stone platform was indeed found during construction of the new car park, but was preserved. Just as importantly, the claim that the new store spoils the famous view from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun is clearly bogus, as anyone who cares to get to the top can testify. The problem is not so much that you can see the Wal-Mart, but one of trying to distinguish it from the 30-odd other ugly, squat buildings that litter the surrounding countryside—to say nothing of the car parks, the electricity pylons and the large power station. Sadly, unrestricted building long ago ruined this particular view, as well as many others in Mexico. It can be learned from Par
Christine Laggard used to work as______.
TEXT D The first performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, in St. Petersburg in 1892, was a flop. Wrote one critic the next day: "For dancers there is rather little in it; for art absolutely nothing, and for the artistic fate of our ballet, one more step downward." Two decades passed before another production was attempted. A century later, the ballet constitutes the single biggest fine-arts moneymaker in the United States, which has claimed the ballet as its own. In 1996, box-office receipts for some 2,400 American performances of the work by more than 20,000 dancers totaled nearly U.S. $50 million. Despite the ballet’s popularity, however, few Americans are aware of its history -- or of some of the twists and turns of fete that have changed it from its original form. Choreographer Maurice Petipa (known as the "father of classical ballet") prepared the first production for Tchaikovsky in 1892. He based his scenario not on the macabre 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Fang of the Mice by E. T. A. Hoffmann, which the composer had thought to use for his inspiration, but on Alexander Dumas’s more benign 1845 French adaptation. Petipa did use the Hoffmann version to name his characters, but mixed up some names because he could not read German. (The heroine of the piece, Clara, should be named Marie according to the story. Clara is in fact the name of one of her dolls.) In the original story the Mouse King had seven heads and terrified the seven-year-old Marie by foaming blood from all seven mouths and grinding and chattering all seven sets of teeth. These memorable characteristics, along with other sinister qualities in Hoffmann’s story, are among those aspects of the original that have been removed in most modem adaptations. Removed from the ballet altogether by Petipa is a vital plot-within-a-plot in the Hoffmann story. This is the fairytale related to Marie while she recovers from injuries sustained in the battle between the forces of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. As a result, the storyline in the ballet does not really make sense. In the fairytale, we learn that the Mouse King’s desire for vengeance has its origins in his evil mother, the wily Madam Mouserinks, whose first seven sons have been executed by the royal court for eating all the fat from the royal family’s sausages. In retribution, Madam Mouserinks has attacked the little Princess Pirlipat in her cradle, turning her into a misshapen creature whose beauty can be restored only if she eats a certain rare, difficult-to-crack nut called Krakatuk. After many years the nut is finally located in Asia by the court clockmaker and wizard, Drosselmeyer, whose young nephew is identified as a prime candidate to crack it. The young man is already known as "the Nutcracker" for the gallantry he shows in cracking nuts for young ladies in his father’s shop. As predicted, he alone is able to crack the hard nut. He offers it to the princess to eat, and her beauty is restored. At that moment, however, the Nutcracker chances to step backwards, trampling on none other than Madam Mouserinks. She is fatally injured, but manages to place a curse on the young man before she dies. He is transformed into a grotesque parody of his former self, with a monstrous head, a yawning mouth and a lever in the back by which his jaw may be moved up and down. Madam Mouserinks sentences him to battle her son, the Mouse King, whom she bore after the death of her seven previous sons, and who has their seven heads. The curse may be removed only when the Nutcracker is able to win the love of a young lady in spite of his ugliness.... Hoffmann, the author of the original Nutcracker story, was as peculiar as many of his characters. Small and wiry, with sunken eyes and dark bushy hair, he had nervous tics that caused his hands, feet and face to twitch constantly. He adored the music of Mozart (and changed one of his middle names from Wilhelm to Amadeus, to honor the great composer), was subject to bouts of deep melancholy and was an alcoholic who sold the rights to his first book for a cellar of wine. He eventually died of a combination of liver disease and a neural illness that gradually paralyzed his body, starting with his feet. Several of Hoffmann’s stories provided the basis for operas and ballets. The French composer Jacques Offenbach, for example, used three of his short stories as the basis for The Tales of Hoffmann -- a quite serious piece, breaking with Offenbach’s earlier light-hearted style. Tchaikovsky, composer of The Nutcracker, was invited to conduct his work but refused. He was terrified that if he were to mount the podium and try to conduct an orchestra his head might fall off. He died shortly after the first performance of The Nutcracker, during a cholera epidemic -- it was supposed he had been drinking impure water, but a more recent theory suggests that he killed himself out of fear of exposure for a sexual scandal involving the Russian royal family. The author and the composer may have had unusual characteristics, and the story of the Nutcracker itself may be bizarre, but its popularity endures. In recent years American choreographers have played with the formula to bring it up to date. Kirk Peterson’s The American Nutcracker is set in the redwood forests of Northern California and replaces some of the characters with legendary or famous American names -- notably 19th-century writer Mark Twain as a party guest. The Pacific Northwest Ballet’s popular Nutcracker production uses sets by avant-garde designer Maurice Sendak and plumbs the tale’s dark psychological aspects far deeper than most. Production company Ballethnic in Atlanta, Georgia, has an Urban Nutcracker set in Atlanta in the 1940s; costumes in earth, amber and chocolate tones represent the different skin colors of the ethnic mix. In Baton Rouge, Louisianna, the Regional Ballet has in its repertory a Bayou Nutcracker in which Clara falls asleep in a bayou, dreams of a lavish plantation party and travels to the land of sweets in a hot-air balloon. Americans wanting to reclaim some of the psychology of the Hoffmann short story have been investigating choreographer Mark Morris’s dark 1991 update since it became available on video. Set in the 1960s, Morris’s visionary The Hard Nut probes many of the same moral issues as the Hoffmann original, most of which are lost in today’s conventional versions. Which of the following statements about Hoffmann’s short stories was NOT true
微信支付 
支付宝支付