Shakespeare in Chinese Cinema

Shakespeare’s plays were first adapted in the Chinese cinema in the era of silent motion pictures, such as A Woman Lawyer (from The Merchant of Venice, 1927), and A Spray of Plum Blossoms (from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1931). The most recent Chinese adaptations/spinoffs include two 2006 films based on Hamlet. After a brief review of Shakespeare’s history in the Chinese cinema, this study compares the two Chinese Hamlets released in 2006-Feng Xiaogang’s Banquet and Hu Xuehua’s Prince of the Himalayas to illustrate how Chinese filmmakers approach Shakespeare. Both re-invent Shakespeare’s Hamlet story and transfer it to a specific time, culture and landscape. The story of The Banquet takes place in a warring state in China of the 10th century while The Prince is set in pre-Buddhist Tibet. The former as a blockbuster movie in China has gained a financial success albeit being criticised for its commercial aesthetics. The latter, on the other hand, has raised attention amongst academics and critics and won several prizes though not as successful on the movie market. This study examines how the two Chinese Hamlet movies treat Shakespeare’s story in using different filmic strategies of story, character, picture, music and style

A novel tuning technique for distributed voltage controlled oscillators

A novel current-steering delay-balanced tuning technique for distributed voltage controlled oscillators (DVCO) is demonstrated. This tuning technique is used to design a DVCO operating at 10 GHz in a 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The DVCO is continuously tunable between 9.9 and 10.3 GHz. Special attention is paid to the layout issues for the high frequency design

Silicon-based distributed voltage-controlled oscillators

Distributed voltage-controlled oscillators (DVCOs) are presented as a new approach to the design of silicon VCOs at microwave frequencies. In this paper, the operation of distributed oscillators is analyzed and the general oscillation condition is derived, resulting in analytical expressions for the frequency and amplitude. Two tuning techniques for DVCOs are demonstrated, namely, the inherent-varactor tuning and delay-balanced current-steering tuning. A complete analysis of the tuning techniques is presented. CMOS and bipolar DVCOs have been designed and fabricated in a 0.35-μm BiCMOS process. A 10-GHz CMOS DVCO achieves a tuning range of 12% (9.3-10.5 GHz) and a phase noise of -103 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from the carrier. The oscillator provides an output power of -4.5 dBm without any buffering, drawing 14 mA of dc current from a 2.5-V power supply. A 12-GHz bipolar DVCO consuming 6 mA from a 2.5-V power supply is also demonstrated. It has a tuning range of 26% with a phase noise of -99 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from the carrier

Statistical studies of random lasing modes and amplified spontaneous emission spikes in weakly scattering systems

We measured the ensemble-averaged spectral correlation functions and statistical distributions of spectral spacing and intensity for lasing modes in weakly scattering systems, and compared them to those of the amplified spontaneous emission spikes. Their dramatic differences illustrated the distinct physical mechanisms. Our numerical simulation revealed that even without reabsorption the number of potential lasing modes might be greatly reduced by local excitation of a weakly scattering system. The lasing modes could be drastically different from the quasimodes of the passive system due to selective amplification of the feedback from the scatterers within the local gain region.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure