A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture conceived neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature. Although the U.S. production of movies intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s, the term B movie continued to be used in the broader sense it maintains today. In its post–Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides of the definition: on the one hand, many B movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity; on the other, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient. In some cases, both are true. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1950s.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_movie

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1842:

American Indian Wars: United States general William Jenkins Worth declared the Second Seminole War to be over. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Seminole_War

1888:

A recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's The Lost Chord (audio clip right), one of the first recordings of music ever made, was played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Chord

1941:

After a secret meeting aboard warships in a secure anchorage near Argentia, Newfoundland, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post-World War II world despite the fact that the United States had yet to enter the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter

2006:

The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in the Lebanon War between Lebanon and Israel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

2007:

Four co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks detonated in the Iraqi towns of Qahtaniya and Jazeera, killing an estimated 796 people and wounding 1,562 others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Yazidi_communities_bombings

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

libration (n): 1. The act of oscillating or wobbling. 2. (astronomy) The apparent wobble or variation in the visible side of the Moon that permanently faces the Earth http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libration

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Time will rust the sharpest sword,

Time will consume the strongest cord; That which molders hemp and steel,

Mortal arm and nerve must feel. --Walter Scott http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Scott