新年档大片密集，你心水哪一部？
就在昨天，纽约时报发表了一篇题为China's Film Industry Finally Joins the Space Race（中国电影业终加入太空角逐）
今天，和大家一起读读这篇报道。
China was a latecomer to space exploration, and in the movies, it has been a latecomer to science fiction, too. That is about to change.
latecomer迟到的人，中文里常说的“后来居上”，the latecomers surpass the early starters.
The country’s first blockbuster set in space, “The Wandering Earth,” opens Tuesday amid grandiose expectations that it will represent the dawning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking.
grandiose其实是贬义词，华而不实，不切实际的。
expectations that...that引导的是同位语从句，解释的是expectations的具体内容：it will represent the dawning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking 这部电影将开启中国电影业的新纪元。dawning这个词是蛮传神的，the dawning of sth.……的开端。不仅如此，dawn也可以做动词，就用这句话改编一下：a new era in Chinese filmmaking is dawning. 中国电影业正迎来新纪元。
The impending peril forces the world’s engineers to devise a plan to move the planet to a new solar system using giant thrusters. Things go very badly when Earth has to pass Jupiter, setting off a desperate scramble to save humanity from annihilation.
impending和upcoming在意思上最大的区别在于，impending指的是不好的事情即将发生，比如大难临头的感觉a feeling of impending disaster.
这段话中还可以留意这个句式：go/start... badly/well when... 用于描述某个动作或事件发生之后局面的变化。比如Things had started badly for Roy Hodgson's side when Fernando Torres limped out of the action afterjust 10 minutes. 在上一次的交锋中，罗伊·霍奇森的球队开场仅十分钟就遭受重创，费尔南多·托雷斯因伤蹒跚离场。
The special effects — like the apocalyptic climatic changes that would occur if Earth suddenly moved out of its cozy orbit — are certain to be measured against Hollywood’s.
measure sth. against sth.将……与……做比较，也可以用这个词组表达“相比于……”，替换compared with, 比如：相比于我们去年的预算，270万美元似乎太少。Measured against our budget last year, 2.7 million seems small.
如果用一句话描述这部电影的意义，这篇报道中引用了这样一句：
It’s like the coming-of-age of the industry.
coming-of-age重要时刻
如何描述春节假期？可以参考这个名词结构：
an official, weeklong holiday that is traditionally a peak box-office period in China.为期一周的法定节假日，通常是中国的票房高峰期。
如何用一句话简明扼要的介绍刘慈欣？
Both “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien” are adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.
人或事物，同位语+定语从句/状语，这种结构在外刊中十分常见，可以轻松用于对某事物的介绍，比如刚才的对春节假期的描述：
the Lunar New Year, an official, weeklong holiday that is traditionally...
还有这篇文章中引用了一位独立评论家的话时对他本人的介绍：
Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, who noted that Hollywood had set the technological standards, and thus audience expectations, very high.
再看这句话：
Both included important plot twists that, not incidentally, cast China’s space program in a positive light, and both were huge hits here.
跌宕起伏的情节 plot twists。cast此处是动词，描述，cast sth./sb. as ..., 把某人说成是英雄，cast sb. in the role of hero.
light此处熟词僻义，in a adj. light，以……的角度，比如前阵子的某个事件令某位吴姓男星的形象大为折损，the incident put Wu Xiubo in a very bad light.
Unlike “Operation Red Sea” or the two “Wolf Warrior” movies, which featured a Rambo-like hero battling Western villains, “The Wandering Earth” is not jingoistic（极端爱国主义的）, though it does star Wu Jing, the hero of the “Wolf Warrior” films, who put up his own investment in the project.
Rambo是谁？兰博，西尔维斯特·史泰龙在《第一滴血》、《第一滴血续集》等多部美国影片中扮演的一名勇猛好斗的军人，常用于形容那些认为打斗与暴力是解决争端唯一方法的人。
后缀-like，似……的，类似的表达还有-esque，这个后缀表示似……的，……式的。比如：Bill Gates-esque story of success 比尔盖茨式的成功故事。
put up提供资金，后面直接跟表示钱的名词。star，及物动词，由某人主演，由XXX主演的电影，a film starring XXX
除此之外，还有一些小词也值得关注，比如孤胆英雄do-it-alone hero，do-it-alone是句式复合形容词作定语，类似的还比如：The do-what-you-can-and-take-what-you-need policy各尽所能，按需分配的政策， a never-to-be-forgotten day 永远不会忘记的日子， the still-to-be-discovered elements 有待发现的元素， a damned-if-they-do-and-damned-if-they-don’t choice 做也见鬼，不做也见鬼的选择， a wrapping-up-and-throwing-away gesture 一个包起来扔掉的手势。这些词如果没有连词符是没有办法理解的呢。
剧透spoiler，说多就剧透了啊，to say more would be a spoiler.