Portal:The arts

"Premiere" (also known as "Pilot") is the series premiere of the American teen drama television series The O.C., which premiered on Fox on August 5, 2003. Written by series creator Josh Schwartz and directed by executive producer Doug Liman, the episode depicts the introduction of troubled teenager Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) into the wealthy lifestyle of the Cohen family in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. (Full article...)

Rock Steady is the fifth studio album by American rock band No Doubt, released on December 11, 2001, by Interscope Records. The band began writing the album with initial recording sessions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, then traveled to London and Jamaica to work with various performers, songwriters, and producers. Sly & Robbie, the Neptunes, and William Orbit were among the many artists the band collaborated with on the album. (Full article...)

The Book of Kells (Latin: Codex Cenannensis; Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais; Library of Trinity College Dublin, MS A. I. [58], sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illustrated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in Ireland or Scotland, and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions across Ireland and Scotland. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination. The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for centuries. (Full article...)

Soultaker is a 1990 American fantasy horror film written by Vivian Schilling and directed by Michael Rissi. It stars Joe Estevez in the title role, alongside Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, Chuck Williams, Robert Z'Dar, and David "Shark" Fralick. The film follows a group of young adults who try to flee from the titular "Soultaker" when their souls are ejected from their bodies after a car accident. Inspired by discussions with Action International Pictures producer Eric Parkinson, the script was based on a real-life car accident which Schilling was involved in. (Full article...)

The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and is currently on its 56th season as of 2026. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show. (Full article...)

Harold Pinter (/ˈpɪntər/; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was an English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. (Full article...)

In fandom, Stucky (also Steve/Bucky or Bucky/Steve) is the pairing of Steve Rogers (Captain America) and James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (the Winter Soldier), fictional characters who appear in comic books and related media produced by Marvel Comics. The pairing is a manifestation of shipping, a phenomenon in fandom wherein individuals create fan works that depict a romantic or sexual relationship between two characters whose relationship in the source material is typically neither romantic nor sexual; Stucky is an example of slash, a genre of fan works that focus on same-sex characters. In accordance with shipping naming conventions, Stucky is a portmanteau of "Steve" and "Bucky". (Full article...)

The Soiscél Molaisse (/ˈsiːʃˌkɛl ˌmɒˈlæʃ/ SEESH-kel mo-LASH; 'Gospel of St. Molaisse') is an Irish cumdach (a type of ornamented metal reliquary box or carrying case for a holy book) that originated from an 8th-century wooden core embellished in the 11th and 15th centuries with metal plates decorated in the Insular style. Until the late 18th century, the shrine held a now-lost companion text, presumed to be a small illuminated gospel book associated with Saint Laisrén mac Nad Froích (d. 564 or 571), also known as Molaisse or "Mo Laisse". In the 6th century, Molaisse founded a church on Devenish Island in the southern part of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, with which the cumdach is associated. (Full article...)

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with English solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Revealing his true nature as a vampire, Dracula moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. Harker joins a group led by Abraham Van Helsing who hunt and kill the Count. (Full article...)

Halo: Contact Harvest is a military science fiction novel by Joseph Staten. Released in October 2007, it is the fifth novel based on the Halo video game franchise. Staten was a longtime employee of Bungie, the developer of the Halo video game series; he directed the cut scenes in the video games and is a major contributor to Halo's storyline. He set out to write a novel that appealed to gamers, as well as those who had never read a Halo novel. (Full article...)

The Daily News Building (also the News Building) is a skyscraper at 220 East 42nd Street in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. The original tower, designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells in the Art Deco style and completed in 1930, was one of several major developments constructed on 42nd Street around that time. A similarly styled expansion, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, was completed in 1960. When it originally opened, the building received mixed reviews and was described as having a utilitarian design. The Daily News Building is a National Historic Landmark, and its exterior and lobby are New York City designated landmarks. (Full article...)

"O Captain! My Captain!" is an extended metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Well received upon publication, the poem was Whitman's first to be anthologized and the most popular during his lifetime. Together with "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", and "This Dust Was Once the Man", it is one of four poems written by Whitman about the death of Lincoln. (Full article...)

The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments In Our Time (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work", and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print. (Full article...)

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819 (see 1820 in poetry). (Full article...)

The Chase is an American television quiz show adapted from the British program of the same name. It premiered on August 6, 2013, on the Game Show Network (GSN). It was hosted by Brooke Burns and featured Mark Labbett as the "chaser" (referred to on air exclusively by his nickname "the Beast"). A revival of the show premiered on January 7, 2021, on ABC. It was hosted by Sara Haines and initially featured as the chasers Jeopardy! champions James Holzhauer (who was a contestant on the GSN version), Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutter. Labbett returned as a chaser in June 2021, before stepping down in 2022 along with Jennings. In their place are Buzzy Cohen, Brandon Blackwell, and Victoria Groce. (Full article...)