title: Tigray War

text: On 30 October, it was reported that Dessie had fallen to the TDF. However, control over the city was not immediately certain, with the federal government denying its capture and reports of fierce fighting coming from the town. On 31 October, the TDF claimed to have captured Kombolcha, a town east of Dessie, and the Ethiopian government accused the TDF of massacring over 100 youths in the town. On the same day, the Amhara regional government declared a state of emergency, which included a region-wide curfew.


title: Tigray War

text: On 2 November 2021, as the counter-offensive came deeper into federal-controlled territory, the Ethiopian government declared a six-month state of emergency, which envisages the possibility to arrest and detain critics of the government without a court warrant, impose curfews, institute censorship, restrict freedom of movement as well as to call any adult person to fight in the war, for fear of serving from three to ten years in prison. Authorities in Addis Ababa also told residents to register their weapons in order to fend off the anticipated offensive. Four other regional governments also made a call to arms. On 5 November, the TPLF, OLA and other rebel groups declared the creation of a nine-group coalition, called the United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces.


title: Tigray War

text: On 22 November, Prime Minister Abiy stated that he will be leading the fight against the rebels from the battlefront after the TDF claimed to have captured Shewa Robit, saying; "We are now in the final stages of saving Ethiopia." Many countries also urged citizens to leave the country.


title: Tigray War

text: From 26 November to 6 December 2021, Ethiopian allied forces recaptured several towns in the Amhara and Afar regions including Lalibela and Shewa Robit, according to the Ethiopian government. On 6 December, government forces claimed to have recaptured the strategic cities of Dessie and Kombolcha. This was later confirmed by TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda; however, he claimed this was a strategic withdrawal, which was "part of their plan." On 12 December, "Reuters" reported that forces loyal to the TPLF had recaptured the town of Lalibela less than two weeks after government forces and their allies had recaptured control of the town for themselves. Nevertheless, by the end of the month, the federal government had successfully repelled the incursion towards Addis Ababa, and Tigrayan forces were pushed back to Tigray.


title: Tigray War

text: On 20 December 2021, the TPLF announced they had withdrawn their troops from Amhara and Afar, saying they were hoping to create, as stated by TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael, "a decisive opening for peace." Debretsion also requested the establishment of a no-fly zone over Tigray, as well as a weapons embargo against Ethiopia and Eritrea. Following these developments, the ENDF stated that it would not advance any deeper into the Tigray region. However, in January 2022, the Ethiopian Air Force began launching a bombing campaign in the Tigray Region, killing 108 people, including at least 56 from an airstrike targeting an IDP camp in Dedebit.


title: Tigray War

text: On 7 January – the same day as the Dedebit airstrike – Ethiopia released a number of opposition leaders from prison, including some from the TPLF, and said they desired to have a dialogue with the Tigrayan leadership. On 26 January, the Ethiopian council of ministers also proposed to end the state of emergency.


title: Tigray War

text: On 24 March 2022, the Ethiopian government declared an indefinite humanitarian truce, in order to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid into Tigray. During the ceasefire, both Ethiopia and the TPLF agreed to have talks about an official end to the war. A number of outstanding issues – in particular, the presence of pro-government troops in Tigray's Western Zone and restoring access to basic public service to Tigray – were topics of discussion throughout. Though there were initial hopes of finding a peaceful solution to ending the war, the talks soon became characterized by steadily increasing hostilities between the negotiation parties. By August, talks started to break down, with both the Ethiopian government and the TPLF accusing each other of refusing to make peace.


title: Tigray War

text: In late August 2022, after months of ceasefire, fighting resumed. Both sides blamed each other for initiating the fighting, and both also expressed frustration "for a lack of progress towards negotiations to end the 21-month conflict." The fighting itself concentrated in the border area connecting Tigray, Amhara and Afar. Allegations emerged that the Tigray were smuggling in weapons, leading to the Ethiopian Air Force shooting down a plane, claiming it was carrying weapons for the TPLF; meanwhile, the government was accused of indiscriminate air bombardments on civilian targets. Civilians reported that pro-government militias, such as FANO, had gotten involved as well. Exacerbating tensions were severe food shortages, an issue that remained unsolved have particularly affected the Tigray region.


title: Tigray War

text: On 27 August, the TDF captured the town of Kobo, following the ENDF's withdrawal. Ethiopia and Eritrea subsequently announced an offensive in North Tigray on 1 September. On 13 September 2022, the TPLF said Eritrea had taken Sheraro. The town's capture by Eritrea and the fighting in nearby areas displaced around 210,000 people, most of whom fled to the city of Shire. A day later Ethiopian airstrikes on Mekelle killed at least ten people. By mid-September, reports emerged of Eritrea engaging in mass mobilization of the country's reservists to be sent to Tigray.


title: Tigray War

text: On 20 September, the government of Tigray said Eritrea had invaded the region, and that heavy fighting was taking place across northern Tigray. The TDF had, thus far, largely resisted the offensive, and reportedly launched a counterattack to retake Sheraro. Meanwhile, Ethiopian and Eritrean forces began massing in Abala and Berhale in the Afar Region, within striking distance of Mekelle. On September 27, an airstrike – allegedly carried out by Eritrea – struck the northern town of Adi Dairo while it was celebrating Meskel, killing at least six civilians and injured 19 more. On 2 October, the TPLF announced it had withdrawn troops from Amhara's North Wollo Zone, including Kobo, to be redeployed north to reinforce lines under heavy Eritrean attack but warned it would return if their southern border is threatened. Three days later, a second airstrike hit Adi Dairo, killing between 50 and 65 people according to aid workers in the town.


title: Tigray War

text: On 10 October, the TPLF claimed that Eritrea was escalating its offensive, sending more forces towards Rama, Tserona, and Zalambessa in the far north, with one aid worker saying it is the heaviest fighting since hostilities resumed. Later reports confirmed that Eritrea was intensifying its efforts to mobilize more troops for the war; it detained "elderly mothers and fathers," and sought draft-dodgers. Tigray mobilized its citizens too, calling on every able-bodied person to join the fight. Amidst the three-front offensive launched by Ethiopia and Eritrea, estimates put the number of Ethiopian casualties at over 90,000 in a single month, while Tigrayan casualties were also deemed incredibly high. According to peace and conflict studies researcher Kjetil Tronvoll, it is likely that 100,000 people had been killed over the preceding few weeks, and alleged that Eritrea and Ethiopia were using human wave attacks to overwhelm Tigrayan defenses.


title: Tigray War

text: On 17 October, Ethiopia said that it would seize every airport and other key infrastructure in the region; that same day, the strategic city of Shire was taken by Eritrea and Ethiopia, leading to the evacuation of thousands of its inhabitants. Ethiopian forces then took Alamata and Korem in the south. By 22 October, ENDF and EDF-allied forces had also captured Adwa and Axum, even as peace talks with the TPLF were about to commence in South Africa. Witnesses from a number of towns told the "Associated Press" that Eritrean forces were regularly killing civilians between 23 and 29 October.


title: Tigray War

text: On 25 October 2022, AU Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki, announced that peace talks involving the Ethiopian government and the TPLF had commenced in Pretoria, South Africa. Hopes that these talks could definitively stop the war, however, remained low, as fighting did not appear to slow down, and Ethiopia vocalized their distrust about the peace process. Still, negotiations continued onward, and on 2 November, Ethiopia and the TPLF announced that they had signed an agreement for a cessation of hostilities (made effective the next day on 3 November, marking the two-year anniversary of the war); however, Eritrea and other warring parties were not involved in the agreement, leaving their status ambiguous. On 12 November, both parties signed a deal to allow humanitarian aid into Tigray.


title: Tigray War

text: Despite important steps towards peace and deescalation being made between the government and the TPLF, Amhara and Eritrean forces continued to launch attacks on Tigrayans throughout November and December. From 17 to 25 November alone, Eritrea was reported to have destroyed 241 houses and killed at least 111 people.


title: Tigray War

text: The intensity of the war has led to spillover effects on the surrounding countries in the region, especially in Sudan.


title: Tigray War

text: By the end of November 2020, thousands of people were believed to have been killed in the conflict and around 44,000 fled to Sudan. On 15 December 2020, four Sudanese soldiers were killed, and 27 others were injured near the Ethiopia–Sudan border, in what Sudan claimed to be an ambush by Ethiopian forces and militias. A Sudanese soldier later claimed that Ethiopian forces had launched artillery attacks on them and intruded into the Jebel al-Teyyour area, located 7 kilometres inside Sudan. Other soldiers claimed that the attackers were Amhara Region militias. Ethiopia claimed the clashes were Ethiopia trying to stop a Sudanese militia which had tried to cross into Ethiopian territory and seize farmlands. In response to the killings, Sudan started to build up its military along the border with Ethiopia.


title: Tigray War

text: Since the war began, both regional and international powers have been actively involved in the conflict. A number of reports have been made alleging that China, Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were all providing military support for the Ethiopian government via the sale of weaponized drones. As early as December 2020, there were unconfirmed rumors that Emirati drones were being stationed in the Eritrean port city of Assab. The victory of Ethiopian forces over Dessie and Kombolcha in December 2021 was partly due to the drones supplied by Ethiopia's allies. In Debretsion Gebremichael’s order to withdraw all his forces from Tigray borders in December 2021, he mentioned "the drones provided by foreign powers" as a major factor that prompted his decision.


title: Tigray War

text: There have been multiple unconfirmed reports of Somali troops being sent from a secret training base in Eritrea run by the National Intelligence and Security Agency to fight against the newly formed TDF. The first of these reports came in January 2021 from unverified social media accounts. The same month, Somalia's information minister, Osman Abukar Dubbe, confirmed Somali soldiers were training in Eritrea, but denied any of these troops had been sent to Tigray. According to the Voice of America, several sources with direct knowledge of the program, including three Somali officials and a foreign diplomat, confirmed to them that Somali troops have been training in neighbouring Eritrea. In January 2022, "The Globe and Mail" reported evidence of Somali troops were involved and they had committed atrocities in Tigray. The report noted that before the war began, Somali forces under the leadership of the Eritrean Army had been stationed in trenches along the border.


title: Tigray War

text: A small group of parents also protested in Mogadishu about what they said was the government's mismanagement of the issue. They demanded information on their loved ones who they say they haven't seen in a year. The head of Somalia's parliamentary committee on foreign affairs asked the Somali president to investigate claims by family members that their sons had gone off to fight in Ethiopia and are now missing. On 19 January 2021, the Somali government denied the claim that Somali troops had trained in Eritrea and then deployed in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.


title: Tigray War

text: Former head of the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency, Abdilsalan Guld, claimed that Somali troops were sent to Tigray. Guld stated that the soldiers, aged from 20 to 30 years old, were secretly taken from Mogadishu and sent to Asmara for military training. Guld stated that 370 of the Somali troops trained by Eritrea were killed in Tigray, and hundreds of others were wounded.


title: Tigray War

text: All sides in the conflict have been accused of violating international human rights law, with evidence of unlawful killings, torture and sexual violence committed. As of late 2022, the combined impact of wartime violence, famine and a lack of medical access had killed an estimated 385,000-600,000 people, with other reported estimates reaching numbers as high as 700,000-800,000 killed.


title: Tigray War

text: Many sources have accused the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments of engaging in crimes against humanity via ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have also been accused of genocide. According to the EU's special envoy to Ethiopia, Pekka Haavisto, senior members of the Ethiopian government called for "wip[ing] out" all Tigrayans for 100 years. The Ethiopian Government denied the allegations.


title: Tigray War

text: On 4 June 2021, the non-profit Genocide Watch classified the events in Tigray as step 9 of genocide (eradication), as well as step 10 (denial). They issued another emergency alert on 20 November 2021, stating that "both sides are committing genocide," referring to detentions of thousands of people based on Oromo or Tigrayan ethnic identity, and arguing that "Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's hate speech and calls for war" together with attacks by the ENDF and TPLF put Ethiopia into stages 4 (dehumanization), 6 (polarization), 8 (persecution), and 9 (extermination) of the ten stages of genocide.


title: Tigray War

text: Ethnic profiling against Tigrayans occurred during the Tigray War, with Ethiopians of Tigrayan ethnicity being put on indefinite leave from Ethiopian Airlines or refused permission to board, prevented from overseas travel, and an "order of identifying ethnic Tigrayans from all government agencies and NGOs" being used by federal police to request a list of ethnic Tigrayans from an office of the World Food Programme. Tigrayans' houses were arbitrarily searched and Tigrayans' bank accounts suspended. During the conflict, many Tigrayans were profiled both professionally and socially, with many fired or called names when out in public as a result of the conflict, such as Tigrayan military members having their weapons confiscated or dismissed from duty. A hotspot for this form of profiling took place in Addis Ababa, including disappearances of major Ethiopian officials and arrests of Tigrayans on the grounds that they supported the TPLF, which was designated as a terrorist organisation in May 2021 by Ethiopian parliament.


title: Tigray War

text: Ethnic Tigrayan members of Ethiopian components of United Nations peacekeeping missions were disarmed and some forcibly flown back to Ethiopia, at the risk of torture or execution, according to United Nations officials. The State of Emergency Taskforce stated that the Tigrayan peacekeepers were returned to Ethiopia because of "infiltration of TPLF elements in various entities." On 1 November 2021, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stated that "we should closely follow those who work for the enemy and live amongst us," as reports of a new roundup of ethnic Tigrayans came out of Addis Ababa.


title: Tigray War

text: Use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war is also widespread and used by both the Ethiopian government and the Tigray rebels. Often, soldiers, and militias subjected Tigrayan women and girls, including pregnant women and young girls, to rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, and other forms of sexual torture. Such sexual violence is often accompanied with other type of physical and mental abuse. With physical abuses included burning their victims with hot iron or cigarettes, forcing metal rods or nails into their victim's genitals, etc. Mental abuses including raping their victim in front of their family members, forcing their victims to rape their family members, calling their victims by derogatory words and ethnic slurs, etc. After being subjected to sexual violence, many women become infected with STIs like HIV, and its often hard for them to find treatments due to the collapse of medical infrastructure during war and senses of shame.


title: Tigray War

text: There were "deeply distressing reports of sexual and gender-based violence, extrajudicial killings, [and the] widespread destruction and looting of public and private property by all parties" according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. More than 136 cases of rape were reported in hospitals in Mekelle, Ayder, Adigrat and Wukro in eastern Tigray between December 2020 and January 2021, with indications that there are many more such unreported cases. As of August 2021, there were 512 to 514 rape victims registered with Ethiopian hospitals; however, the real number is probably much larger than that and can be as large as 120,000 by some estimations. Many sources believe the sexual violence in Tigray is intentionally committed by governments as a weapon of war with many strategic purposes, including to destroying the morale of the enemy, to genocide and genetically cleanse certain populations, and to spread STIs as a form of biological warfare.


title: Tigray War

text: There were alleged reports that several Tigrayan forces have gang-raped dozens of women and underage girls in two towns in Amhara region according to rights group Amnesty International. Girls – some as young as 14 – have been identified as victims of rape in the towns of Chenna and Kobo in August and September 2021.


title: Tigray War

text: There have been several reported attacks on humanitarian workers, including attacks by Ethiopian government soldiers. The Danish Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee reported killings of their staff in early December 2020. Although the Ethiopian federal government claimed to have given "full and unhindered access for humanitarian actors to operate in all parts of the region," many humanitarian agencies reported having been repulsed at army checkpoints and blocked from entry to various regions. There were accusations by US officials that armed forces were specifically singling out humanitarian workers for an attack.


title: Tigray War

text: On 23 March 2021, a driver from "Médecins Sans Frontières" was beaten by Ethiopian soldiers after witnessing extrajudicial killings by Ethiopian government soldiers. Following the 23 June bombing of Togoga, there were reports of Ethiopian government soldiers firing on ambulances to prevent them from reaching the injured. On 25 June 2021, three "Médecins Sans Frontières" workers were found murdered near their car in Tigray.


title: Tigray War

text: Investigations into the war crimes include the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) joint investigation, and the ACHPR Tigray investigation by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR).


title: Tigray War

text: According to the United Nations (UN), some 2.3 million children have been cut off from desperately needed aid and humanitarian assistance. Since the start of the conflict, the Ethiopian federal government has strictly controlled access to the Tigray Region, and the UN has said it is frustrated that talks with the Ethiopian government had not yet secured adequate humanitarian access for "food, including ready-to-use therapeutic food for the treatment of child malnutrition, medicines, water, fuel, and other essentials that are running low" said UNICEF. By 13 March 2021, the UN and its partners reached about 0.9 million people with complete food baskets, and 0.7 million people with clean water. Despite the progress made, many are still hard to reach due to ongoing fighting. About 4.5 million people of are still in need of aid and about 1 million of that are not in accessible areas due to ongoing fighting.


title: Tigray War

text: There has been limited access to clean water due to hygiene and sanitation services largely being disrupted across Tigray. The Tigray Regional Water Bureau reported that out of 36 villages it assessed, only 4 had partially functioning water sources. Along with that, an estimated 250 motorized water pumping systems have been out of order, and the status of 11,000 hand pumps in rural areas was unknown. Because of this, there has been a heightened risk of outbreaks of water-borne diseases and COVID-19.


title: Tigray War

text: In February 2021, GOAL Ethiopia, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), MCMDO, MSF-Spain, and World Vision, found that nearly one in seven children in 16 woredas and town administrations across Tigray were acutely malnourished. While in Enderta, Abi Adi and Shire, GOAL and IRC reported that 16.6% of children screened had acute malnutrition with 3.5% suffering from severe acute malnutrition.


title: Tigray War

text: According to the UN, in March 2021, out of more than 260 health centres in Tigray before the war, only 31 were fully functional, while 7 were partially functional. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), all of the functioning hospitals and health centres in Tigray had a lack of medical supplies, drugs, and equipment. UN partners reported continued looting of health facilities. Only 16% of the health facilities had vaccination services and only 17% had maternal services (antenatal care, birth delivery, etc.).


title: Tigray War

text: On 31 August 2021, USAID's mission director in Ethiopia, Sean Jones said: "We do have proof that several of our warehouses have been looted and completely emptied in the areas, particularly in Amhara, where TPLF soldiers have gone into, I do believe that the TPLF has been very opportunistic," in a televised interview with state broadcaster EBC in Addis Ababa. All parties to the conflict have been accused by USAID of looting aid shipments.


title: Tigray War

text: By the summer of 2022, the government blockade of essential services to Tigray was still in place, and the humanitarian situation remained severe, with roughly 13 million people being in need of food aid. According to the World Food Programme, while international aid had technically been allowed into the region during the 2022 ceasefire, in practice, very little aid was reaching the people that needed it most, largely due to fuel not being made available in these area. On 25 August (one day after the war resumed), the WFP accused the TPLF of stealing 570,000 liters of fuel meant to transport humanitarian aid.


title: Tigray War

text: In late October 2022, it was revealed that the Tigray Region was running out of medical supplies, with the CEO of their largest hospital saying it was "doomed to collapse soon." WHO officials stated that childhood vaccination rates had plummeted from 90% (before the war) to under 10%. On 29 October, UNICEF reported that around 29.7 million people in Ethiopia were in need of humanitarian assistance.


title: Tigray War

text: In December 2020, the UN estimated more than one million people had been internally displaced by the fighting. More than 50,000 people have fled to Sudan due to the conflict. Communications and travel links were still blocked, and Human Rights Watch warned that "actions that deliberately impede relief supplies" would violate international humanitarian law. Possible COVID-19 outbreaks were feared as refugees fleeing the Tigray conflict sheltered in crowded camps. By March 2021, Shire had become a major centre for internally displaced people and humanitarian aid distribution.


title: Tigray War

text: In September 2021, the humanitarian situation continued to worsen in Tigray, Afar and Amhara Regions, due both to the armed conflict itself and due to bureaucratic obstruction. Two thousand displaced people returned to the Fantí Rasu zone in Afar Region after the ENDF and Afar Special Forces regained control and OCHA partner organisations' access to improved.


title: Tigray War

text: UNICEF stated that by the end of September 2022, around 574,000 more people in Afar, Amhara and Tigray were left displaced after fighting resumed in August 2022; they also reported that over 870,000 had become refugees.


title: Tigray War

text: In November 2020, the Amhara Region Special Force and Amhara militias loyal to the Amhara regional government took control of the western zone of Tigray in order to settle a decades-old land dispute. They claim the area was taken from them by force in 1992 after TPLF forces overthrew the communist PDRE government and divided the country into ethnic regional states. They have also claimed the woredas (districts) of Welkait, Tegede, Kafta Humera, Tselemti, and Raya to be theirs.


title: Tigray War

text: Since then, the area has been under the "de facto" control of Amhara regional authorities. Their control has been marked by reports of ethnically motivated violence and forced displacement. By February 2021, about 45,000 civilians had been forced to leave the zone due to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and the disappearances of people, especially young men. One refugee interviewed by Reuters said that if they didn't leave when they did, they would have been killed by Amhara forces. 41 other refugees interviewed have also described attacks, looting, and threats by Amhara forces.


title: Tigray War

text: In March 2021, Mulu Nega, then leader of the federal-government-appointed Transitional Government of Tigray, stated that Amhara "de facto" administrators of Western Tigray used violence against ethnic Tigrayans and forcibly displaced them. Yabsira Eshetie, the administrator of the area, denied the claims. The Amhara government also denied the reports of forced displacement and asked the Ethiopian government to modify the border between the Amhara and Tigray regions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that there had been acts of ethnic cleansing in Tigray.


title: Tigray War

text: In November 2020, the UN warned of "very critical" supply shortages for the nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees who, prior to the war, were registered in four camps in Tigray region. Later that same month, the UN reported that people in Tigray were fleeing Mekelle. The federal government had warned of "no mercy" if Tigray forces and residents remained intermingled. As of 2 February 2021, 20,000 of the Eritrean refugees in Tigray, mostly from the Hitsats and Shimelba camps, remained unaccounted for, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.


title: Tigray War

text: Claire Wilmot, writing in "The Washington Post", found that a significant number of new, single-issue Twitter accounts were opened in the immediate aftermath of the Northern Command attacks. Most appeared to be authentic accounts from people seeking to raise international awareness of the conflict in the midst of a communications blackout in Tigray. The Ethiopian government cited disinformation and hate speech to justify communications blackouts. Researchers suggested that reducing access to information could help to create contexts where misinformation can thrive because it reduces the ability to verify information. In late July 2021, a report emerged that there was coordination in social media messaging and media reportage of the conflict in Ethiopia, to an extent it mirrored an earlier Syrian hybrid information campaign designated as Project Basma.


title: Tigray War

text: The Ethiopian government tried to control the information environment by positioning itself as the sole provider of reliable information. In February, pro-government groups called on their supporters in Ethiopia and the diaspora to combat what they called "TPLF fake news" online. Pro-government groups used tactics similar to those of pro-Tigray groups to push their narrative of the conflict, though as of 5 February, pro-government campaigns had produced fewer Tweets overall. Both "Agence France-Presse" and "BBC News" have documented examples of old or manipulated photos, which misleadingly endorsed either the federal Ethiopian government or the TPLF.


title: Tigray War

text: Researchers found that groups use tactics such as "copy and paste" campaigns hosted on websites, which include instructions for opening new accounts, copying and pasting pre-written tweets, and tagging influencers. Both campaigns produced disinformation and misinformation, though the majority of content produced was activist in nature. Wilmot suggested that the lines between authentic political activity and deliberate manipulation of online content during the conflict were increasingly blurred.


title: Tigray War

text: Facebook has been heavily criticized for its perceived role in fuelling ethnic tensions during the war, and has faced accusations that, in choosing not to crack down on hate speech being spread by Ethiopian users, it is complicit in cases of ethnic cleansing in the country.


title: Tigray War

text: The Ethiopian government had engaged in repeated crackdowns on media coverage throughout the war. In November 2021 (during the 2021–2022 state of emergency), the Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA) threatened to cancel the media licences of "BBC News", "Reuters", "CNN" and "Associated Press", accusing the news organisations of having "consistently disseminated news that sowed seeds of animosity among people and compromised the sovereignty of the country." The EMA cited "reporting the Law enforcement operation as a genocidal campaign" as an example of misleading information aiming to "undermin[e] the [federal] government's efforts to address the humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region."


title: Tigray War

text: On 20 May 2022, Ethiopian law enforcement began arresting journalists en masse, with 4,500 people in the Amhara Region alone being taken into custody. One Amhara law enforcement official described this as a way to maintain "law and order" and "get rid of outside enemies."


title: Tigray War

text: The media restrictions resulted in what has been described as an "information blackout." Many journalists, both local and international, have noted the difficulty they face with trying to report on the war, as they risk the possibility of getting either killed or imprisoned by government forces. By December 2021, the "Committee to Protect Journalists" described both Ethiopia and Eritrea as the worst "jailers of journalists" in sub-Saharan Africa.


title: Tigray War

text: Several proposals for peace negotiations and mediation were made involving some of the main groups involved in the war. Of these, this includes: an emergency Intergovernmental Authority on Development summit in December 2020; a joint statement by the National Congress of Great Tigray, the Tigray Independence Party, and Salsay Weyane Tigray describing their eight pre-conditions for peace in February 2021; a mediation group called "A3+1," (consisting of three African countries, Kenya, Niger and Tunisia, and one non-African country, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) in July–August 2021; and a March–August 2022 ceasefire wherein Ethiopian and Tigrayan officials attempted to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. Although, the war has not yet fully been concluded, on 2 November 2022, the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan leaders signed a peace accord, with African Union as a mediator, and agreed on "orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament". The agreement was made effective the next day on 3 November, marking the two-year anniversary of the war.


title: Dracula

text: Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the countess Elizabeth Báthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the name "Dracula" in Whitby's public library while holidaying there, picking it because he thought it meant "devil" in Romanian.


title: Dracula

text: Following its publication, "Dracula" was positively received by reviewers who pointed to its effective use of horror. In contrast, reviewers who wrote negatively of the novel regarded it as excessively frightening. Comparisons to other works of Gothic fiction were common, including its structural similarity to Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White" (1859). In the past century, "Dracula" has been situated as a piece of Gothic fiction. Modern scholars explore the novel within its historical context—the Victorian era—and discuss its depiction of gender roles, sexuality, and race.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" is one of the most famous pieces of English literature. Many of the book's characters have entered popular culture as archetypal versions of their characters; for example, Count Dracula as the quintessential vampire, and Abraham Van Helsing as an iconic vampire hunter. The novel, which is in the public domain, has been adapted for film over 30 times, and its characters have made numerous appearances in virtually all media.


title: Dracula

text: Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visits Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to help the Count purchase a house near London. Ignoring the Count's warning, Harker wanders the castle at night and encounters three vampire women; Dracula rescues Harker, and gives the women a small child bound inside a bag. Harker awakens in bed; soon after, Dracula leaves the castle, abandoning him to the women; Harker escapes with his life and ends up delirious in a Budapest hospital. Dracula takes a ship for England with boxes of earth from his castle. The captain's log narrates the crew's disappearance until he alone remains, bound to the helm to maintain course. An animal resembling a large dog is seen leaping ashore when the ship runs aground at Whitby.


title: Dracula

text: Lucy Westenra's letter to her best friend, Harker's fiancée Mina Murray, describes her marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Lucy accepts Holmwood's, but all remain friends. Mina joins her friend Lucy on holiday in Whitby. Lucy begins sleepwalking. After his ship lands there, Dracula stalks Lucy. Mina receives a letter about her missing fiancé's illness, and goes to Budapest to nurse him. Lucy becomes very ill. Seward's old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, determines the nature of Lucy's condition, but refuses to disclose it. He diagnoses her with acute blood-loss. Van Helsing places garlic flowers around her room and makes her a necklace of them. Lucy's mother removes the garlic flowers, not knowing they repel vampires. While Seward and Van Helsing are absent, Lucy and her mother are terrified by a wolf and Mrs. Westenra dies of a heart attack; Lucy dies shortly thereafter. After her burial, newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady" (beautiful lady), and Van Helsing deduces it is Lucy. The four go to her tomb and see that she is a vampire. They stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Jonathan Harker and his now-wife Mina have returned, and they join the campaign against Dracula.


title: Dracula

text: Everyone stays at Dr. Seward's asylum as the men begin to hunt Dracula. Van Helsing finally reveals that vampires can only rest on earth from their homeland. Dracula communicates with Seward's patient, Renfield, an insane man who eats vermin to absorb their life force. After Dracula learns of the group's plot against him, he uses Renfield to enter the asylum. He secretly attacks Mina three times, drinking her blood each time and forcing Mina to drink his blood on the final visit. She is cursed to become a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed. As the men find Dracula's properties, they discover many earth boxes within. The vampire hunters open each of the boxes and seal wafers of sacramental bread inside them, rendering them useless to Dracula. They attempt to trap the Count in his Piccadilly house, but he escapes. They learn that Dracula is fleeing to his castle in Transylvania with his last box. Mina has a faint psychic connection to Dracula, which Van Helsing exploits via hypnosis to track Dracula's movements. Guided by Mina, they pursue him.


title: Dracula

text: In Galatz, Romania, the hunters split up. Van Helsing and Mina go to Dracula's castle, where the professor destroys the vampire women. Jonathan Harker and Arthur Holmwood follow Dracula's boat on the river, while Quincey Morris and John Seward parallel them on land. After Dracula's box is finally loaded onto a wagon by Romani men, the hunters converge and attack it. After routing the Romani, Harker slashes Dracula's neck and Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Quincey is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani. He dies from his wounds, at peace with the knowledge that Mina is saved. A note by Jonathan Harker seven years later states that the Harkers have a son, named Quincey.


title: Dracula

text: As the acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, Bram Stoker was a recognisable figure: he would greet evening guests, and served as assistant to the stage actor Henry Irving. In a letter to Walt Whitman, Stoker described his own temperament as "secretive to the world", but he nonetheless led a relatively public life. Stoker supplemented his income from the theatre by writing romance and sensation novels, and had published 18 books by his death in 1912. "Dracula" was Stoker's seventh published book, following "The Shoulder of Shasta" (1895) and preceding "Miss Betty" (1898). Hall Caine, a close friend of Stoker's, wrote an obituary for him in "The Daily Telegraph", saying that—besides his biography on Irving—Stoker wrote only "to sell" and "had no higher aims".


title: Dracula

text: Many figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula, but there is no consensus. In his 1962 biography of Stoker, Harry Ludlam suggested that Ármin Vámbéry, a professor at the University of Budapest, supplied Stoker with information about Vlad Drăculea"," commonly known as Vlad the Impaler. Professors Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu popularised the idea in their 1972 book, "In Search of Dracula". Benjamin H. LeBlanc writes that there "is" a reference within the text to Vámbéry, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend of Abraham Van Helsing, but an investigation by McNally and Florescu found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers, nor in Stoker's notes about his meeting with Vámbéry. Academic and "Dracula" scholar Elizabeth Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, and rhetorically asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty.


title: Dracula

text: Raymond McNally's "Dracula Was A Woman" (1983) suggests another historical figure as an inspiration: Elizabeth Báthory. McNally argues that the imagery of "Dracula" has analogues in Báthory's described crimes, such as the use of a cage resembling an iron maiden. Gothic critic and lecturer Marie Mulvey-Roberts writes that vampires were traditionally depicted as "mouldering revenants, who dragged themselves around graveyards", but—like Báthory—Dracula uses blood to restore his youth. Recent scholarship has questioned whether Báthory's crimes were exaggerated by her political opponents, with others noting that very little is concretely known about her life. A book that Stoker used for research, "The Book of Were-Wolves", does have some information on Báthory, but Miller writes that he never took notes on anything from the short section devoted to her. In a facsimile edition of Bram Stoker's original notes for the book, Miller and her co-author Robert Eighteen-Bisang say in a footnote that there is no evidence she inspired Stoker. In 2000, Miller's book-length study, "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense", was said by academic Noel Chevalier to correct "not only leading "Dracula" scholars, but non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries".


title: Dracula

text: Aside from the historical, Count Dracula also has literary progenitors. Academic Elizabeth Signorotti argues that "Dracula" is a response to the lesbian vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872), "correcting" its emphasis on female desire. Bram Stoker's great-nephew, broadcaster Daniel Farson, wrote a biography of the author; in it, he doubts that Stoker was aware of the lesbian elements of "Carmilla", but nonetheless notes that it influenced him profoundly. Farson writes that an inscription upon a tomb in "Dracula" is a direct allusion to "Carmilla". Scholar Alison Milbank observes that as Dracula can transform into a dog, Carmilla can become a cat. According to author Patrick McGrath, "traces of "Carmilla"" can be found in the three female vampires residing in Dracula castle. A short story written by Stoker and published after his death, "Dracula's Guest", has been seen as evidence of "Carmilla" influence. According to Milbank, the story was a deleted first chapter from early in the original manuscript, and replicates "Carmilla" setting of Styria instead of Transylvania.


title: Dracula

text: In addition to Transylvanian folklore, some elements of Irish folklore have been proposed as possible influences on Stoker. Bob Curran, a lecturer in Celtic History and Folklore at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, suggested in the peer-reviewed historian journal "History Ireland" that Stoker may have drawn some inspiration for Dracula from the Irish vampire Abhartach.


title: Dracula

text: Prior to writing the novel, Stoker researched extensively, assembling over 100 pages of notes, including chapter summaries and plot outlines. The notes were sold by Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, in 1913, to a New York book dealer for £2.2s, (). Following that, the notes became the property of Charles Scribner's Sons, and then disappeared until they were bought by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia in 1970. H. P. Lovecraft wrote that he knew "an old lady" who was approached to revise the original manuscript, but that Stoker found her too expensive. Stoker's first biographer, Harry Ludlam, wrote in 1962 that writing commenced on "Dracula" around 1895 or 1896. Following the rediscovery of Stoker's notes in 1972 by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, the two dated the writing of "Dracula" to between 1895 and 1897. Later scholarship has questioned these sets of dates. In the first extensive study of the notes, Joseph S. Bierman writes that the earliest date within them is 8 March 1890, for an outline of a chapter that "differs from the final version in only a few details". According to Bierman, Stoker always intended to write an epistolary novel, but with an original setting of Styria instead of Transylvania; this iteration did not explicitly use the word "vampire". For two summers, Stoker and his family stayed in the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland, while he was actively writing "Dracula".


title: Dracula

text: Stoker's notes illuminate much about earlier iterations of the novel. For instance, they indicate that the novel's vampire was intended to be a count, even before he was given the name "Dracula". Stoker likely found the name "Dracula" in Whitby's public library while holidaying there with his wife and son in 1880. On the name, Stoker wrote: "Dracula means devil. Wallachians were accustomed to give it as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous by courage, cruel actions or cunning". Stoker's initial plans for "Dracula" markedly differ from the final novel. Had Stoker completed his original plans, a German professor called Max Windshoeffel "would have confronted Count Wampyr from Styria", and one of the Crew of Light would have been slain by a werewolf. Stoker's earliest notes indicate that "Dracula" might have originally been intended to be a detective story, with a detective called Cotford and a psychical investigator called Singleton.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" was published in London in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. It cost 6 shillings, and was bound in yellow cloth and titled in red letters. In 2002, Barbara Belford, a biographer, wrote that the novel looked "shabby", perhaps because the title had been changed at a late stage. Although contracts were typically signed at least 6 months ahead of publication, "Dracula" was unusually signed only 6 days prior to publication. For the first thousand sales of the novel, Stoker earned no royalties. Following serialisation by American newspapers, Doubleday & McClure published an American edition in 1899. In the 1930s when Universal Studios purchased the rights to make a film version, it was discovered that Stoker had not fully complied with US copyright law, placing the novel into the public domain. The novelist was required to purchase the copyright and register two copies, but he registered only one. Charlotte Stoker, Bram's mother, gushed about the novel to the author, predicting it would bring him immense financial success; she was wrong. The novel, although reviewed well, did not make Stoker much money and did not cement his critical legacy until after his death. Since its publication, "Dracula" has never been out of print.


title: Dracula

text: In 1901, "Dracula" was translated into Icelandic by Valdimar Ásmundsson under the title "Makt Myrkranna" ("Powers of Darkness") with a preface written by Stoker. In the preface, Stoker writes that the events contained within the novel are true, and that "for obvious reasons" he had changed the names of places and people. Although scholars had been aware of the translation's existence since the 1980s because of Stoker's preface, none had thought to translate it back into English. "Makt Myrkranna" differs significantly from Stoker's novel. Character names were changed, the length was abridged, and it was more overtly sexual than the original. Dutch scholar Hans Corneel de Roos compared the translation favourably to Stoker's, writing that where "Dracula" meandered, the translation was concise and punchy.


title: Dracula

text: Academic analyses of "Dracula" as sexually charged have become so frequent that a cottage industry has developed around the topic. Sexuality and seduction are two of the novel's most frequently discussed themes, especially as it relates to the corruption of English womanhood. Modern critical writings about vampirism widely acknowledge its link to sex and sexuality. Bram Stoker himself was possibly homosexual; Talia Schaffer points to intensely homoerotic letters sent by him to the American poet Walt Whitman. Stoker began writing the novel one month following the imprisonment of his friend Oscar Wilde for homosexuality.


title: Dracula

text: The novel's characters are often said to represent transgressive sexuality through the performance of their genders. The primary sexual threat posed by Count Dracula is, Christopher Craft writes, that he will "seduce, penetrate, [and] drain another male", with Jonathan Harker's excitement about being penetrated by three vampire women serving as a mask and proxy for his homosexual desire. His excitement also inverts standard Victorian gender roles; in succumbing to the vampire women, Harker assumes the traditionally feminine role of sexual passivity while the vampire women assume the masculinised role of acting. Sexual depravity and aggression were understood by the Victorians as the exclusive domain of Victorian men, while women were expected to submit to their husband's sexual wishes. Harker's desire to submit, and the scene's origin as a dream Stoker had, highlights the divide between societal expectations and lived realities of men who wanted more freedom in their sexual lives. In the British version of the text, Harker hears the three vampire women whispering at his door, and Dracula tells them they can feed on him tomorrow night. In the American version, Dracula insinuates that he will be feeding on Harker that night: "To-night is mine! To-morrow is yours!" Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, in the Norton Critical Edition of the text, posit that Stoker thought the line would render the novel unpublishable in 1897 England, and that "the America that produced his hero Walt Whitman would have been more tolerant of men feeding on men".


title: Dracula

text: The novel's depiction of women continues to divide critics. Elaine Showalter writes that Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker represent different aspects of the New Woman. According to Showalter, Lucy represents the "sexual daring" of the New Woman, evidenced by how she wonders why a woman cannot marry three men if they all desire her. Mina, meanwhile, represents the New Woman's "intellectual ambitions", citing her occupation as a schoolmaster, her keen mind, and her knowledge of shorthand. Carol A. Senf writes that Stoker was ambivalent about the New Woman phenomenon. Of the novel's five vampires, four are women, and all are aggressive, "wildly erotic", and driven only by their thirst for blood. Mina Harker, meanwhile, serves as the antithesis of the other female characters, and plays a singularly important role in Dracula's defeat. On the other hand, Judith Wasserman argues that the fight to defeat Dracula is really a battle for control over women's bodies. Senf points out that Lucy's sexual awakening, and her reversal of gender-based sexual roles, is what Abraham Van Helsing considers a threat.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula", and specifically the Count's migration to Victorian England, is frequently read as emblematic of invasion literature, and a projection of fears about racial pollution. A number of scholars have indicated that "Dracula" version of the vampire myth participates in antisemitic stereotyping. Jules Zanger links the novel's portrayal of the vampire to the immigration of Eastern European Jews to "fin de siècle" England. Between 1881 and 1900, the number of Jews living in England had increased sixfold because of pogroms and antisemitic laws elsewhere. Jack Halberstam provides a list of Dracula's associations with antisemitic conceptions of Jewish people: his appearance, wealth, parasitic bloodlust, and "lack of allegiance" to one country. In terms of his appearance, Halberstam notes Dracula's resemblance to other fictional Jews; for example, his long, sharp nails are compared to those of Fagin in Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" (1838), and Svengali of George du Maurier's "Trilby" (1895), who is depicted as animalistic and thin.


title: Dracula

text: The novel's depiction of Slovaks and Romani people has attracted some, albeit limited, scholarly attention. Peter Arnds wrote that the Count's control over the Romani and his abduction of young children evokes real folk superstitions about Romani people stealing children, and that his ability to transform into a wolf is likewise related to xenophobic beliefs about the Romani as animalistic. Although vagrants of all kinds were associated with animals, the Romani were victims of persecution in Europe due to a belief that they enjoyed "unclean meat" and lived among animals. Stoker's description of the Slovaks draws heavily from a travel memoir by a British major. Unlike the major's description, Harker's description is overtly imperialistic, labelling the people as "barbarians" and their boats as "primitive", emphasising their perceived cultural inferiority.


title: Dracula

text: Stephen Arata describes the novel as a case of "reverse colonisation"; that is, a fear of the non-white invading England and weakening its racial purity. Arata describes the novel's cultural context of mounting anxiety in Britain over the decline of the British Empire, the rise of other world powers, and a "growing domestic unease" over the morality of imperial colonisation. Manifesting also in other works aside from Stoker's novel, narratives of reverse colonisation indicate a fear of the "civilised" world being invaded by the "primitive". What Dracula does to human bodies is not horrifying simply because he kills them, but because he transforms them into the racial Other. Monika Tomaszewska associates Dracula's status as the racial Other with his characterisation as a degenerate criminal. She explains that, at the time of the novel's composition and publication, the "threatening degenerate was commonly identified as the racial Other, the alien intruder who invades the country to disrupt the domestic order and enfeeble the host race".


title: Dracula

text: The novel's representation of vampirism has been discussed as symbolising Victorian anxieties about disease. The theme is discussed with far less frequency than others because it is discussed alongside other topics rather than as the central object of discussion. For example, some connect its depiction of disease with race. Jack Halberstam points to one scene in which an English worker says that the repugnant odour of Count Dracula's London home smells like Jerusalem, making it a "Jewish smell". Jewish people were frequently described, in Victorian literature, as parasites; Halberstam highlights one particular fear that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist's description of Jews as "Yiddish bloodsuckers". In contrast, Mathias Clasen writes parallels between vampirism and sexually-transmitted diseases, specifically syphilis. Martin Willis, a researcher focused on the intersection of literature and disease, argues that the novel's characterisation of vampirism makes it both the initial infection and resulting illness.


title: Dracula

text: As an epistolary novel, "Dracula" is narrated through a series of documents. The novel's first four chapters are related as the journals of Jonathan Harker. Scholar David Seed notes that Harker's accounts function as an attempt to translocate the "strange" events of his visit to Dracula's castle into the nineteenth-century tradition of travelogue writing. John Seward, Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker all keep a crystalline account of the period as an act of self-preservation; David Seed notes that Harker's narrative is written in shorthand to remain inscrutable to the Count, protecting his own identity, which Dracula threatens to destroy. Harker's journal, for example, embodies the only advantage during his stay at Dracula's castle: that he knows more than the Count thinks he does. The novel's disparate accounts approach a kind of narrative unity as the narrative unfolds. In the novel's first half, each narrator has a strongly characterised narrative voice, with Lucy's showing her verbosity, Seward's businesslike formality, and Harker's excessive politeness. These narrative styles also highlight the power struggle between vampire and his hunters; the increasing prominence of Van Helsing's broken English as Dracula gathers power represents the entrance of the foreigner into Victorian society.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" is a common reference text in discussions of Gothic fiction. Jerrold E. Hogle notes Gothic fiction's tendency to blur boundaries, pointing to sexual orientation, race, class, and even species. Relating this to "Dracula", he highlights that the Count "can disgorge blood from his breasts" in addition to his teeth; that he is attracted to both Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray; appears both racially western and eastern; and how he is an aristocrat able to mingle with homeless vagrants. Stoker drew extensively from folklore in crafting Count Dracula, but many of the Count's physical attributes were typical of Gothic villains during Stoker's lifetime. In particular, his hooked nose, pale complexion, large moustache and thick eyebrows were likely inspired by the villains of Gothic fiction. Likewise, Stoker's selection of Transylvania has roots in the Gothic. Writers of the mode were drawn to Eastern Europe as a setting because travelogues presented it as a land of primitive superstitions. "Dracula" deviates from Gothic tales before it by firmly establishing its time—that being the modern era. The novel is an example of Urban Gothic.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" became the subject of critical interest into Irish fiction during the early 1990s. "Dracula" is set largely in England, but Stoker was born in Ireland, which was at that time part of the British Empire, and lived there for the first 30 years of his life. As a result, a significant body of writing exists on "Dracula", Ireland, England, and colonialism. Calvin W. Keogh writes that Harker's voyage into Eastern Europe "bears comparison with the Celtic fringe to the west", highlighting them both as "othered" spaces. Keogh notes that the Eastern Question has been both symbolically and historically associated with the Irish question. In this reading, Transylvania functions as a stand-in for Ireland. Several critics have described Count Dracula as an Anglo-Irish landlord.


title: Dracula

text: Upon publication, "Dracula" was well received. Reviewers frequently compared the novel to other Gothic writers, and mentions of novelist Wilkie Collins and "The Woman in White" (1859) were especially common because of similarities in structure and style. A review appearing in "The Bookseller" notes that the novel could almost have been written by Collins, and an anonymous review in "Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art" wrote that "Dracula" improved upon the style of Gothic pioneer Ann Radcliffe. Another anonymous writer described Stoker as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the nineties". Other favourable comparisons to other Gothic novelists include the Brontë sisters and Mary Shelley.


title: Dracula

text: Many of these early reviews were charmed by Stoker's unique treatment of the vampire myth. One called it the best vampire story ever written. "The Daily Telegraph" reviewer noted that while earlier Gothic works, like "The Castle of Otranto", had kept the supernatural far away from the novelists' home countries, "Dracula" horrors occurred both in foreign lands—in the far-away Carpathian Mountains—and at home, in Whitby and Hampstead Heath. An Australian paper, "The Advertiser", regarded the novel as simultaneously sensational and domestic. One reviewer praised the "considerable power" of Stoker's prose and describing it as impressionistic. They were less fond of the parts set in England, finding the vampire suited better to tales set far away from home. The British magazine "Vanity Fair" noted that the novel was, at times, unintentionally funny, pointing to Dracula's disdain for garlic.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" was widely considered to be frightening. A review appearing in "The Manchester Guardian" in 1897 praised its capacity to entertain, but concluded that Stoker erred in including so much horror. Likewise, "Vanity Fair" opined that the novel was "praiseworthy" and absorbing, but could not recommend it to those who were not "strong". Stoker's prose was commended as effective in sustaining the novel's horror by many publications. A reviewer for the "San Francisco Wave" called the novel a "literary failure"; they elaborated that coupling vampires with frightening imagery, such as insane asylums and "unnatural appetites", made the horror too overt, and that other works in the genre, such as "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", had more restraint.


title: Dracula

text: Modern critics frequently write that "Dracula" had a mixed critical reception upon publication. Carol Margaret Davison, for example, notes an "uneven" response from critics contemporary to Stoker. John Edgar Browning, a scholar whose research focuses on "Dracula" and literary vampires, conducted a review of the novel's early criticism in 2012 and determined that "Dracula" had been "a critically acclaimed novel". Browning writes that the misconception of "Dracula" mixed reception stems from a low sample size. Of 91 contemporary reviews, Browning identified 10 as "generally positive"; 4 as "mixed" in their assessment; 3 as "wholly or mostly negative"; and the rest as positive and possessing no negative reservations. Among the positive reviews, Browning writes that 36 were unreserved in their praise, including publications like "The Daily Mail", "The Daily Telegraph", and "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper". Other critical works have rejected the narrative of "Dracula" mixed response. Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's "In Search of Dracula" mentions the novel's "immediate success". Other works about "Dracula", coincidentally also published in 1972, concur; Gabriel Ronay says the novel was "recognised by fans and critics alike as a horror writer's stroke of genius", and Anthony Masters mentions the novel's "enormous popular appeal". Since the 1970s, "Dracula" has been the subject of significant academic interest, evidenced by its own peer-reviewed journal and the numerous books and articles discussing the novel.


title: Dracula

text: The story of "Dracula" has been the basis for numerous films and plays. Stoker himself wrote the first theatrical adaptation, which was presented at the Lyceum Theatre on 18 May 1897 under the title "Dracula, or The Undead" shortly before the novel's publication and performed only once, in order to establish his own copyright for such adaptations. Although the manuscript was believed lost, the British Library possesses a copy. It consists of extracts from the novel's galley proof with Stoker's own handwriting providing direction and dialogue attribution.


title: Dracula

text: The first film to feature Count Dracula was Károly Lajthay's "Drakula Halála" ("The Death of Dracula"), a Hungarian silent film released in 1921. Very little of the film has survived, and David J. Skal notes that the cover artist for the 1926 Hungarian version of the film was more influenced by the second adaptation of "Dracula", F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu". Critic Wayne E. Hensley writes that the film's narrative differs significantly from the novel, but that characters have clear counterparts. Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, initiated legal action against the film studio, Prana. The legal case lasted two or three years, and in May 1924, Prana agreed to destroy all copies of the film.


title: Dracula

text: Visual representations of the Count have changed significantly over time. Early treatments of Dracula's appearance were established by theatrical productions in London and New York. Later prominent portrayals of the character by Béla Lugosi (in a 1931 adaptation) and Christopher Lee (firstly in the 1958 film and later its sequels) built upon earlier versions. Chiefly, Dracula's early visual style involved a black-red colour scheme and slicked back hair. Lee's portrayal was overtly sexual, and also popularised fangs on screen. Gary Oldman's portrayal in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and costumed by Eiko Ishioka, established a new default look for the character—a Romanian accent and long hair. The assortment of adaptations feature many different dispositions and characteristics of the Count.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" has been adapted a large number of times across virtually all forms of media. John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart write that the novel and its characters have been adapted for film, television, video games and animation over 700 times, with nearly 1000 additional appearances in comic books and on the stage. Roberto Fernández Retamar deemed Count Dracula—along with characters such as Frankenstein's monster, Mickey Mouse and Superman—to be a part of the "hegemonic Anglo-Saxon world['s] cinematic fodder". Across the world, completed new adaptations can be produced as often as every week.


title: Dracula

text: "Dracula" was not the first piece of literature to depict vampires, but the novel has nonetheless come to dominate both popular and scholarly treatments of vampire fiction. Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when people discuss vampires. "Dracula" succeeded by drawing together folklore, legend, vampire fiction and the conventions of the Gothic novel. Wendy Doniger described the novel as vampire literature's "centrepiece, rendering all other vampires BS or AS". It profoundly shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics. Bats had been associated with vampires before "Dracula" as a result of the vampire bat's existence—for example, "Varney the Vampire" (1847) included an image of a bat on its cover illustration. But Stoker deepened the association by making Dracula able to transform into one. That was, in turn, quickly taken up by film studios looking for opportunities to use special effects. Patrick McGrath notes that many of the Count's characteristics have been adopted by artists succeeding Stoker in depicting vampires, turning those fixtures into clichés. Aside from the Count's ability to transform, McGrath specifically highlights his hatred of garlic, sunlight, and crucifixes. William Hughes writes critically of the Count's cultural omnipresence, noting that the character of Dracula has "seriously inhibited" discussions of the undead in Gothic fiction.


title: Dracula

text: Adaptations of the novel and its characters have contributed to its enduring popularity. Even within academic discussions, the boundaries between Stoker's novel and the character's adaptation across a range of media have effectively been blurred. Dacre Stoker suggests that Stoker's failure to comply with United States copyright law contributed to its enduring status, writing that writers and producers did not need to pay a licence fee to use the character.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Twilight is a 2008 American romantic fantasy film directed by Catherine Hardwicke from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. It is the first instalment in "The Twilight Saga" film series. The film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Bella Swan, a teenage girl, and Edward Cullen, a vampire, respectively, and focuses on the development of Bella and Edward's relationship and the subsequent efforts of Edward and his family to keep Bella safe from a coven of evil vampires.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: The project was in development for approximately three years at Paramount Pictures' MTV Films, during which time a film adaptation that differed significantly from the novel was written. Summit Entertainment acquired the rights to the novel after the project's stagnant development. Melissa Rosenberg wrote a new adaptation of the novel shortly before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike and sought to be faithful to the novel's storyline. Principal photography began on March 2008 and took 44 days, being completed on May 2; the film was shot in the states of Oregon and Washington.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: "Twilight" premiered in Los Angeles on November 17, 2008, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 21, by Summit Entertainment. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film grossed over $407 million worldwide. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on March 21, 2009 and became the most purchased DVD of the year. The soundtrack was released on November 4, 2008.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan, leaves Phoenix, Arizona and moves to Forks, a small town located on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, to live with her father, Charlie, the town's police chief. Her mother, Renée, is remarried to Phil, a minor league baseball player whose career often keeps them on the road.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Bella becomes re-acquainted with Jacob Black, a Native American teen who lives with his father, Billy, on the Quileute Indian Reservation near Forks. She makes friends at her new high school, but finds the mysterious and aloof Cullen siblings particularly intriguing. Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in biology class on her first day, but he seems repulsed by her. After a week's absence from school, Edward returns and socializes normally with Bella. A few days later, she is nearly struck by a skidding van in the school parking lot. Edward instantaneously covers a distance of over thirty feet, putting himself between Bella and the van, stopping it with only his hand. He subsequently refuses to explain his actions to her, warning her against befriending him. Jacob tells Bella about a long-standing animosity between the Cullens and the Quileutes, and says the Cullens are not allowed on the reservation.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Edward appears out of nowhere and saves Bella a second time. After much research, Bella concludes that Edward has mysterious powers that resemble a vampire's. He eventually confirms this, but says that he and the other Cullens only consume animal blood. They fall in love, and Edward introduces Bella to his vampire family. Carlisle Cullen, the family patriarch, is a doctor at the Forks hospital. Esme is Carlisle's wife and the family matriarch. Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie are their informally-adopted children. The family's reaction to Bella is mixed, concerned that the family's secret could be exposed.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Edward and Bella's relationship is jeopardized when three nomadic vampires—James, Victoria, and Laurent—arrive in the Forks area, and are responsible for a series of deaths being investigated as animal attacks. James, a tracker vampire with incredible hunting instincts, is excited by Bella's scent and becomes obsessed with hunting her for sport. Edward and the other Cullens protect Bella, but James tracks her to Phoenix, where she is hiding with Jasper and Alice.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: James lures Bella into a trap at an old ballet studio. He attacks her, infecting her with vampire venom. Edward arrives and, after a ferocious battle, subdues James just as other Cullens arrive. Alice, Emmett, and Jasper kill James, decapitating and burning him, as Edward removes the venom from Bella's wrist, preventing her becoming a vampire. In the aftermath, she has suffered a broken leg and is hospitalized. Upon returning to Forks, Edward accompanies Bella to the high school prom, where he refuses her request to transform her into a vampire. They are unaware that James' mate, Victoria, is secretly watching them, plotting revenge for her lover's death.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: In early 2004, Greg Mooradian of Maverick Films brought an unpublished manuscript of "Twilight" to David Gale, then executive vice president of Paramount Pictures' MTV Films division, to propose a film adaptation. Gale, in turn, brought it to Paramount's then co-president of production, Karen Rosenfelt, who lobbied to option the rights to the novel. MTV Films eventually acquired the rights in April of the same year and later hired Mark Lord to write a script. The screenplay that was subsequently developed was substantially different from its source material, being more action-oriented. According to Lord, he originally pitched his adaptation as a vampiric take on the play "Romeo and Juliet", but MTV Films "wanted to just put in some more action to advance it more and give something more for the male audience. They thought they were going to lose the male audience with too much of a romance." MTV Films was pleased with the script he delivered, which included, among many changes, the character of Bella Swan being a long-distance runner, cursing, using shotguns against vampires who killed her father, being turned into a vampire, and riding "jet skis being chased by the FBI". When talking about MTV Films' original script, author Stephenie Meyer said, "They could have filmed it and not called it "Twilight" because it had nothing to do with the book, and that’s kind of frightening."


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Following a change of management at Paramount Pictures, the studio's new president of production Brad Weston told Gale that he believed audiences weren't interested in films about vampires and werewolves, after being involved with box-office bomb "Cursed" at Dimension Films, and development stalled. In January 2006, Paramount put "Twilight" into turnaround. Rosenfelt, who had left Paramount and came aboard "Twilight" as a producer, was determined to make the film happen, and attempted to forge a co-production deal between Paramount and Fox 2000 Pictures, where she had a producing deal, but Fox 2000 didn't agreed with Paramount's terms. Rosenfelt later tried to generate interest at Fox Atomic, but Fox Atomic passed. In October 2006, Rosenfelt met with Erik Feig, then president of production of Summit Entertainment, and mentioned to him that of all the projects she wished she could make, she thought "Twilight" had the biggest potential. After their meeting, Feig obtained a copy of the novel, read it, and passed it on to colleagues at Summit, who perceived it as an opportunity to launch a franchise. When Paramount Pictures let the rights to "Twilight" expire in April 2007, Summit acquired them, agreeing with Meyer that their film adaptation would be more faithful to the novel than MTV Films' version.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Before even having the rights to "Twilight", Feig, a fan of director Catherine Hardwicke, talked with Hardwicke on the 2007 Sundance Film Festival about working with Summit Entertainment and sent her five scripts of films the studio was developing, including Mark Lord's draft of "Twilight" for MTV Films. Hardwicke didn't liked any of the scripts, but ended up curious about "Twilight". She bought a copy of the novel and realized the script she had read had very little to do with the source material, which she soon began envisioning as a film. Following Summit's acquisition of the rights, Hardwicke was set to direct the film and Melissa Rosenberg was hired to write the script in mid-2007.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Rosenberg developed an outline by the end of August, and collaborated with Hardwicke on writing the screenplay during the following month. Rosenberg said Hardwicke "was a great sounding board and had all sorts of brilliant ideas. [...] I'd finish off scenes and send them to her, and get back her notes." Due to the impending Writers Guild of America strike, Rosenberg worked full-time to finish the screenplay before October 31. In adapting the novel, she "had to condense a great deal." Some characters from the novel were not featured in the screenplay, whereas some characters were combined into others. "[O]ur intent all along was to stay true to the book", Rosenberg explained, "and it has to do less with adapting it word for word and more with making sure the characters' arcs and emotional journeys are the same." Hardwicke suggested the use of voice over to convey Bella's internal dialogue — since the novel is told from her point of view — and she sketched some of the storyboards during pre-production.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: The filmmakers behind "Twilight" worked to create a film that was as faithful to the novel as they thought possible when converting the story to another medium. Producer Greg Mooradian said, "It's very important to distinguish that we're making a separate piece of art that obviously is going to remain very, very faithful to the book. [...] But at the same time, we have a separate responsibility to make the best movie you can make." To ensure a faithful adaptation, Meyer was kept very involved in the production process, having been invited to visit the set during filming and even asked to give notes on the script and on a rough cut of the film. Of this process, she said, "It was a really pleasant exchange [between me and the filmmakers] from the beginning, which I think is not very typical. They were really interested in my ideas", and "[...]they kept me in the loop and with the script, they let me see it and said, 'What are your thoughts?' [...] They let me have input on it and I think they took 90 percent of what I said and just incorporated it right in to the script." Meyer fought for one line in particular, one of the most well known from the book about "the lion and the lamb", to be kept verbatim in the film: "I actually think the way Melissa [Rosenberg] wrote it sounded better for the movie [...] but the problem is that line is actually tattooed on peoples' bodies. [...] But I said, 'You know, if you take that one and change it, that's a potential backlash situation. Meyer was even invited to create a written list of things that could not be changed for the film, such as giving the vampires fangs or killing characters who do not die in the book, that the studio agreed to follow in contract. The consensus among critics is that the filmmakers succeeded in making a film that is very faithful to its source material, with one reviewer stating that, with a few exceptions, ""Twilight" the movie is unerringly faithful to the source without being hamstrung by it."


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: However, as is most often the case with film adaptations, differences do exist between the film and source material. Certain scenes from the book were cut from the film, such as a biology room scene where Bella's class does blood typing. Hardwicke explains, "Well [the book is] almost 500 pages—you do have to do the sweetened condensed milk version of that. [...] We already have two scenes in biology: the first time they're in there and then the second time when they connect. For a film, when you condense, you don't want to keep going back to the same setting over and over. So that's not in there." The settings of certain conversations in the book were also changed to make the scenes more "visually dynamic" on-screen, such as Bella's revelation that she knows Edward is a vampire—this happens in a meadow in the film instead of in Edward's car as in the novel. A biology field trip scene is added to the film to condense the moments of Bella's frustration at trying to explain how Edward saved her from being crushed by a van. The villainous vampires are introduced earlier in the film than in the novel. Rosenberg said that "you don't really see James and the other villains until to the last quarter of the book, which really won't work for a movie. You need that ominous tension right off the bat. We needed to see them and that impending danger from the start. And so I had to create back story for them, what they were up to, to flesh them out a bit as characters." Rosenberg also combined some of the human high school students, with Lauren Mallory and Jessica Stanley in the novel becoming the character of Jessica in the film, and a "compilation of a couple of different human characters" becoming Eric Yorkie. About these variances from the book, Mooradian stated, "I think we did a really judicious job of distilling [the book]. Our greatest critic, Stephenie Meyer, loves the screenplay, and that tells me that we made all the right choices in terms of what to keep and what to lose. Invariably, you're going to lose bits and pieces that certain members of the audience are going to desperately want to see, but there's just a reality that we're not making 'Twilight: The Book' the movie."


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Several actresses, including Lily Collins and Jennifer Lawrence, screen tested for the role of Bella Swan, while Hardwick desired to test Kristen Stewart, who she had saw in "Into the Wild" and became her first choice for the part. Stewart eventually agreed to met Hardwicke while working on the film "Adventureland", and Hardwicke visited her in Philadelphia with actor Jackson Rathbone, who was in contention to portray Edward Cullen, for an informal screen test that "captivated" the director. After casting Stewart as Bella, Hardwicke had trouble finding an actor otherworldly enough to play Edward Cullen. Rathbone, Shiloh Fernandez, Ben Barnes, and Robert Pattinson were the final four up for the role. Hardwicke did not initially choose Pattinson for Edward Cullen, with him arriving at her house in Venice, Los Angeles for a test, according to Hardwicke, "kind of wild-looking" with "scraggly, black dyed hair, and a stain on his shirt", while also having, according to Pattinson, a "hairless, chubby body" from "drinking beer all day" for a few months. After an audition on her bed, however, where Pattinson kissed Stewart for the screen test and fell out of the bed, he was selected. Hardwicke said, "Kristen was like, 'It's got to be Rob!' She felt connected to him from the first moment. That electricity, or love at first sight, or whatever it is." Hardwicke gave him the part, as long as he got in shape and made a promise. "'You've got to realize that Kristen is 17 years old'", Hardwicke told him. "'She's underage. You've got to focus, dude, or you're going to be arrested.' I made him swear on a stack of Bibles." Pattinson was unfamiliar with the book series prior to his screen test but read the books later on. Meyer even allowed him to view a manuscript of the unfinished "Midnight Sun", which chronicles the events in "Twilight" from Edward's point of view. Fan reaction to Pattinson's casting as Edward was initially negative; Rachelle Lefèvre remarked that "[e]very woman had their own Edward [that] they had to let go of before they could open up to [him], which they did." Meyer was "excited" and "ecstatic" in response to the casting of the two main characters. She had expressed interest in having Emily Browning and Henry Cavill cast as Bella and Edward, respectively, prior to pre-production.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Peter Facinelli was chosen to play Carlisle Cullen, though he wasn't the first choice by Summit, revealing, "Hardwicke liked me, but there was another actor that the studio was pushing for." For unknown reasons, that actor was not able to play the part and Facinelli was selected in his place. Elizabeth Reaser was hired as Esme Cullen, despite only knowing in the audition that the film was based on a novel. Jackson Rathbone, who was in the final mix for Edward, was cast as Jasper Hale. The choice of Ashley Greene to portray Alice Cullen was the subject of fan criticism due to Greene being taller than her character as described in the novel. Meyer had also stated that Rachael Leigh Cook resembled her vision of Alice. Nikki Reed was cast as Rosalie Hale. Reed had previously worked with Hardwicke on "Thirteen", which they wrote together, and "Lords of Dogtown". Reed commented, "I don't want to say it's a coincidence, because we do work well together, and we have a great history. I think we make good work, but it's more that the people that hire [Hardwicke] to direct a film of theirs [have] most likely seen her other work." After an open casting call, Taylor Lautner was cast as Jacob Black. Kellan Lutz was in Africa shooting the HBO miniseries "Generation Kill" when the auditions for the character of Emmett Cullen were conducted. The role had already been cast by the time that pre-production ended in December 2007, but the actor who had been selected "fell through"; Lutz subsequently auditioned and was flown to Oregon, where Hardwicke personally chose him. Rachelle Lefèvre was interested in pursuing a role in the film because Hardwicke was attached to the project as director; there was also "the potential to explore a character, hopefully, over three films"; and she wanted to portray a vampire. She "thought that vampires were basically the best metaphor for human anxiety and questions about being alive." Christian Serratos initially auditioned for Jessica Stanley, but she "fell totally in love with Angela" after reading the novels and successfully took advantage of a later opportunity to audition for Angela Weber. The role of Jessica Stanley went to Anna Kendrick, who got the part after two mix-and-match auditions with various actors.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Principal photography took 44 days, after more than a week of rehearsals, and completed on May 2, 2008. Similar to her directorial debut "Thirteen", Hardwicke opted for an extensive use of hand-held cinematography to make the film "feel real". Meyer visited the production set three times and was consulted on different aspects of the story; she also has a brief cameo in the film. Cast members who portrayed vampires avoided sunlight to make their skin pale, though makeup was also applied for that effect, and wore contact lenses: "We did the golden color because the Cullens have those golden eyes. And then, when we're hungry, we have to pop the black ones in," Facinelli explained. They also participated in rehearsals with a dance choreographer and observed the physicality of different panthera to make their bodily movements more elegant.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Scenes were filmed primarily in Portland, Oregon, including at the Cullen House, a striking glass-and-wood residence. Stunt work was done mainly by the cast. The fight sequence between Gigandet and Pattinson's characters in a ballet studio, which was filmed during the first week of production, involved a substantial amount of wire work because the vampires in the story have superhuman strength and speed. Gigandet incorporated mixed martial arts fighting moves in this sequence, which involved chicken and honey as substitutes for flesh. Bella, the protagonist, is unconscious during these events, and since the novel is told from her point of view, such action sequences are illustrative and unique to the film. Pattinson noted that maintaining one's center of gravity is difficult when doing wire work "because you have to really fight against it as well as letting it do what it needs to do." Lefèvre found the experience disorienting since forward motion was out of her control.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Instead of shooting at Forks High School itself, scenes taking place at the school were filmed at Kalama High School and Madison High School. Other scenes were filmed in St. Helens, and Hardwicke conducted some reshooting in Pasadena, California, in August. "Twilight" was originally scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on December 12, 2008, but its release date was changed to November 21 after "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was rescheduled for an opening in July 2009. Two teaser trailers, as well as some additional scenes, were released for the film, as well as a final trailer, which was released on October 9. A 15-minute excerpt of "Twilight" was presented during the International Rome Film Festival in Italy. The film received a rating of PG-13 from the Motion Picture Association of America for "some violence and a scene of sensuality".


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: The score for "Twilight" was composed by Carter Burwell, with the rest of the soundtrack chosen by music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas. Meyer was consulted on the soundtrack, which includes music by Muse and Linkin Park, bands she listened to while writing the novels. The original soundtrack was released on November 4, 2008, by Chop Shop Records in conjunction with Atlantic Records. It debuted at number 1 on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: "Twilight" grossed over $7 million in ticket sales from midnight showings alone on November 21, 2008. The film is fifth overall on Fandango's list of top advance ticket sales, outranked only by the following year, "" (2005), "The Dark Knight" (2008), and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (2009). It grossed $35.7 million on its opening day. For its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, "Twilight" accumulated $69.6 million from 3,419 theaters at an average of $20,368 per theater. The film grossed $192,769,854 in the United States and Canada, and $214,417,861 in international territories for a total of $407,187,715. Its opening weekend gross was the highest ever of a female-directed film, surpassing that of "Deep Impact" (1998).


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Based on 219 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 49% and a weighted average score of 5.41/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Having lost much of its bite transitioning to the big screen, "Twilight" will please its devoted fans, but do little for the uninitiated." On Metacritic, it has a weighted mean score of 56 based on 38 reviews from film critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". "New York Press" critic Armond White called the film "a genuine pop classic", and praised Hardwicke for turning "Meyer's book series into a Brontë-esque vision." Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "I saw it at a sneak preview. Last time I saw a movie in that same theater, the audience welcomed it as an opportunity to catch up on gossip, texting, and laughing at private jokes. This time the audience was rapt with attention". In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Kenneth Turan wrote, ""Twilight" is unabashedly a romance. All the story's inherent silliness aside, it is intent on conveying the magic of meeting that one special person you've been waiting for. Maybe it is possible to be 13 and female for a few hours after all". "USA Today" gave the film two out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, "Meyer is said to have been involved in the production of "Twilight", but her novel was substantially more absorbing than the unintentionally funny and quickly forgettable film". "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a "B" rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Hardwicke's direction: "She has reconjured Meyer's novel as a cloudburst mood piece filled with stormy skies, rippling hormones, and understated visual effects".


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: The film was released on DVD in North America on March 21, 2009, through midnight release parties, and sold over 3 million units in its first day. It was released on April 6, 2009 in the UK. Bonus features include about 10 to 12 extended or deleted scenes, montages and music videos, behind-the-scenes interviews, a "making-of" segment, and commentary featuring Hardwicke, Stewart, and Pattinson. The Blu-ray disc edition of the film was released on March 21, 2009, in select locations, but was made more widely available at further retailers on May 5, 2009. As of July 2012, the film has sold 11,242,519 units, earning $201,190,019.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: The film and the next two installments of the Twilight Saga was rereleased as a triple feature with extended cuts on January 13, 2015.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: A film trivia video game developed by Screenlife Games and published by Konami for the Wii, Nintendo DS, PC and iPhone was released alongside the second film.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: Since its release, "Twilight" has received numerous nominations and awards. In January 2009, Carter Burwell was nominated for Film Composer of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association. Robert Pattinson won Bravo TV's A-List Award for A-List Breakout. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Pattinson, who was nominated alongside Taylor Lautner, also won an award for Male Breakthrough Performance, "Decode" was nominated for Best Song from a Movie, "Twilight" won an award for Best Movie, Kristen Stewart won for Best Female performance, Stewart and Pattinson were awarded Best Kiss, and Pattinson and Cam Gigandet won an award for Best Fight. Christian Serratos won a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film: Supporting Young Actress. For the 2009 Teen Choice Awards, held on August 9, the film and its actors received a combined total of 12 nominations, nine of which the film won. At the 2009 Scream Awards, the film was nominated for nine awards, four of which it won. The film won two ALMA Awards for makeup and hairstyling. It also won the Public Choice Award at the World Soundtrack Awards, where Carter Burwell was also nominated for Composer of the Year. Catherine Hardwicke received a Young Hollywood Award for her directing. In addition, the film was nominated for Best Fantasy Film at the 35th Saturn Awards and two Grammy Awards.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: In 2015, Lionsgate released an Extended edition a bit over 4 minutes longer. It edits into the movie scenes already released as "Deleted Scenes" on previous DVD releases.


title: Twilight (2008 film)

text: MTV reported in February 2008 that Summit Entertainment intended to create a series of at least three films based on Meyer's books. The studio had optioned "New Moon", the second book in the series, by October 2008, and confirmed their plans to make a film based on it November 22, 2008. Because Catherine Hardwicke had wanted more preparation time than Summit's schedule for the production and release of the sequel would provide, Chris Weitz was selected to direct it in December 2008.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation division ArmaLite sold the patent and trademarks to Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1959. After most of Colt's patents for the Colt AR-15 expired in 1977, many firearm manufacturers began to produce copies of the Colt AR-15 under various names. While the patents are expired, Colt retained the trademark of the AR-15 and is the sole manufacturer able to label their firearms as "AR-15". The "AR" in Colt AR-15 stands for "ArmaLite Rifle", not "assault rifle".


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: The Federal Assault Weapons Ban restricted the sale of the Colt AR-15 and some derivatives in the United States from 1994 to 2004, although it did not affect rifles with fewer listed features. After the term modern sporting rifles was coined in 2009 by the US National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association, it was quickly adopted by much of the industry.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: In the 2010s, AR-15-style rifles became one of the "most beloved and most vilified rifles" in the United States, according to "The New York Times". The rifles are controversial in part due to their use in high-profile mass shootings. Promoted as "America's rifle" by the National Rifle Association, AR-15-style rifles' popularity is partially attributable to active restrictions, or proposals to ban or restrict them.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: A common misconception is that "AR" is an acronym for "assault rifle", perhaps because of the weapon's inclusion in the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, or because the ArmaLite AR-15 was originally designed to replace the M14 rifle in the Vietnam War.<ref name="Bartocci_7/16/2012"></ref> The "AR" in AR-15 actually stands for "ArmaLite Rifle", and "AR-15" is most-commonly used to refer "only" to the civilian semi-automatic variants of the rifle which lack the fully automatic function.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: The AR-15 is closely related to the military M16 and M4 Carbine rifles, which all share the same core design. Invented by infantry rifle designer Eugene Stoner in 1956 for use in the 7.62 NATO caliber ArmaLite AR-10 battle rifle, the design features a gas-operated, rotating bolt combined with an integral piston (instead of a conventional direct impingement, operating system), and was patented under . A lighter weight selective fire variant of the AR-10 was designed in 1958 for military use and designated the ArmaLite model 15, or AR-15.<ref name="Bartocci_7/16/2012"></ref> Due to financial problems and limitations in terms of manpower and production capacity, ArmaLite sold the AR-15 and AR-10 designs and trademarks to Colt in 1959. In 1964, Colt began selling its own version with an improved semi-automatic design known as the Colt AR-15. After Colt's patents expired in 1977, an active marketplace emerged for other manufacturers to produce and sell their own semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles. Some versions of the AR-15 were classified as "assault weapons" and banned under the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act in 1994 within the United States. This act expired in 2004.<ref name="Bocetta_3/15/2018"></ref>


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: In 2009, the term "modern sporting rifle" was coined by the National Shooting Sports Foundation for its survey that year as a marketing term used by the firearms industry to describe modular semi-automatic rifles including AR-15s. Today, nearly every major firearm manufacturer produces its own generic AR-15 style rifle. As Colt continues to own and use the AR-15 trademark for its line of AR-15 variants, other manufacturers must use their own model numbers and names to market their AR-15 style rifles for commercial sale.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: Under US law, when manufactured with a barrel length less than and without a shoulder stock, it is legally considered a pistol as opposed to being a short-barreled rifle, and is described as an AR-15 style pistol.


title: AR-15 style rifle

text: The lower receiver alone is legally defined as a firearm under United States federal law. However, this definition may be questionable due to several court rulings (or government dismissals to avoid rulings) that the AR-15 lower receiver does not match the legal definition in 27 CFR § 479.11, though a 2021 case from the Eighth Circuit found otherwise.