THE WINSORS & THE GOBLET OF FIRE'S TOURNAMENT

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have started to prepare their participation in The Goblet of Fire, an interesting tournament that it is going to be celebrated in Hogwarts.

The Winsors have been invited by Albus Dumbledore and it has been a great honour for them to have this chance. The rivals are very powerful and strong but The Winsors are going to offer their best result.

 

The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks. 

 

The schools took it in turns to host the tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities -until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued.

 

Before confirming their participation, The Winsors have studied some English vocabulary about Clothes, Weather and The Body. They have also practised an A2 Cambridge Test.

 

Download Clothes Vocabulary

 

More information: Clothes

 

Download Weather Vocabulary

 

More information: Weather

 

Download The Body Vocabulary

 

 More information: The Body

 

 Download A2 Cambridge Test_02 (Reading & Listening)

 

More information: Exam English

 

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a fantasy book written by British author J. K. Rowling and the fourth novel in the Harry Potter series.

It follows Harry Potter, a wizard in his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the mystery surrounding the entry of Harry's name into the Triwizard Tournament, in which he is forced to compete.

The book was published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury and in the United States by Scholastic. In both countries, the release date was 8 July 2000. This was the first time a book in the series was published in both countries at the same time.

The novel won a Hugo Award, the only Harry Potter novel to do so, in 2001. The book was adapted into a film, released worldwide on 18 November 2005, and a video game by Electronic Arts.

More information: Wizarding World

Throughout the three previous novels in the Harry Potter series, the main character, Harry Potter, has struggled with the difficulties of growing up and the added challenge of being a famed wizard.

When Harry was a baby, Lord Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard in history, killed Harry's parents but was mysteriously defeated after unsuccessfully trying to kill Harry, though his attempt left a lightning-shaped scar on Harry's forehead.

This results in Harry's immediate fame and his being placed in the care of his abusive Muggle, non-magical, aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, who have a son named Dudley.

On Harry's eleventh birthday, he learns he is a wizard from Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and enrols in Hogwarts. He befriends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and confronts Lord Voldemort, who is trying to regain power.

In Harry's first year, he has to protect the Philosopher's Stone from Voldemort and one of his faithful followers at Hogwarts.

After returning to school after summer break, students at Hogwarts are attacked by the legendary monster of the Chamber of Secrets after the Chamber is opened. Harry ends the attacks by killing a Basilisk and thwarting another attempt by Lord Voldemort to return to full strength.

The following year, Harry hears he has been targeted by escaped mass murderer Sirius Black. Despite stringent security measures at Hogwarts, Harry encounters Black at the end of his third year and learns Black was framed and is actually Harry's godfather. He also learns that it was his father's old school friend Peter Pettigrew who betrayed his parents.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in the Harry Potter series. The first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published by Bloomsbury on 26 June 1997.

The second, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published on 2 July 1998. The third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, followed on 8 July 1999. Goblet of Fire is almost twice the size of the first three books, the paperback edition was 636 pages.

More information: Wizarding World

Rowling stated that she knew from the beginning it would be the biggest of the first four. She said there needed to be a proper run-up for the conclusion and rushing the complex plot could confuse readers. She also stated that everything is on a bigger scale, which was symbolic, as Harry's horizons widened both literally and metaphorically as he grew up. She also wanted to explore more of the magical world.

Until the official title's announcement on 27 June 2000, the book was called by its working title, Harry Potter IV. Previously, in April, the publisher had listed it as Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament.

However, J. K. Rowling expressed her indecision about the title in an Entertainment Weekly interview. I changed my mind twice on what the title was. The working title had got out -Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament. Then I changed Doomspell to Triwizard Tournament. Then I was teetering between Goblet of Fire and Triwizard Tournament. In the end, I preferred Goblet of Fire because it's got that kind of cup of destiny feel about it, which is the theme of the book.

Rowling mentioned that she originally wrote a Weasley relative named Malfalda, who, according to Rowling, was the daughter of the second cousin who's a stockbroker mentioned in Philosopher's Stone. This stockbroker had been very rude to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley in the past, but now he and his (Muggle) wife had inconveniently produced a witch, they came back to the Weasleys asking for their help in introducing her to wizarding society before she starts at Hogwarts.

More information: Wizarding World

Malfalda was supposed to be a Slytherin and was to fill in the Rita Skeeter subplot, but she was eventually removed because there were obvious limitations to what an eleven year old closeted at school could discover.

Rowling considered Rita Skeeter to be much more flexible. Rowling also admitted that the fourth book was the most difficult to write at the time because she noticed a giant plot hole halfway through writing. In particular, Rowling had trouble with the ninth chapter, The Dark Mark, which she rewrote 13 times.

It was pointed out that bigotry is a big theme in the Harry Potter novels and Goblet of Fire in particular. it was mentioned how Voldemort and his followers are prejudiced against Muggles and how, in Goblet of Fire, Hermione forms a group to liberate Hogwarts' house-elves who have been indentured servants so long they lack desire for anything else.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was adapted into a film, released worldwide on 18 November 2005, which was directed by Mike Newell and written by Steve Kloves.

More information: Screen Rant

Download Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

 

 

 Dark and difficult times lie ahead.

Soon we must all face the choice between

what is right and what is easy.

Albus Dumbledore

1891, THE MUSIC HALL AKA CARNEGIE HALL OPENS IN NYC

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music, and she has remembered the Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall), a wonderful place that had its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Meanwhile, The Grangers have been practising some English vocabulary about Animals and Clothes.

Download Animals Vocabulary

 

More information: Animals

 

Download Clothes Vocabulary

 

More information: Clothes

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. The hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1973 and David Geffen Hall in 2015.

Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark in 1967.

Carnegie Hall is on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street and 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City. The site covers 2,565.8 m2. Its lot is 61 m wide, covering the entire width of the block between 56th Street to the south and 57th Street to the north, and extends 46 m eastward from Seventh Avenue.

More information: Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall shares the city block with the Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower to the east.

It is cater-corner from the Osborne Apartments. It also faces the Rodin Studios and 888 Seventh Avenue to the west; Alwyn Court, the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, and One57 to the north; the Park Central Hotel to the southwest; and the CitySpire Center to the southeast. Right outside the hall is an entrance to the New York City Subway's 57th Street–Seventh Avenue station, served by the N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains.

Carnegie Hall is part of an artistic hub that developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its opening in 1891 directly contributed to the development of the hub. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Osborne Apartments, and the Rodin Studios. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who funded its construction. It was intended as a venue for the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, on whose boards Carnegie served. Construction began in 1890, and was carried out by Isaac A. Hopper and Company.

Although the building was in use from April 1891, the official opening night was May 5, with a concert conducted by Walter Damrosch and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1925, when Carnegie's widow sold it to a real estate developer, Robert E. Simon. When Simon died in 1935, his son, Robert E. Simon, Jr., became owner.

More information: Classic New York History

On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits
the most famous concert hall in the world.
No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky
led the first performances in 1891.
Virtually every major artist has performed there.
There is simply no place like it.
The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.

Leonard Slatkin

55 CENTRAL PARK WEST, GHOSTBUSTERS IN MANHATTAN

Today, The Grandma has visited 55 Central Park West in New York City. 

 

It is one of the most enchanted buildings of the city and she has had the wonderful help of The Ghostbusters to enter in.

 

Meanwhile, The Newtons have been preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied some vocabulary about Animals and Clothes.

 

More information: Animals & Clothes 

 

Ghostbusters is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film directed and produced by Ivan Reitman, and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, three eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. It also stars Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, and features Annie Potts, William Atherton, and Ernie Hudson in supporting roles.

Based on his own fascination with spirituality, Aykroyd conceived Ghostbusters as a project starring himself and John Belushi, in which they would adventure through time and space battling supernatural threats.

Following Belushi's death in 1982, and with Aykroyd's concept deemed financially impractical, Ramis was hired to help rewrite the script to set it in New York City and make it more realistic. It was the first comedy film to employ expensive special effects, and Columbia Pictures, concerned about its relatively high $25-30 million budget, had little faith in its box office potential. Filming took place from October 1983 to January 1984, in New York City and Los Angeles.

Due to competition for special effects studios among various films in development at the time, Richard Edlund used part of the budget to found Boss Film Studios, which employed a combination of practical effects, miniatures, and puppets to deliver the ghoulish visuals.

Ghostbusters was released on June 8, 1984, to critical acclaim and became a cultural phenomenon. 

It was well received for its blend of comedy, action, and horror, and Murray's performance was often singled out for praise. It earned $282.2 million during its initial theatrical run, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 1984 in the United States and Canada, and the then-highest-grossing comedy ever. 

It was the number-one film in theaters for seven consecutive weeks and one of only four films to gross more than $100 million that year. Further theatrical releases have increased the total gross to around $295.2 million, making it one of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Its theme song, Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr., was also a number-one hit.

More information: Mental Floss

With its effect on popular culture, and a dedicated fan following, the success of Ghostbusters launched a multi-billion dollar multimedia franchise. This included the popular animated television series The Real Ghostbusters (1986), its sequel Extreme Ghostbusters (1997), video games, board games, comic books, clothing, music, and haunted attractions.

Ghostbusters was followed in 1989 by Ghostbusters II, which fared less well financially and critically, and attempts to develop a second sequel paused in 2014 following Ramis's death. After a 2016 reboot received mixed reviews and underperformed financially, a second sequel to the 1984 film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, was released in November 2021.

Principal photography began in New York City on October 28, 1983. On the first day, Reitman brought Murray to the set, still unsure if he had read the script. Filming in New York lasted for approximately six weeks, finishing just before Christmas. Reitman was conscious they had to complete the New York phase before they encountered inhospitable December weather.

At the time, choosing to shoot in New York City was considered risky. In the early 1980s, many saw the city as synonymous with fiscal disaster and violence, and Los Angeles was seen as the center of the entertainment industry.

In a 2014 interview, Reitman said he chose New York because I wanted the film to be... my New York movie. As Reitman was working with comedians, he encouraged improvisation, adapting multiple takes and keeping the cast creations that worked, but directing them back to the script.

Some guerrilla filmmaking took place, capturing spontaneous scenes at iconic locations around the city, including one shot at Rockefeller Center where the actors were chased off by a real security guard.

A scene was shot on Central Park West with extras chanting Ghostbusters before the name had been cleared. Medjuck contacted the studio, urging them to secure permission to use the word as the title.

The building at 55 Central Park West served as the home of Weaver's character and the setting of the Ghostbusters' climactic battle with Gozer. 

The art department added extra floors and embellishments using matte paintings, models, and digital effects to create the focal point of ghostly activity.

More information: Roger Ebert

We’re ready to believe you!

The Ghostbusters