Poor Things – Emma Stone transfixes in Lanthimos’s thrilling carnival of oddness

1. It may only be the beginning of the year, but it’s hard to imagine that there will be a funnier,
2. filthier, or more extravagantly peculiar film this year than Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest picture. To
3. describe Poor Things, which is adapted by Tony McNamara from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray,
4. as creatively uninhibited hardly does justice to the wild, wild ride that this explosively inventive
5. picture takes us on. Driven by a courageous and physically committed performance from Emma
6. Stone, the film follows her journey as Bella Baxter, at the start of the picture a barely verbal blank
7. slate, who embarks on an autodidact voyage of discovery to become the ultimate self-made
8. woman.
9. Like in the book, the period is impossible to pin down exactly. The story unfolds in a parallel
10. past, a gothic, steampunk-infused Victoriana, a world that is distorted by the patriarchal power
11. disparities in society. Without giving away the specifics, the picture is a subversive spin on Mary
12. Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the role of Bella’s creator and guardian taken by unorthodox genius
13. Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Called “God” by Bella, Godwin bears grotesque scars on his face
14. and body resulting from his childhood experience as the subject of his father’s deranged scientific
15. curiosity – an experience that failed to stymie his own rather baroque quest for empirical facts.
16. When Godwin recruits eager student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to keep a record of Bella’s
17. accelerated progress, her grasp of language expands exponentially.
18. But Bella’s hunger knowledge and experience is too voracious to be contained the
19. walls Godwin’s mansion. She grasps the opportunity offered by caddish lawyer and man
20. about-town Duncan Wedderburn (a marvelously hammy Mark Ruffalo) and ventures forth
21. London, first to Lisbon, then by steamship to Alexandria, and finally to a Parisian brothel. As Bella’s
22. horizons broaden, so the look of the film alters to encompass her experiences. The chapter set
23. predominantly in Godwin’s home is black and white, but once Bella ventures forth, the film shifts
24. into color. But not just any color – there’s an uncanny, hyperreal quality to the palette that makes
25. each frame look like a hand-tinted piece of Victorian postcard erotica.
26. It’s an alchemic combination, this continuing collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, a
27. working relationship that started with The Favourite and will continue with another feature film
28. project, titled Kinds of Kindness. They unleash in each other an extra level of uninhibited artistic
29. daring that must be rooted in an uncommon degree of mutual trust. Nowhere is this more evident
30. than in the physicality of Stone’s remarkable performance. Stone’s virtuoso use of her body – the
31. way it inhabits space, the way she gradually masters her gangling, string-like limbs, the guilelessly
32. open play of emotions in her face – is one of the most crucial elements in our experience of Bella’s
33. journey.
34. That journey is supported by a deliciously eccentric score by Jerskin Fendrix. An uneasy,
35. detuned four-note motif played on flayed violin strings opens the film and returns in various
36. incarnations throughout, sounding at one point like a hippo mating with a harmonium. The gradual
37. build of intricacy and sophistication in the music brilliantly mirrors Bella’s intellectual growth.
38. Bella’s appetite for novelty is reflected in film-making that evokes a similar sense of wonder and
39. discovery in the audience. From the quirky flamboyance of Holly Waddington’s costumes to the
40. off-kilter production design by Shona Heath and James Price, Poor Things is an endlessly
41. fascinating carnival of oddness.

(Available at: www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/14/poor-things-review-yorgos-lanthimos-emma-stone-frankenstein – text specially adapted for this test).

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In the video game and HBO show The Last of Us, humans struggle to survive after an infectious fungus turns ordinary people into zombies. Creators of the franchise didn't look far for inspiration — the series is based off a real-life species of fungus that performs a kind of "mind control" on its insect hosts. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients before filling its body with spores that will let the fungus reproduce. It then compels the insect to seek height and remain there before it expels these spores, infecting other nearby insects in the process. Bryn Dentinger, a biology professor at the University of Utah and curator of mycology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, told NPR that the fungus is one of the best known, and probably most commonly encountered, kinds of organisms with this mind control capability. And he said that scientists aren't entirely sure how cordyceps is able to have the effect that it does on insects, although there are theories. "There seems to be some combination of physical manipulation of muscle fibers, for example, possibly growth into the brain itself, that can impact its behavior," he said. "But there's also very likely some sort of chemical attack on the host, either small molecules, or proteins or some other things, that end up manipulating brain behavior." Dentinger, who is also a fan of HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us, said that there are some major differences between how the fungus is portrayed in the show and in real life. Cordyceps does not typically infect other hosts through the mouth, for example, and the infected aren't connected to one another through a network. And, perhaps the most important: The fungus cannot infect humans. "Our body temperatures are high enough that most organisms, their proteins would denature at that temperature and so they can't survive in our bodies," he said. But there are species of fungus that are able to withstand higher temperatures and can therefore infect humans. Climate change, as Dentinger explains, is equipping certain fungi with the capacity to withstand higher temperatures. And it's possible that a fungus with similar mind-control capabilities could, at some point, be able to withstand a human's body temperature. "That may be one reason why we're seeing more fungal infections in human humans, but again, to date, none of them are cordyceps," he said. "However, maybe that will happen in the future, but, at the moment, that is not a possibility." And, as Dentinger, there are already species of fungus that alter a human's mental processing, such as psilocybin, otherwise known as "magic mushrooms." Meanwhile, other kinds of fungi are already ubiquitous in human life. Take yeast, for example, which is found in bread and in the human gut. And while the prospect of fungus being able to manipulate human behavior isn't impossible, it's not likely, according to Dentinger. The traits the fungus have that allow them to attack an insect host are very specific to that insect – and it's not easily transferable to another species. It's unlikely that they would be able to hop from, say, an ant to a human, because we're so different," he said.

Fonte: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1151868673/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-zombfungus-real. Acesso em: 30.01.2023.

Leia o texto a seguir para responder a questão a seguir.

In the video game and HBO show The Last of Us, humans struggle to survive after an infectious fungus turns ordinary people into zombies. Creators of the franchise didn't look far for inspiration — the series is based off a real-life species of fungus that performs a kind of "mind control" on its insect hosts. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients before filling its body with spores that will let the fungus reproduce. It then compels the insect to seek height and remain there before it expels these spores, infecting other nearby insects in the process. Bryn Dentinger, a biology professor at the University of Utah and curator of mycology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, told NPR that the fungus is one of the best known, and probably most commonly encountered, kinds of organisms with this mind control capability. And he said that scientists aren't entirely sure how cordyceps is able to have the effect that it does on insects, although there are theories. "There seems to be some combination of physical manipulation of muscle fibers, for example, possibly growth into the brain itself, that can impact its behavior," he said. "But there's also very likely some sort of chemical attack on the host, either small molecules, or proteins or some other things, that end up manipulating brain behavior." Dentinger, who is also a fan of HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us, said that there are some major differences between how the fungus is portrayed in the show and in real life. Cordyceps does not typically infect other hosts through the mouth, for example, and the infected aren't connected to one another through a network. And, perhaps the most important: The fungus cannot infect humans. "Our body temperatures are high enough that most organisms, their proteins would denature at that temperature and so they can't survive in our bodies," he said. But there are species of fungus that are able to withstand higher temperatures and can therefore infect humans. Climate change, as Dentinger explains, is equipping certain fungi with the capacity to withstand higher temperatures. And it's possible that a fungus with similar mind-control capabilities could, at some point, be able to withstand a human's body temperature. "That may be one reason why we're seeing more fungal infections in human humans, but again, to date, none of them are cordyceps," he said. "However, maybe that will happen in the future, but, at the moment, that is not a possibility." And, as Dentinger, there are already species of fungus that alter a human's mental processing, such as psilocybin, otherwise known as "magic mushrooms." Meanwhile, other kinds of fungi are already ubiquitous in human life. Take yeast, for example, which is found in bread and in the human gut. And while the prospect of fungus being able to manipulate human behavior isn't impossible, it's not likely, according to Dentinger. The traits the fungus have that allow them to attack an insect host are very specific to that insect – and it's not easily transferable to another species. It's unlikely that they would be able to hop from, say, an ant to a human, because we're so different," he said.

Fonte: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1151868673/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-zombfungus-real. Acesso em: 30.01.2023.

Leia o texto a seguir para responder a questão a seguir.

In the video game and HBO show The Last of Us, humans struggle to survive after an infectious fungus turns ordinary people into zombies. Creators of the franchise didn't look far for inspiration — the series is based off a real-life species of fungus that performs a kind of "mind control" on its insect hosts. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients before filling its body with spores that will let the fungus reproduce. It then compels the insect to seek height and remain there before it expels these spores, infecting other nearby insects in the process. Bryn Dentinger, a biology professor at the University of Utah and curator of mycology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, told NPR that the fungus is one of the best known, and probably most commonly encountered, kinds of organisms with this mind control capability. And he said that scientists aren't entirely sure how cordyceps is able to have the effect that it does on insects, although there are theories. "There seems to be some combination of physical manipulation of muscle fibers, for example, possibly growth into the brain itself, that can impact its behavior," he said. "But there's also very likely some sort of chemical attack on the host, either small molecules, or proteins or some other things, that end up manipulating brain behavior." Dentinger, who is also a fan of HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us, said that there are some major differences between how the fungus is portrayed in the show and in real life. Cordyceps does not typically infect other hosts through the mouth, for example, and the infected aren't connected to one another through a network. And, perhaps the most important: The fungus cannot infect humans. "Our body temperatures are high enough that most organisms, their proteins would denature at that temperature and so they can't survive in our bodies," he said. But there are species of fungus that are able to withstand higher temperatures and can therefore infect humans. Climate change, as Dentinger explains, is equipping certain fungi with the capacity to withstand higher temperatures. And it's possible that a fungus with similar mind-control capabilities could, at some point, be able to withstand a human's body temperature. "That may be one reason why we're seeing more fungal infections in human humans, but again, to date, none of them are cordyceps," he said. "However, maybe that will happen in the future, but, at the moment, that is not a possibility." And, as Dentinger, there are already species of fungus that alter a human's mental processing, such as psilocybin, otherwise known as "magic mushrooms." Meanwhile, other kinds of fungi are already ubiquitous in human life. Take yeast, for example, which is found in bread and in the human gut. And while the prospect of fungus being able to manipulate human behavior isn't impossible, it's not likely, according to Dentinger. The traits the fungus have that allow them to attack an insect host are very specific to that insect – and it's not easily transferable to another species. It's unlikely that they would be able to hop from, say, an ant to a human, because we're so different," he said.

Fonte: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1151868673/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-zombfungus-real. Acesso em: 30.01.2023.

Leia o texto a seguir para responder a questão a seguir.

In the video game and HBO show The Last of Us, humans struggle to survive after an infectious fungus turns ordinary people into zombies. Creators of the franchise didn't look far for inspiration — the series is based off a real-life species of fungus that performs a kind of "mind control" on its insect hosts. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients before filling its body with spores that will let the fungus reproduce. It then compels the insect to seek height and remain there before it expels these spores, infecting other nearby insects in the process. Bryn Dentinger, a biology professor at the University of Utah and curator of mycology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, told NPR that the fungus is one of the best known, and probably most commonly encountered, kinds of organisms with this mind control capability. And he said that scientists aren't entirely sure how cordyceps is able to have the effect that it does on insects, although there are theories. "There seems to be some combination of physical manipulation of muscle fibers, for example, possibly growth into the brain itself, that can impact its behavior," he said. "But there's also very likely some sort of chemical attack on the host, either small molecules, or proteins or some other things, that end up manipulating brain behavior." Dentinger, who is also a fan of HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us, said that there are some major differences between how the fungus is portrayed in the show and in real life. Cordyceps does not typically infect other hosts through the mouth, for example, and the infected aren't connected to one another through a network. And, perhaps the most important: The fungus cannot infect humans. "Our body temperatures are high enough that most organisms, their proteins would denature at that temperature and so they can't survive in our bodies," he said. But there are species of fungus that are able to withstand higher temperatures and can therefore infect humans. Climate change, as Dentinger explains, is equipping certain fungi with the capacity to withstand higher temperatures. And it's possible that a fungus with similar mind-control capabilities could, at some point, be able to withstand a human's body temperature. "That may be one reason why we're seeing more fungal infections in human humans, but again, to date, none of them are cordyceps," he said. "However, maybe that will happen in the future, but, at the moment, that is not a possibility." And, as Dentinger, there are already species of fungus that alter a human's mental processing, such as psilocybin, otherwise known as "magic mushrooms." Meanwhile, other kinds of fungi are already ubiquitous in human life. Take yeast, for example, which is found in bread and in the human gut. And while the prospect of fungus being able to manipulate human behavior isn't impossible, it's not likely, according to Dentinger. The traits the fungus have that allow them to attack an insect host are very specific to that insect – and it's not easily transferable to another species. It's unlikely that they would be able to hop from, say, an ant to a human, because we're so different," he said.

Fonte: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1151868673/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-zombfungus-real. Acesso em: 30.01.2023.