【推荐1】The 87^th Academy Award nominations（提名）were announced on Jan 15,and The Grand Budapest Hotel stood out as a favorite with nine nominations, including Best Picture. Check out some other Best Picture nominees to see if you missed any of last year's top Hollywood films.

The Imitation Game

This historical thriller is about British computer scientist, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), the father of artificial intelligence. At the start of World War Ⅱ, Turing was asked to join a select team of mathematical geniuses to decode（解码）the system the Nazis used to send military messages. Besides the actual breaking of the code, Cumberbatch's portrayal（扮演）of Turing's personality, a mixture of decency（正派）and shyness, is also a highlight of the movie.

Birdman

This dark comedy film is about how Riggan Thomson, a faded star once famous for his superhero roles, struggles to regain fame. American actor Michael Keaton, 63, who has a similar experience to Thomson's, plays the leading role.

Selma

A stellar cast(主要演员) including talk show queen Oprah Winfrey may be one reason to see Selma. But that the film focuses on Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights also makes it worth viewing. Based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches, the film is a chronicle(编年史) of King's(David Oyelowo) campaign for political rights for African-American people.

The Theory of Everything

We know English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking for his significant scientific discoveries, especially his black hole theories. This biographical film reveals the scientist's (played by Eddie Redmayne) secret romantic relationship with Jane Hawking (Felicity Jones), whom he meets and falls in love with at Cambridge and who later becomes his first wife.

Boyhood

American Director Richard Linklater did an experiment in this film, using the same cast for l2 years to record a boy's growth. In two and a half hours, we see Mason, a Texas boy from a divorced family, grow from 6-year-old boy to a freshman in college.

【推荐2】As one of the world’s most popular cultural mediums, cinema got the most attention at the Taihu World Cultural Forum, an annual event that aims to improve cultural exchanges. It is reported that the box office (票房) takings in China have been growing at an impressive rate in the past five years, which indicates that China, the world’s second-largest movie market, is closing the gap with the United States, the world’s top cinema market.

Cao Yin, director of the program center at China Movie Channel, said that China has the most cinema screens of any country, and the number is increasing steadily. Saying that China has signed coproduction agreements with more than 20 countries, Cao added it has deepened cinematic exchanges between Chinese filmmakers and their foreign counterparts (同行)．

Hong Kong director Stanley Tong said that with the country’s huge home market he believes foreign filmmakers will increasingly seek cooperation with China.“International coproduction will become an important platform to send Chinese stories overseas and give us a broader vision of creation, ” Tong said.

Recently, over 80 percent of the world’s top 100 highest box-office titles have been action films. Tong said the action film, in which plots are basically secondary to dazzling stunts (特技), is one of the easiest ways to appeal to foreign audiences. But it has been a decades-long struggle for Chinese filmmakers to sell their stories overseas.When asked what kinds of Chinese films would have the most global appeal, Yan Zhaozhu, chairman of the Taihu World Cultural Forum, said stories that address universal issues, such as environmental protection and climate change, are perhaps the best options.

【推荐3】Nuo Opera is one of the most popular folk operas in southern China. There are many different stories about the history of Nuo Opera. Some hold that it began during the Zhou Dynasty. It was probably during the Song Dynasty that Nuo became a drama Nuo Opera is the most direct and important expressive medium of Nuo culture. It covers ancient religion, folklore(民间传说) and art and combines literature, music, dance, drama, painting, calligraphy, sculpture and paper-cut. Besides, Nuo Opera involves many acrobatic(杂交的) performances and most of the performers are specially trained. It has great artistic value and is called the living fossil of Chinese drama.

The unique symbol of Nuo Opera, the masks, is considered a treasure of Chinese folk art.Different roles require different masks to reveal the characters, through their changing facial features and decorations. There are many masks used in one drama. The masks are mainly made of poplar and willow, because these two kinds of wood are durable and easy to carve. Studies show that the face painting of Peking Opera and face changing of Sichuan Opera were influenced by Nuo Opera masks.

Nuo Opera used to be very popular in every part of China, but gradually, it faded out in most parts.Nowadays, it remains popular only among rural areas in south-west China, such as Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Nuo Opera is very different in different areas.

【推荐1】Paintings and sculptures can be a feast for the eyes of visitors to art museums, but today their viewing is also an unconventional treatment for people with mental illness.

Last month. a group of Canadian doctors started to write a new kind of prescription (处方), which gives patients free access to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). There, they will have a “relaxing. revitalizing experience” looking at the museum’s collection.

Nathalie Bondil. the museum’s director general. believes that being in contact with culture and arts can help with wellbeing. “In the 21st century, culture will be what physical activity was for health in the 20th century.” she said.

Each prescription will allow not only the patients but also their families or friends to go with them. In the museum. the visitor can appreciate the artworks, and take part in a wide range of activities including drawing, sewing (缝纫) and making a sculpture with recycled materials.

The new treatment is said to be the first of its kind in the world. But there’s increasing evidence that the display of visual art, especially art depicting (描绘) nature, can have positive effects on people with depression, anxiety and self-respect problems.

In 2017, the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing

(APPGAHW) also released a report stating that “the time has come to recognize the powerful contribution the arts can make to our health and wellbeing”.

Is it possible for art to improve overall health? We may not know the answer yet. But one thing is certain, more and more people today are persuaded by the idea that “art is good medicine”.

【推荐2】The state of the world’s plants is not strong. One in five plant species faces the risk of disappearance, according to a report. And such loss of plant variety could have destructive influences on our own plant uses.

“Plants are extremely momentous to human beings,” said Kathy Willis, science director at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, who led the new report. “Plants provide us with everything--- food, fuel, medicine, and they are unbelievably important for our climate controlling. Without plants we would not be here.”

The good news is that deforestation rates around the world have decreased to a great extent since the 1950s. However, this first-ever report on the health of plant species around the world shows that there is much more to be done.

The report, named the “State of the World’s Plants”, estimates that there are now about 390,900 plant species known to science. And some 21 percent of those plants are in danger of disappearance. “The positive side is that we’re still discovering lots of new plants, about 2,000 each year, new plants for food, for fuel and for drugs,” said Dr Willis. “The bad side is that we’ve seen a huge change in land cover, mainly driven by cultural activity, with a little bit of climate change in there as well.”

Human activity has a significant effect on the risk of plant disappearance. As humans cut down forests to clear space for agriculture, towns and cities, vast stores of biodiversity (生物多样性) are lost.

Losing the diversity of plants could also be a problem for human use. Not only could this affect our own food supply directly, it could also affect the food web. If a plant-eating animal loses some of its food supplies, that change could affect the food chain.

【推荐3】Today we know Antarctica as an extreme environment containing ice and snow. But new research provides evidence that the area was very different in the past.

The evidence was found inside a piece of earth sediment(沉积物) collected by researchers from a depth of about 30 meters below the ocean floor off the coast of Antarctica. In the sediment, they found forest soil estimated to be about 90 million years old. This would have been in the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs were the main land animals.

Johann Klages is a geologist, working in the Institute's Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. He said an examination showed that the material formed on land, not in the ocean.

The researchers estimate that the area – about 900 kilometers from the South Pole – had average yearly temperatures of about 12 to 13 degrees Celsius. During the warmest summer months, average temperatures likely reached between 20 to 25 degrees Celsius. The average yearly temperature in that area is about 40 degrees below zero Celsius.

The examination results showed “a dense network of roots that spread through the entire soil layer,” the Helmholtz Center said in a statement.

The dark brownish-gray soil included fine dirt particles and hard clay, as well as substances linked to at least 65 different kinds of plants, the study found. Klages put that the plants included trees, ferns and flowering plants and while no animal remains were found, there were likely dinosaurs, flying reptiles and many insects in the environment.

The researchers said that the rainforest environment in Antarctica was especially surprising because each year, the area experiences a four-month polar night when there is no sunlight to fuel plant life.