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May 15[edit]

Lead actor in a supporting role[edit]

Is it unusual for an actor in a leading role – listed first in the acting credits – to campaign for and be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for that role? This is in regard to the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. According to the article supporting actor there are no specific criteria for the difference between nominations for supporting or lead actor/actress roles at the Academy Awards and each case is considered individually. So I'm wondering if it's an unusual practice (and therefore possibly noteworthy). – Reidgreg (talk) 14:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that it's possibly noteworthy. For that matter, it's a relatively new thing for actors (broadest sense) to actively campaign openly for an award of any type. Campaigning has long been the norm, but there always was a sense of plausible deniability: so-and-so just happened to make the talk show rounds, "the studio" was pushing for it, etc. It would have been unseemly and self-aggrandizing to say (out loud) "Yeah, I think my performance was worthy of Oscar consideration..." To do so for a "lesser" award would add layers of intrigue. Matt Deres (talk) 15:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unlikely. There are a few instances where it might have made sense. For example, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were both nominated for best actress for All About Eve. If they had been worried about splitting the Eve votes, enabling someone else (Judy Holliday) to win, then the scenario could have played out ... if only Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter hadn't both been nominated for supporting actress for the same film! Clarityfiend (talk) 12:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 16[edit]

Glass with ice in "Perfect Days"[edit]

In Wim Wenders's Tokyo-located film Perfect Days, the main character several times goes into a bar (different bars, I think) and the waiter offers him a glass with a clear liquid and ice saying something to the effect of "For your day's hard work". Is that a Japanese custom or is it a courtesy offered by those bars to that customer? What is in the glass? Water? --Error (talk) 22:12, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

今日も一日お疲れ様でした, "Thank you for your hard work of today", is a common somewhat formulaic Japanese way of greeting a worker at the end of their workday. An American bartender might just say, "Hi", or if they are chatty, "How's it rolling?". The liquid is probably just water. --Lambiam 06:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

--Error (talk) 22:38, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 18[edit]

Any ongoing competitive series about home or amateur cooks?[edit]

For all I know, there are MasterChef versions, like MasterChef (British TV series) and MasterChef Australia. I don't want short-lived ones, like Best Home Cook or Top Chef Amateurs, or any show about bakers, like The Great British Bake Off. Well, there are categories of such competitions, but I think creating a subcategory of them is risky and subject to guidelines. George Ho (talk) 22:48, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: If I recall correctly Chopped_(TV_series) has both amateur and professional contestants. RudolfRed (talk) 17:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RudolfRed: Hmm... I'm thinking only amateur cooks, unfortunately. George Ho (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You might have a browse through Category:Cooking television series by country. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RudolfRed: You're thinking of Cooks vs. Cons. Chopped has only pros. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The original Australia My Kitchen Rules is possibly ongoing. The NZ spinoff My Kitchen Rules NZ is also sort of ongoing, I don't think it was specifically cancelled with the rest cancellations but I suspect the prospect of any future season will depend on the current one. No idea of the South African one. Nil Einne (talk) 09:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think various Come Dine with Me are also ongoing although I believe the competition tends to be more limited despite there being a winner and a smallish vash prize, whatever may have happened in 2016. Nil Einne (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 19[edit]

Looking for a spy movie[edit]

I'm looking for a - presumably - spy movie that must be from the 1960s or 1970s. I remember a scene in it in which a group (I can't remember exactly whether it was the good guys or the bad guys, but I suspect the former) retreated into a bug-proof room. This transparent/translucent greenhouse-like thing was bug-proof because water flowed around it from above, like a curtain. Does anyone know what movie this might be? I don't think it can be the Mini-Max series with its cones of silence, I can remember the water very clearly, and it was probably not a parody. The room was also big enough for a conference table for several people. Besides, I was too young or not even born to have seen the series on television in the 1960s or 1970s; if it had been in the 1990s, I would probably still remember it. --Thorbjoern (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By way of clarification, I suggest that "the Mini-Max series" (that this isn't) was Get Smart. --142.112.143.8 (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Get Smart's primary joke was the Cone of Silence. There were variations, such as a Closet of Silence. There was also the Umbrella of Silence, big enough for a table and four people. It had plastic sheeting around it to look like water pouring off. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 17:43, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 23[edit]

Reverse of a picardy third[edit]

Listen to the Exciters song "Tell Him". The chorus is in E major, but (according to all sheet music sources for this song) the final word "now" is on an E minor chord. This is the reverse of a picardy third. Does this have a special name?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On a listen, the chorus in the Exciters version is in F major, and the guitarist clearly comps F major on that final word/the following final two bars of the chorus. The original version (performed by Gil Hamilton, as "Tell Her") has the chorus in Bb major, and the harmony for the bars in question is similarly Bb major. The same transcription error popping up in multiple sheet music sources is a relatively common occurrence in popular song, usually stemming from an error in a hastily-made fake book chart that later gets copied into "official" transcriptions/arrangements.

If such a harmonic progression had occured here (to a minor chord), it would be considered a type of modulation to the parallel minor (sometimes termed "parallel modulation"), as the following sections (the verses) are in an F minor tonality. In addition, the term "Picardy third" is typically only applied to the end of a work/large structural section (the latter chiefly in Western classical music), so a movement at the end of a verse-chorus form section isn't quite analogous. (fugues) (talk) 01:16, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 27[edit]

seeking Shchedryk sheet[edit]

Where do people look for written scores these days, preferably open-source & academic types instead of sketchy sites and annoying apps? I would love a Carol of the Bells in four voices. Temerarius (talk) 02:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Temerarius: Try IMSLP for public-domain works. Unfortunately, the English lyrics are still under copyright, so the scores only have lyrics in Ukrainian (as well as Italian and Spanish translations by respective editors who released them under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Double sharp (talk) 08:08, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much @Double sharp! Temerarius (talk) 21:36, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Shams al-Ma'arif as a model for the Necronomicon?[edit]

Could it be that Lovecraft used the book "Shams al-Ma'arif" as a model for his fictional book Necronomicon? 2A02:8071:60A0:92E0:0:0:0:992A (talk) 14:57, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that he had heard of it, but as the first English translations appeared in 2022, and I'm fairly sure that Lovecraft could not read Arabic (or Urdu or Turkish, into which it has also been translated), he would likely not have known it in detail.

In his Lovecraft: A Biography (New York, Doubleday, 1975), L.Sprague de Camp states (p167) that "The name [Necronomicon] was probably suggested by the Astronomica of Manilius . . . quoted by Lovecraft in his newspaper columns." De Camp goes on to cite a number of real, legendary and fictional books that Lovecraft mentioned in prose and correspondence, but Shams al-Ma'arif is not amongst them.

Those real books include William Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904), Joseph Glanvil's [sic] Sadducismus Triumphatus (1668, published 1681), The ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, and Helena Blavatsky's The Book of Dzyan (plagiarised from Sanscrit texts).

Of course, Lovecraft was a voluminous correspondent, and it's possible that references to Shams al-Ma'arif have turned up in papers of his studied since 1975. I can certainly see why you make the suggestion.

One further possibility: Lovecraft was an avid fan of The One Thousand and One Nights from early childhood, and in two separate letters recounted that he adopted the pseudonym of Abdul Alhazred around the age of five (see Lin Carter Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (New York, Ballantine Books, 1972, Chapter 1)). Having access to his maternal grandfather's "voluminous" library, he probably read an adult rather than child's version, so if Shams al-Ma'arif is mentioned, he would have learned of its existence thus. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 20:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another potential sources of inspiration are the Picatrix and the Kitāb al-nawāmīs, of which the text was accessible. --Lambiam 09:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 28[edit]