Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Czech New Wave Polemic ‘The Joke’ Returns to Karlovy Vary in Restored Glory
variety.comWill Tizard ContributorMilan Kundera’s first novel, “The Joke,” won him critical praise and set the tone for a robust career in the spring of 1967, debuting just in time to catch the rising tide of freedom of expression that would reach its peak with the Prague Spring movement just a year later.
Jaromil Jires crafted a screen adaptation of the book, in collaboration with the writer, which became one of the iconic films of the Czech New Wave.The digital restoration of the film, part of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s program of preserving and promoting classic films, alongside the Czech National Film Archive, brings a crisp new copy of the film to audiences this summer.
The chance to experience “The Joke” in a pristine state after extensive work by Prague post house UPP and studio Soundsquare has been a long-time coming.
When the Soviet crackdown, known as Normalization, rolled into Prague along with Warsaw Pact tanks in the summer of 1968, a rich era crashed to a premature end with the return of Soviet-oriented Czechoslovak state control.The story of a young intellectual whose life is ruined by the regime for writing a flippant postcard proved too much for the post-Dubcek authorities.
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