[Mission 2022] Insta–DART (Daily Aptitude and Reasoning Test) 26 February 2022

Allen’s Oscar record speaks for itself: two best actress winners (Diane Keaton in Annie Hall; Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine); four best supporting actresses; and six more nominations for women, not to mention mature, female- centred films such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Interiors. You can see why, until recently, women considered it a great honour to be cast in Allen’s movies. This apparent contradiction takes some unpicking. But there is another facet to Allen’s record with women: He is the laziest director in town. Allen’s one-movie-a-year work rate is often praised as heroic, but in order to maintain it, he barely directs his movies at all these days. This was revealed, perhaps inadvertently, by the recent book Start to Finish: Woody Allen and the Art of Movie making, in which long-time Allen chronicler Eric Lax shadowed him through the making of 2015’s Irrational Man. Allen doesn’t rehearse or prepare. He does the minimum number of takes and camera setups, never does reshoots and likes to be finished by six every evening. What’s more, he barely gives his actors any instructions at all. No wonder big stars happily work with him: compared to other directors, it’s a holiday. Knowing Allen’s hands-off approach, his films become a litmus test of acting ability. Some actors sink: Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in Cassandra’s Dream, for example; or Justin Timberlake in Wonder Wheel. Others swim magnificently. Either way, Allen is like the disinterested pool attendant over in the corner. Hayley Atwell said on working with him: I didn’t feel directed by him at all. I didn’t have any kind of relationship with him’. And Cate Blanchett on Blue Jasmine: First day, [Allen] said, “It’s awful. You’re awful””. But Blanchett took matters into her own hands, researched the role and put in the Oscar- winning performance, despite rather than because of the director. That’s what good actors do. We can’t take away all of Allen’s credit as a writer or director, but we should give a lot more to the actors themselves. Often they have been the one to hold his movies together.

Which of the following is the main point of the author in the passage?

Medieval merchants risked the hazards of the Silk Road to reach the markets of China; Portuguese caravels in the 15th century sailed beyond the bounds of the known world, searching less for knowledge than for gold and spices. Historically, the drive for opening frontiers has always been the search for resources. Science and curiosity are weaker drivers. The only way to open up space, whether the space of solar system or interstellar space is to create an economic engine and that engine is resource extraction.

Q.2 Which one of the following statements best sums up the passage given above?

As we look to 2050, when we will need to feed two billion more people, the question of which diet is best hartaen on new urgency. The foods we choose to eat in the coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy a way of eating that is on the rise throughout the developing World, will take a greater toll on the world’s resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables.

3-What is the critical message conveyed by the above passage?

“The conceptual difficulties in National Income comparisons between underdeveloped and industrialised countries are particularly serious because a part of the national output in various underdeveloped countries is produced without passing through the commercial channels.”

4-In the above statement, the author implies that:

Read the following passage and answer that follow:

D.H Lawrence – 1885-1930: The Supreme Triumph For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man as for flow and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture, that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is the part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet below know the perfectly, and my blood is the sea. My soul knows that I am a part of the human race, my soul is an inorganic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is a part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of wards. Apocalypse, 1931.

5-When the dead look after the afterwards, the living should look at life: