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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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