title: The Velvet Underground

text: The Reed–Cale–Morrison–Tucker lineup officially reunited without Yule (whose inclusion had been championed by Morrison) in 1992, commencing activities with a European tour beginning in Edinburgh on June 1, 1993, and including a performance at Glastonbury which appeared on an "NME" front cover. Cale sang most of the songs Nico had originally performed. As well as headlining (with Luna as the opening act), the Velvets performed as supporting act for five dates of U2's Zoo TV Tour. With the success of the Velvet Underground's European reunion tour, a series of US tour dates were proposed, as was an "MTV Unplugged" broadcast, and possibly even some new studio recordings. Before any of this could come to fruition, Cale and Reed fell out again, breaking up the band once more.


title: The Velvet Underground

text: On August 30, 1995, Sterling Morrison died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma after returning to his hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York, at age 53. When the classic lineup of the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Reed, Tucker, and Cale reformed the Velvet Underground for the last time. Doug Yule was not inducted and did not attend. At the ceremony, the band was inducted by Patti Smith, and the trio performed "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend", written in tribute to Morrison.


title: The Velvet Underground

text: In December 2009, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the band's formation, Reed, Tucker and Yule (with Cale not present) gave a rare interview at the New York Public Library.


title: The Velvet Underground

text: The Velvet Underground continues to exist as a New York–based partnership managing the financial and back catalog aspects for the band members. In January 2012, the surviving members of the band initiated legal action against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts over unauthorised use of the debut album's banana design. Forty-fifth anniversary box sets of the band's first four studio albums, including significantly expanded bonus material, appeared from 2012 to 2015; the live box set "The Complete Matrix Tapes", comprising remixed and remastered versions of a series of professionally recorded 1969 performances, also appeared in 2015.


title: The Velvet Underground

text: On October 27, 2013, Lou Reed died at his home in Southampton, New York, aged 71. He had undergone a liver transplant earlier in the year. John Cale responded to Reed's passing by saying, "The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet…I've lost my 'school-yard buddy'".


title: The Velvet Underground

text: In 2017, John Cale and Maureen Tucker reunited to perform "I'm Waiting for the Man" at the Grammy Salute to Music Legends concert.


title: The Velvet Underground

text: The Velvet Underground is regarded as one of the most influential bands in rock history. In 1996 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Critic Robert Christgau considers it "the number three band of the '60s, after the Beatles and James Brown and His Famous Flames". AllMusic wrote that "Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan [...] the Velvets' innovations – which blended the energy of rock with the sonic adventurism of the avant-garde, and introduced a new degree of social realism and sexual kinkiness into rock lyrics – were too abrasive for the mainstream to handle." The group's first four albums were included in "Rolling Stone"s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The group was ranked the 19th-greatest artist by the same magazine and the 24th-greatest artist in a poll by VH1.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a 2015 action role-playing game developed and published by CD Projekt. It is the sequel to the 2011 game "" and the third game in "The Witcher" video game series, played in an open world with a third-person perspective. The games follow "The Witcher" series of fantasy novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game takes place in a fictional fantasy world based on Slavic mythology. Players control Geralt of Rivia, a monster slayer for hire known as a Witcher, and search for his adopted daughter, who is on the run from the otherworldly Wild Hunt. Players battle the game's many dangers with weapons and magic, interact with non-player characters, and complete quests to acquire experience points and gold, which are used to increase Geralt's abilities and purchase equipment. The game's story has three possible endings, determined by the player's choices at key points in the narrative.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Development began in 2011 and lasted for three and a half years. Central and Northern European cultures formed the basis of the game's world. The game was developed using the REDengine 3, which enabled CD Projekt to create a complex story without compromising its open world. The music was primarily composed by Marcin Przybyłowicz and performed by the Brandenburg State Orchestra.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in May 2015, with a Nintendo Switch version released in October 2019, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions titled "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition" which was released in December 2022. The game received critical acclaim, with praise for its gameplay, narrative, world design, combat, and visuals, although it received minor criticism due to technical issues. It holds more than 200 game of the year awards and has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Two expansions were also released to critical acclaim: "" and "". A Game of the Year edition was released in August 2016, with the base game, expansions and all downloadable content included. The game shipped over 40 million copies, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" is an action role-playing game with a third-person perspective. Players control Geralt of Rivia, a monster slayer known as a Witcher. Geralt walks, runs, rolls and dodges, and (for the first time in the series) jumps, climbs and swims. He has a variety of weapons, including bombs, a crossbow and two swords (one steel and one silver). The steel sword is used primarily to kill humans while the silver sword is more effective against creatures and monsters. Players can draw out, switch and sheathe their swords at will. There are two modes of melee attack; light attacks are fast but weak, and heavy attacks are slow but strong. Players can block and counter enemy attacks with their swords. Swords have limited endurance and require regular repair. In addition to physical attacks, Geralt has five magical signs at his disposal: Aard, Axii, Igni, Yrden and Quen. Aard prompts Geralt to unleash a telekinetic blast, Axii confuses enemies, Igni burns them, Yrden slows them down and Quen offers players a temporary, protective shield. The signs use stamina, and cannot be used indefinitely. Players can use mutagens to increase Geralt's magic power. Geralt loses health when attacked by enemies, although wearing armour can help reduce health loss. Health is restored with meditation or consumables, such as food and potions. Players occasionally control Ciri, Geralt's adoptive daughter who can teleport short distances.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game has responsive, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and dynamic environments. The day-night cycle influences some monsters; a werewolf becomes powerful during the night of a full moon. Players can learn about their enemies and prepare for combat by reading the in-game bestiary. When they kill an enemy, they can loot its corpse for valuables. Geralt's witcher sense enables players to find objects of interest, including items that can be collected or scavenged. Items are stored in the inventory, which can be expanded by purchasing upgrades. Players can sell items to vendors or use them to craft potions and bombs. They can visit blacksmiths to craft new weapons and armorers to craft new armour with what they have gathered. The price of an item and the cost of crafting it depend on a region's local economy. Players earn experience points by completing quests. When a player earns enough experience, Geralt's level increases and the player receives ability points. These points may be used on four skill trees: combat, signs, alchemy and general. Combat upgrades enhance Geralt's attacks and unlock new fighting techniques; signs upgrades enable him to use magic more efficiently, and alchemy upgrades improve crafting abilities. General upgrades have a variety of functions, from raising Geralt's vitality to increasing crossbow damage.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game focuses on narrative and has a dialogue tree which allows players to choose how to respond to non-player characters. Geralt must make decisions which change the state of the world and lead to 36 possible endings, affecting the lives of in-game characters. He can have a romantic relationship with some of the game's female characters by completing certain quests. In addition to the main quests, books offer more information on the game's world. Players can begin side quests after visiting a town's noticeboard. These side missions include Witcher Contracts (elaborate missions requiring players to hunt monsters) and Treasure Hunt quests, which reward players with top-tier weapons or armour. The game's open world is divided into several regions. Geralt can explore each region on foot or by transportation, such as a boat. Roach, his horse, may be summoned at will. Players can kill enemies with their sword while riding Roach, but an enemy presence may frighten the horse and unseat Geralt. Points of interest may be found on the map, and players receive experience points after completing mini-missions in these regions. Players can discover Places of Power for additional ability points. Other activities include horse racing, boxing and card playing; the card-playing mechanic was later expanded into a standalone game, "".


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game is set in the Continent, a fictional fantasy world based on Slavonic mythology. It is surrounded by parallel dimensions and extra-dimensional worlds. Humans, elves, dwarves, monsters and other creatures co-exist on the Continent, but non-humans are often persecuted for their differences. The Continent is caught up in a war between the empire of Nilfgaard—led by Emperor Emhyr var Emreis (Charles Dance), who invaded the Northern Kingdoms—and Redania, ruled by King Radovid V. Several locations appear, including the free city of Novigrad, the Redanian city of Oxenfurt, the no man's land of Velen, the city of Vizima (former capital of the recently conquered Temeria), the Skellige islands (home to several Norse-Gaels Viking clans) and the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The main character is the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia (Doug Cockle), a monster hunter trained since childhood in combat, tracking, alchemy and magic, and made stronger, faster and resistant to toxins by mutagens. He is aided by his lover, the powerful sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg (Denise Gough), his former love interest Triss Merigold (Jaimi Barbakoff), the bard Dandelion (John Schwab), the dwarf warrior Zoltan Chivay (Alexander Morton), and Geralt's Witcher mentor Vesemir (William Roberts). Geralt is spurred into action by the reappearance of his and Yennefer's adopted daughter, Ciri (Jo Wyatt). Ciri is a Source, born with innate (and potentially vast) magical abilities; after the apparent death of her parents, she was trained as a witcher while Yennefer taught her magic. Ciri disappeared years before to escape the Wild Hunt, a group of spectral warriors led by the King of the Wild Hunt: the elf Eredin, from a parallel dimension.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Geralt and his mentor Vesemir arrive at the town of White Orchard after receiving a letter from Geralt's long-lost lover Yennefer. After defeating a griffin for the local Nilfgaardian garrison, Geralt accompanies Yennefer to the city of Vizima, where they meet with Emperor Emhyr. Emhyr orders Geralt to find Ciri, who is Emhyr's biological, and Geralt's adopted daughter. Ciri is a Child of the Elder Blood, the last heir to an ancient Elven bloodline that grants her the power to manipulate time and space, and is being relentlessly stalked by the enigmatic Wild Hunt. Geralt learns of three places Ciri was recently seen: the war-ravaged swamp province of Velen, the free city-state of Novigrad, and the Skellige Isles.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: In Velen, Geralt tracks Ciri to the fortress of the Bloody Baron, a warlord who recently took over the province. The Baron demands that Geralt find his missing wife and daughter in exchange for information about Ciri. Geralt learns that the Baron drove his own family away with his drunken rages; while his daughter fled to Oxenfurt, his wife Anna became a servant of the Crones, three malicious witches that watch over Velen. He also discovers that Ciri was briefly captured by the Crones, but escaped to the Baron's stronghold before continuing on to Novigrad.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: At Novigrad, Geralt reunites with his former lover Triss Merigold, who has gone underground to escape persecution by the Church of the Eternal Fire. He learns that Ciri and his old friend Dandelion ran afoul of Novigrad's powerful crime bosses while seeking to break a curse related to a mysterious phylactery. With the help of Triss and several old acquaintances, Geralt rescues Dandelion, who tells him that Ciri teleported to Skellige to escape pursuit by guards.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Geralt sails to Skellige and reunites with Yennefer, who is investigating a magical explosion near where Ciri was last seen. They discover that Ciri visited the island of Lofoten, but when the Wild Hunt attacked again, fled in a boat with an unidentified elf. When the boat returned to shore, its only occupant was Uma, a deformed creature Geralt previously saw living with the Bloody Baron. Deducing that Uma was the victim of the curse Ciri tried to lift in Novigrad, Geralt collects Uma in Velen and takes him to the nearly abandoned witcher school at Kaer Morhen. Working with Yennefer and his fellow witchers, Geralt breaks the curse and restores Uma's true identity: Avallac'h, Ciri's teacher and the elf seen with her on her travels. Avallac'h tells Geralt that he placed Ciri in an enchanted sleep on the Isle of Mists to keep her temporarily safe from the Wild Hunt.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Geralt finds Ciri on the Isle of Mists and learns from her that Eredin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, wants her Elder Blood powers to save his homeworld from a catastrophe known as the White Frost. They return to Kaer Morhen and fortify it against the inevitable arrival of the Hunt. In the battle that ensues, Vesemir is killed, causing Ciri to unleash her uncontrolled power and temporarily send the Hunt into retreat.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Realizing that the Hunt will never stop, Ciri and Geralt decide to fight Eredin at a time and place of their choosing. While Triss and Yennefer reform the Lodge of Sorceresses to aid in the fight, Geralt recovers the Sunstone, an artifact that can communicate between worlds. Using the Sunstone, Avallac'h lures Eredin to Skellige, where Geralt defeats him in combat. As he dies, Eredin tells Geralt that Avallac'h has betrayed him, and plans to use Ciri's power for his own ends.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: As the White Frost begins to encroach on the Continent, Geralt and Yennefer pursue Avallac'h, but find Ciri alive and well. She tells Geralt that Avallac'h is not a traitor, and has only ever intended to fight the White Frost. Thinking back on her relationship with Geralt, Ciri finds the strength to stop the cataclysm; if Geralt patronized and protected her throughout the game, she dies in the attempt, but if he guided her to mature and make her own choices, she survives.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The player's choices can lead to several different endings. If Ciri survives after defeating the White Frost and Geralt took her to meet her father, she will become the Empress of Nilfgaard. If Ciri survives but did not meet the emperor, Geralt helps her fake her death, and she becomes a witcher. If Ciri is killed in her confrontation with the White Frost, the story ends with Geralt retrieving her medallion from the last remaining Crone. The player's choices also determine whether Geralt ends up in a romantic relationship with Yennefer, Triss, or neither, and how much of the North is ultimately conquered by Nilfgaard.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Although the game was planned to begin production in 2008, CD Projekt Red's preoccupation with "Rise of the White Wolf" pushed it back to 2011. The company developed "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" with a self-funded budget of US$81 million over three-and-a-half years. The project began with 150 employees, eventually growing to over 250 in-house staff. 1,500 people were involved in the production globally. While the game is based on Andrzej Sapkowski's novels, it is not an official continuation of them and Sapkowski's involvement with the game was limited to the creation of its in-game map. The game was localised in 15 languages, with a total of 500 voice actors. The game was scripted concurrently in Polish and English to alleviate difficulty in localisation. According to Side (the company which handled voice casting and recording), the 450,000-word script had 950 speaking roles. The voices were recorded from late 2012 to early 2015. CD Projekt Red wanted the game to be free of any digital rights management (DRM) due to the developer's unsuccessful control of piracy with its predecessor, "The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings", whose DRM also made it run slowly.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was created with the REDengine 3, CD Projekt Red's proprietary game engine designed for nonlinear role-playing video games set in open world environments, aided by the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles and prepared for use in October 2014. The first play-through indicated to the developers that the open world, despite its content and generation around the quests, seemed empty. As a solution, they added points of interest. The game had 5,000 bugs that December, which (with a launch date of February 2015) necessitated its postponement. Like the previous two "Witcher" games, players are given a complex story with multiple choices and consequences. Unlike other game engines, REDengine 3 permits a complex storyline without sacrificing virtual world design. The user interface was made more intuitive with grid-based solutions. The camera system was improved to use long shots for battles with multiple enemies and close-ups for more-intimate confrontations. More animations were used for combat sequences than in "The Witcher 2", with each lasting less than one second for quick succession. Game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz and senior game designer Damien Monnier cited "Dark Souls" and "Demon's Souls" as influences on "Wild Hunt" combat system, and level designer Miles Tost and senior environment artist Jonas Mattsson cited "The Legend of Zelda" series and "Red Dead Redemption" as influencing the game's level designs and environments.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Months before its release date, the game's economy, crafting, and inventory systems were incomplete and apparently unable to meet the deadline. Senior gameplay designer Matthew Steinke thought of a remedy and drew up a system context diagram. To allocate prices, Steinke wrote a formula based on rate of damage, defence, or healing. Polynomial least squares were used to determine its efficacy, and it was found to eliminate bugs from the system and reduce loading times. Each character was given a unique personality to contrast the fetch-quest system typically used in video games. It was decided early that the writing would be witty, with metaphors and implied meanings. The dialogue was limited to 15 lines, with occasional exceptions, to retain content originality. Player options were written as morally ambiguous, reflecting real life and Andrzej Sapkowski's original "Witcher" series. Alcoholism, abuse and sexuality, depicted as normal parts of the medieval world, were incorporated into the story for authenticity. Areas of the open world were based on Poland, Amsterdam, and Scandinavia. Objects were modelled by hand.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Storylines such as Yennefer imprisoning Geralt on an island and Geralt's covert recruitment to the Wild Hunt were discarded to make the game smaller and avoid splitting it into two parts. The card game Gwent was preceded by other mini-game proposals, including a drinking game, knife throwing, and ice skating. A re-enactment of the Battle of Grunwald was recorded for the sounds of battle, marching, blacksmithing, and the firing of arrows. Recording the knights' voices for post-processing, the speakers wore helmets for an authentic sound. Marcin Przybyłowicz was the game's music director and composer, with additional music contributed by Polish folk band Percival. According to Przybyłowicz, working with Percival was a challenge; he expected an academic approach before learning that most of the group were not formally trained, and much of the music was improvised. Multi-instrumentalist Robert Jaworski of the folk band Żywiołak recorded lute, Renaissance fiddle, bowed gusle, and hurdy-gurdy sections. The score was performed in Frankfurt an der Oder by the Brandenburg State Orchestra, conducted by Bernd Ruf.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was announced in 2013, then to be released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One the following year. The release date was later delayed from the third quarter of 2014 to February 2015. After missing its planned release date of 24 February, CD Projekt Red confirmed in April that the game was released to manufacturing. "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was released worldwide on 19 May 2015. Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and President Bronisław Komorowski visited CD Projekt Red to celebrate the launch. As with the second game, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Bandai Namco Entertainment each handled physical distribution of the game in North America and Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand respectively. In addition to the standard edition, players can also purchase the Collector's Edition, which includes the base game and items such as an artbook, a statue of Geralt fighting against a griffin, and a Witcher medallion. At E3 2019, a port for the Nintendo Switch, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition", was announced. It was developed in cooperation with Saber Interactive, and was released on 15 October 2019. The port features slight graphical downgrades to compensate for the Switch's less powerful hardware, but is otherwise identical to existing versions.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński listed three pillars that he considered integral to marketing: game quality, a "gamer-centric value proposition", and communication with fans. To achieve the second, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was marketed as ""Skyrim" in a "Game of Thrones" sauce". The third explained in detail the visual downgrade from earlier promotional footage to the finished product, which Iwiński thought effective. The logo was re-designed to make it less obvious that "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" was a sequel; the number three suggested a claw mark or mask to an audience unfamiliar with the series, while fans would recognise it as the mark of the Wild Hunt.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The developer studied "Witcher" forums and websites such as Reddit to predict what players generally desired from downloadable content (DLC). A collection of 16 free DLC was released, as announced before release by the developers. They included cosmetic and additional gameplay content and the New Game Plus mode. CD Projekt Red announced two expansion packs: "" and "". "Hearts of Stone" was released on 13 October 2015, and "Blood and Wine" on 31 May 2016. "Hearts of Stone" follows Geralt as he contacts a mysterious entity known as the Man of Glass and an immortal man, Olgierd von Everec. The expansion was critically acclaimed. The second expansion pack, "Blood and Wine", follows Geralt as he travels to Toussaint (a Nilfgaardian duchy untouched by war) to track down a mysterious beast which is terrorizing the region. It was also critically acclaimed, winning the Best RPG category at The Game Awards 2016. A Game of the Year edition, with the base game, both expansions and all DLC, was released on 30 August 2016.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The publisher announced a re-release of the game planned for the PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. The game will be available as a free upgrade to existing owners on PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, or to purchase separately. In 2021, video game news site "Kotaku" reported that the game would include content from mods produced by fans; "HalkHogan", creator of a mod that improves the game's textures, announced that the developer had entered talks to include content from "The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project" in the release. CD Projekt Red confirmed to "Kotaku" that they had entered talks with mod creators, prompting discussion about why the company, which earned $300mil in 2020, sought out community assistance. The release was scheduled for the second half of 2021, but was later delayed to the second quarter of 2022. The game is being developed by Saber Interactive. On 13 April 2022, CDPR announced that its in-house development team would be taking over the remaining work on the re-release, and that its release date would be postponed. In November, a release date of 14 December 2022 was announced. The next-gen update will include new outfits and a quest inspired by the Netflix-Series, improved visuals and performance and bug fixes as well as all previously released downloadable content. The re-release was published on schedule, and was criticized for introducing performance issues and bugs. Later that day, CD Projekt Red announced that they were investigating the issues and working on fixes.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" received "universal acclaim" for the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S versions, and "generally favorable reviews" for the Switch version, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Critics agreed that it was an ambitious action role-playing game which was grand in scale, but marred by technical difficulties and a lack of innovation. "GameSpot" and "Eurogamer" gave the game their highest rating. "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" has been considered one of the greatest games of all time.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game world received widespread praise from critics. Kimberly Wallace of "Game Informer" called it "immersive", and was impressed by its attention to detail. "Destructoid"s Chris Carter praised its size, which he found enormous and would take players hours to explore. Jonathon Leack, writing for "Game Revolution", praised the game's effective use of its large world. Leack wrote that every region had quests and activities for players to try, although he thought that much was filler which extended its length. Tom Senior of "GamesRadar" praised the open world's variety, describing it as an "exciting realization of the Ronin fantasy". "GameTrailers" Daniel Bloodworth praised the game for encouraging exploration; many quests would only become available to players after they met non-playable characters in different parts of the world. Vince Ingenito of "IGN" and Shaun Prescott of "PC Gamer" were impressed by the game's scenery and its day-night cycle, with Ingenito saying that it highlighted the game world's authenticity.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Its narrative received critical acclaim. Carter praised the cast of characters, which he called unique and interesting. He considered the narrative more involving, with players witnessing key events and making consequential choices. Wallace praised the game's dialogue and its side-quests; each was similar to a short story, and player decisions in the quests would influence the state of the world. She liked the main quest, which added more character to Geralt, and said that the romance options were a significant improvement over its predecessors. However, she was disappointed with the quality of the game's endings. Kevin Van Ord of "GameSpot" echoed Wallace, noting that "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt"s story had more characterisation for Geralt than the previous games. He welcomed the change, since it gave players emotional connections to the in-game characters. Senior enjoyed the side-quests, calling them "a compilation of dark fantasy short stories" which overshadowed the main quests. Ingenito was disappointed with the main story, saying that there was too much padding and too many dull quests. "PC Gamer"s Shaun Prescott agreed, saying that the narrative would have felt rote if the side content was not engaging. Van Ord, Wallace and Brett Phipps of "VideoGamer.com" praised the voice acting, with Wallace calling it the series' best. Arthur Gies from "Polygon" criticized that some of the female characters are overly sexualized and that there are no people of color in the main game.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game's combat had a generally-positive reception. Bloodworth found Geralt more mobile and agile with the new climbing and swimming mechanic. Carter said that it was significantly streamlined and its predecessors' strategic elements removed, but appreciated its action. Wallace wrote that with a simplified alchemy system, a decent user interface and diverse difficulty settings the combat was more accessible, although she disliked the disruptive weapon-degradation system and unrefined crossbow shooting mechanic. Leack thought the system lacked complexity and criticised its lack of polish, caused by the unreliable lock-on system, camera issues and excessively-long combat animation. Senior noted that some gameplay mechanics, such as rolling and dodging, were inconsistent and made the system feel unfair. Ingenito praised the combat, describing its fluidity as a significant improvement over its predecessors.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Other gameplay aspects received mixed reviews. Van Ord praised the game's customisation and upgrade system (which offered players a sense of progression), since it hardened as the story unfolded. Ingenito called its upgrade system deep and flexible, since players have considerable freedom when customising Geralt's skills. Leack disliked the upgrade system, calling it "unexciting". Carter was disappointed with the Witcher Senses, finding it repetitive, but Senior considered them superior to objective markers—the norm for role-playing games. Prescott disliked the user interface for its clumsiness and tedium. Senior found the Gwent card game an addictive minigame.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: The game was criticised for its technical issues. Carter called its climbing animations stiff, noting that some gameplay bugs would hinder player progress. According to Wallace, the game's load times were too long. Leack noted that the game had a graphic downgrade, and the actual game did not look as good as the 2013 demonstration. Senior, Phipps and Ingenito noted frame rate issues; although Ingenito thought it did not impact the gameplay, Phipps called it a persistent problem which overshadowed many of the game's achievements.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Before its release, over 1.5 million people pre-ordered the game. "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" debuted atop the UK software sales chart in its first week, when it earned 600 percent more than predecessor "The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings". It was the best-selling video game of the year in the UK, breaking the record held by "Battlefield Hardline". It debuted atop the Japanese video-game sales charts, selling 67,385 copies in its first week. Four million copies of the game were sold in its first two weeks of release.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: By June 2015, over 690,000 players had activated the game through GOG Galaxy. The game sold over six million copies in the next six weeks, and the studio made a profit of $63.3 million in the first half of 2015. In March 2016, CD Projekt Red reported that the game had shipped nearly 10 million copies worldwide. By the end of 2017, the series as a whole had sold over 33 million. By June 2019, that number had risen to over 40 million, with "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" accounting for over half of that figure.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Following the release of the first season of Netflix' television series "The Witcher" in December 2019, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" had a 554% increase in sales that month compared to December 2018. By December 2019, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" had sold over 28 million copies worldwide. And by April 2021 it had sold over 30 million copies, while the series as a whole had sold over 50 million. By April 2022, the game had sold 40 million copies.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" received pre-release awards at E3 in 2013 and 2014. It was voted the best role-playing game at the IGN Best of E3 Awards in 2013 and 2014. It won IGN's E3 People's Choice Award in 2013 and 2014, GameSpot's E3 People's Choice Award in 2014, and the Most Wanted Award at the 31st and 32nd Golden Joystick Awards. It was the Most Anticipated Game at the Game Awards 2014 in Las Vegas. It received 260 game of the year awards and was the most awarded game of all time until 2021, when it was overtaken by "The Last of Us Part II". By August 2016, it had received over 800 awards. On 2020, Gamesradar listed it as the top game of the generation.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

text: Its accolades are from several events, including the Golden Joystick Awards, The Game Awards, D.I.C.E. Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, SXSW Gaming Awards and the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) awards. "The Witcher 3" was recognized as game of the year by IGN, GameSpot, Game Informer and other gaming publications. The game received a Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design and Best Gaming Moment, and the Game Awards for Best Role-Playing Game and Studio of the Year for CD Projekt Red. It won Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Outstanding Technical Achievement and Outstanding Achievement in Story at the D.I.C.E. Awards, and won the Game of the Year and Best Technology awards at the 16th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Les Misérables is a 2012 epic period musical film directed by Tom Hooper from a screenplay by William Nicholson, Alain Boublil, who wrote the original French lyrics, Claude-Michel Schönberg, who wrote the music, and Herbert Kretzmer, who wrote the English lyrics. The film is based on the 1985 West End English translation of the 1980 French musical by Boublil and Schönberg, which itself is adapted from the 1862 French novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The film is a British-American venture distributed by Universal Pictures. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Set in France during the early nineteenth century, the film tells the story of Jean Valjean who, while being hunted for decades by the ruthless policeman Javert after breaking parole, agrees to care for a factory worker's daughter. The story reaches resolution against the background of the June Rebellion of 1832.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Following the release of the 1980 musical, a film adaptation was mired in "development hell" for over ten years, as the rights were passed on to several major studios, and various directors and actors considered. In 2011, producer Cameron Mackintosh sold the film rights to Eric Fellner, who financed the film through Working Title Films. In June 2011, production of the film officially began, with Hooper and Mackintosh serving as director and producer, and the main characters were cast later that year. Principal photography began in March 2012, with a budget of $61million. Filming took place on locations in Greenwich, London, Chatham, Winchester, Bath, and Portsmouth, England; in Gourdon, France; and on soundstages in Pinewood Studios.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "Les Misérables" premiered at Leicester Square in London on 5 December 2012, and was theatrically released on 25 December 2012 in the United States and on 11 January 2013 in the United Kingdom. It grossed over $441million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews: many critics praised the direction, production values, musical numbers, and the ensemble cast, with Jackman, Hathaway, Redmayne, Seyfried, and Samantha Barks being the most often singled out for praise. However, Crowe's performance as Javert was heavily criticized; his singing, in particular, was almost universally panned. The film was nominated for eight awards at the 85th Academy Awards, winning three, and received numerous other accolades.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In 1815, French prisoner Jean Valjean is released from the Bagne of Toulon after a nineteen-year sentence for stealing bread for his nephew. His paroled status prevents him from finding work or accommodation, but he is sheltered by the kindly Bishop of Digne. Valjean attempts to steal his silverware and is captured by police, but the bishop claims he gave him the silver, and tells him to use it to begin an honest life. Moved, Valjean breaks his parole and assumes a new identity, intending to redeem others.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Eight years later, Valjean is a respected factory owner and mayor of Montreuil, Pas-de-Calais. He is startled when Javert, formerly a Toulon prison guard, arrives as his new chief of police. Witnessing Valjean rescuing a worker trapped under a cart makes Javert suspect the former's true identity. Meanwhile, one of Valjean's workers, Fantine, is fired by the foreman when she is revealed to have an illegitimate daughter, Cosette, living with the greedy Thénardier family, to whom Fantine sends her earnings.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Out on the streets and increasingly unwell, Fantine sells her hair, teeth, and eventually her sexual favors to support Cosette. Javert arrests her when she attacks an abusive customer, but Valjean recognises her and takes her to the hospital. Learning that a man has been wrongly identified as him, Valjean reveals his identity to the court before returning to the dying Fantine, promising to care for Cosette. Javert arrives to arrest him but he escapes to the Thénardiers' inn. Valjean pays Fantine's debts, then flees from Javert with Cosette. They hide in a convent, aided by the worker he had rescued.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Nine years later, Valjean has become a philanthropist to the poor in Paris. General Lamarque, the only government official sympathetic to the poor, dies, and the revolutionist group Friends of the ABC plot against the monarchy. Marius Pontmercy, a member of the Friends, falls in love with Cosette at first sight and asks Éponine, the Thénardiers' daughter, to find her. He and Cosette meet and confess their love; Éponine, herself in love with Marius, is heartbroken.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Thénardier attempts to rob Valjean's house, but Éponine stops him. Fearing Javert is near, Valjean plans to flee to England with Cosette. She leaves Marius a letter, which Éponine hides from him. During Lamarque's funeral procession, the revolt begins and barricades are built across Paris. Javert poses as an ally to spy on the rebels, but the street urchin Gavroche exposes him as a policeman. During the first skirmish against the soldiers, Éponine takes a bullet for Marius and dies in his arms, giving him Cosette's letter and confessing her love. Marius' answer to Cosette is intercepted by Valjean, who joins the revolt to protect him.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Valjean offers to execute the imprisoned Javert, but releases him instead, pretending he shot him. By dawn, the soldiers storm the barricade and kill everyone except Marius and Valjean, who escape into the sewers. Thénardier comes across an unconscious Marius and steals his ring, before Valjean threatens him into revealing the way out. Valjean finds Javert waiting for him, but seeing that Marius is close to death, he lets them go. Morally disturbed by the mercy of his nemesis and his own in return, Javert kills himself by throwing himself in the Seine. Marius recovers, traumatized by the death of his friends.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Marius and Cosette are reunited but Valjean, concerned his past would threaten their happiness, makes plans to leave. He reveals his past to Marius, who promises to remain silent. At Marius and Cosette's wedding, the Thénardiers crash the reception to blackmail him; Thénardier claims he witnessed Valjean carrying a murdered corpse and shows the stolen ring, which Marius recognises as his own. Realizing Valjean saved him from the barricade, Marius forces Thénardier to reveal where he is, and the Thénardiers are thrown out of the wedding. At the convent, Cosette and Marius find the dying Valjean, who gives them letters of confession before dying peacefully. His spirit is guided by visions of Fantine and the Bishop to join Éponine, Gavroche and the Friends of the ABC in the afterlife.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Colm Wilkinson and Frances Ruffelle, two of the original cast members involved in the West End and Broadway productions of the English version (as Jean Valjean and Éponine, respectively), make appearances. Wilkinson plays the Bishop of Digne, while Ruffelle plays a prostitute. Hadley Fraser, who previously played Grantaire in the 25th Anniversary Concert and Javert at West End, appears as the Army General. Another West End actor, Gina Beck, appears as one of the "Turning Women". Michael Jibson plays the foreman of the factory in which Fantine works and is fired from. Bertie Carvel has a cameo as Bamatabois, a dandy who sexually harasses Fantine. Stephen Tate plays Fauchelevent, a man Valjean rescues from under a cart that later helps Valjean and Cosette escape.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Several actors in the West End production of the musical appear as members of the student society, including George Blagden as Grantaire; Killian Donnelly as Combeferre; Fra Fee as Courfeyrac; Alistair Brammer as Jean Prouvaire; Hugh Skinner as Joly; Gabriel Vick as Feuilly; Iwan Lewis as Bahorel; and Stuart Neal as Bossuet. Blagden was cast in January 2012. Ian Pirie, Adam Pearce, Julian Bleach, and Marc Pickering portray Babet, Brujon, Claquesous, and Montparnasse, members of Thenadier's gang. Other stage actors including Kate Fleetwood, Hannah Waddingham, Daniel Evans and Kerry Ellis have small parts in the film along with actors who previously starred in various productions of "Les Misérables".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: A highlights soundtrack album was released via Universal Republic 21 December 2012. Republic Records confirmed 25 January 2013, via Twitter that a 2-disc deluxe soundtrack was in production alongside the DVD and Blu-ray; it was released 19 March 2013.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The film contains every song from the original stage musical with the exception of "I Saw Him Once" and "Dog Eats Dog", although many songs have been partially or extensively cut. "The Attack on Rue Plumet" and "Little People" were especially shortened. In addition, the Bishop sings with Fantine during "Valjean's Death" instead of Eponine, as was in the stage musical. "Stars" was also moved to before "Look Down", which echoes the original 1985 London production. The lyrics of some songs were also changed to suit the changes in setting or narrative to the stage musical. In addition to the cuts, a new song, "Suddenly" was added, new music was composed for the battle scenes, and the order of several songs changed from the stage musical. Several major pieces—primarily "Who Am I?", "Stars", and the two "Soliloquy" pieces—are performed in a different key from most recordings.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Following the release of "Les Misérables" (1980), a French sung-through concept album by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo, the musical premiered at the Palais des Sports in Paris in 1980. The English-language West End theatre production opened at the Barbican Arts Centre on 8 October 1985. The subsequent Broadway production opened at the Broadway Theatre on 12 March 1987 and closed at the Imperial Theatre on 18 May 2003 after 6,680 performances. In 1988, Alan Parker was considered to direct a film adaptation of the "Les Misérables" musical. In 1991, Bruce Beresford signed on to be the film's director.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In 1992, producer Cameron Mackintosh announced that the film would be co-produced by TriStar Pictures. However, the film was abandoned. In 2005, Mackintosh later confirmed that interest in turning the musical into a film adaptation had resumed during the early months of that year. Mackintosh said that he wanted the film to be directed by "someone who has a vision for the show that will put the show's original team, including [Mackintosh], back to work." He also said that he wanted the film audiences to make it "fresh as the actual show".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In 2009, producer Eric Fellner began negotiations with Mackintosh to acquire the film's rights and concluded it near the end of 2011. Fellner, Tim Bevan, and Debra Hayward engaged William Nicholson to write a screenplay for the film. Nicholson wrote the draft within six weeks time.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In March 2011, director Tom Hooper began negotiations to direct "Les Misérables" from the screenplay by William Nicholson. Production on the film officially began in June that year, with Cameron Mackintosh and Working Title Films co-producing. Having already approached Hooper prior to production with the desire of playing Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman began negotiations to star in the film alongside Paul Bettany as Javert. Other stars who became attached to the project included Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In September 2011, Jackman was cast as Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe was cast as Javert. The following month, Mackintosh confirmed that Fantine would be played by Hathaway. Before Hathaway was cast, Amy Adams, Jessica Biel, Tammy Blanchard, Kristin Kreuk, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet and Rebecca Hall were also considered for the part. For the role, Hathaway allowed her hair to be cut short on camera for a scene in which her character sells her hair, stating that the lengths she goes to for her roles "don't feel like sacrifices. Getting to transform is one of the best parts of [acting]." The role also required her to lose .


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In addition to Hathaway's weight loss, Hugh Jackman also lost an extreme amount of weight for the opening scene as Jean Valjean when he is imprisoned in a labor camp. To achieve an emaciated look, Jackman committed to a minimalistic diet and intense workouts. In an interview with Epix, Jackman revealed that he went on 45 minute morning runs on an empty stomach which Hathaway later used as a weight loss tactic with Jackman's help, and he went on a 36-hour liquid fast. This allowed him to rapidly lose ten pounds and caused his eyes and cheeks to sink severely.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In November 2011, Eddie Redmayne was cast as Marius Pontmercy. The shortlist of actresses for the role of Éponine included Scarlett Johansson, Lea Michele, Miley Cyrus, Tamsin Egerton, Taylor Swift, and Evan Rachel Wood.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In January 2012, the press reported that the role of Éponine had officially been offered to Taylor Swift. However, Swift later stated that those reports were not entirely accurate. At the end of the month, Mackintosh made a special appearance during the curtain call of the "Oliver!" UK tour at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, announcing that the tour's Nancy, Samantha Barks, who had played Éponine in the West End production and in the 25th Anniversary concert, would reprise the role in the film. Barks had been auditioning for 15 weeks by that point.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Originally, an unknown was sought for the role of Cosette, with an open casting call in New York City in December 2011. In January 2012, reports surfaced that Amanda Seyfried had been offered the role instead. Eddie Redmayne confirmed both Seyfried's casting and that of Bonham Carter as Madame Thénardier in an interview on 12 January. Hooper confirmed that he would stick to the musical's essentially sung-through form and would thus introduce very little additional dialogue. Hooper confirmed that the film would not be shot in 3D, expressing his opinion that it would not enhance the emotional narrative of the film and would distract audiences from the storytelling.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Following this announcement, reports surfaced in the press that Sacha Baron Cohen had begun talks to join the cast as Thénardier and that Aaron Tveit had been cast as Enjolras. Later that month, the press officially confirmed Tveit's casting as Enjolras. Colm Wilkinson and Frances Ruffelle (the original Valjean and Éponine, respectively, in the West End and Broadway productions) appeared in the film. Wilkinson played the Bishop of Digne, and Ruffelle had a cameo as a prostitute. George Blagden was cast as Grantaire. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's "Front Row", Tom Hooper revealed that Claude-Michel Schönberg will be composing one new song and additional music. The director also expanded on the performers singing live on set, which he felt would eliminate the need to recapture "locked" performances and allow more creative freedom. More details of this were confirmed by Eddie Redmayne in an interview. He stated that the cast would sing to piano tracks (via earpiece) and that the orchestra would be added in post-production.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In February 2012, casting auditions involving extras for the film took place at the University of Portsmouth and Chatham Maritime in Chatham. Several days later, Mackintosh officially confirmed that Bonham Carter would play Madame Thénardier. He also announced that the title of the newly created song for the film is "Suddenly" and that it "beautifully explains what happens when Valjean takes Cosette from the inn and looks after her."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The cast began rehearsals in January 2012, with principal photography due to begin in March. The press officially confirmed Baron Cohen's casting during the latter month. No table read took place before filming.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: With a production budget of $61million, principal photography of the film began 8 March 2012 in Gourdon. Filming locations in England included Boughton House, the Chantry Chapel and Cloisters at Winchester College, Winchester Cathedral Close, Her Majesty's Naval Base Portsmouth, Chatham Dockyard, St Mary the Virgin Church, Ewelme, South Oxfordshire and Pinewood Studios. In April 2012, crews built a replica of the Elephant of the Bastille in Greenwich. In the novel, Gavroche lives in the decaying monument.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: On-location filming also took place at Gourdon, Alpes-Maritimes in France. Footage of Hathaway singing "I Dreamed a Dream", a song from the musical, was shown at CinemaCon 26 April 2012. Russell Crowe confirmed 5 June 2012, on Twitter that he had finished filming. He was later followed by Samantha Barks, confirming that all of her scenes had too been completed. Jackman stated that all filming had been completed 23 June 2012. Some late filming occurred in Bath, Somerset, in October 2012 where stunt shots for Javert's suicide scene had to be reshot due to an error found with this footage during post-production. Bath was not the original filming location for this scene, but the late footage was captured at Pulteney Weir.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The film's vocals were recorded live on set using live piano accompaniments played through earpieces as a guide, with the orchestral accompaniment recorded in post-production, rather than the traditional method where the film's musical soundtracks are usually pre-recorded and played back on set to which actors lip-sync. Production sound mixer Simon Hayes used 50 DPA 4071 lavalier microphones to record the vocals. Hooper explained his choice:


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Although the creative team stated that this live recording method was unique and "a world's first", many films have used this technique before, notably early talkies, when lip-syncing had not been perfected. More recent examples include the 1975 20th Century Fox film "At Long Last Love"; the adaptation of "The Magic Flute", released that same year; the 1995 adaptation of "The Fantasticks"; portions of the 1996 adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita"; the 2001 film version of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"; and the 2007 film "Across the Universe", with songs by the Beatles.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Producers announced 27 August 2012, that recording sessions for "Les Misérables" would begin in London 10 October and featured a 70-piece orchestra. They also announced that composer Claude-Michel Schönberg was composing additional music to underscore the film.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The film's first teaser trailer debuted online on 30 May 2012, and later in theatres with "Snow White and the Huntsman", "The Bourne Legacy" and "Argo".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Producers released an extended first look on the film's official Facebook page on 20 September 2012. This short introduces and explains Hooper's method of recording vocals live on set, comparing it to the traditional method of pre-recording the vocals in a studio months in advance. Hugh Jackman stated that filming in this way allows him more creative freedom with the material and that he "only has to worry about acting it." Both Hooper and the actors believe that this choice of production method will make the film feel much more emotional, raw, and real. The actors praised Hooper for his method and provide brief interviews throughout the video. Hooper mentions, "I thought it was an amazing opportunity to do something genuinely groundbreaking."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Clips of Jackman, Hathaway, Seyfried, Redmayne and Barks singing were received very positively, especially the teaser trailer's presentation of "I Dreamed a Dream" by Hathaway. Producers released a new poster, featuring young Cosette (in what is essentially a real-life version of the musical's emblem), played by Isabelle Allen, on 24 September 2012, on the film's official Facebook page. They released posters featuring Jean Valjean, Javert, Fantine, and Cosette on 12 October, with additional posters of Thénardiers and Marius released on 1 November 2012.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "Les Misérables" was originally set to be released on 7 December 2012 before the studio moved it to 14 December in the United States; however, on 18 September, they delayed the film's release date to 25 December, so as not to conflict with the opening of "", which opened on 14 December. Because of this, it opened alongside "Django Unchained". Release date for the United Kingdom was on 11 January 2013.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "Les Misérables" was screened for the first time at Lincoln Center in New York City, on 23 November 2012, where it received a standing ovation from the audience. This was followed by a screening the next day in Los Angeles, which also received positive reviews.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "Les Misérables" premiered on 5 December 2012, at the Empire, Leicester Square in London. Red carpet footage was screened live online in an event hosted by Michael Ball, the original Marius of the West End. The film was released in select IMAX theatres in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Montreal the same day as its domestic theatrical release, 25 December 2012. "Les Misérables" was also released internationally by IMAX theatres on 10 January 2013. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures in North America, Latin America and most of Europe, and Toho (through Toho-Towa) in Japan.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The film was confirmed for home release on 13 May 2013 on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD in the United Kingdom; it was released in the United States on 22 March 2013. The DVD contains three featurettes: "The Stars of Les Misérables", "Creating the Perfect Paris", and "The Original Masterwork: Victor Hugo's Les Misérables", along with an audio commentary from director Tom Hooper. The Blu-ray has all DVD features including four additional featurettes: "Les Misérables Singing Live", "Battle at the Barricade", "The West End Connection", and "Les Misérables On Location".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "Les Misérables" earned $148.8 million in North America and $293 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $441.8 million. In North America, "Les Misérables" opened 25 December 2012 in 2,808 theatres, placing first at the box office with $18.1million. This amount broke the record for the highest opening day gross for a musical film, previously held by "", and was also the second highest opening day gross for a film released on Christmas Day. It earned $27.3million in its opening weekend, placing third behind "Django Unchained" and "".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The film was released in the United Kingdom 11 January 2013 and earned £8.1 ($13.1) million in its opening weekend, making it the largest opening weekend for a musical film, as well as for Working Title.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 70% approval rating with an average rating of 6.90/10, based on an aggregation of 256 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Impeccably mounted but occasionally bombastic, "Les Misérables" largely succeeds thanks to bravura performances from its distinguished cast." On Metacritic, the film achieved an average score of 63 out of 100 based on 41 reviews, signifying "generally favorable reviews". The film was generally praised for its acting and ensemble cast, with Jackman, Hathaway, Redmayne, Seyfried and Barks being singled out for praise. However, Crowe's performance was criticized. The live singing, which was heavily promoted in marketing for the film, received a more divided response.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the film five stars: ""Les Misérables" is a blockbuster, and the special effects are emotional: explosions of grief; fireballs of romance; million-buck conflagrations of heartbreak. Accordingly, you should see it in its opening week, on a gigantic screen, with a fanatical crowd."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: "The Guardian"s Peter Bradshaw concurred: "Even as a non-believer in this kind of "sung-through" musical, I was battered into submission by this mesmeric and sometimes compelling film ...". Kenneth Turan of "Los Angeles Times" gave a positive review, saying that the film "is a clutch player that delivers an emotional wallop when it counts. You can walk into the theater as an agnostic, but you may just leave singing with the choir." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" said, "Besides being a feast for the eyes and ears, "Les Misérables" overflows with humor, heartbreak, rousing action and ravishing romance. Damn the imperfections, it's perfectly marvelous."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" said, "As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" wrote: "[Director Tom] Hooper can be very good with actors. But his inability to leave any lily ungilded—to direct a scene without tilting or hurtling or throwing the camera around—is bludgeoning and deadly. By the grand finale, when tout le monde is waving the French tricolor in victory, you may instead be raising the white flag in exhausted defeat."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Justin Chang of "Variety" wrote that the film "will more than satisfy the show's legions of fans." Chang praised the performances of Jackman, Hathaway, Barks, Tveit, Redmayne, and Seyfried ("i.e.", every leading cast member except Crowe) but said that the film's editing "seems reluctant to slow down and let the viewer simply take in the performances."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Calum Marsh of "Slant Magazine" gave the film one star out of four, and wrote: "Flaws—and there are a great many that would have never made the cut were this a perfectible studio recording—are conveniently swept under the rug of candid expression ... the worst quality of Les Misérables's live singing is simply that it puts too much pressure on a handful of performers who frankly cannot sing... Fisheye lenses and poorly framed close-ups abound in Les Misérables, nearly every frame a revelation of one man's bad taste ... One would be hard-pressed to describe this, despite the wealth of beauty on display, as anything but an ugly film, shot and cut ineptly. Everything in the film, songs included, is cranked to 11, the melodrama of it all soaring. So it's odd that this kind of showboating maximalism should be ultimately reduced to a few fisheye'd faces, mugging for their close-up, as the people sing off-key and broken." "Chicago Tribune" critic Michael Phillips gave the film one and a half stars out of four, writing: "The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. ...too little in this frenzied mess of a film registers because Hooper is trying to make everything register at the same nutty pitch."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Some specific performances were reviewed very positively. Anne Hathaway's performance of ballad "I Dreamed a Dream" was met with praise, with many comparing its showstopper-like quality to Jennifer Hudson's performance of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from "Dreamgirls". Christopher Orr of "The Atlantic" wrote that "Hathaway gives it everything she has, beginning in quiet sorrow before building to a woebegone climax: she gasps, she weeps, she coughs. If you are blown away by the scene—as many will be; it will almost certainly earn Hathaway her first Oscar—this may be the film for you." Ann Hornaday of "The Washington Post" writes that "The centerpiece of a movie composed entirely of centerpieces belongs to Anne Hathaway, who as the tragic heroine Fantine sings another of the memorable numbers". Joy Tipping of "The Dallas Morning News" described Hathaway's performance as "angelic".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" describes her as "superb as the tragic Fantine". Travers felt that "A dynamite Hathaway shatters every heart when she sings how 'life has killed the dream I dreamed'. Her volcanic performance has Oscar written all over it." Lou Lumenick, critic for "New York Post", wrote that the film is "worth seeing for Hathaway alone". She was widely considered to be the frontrunner for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, ultimately winning it.


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Eddie Redmayne also received considerable praise for his performance with "Bloomberg News" saying that "Eddie Redmayne—most recently seen as the eager young production assistant in "My Week with Marilyn"—delivers by far the most moving and memorable performance in the film as the young firebrand Marius, who, along with his fellow students, is caught up in France's political upheavals in the 19th century."


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Samantha Barks earned praise for her portrayal of Éponine, with "Digital Journal" saying: "Samantha Barks plays Éponine with such grace, sweetness, and sadness that it is hard to imagine anyone else in the role", while Claudia Puig of "USA Today" calls her "heartbreakingly soulful", Richard Roeper of "Chicago Sun-Times" described her performance as "star-making".


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: Crowe's performance was less well received. In response to those criticisms, Tom Hooper told "USA Today":


title: Les Misérables (2012 film)

text: In 2013, the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Hugh Jackman, and went on to win in three categories: Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Sound Mixing.


title: Forbes

text: Forbes () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. "Forbes" also reports on related subjects such as technology, communications, science, politics, and law. It is based in Jersey City, New Jersey. Competitors in the national business magazine category include "Fortune" and "Bloomberg Businessweek". "Forbes" has an international edition in Asia as well as editions produced under license in 27 countries and regions worldwide.


title: Forbes

text: The magazine is well known for its lists and rankings, including of the richest Americans (the Forbes 400), of the America's Wealthiest Celebrities, of the world's top companies (the Forbes Global 2000), Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People, and The World's Billionaires. The motto of "Forbes" magazine is "Change the World". Its chair and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes, and its CEO is Mike Federle. In 2014, it was sold to a Hong Kong–based investment group, Integrated Whale Media Investments.


title: Forbes

text: B. C. Forbes, a financial columnist for the Hearst papers, and his partner Walter Drey, the general manager of the "Magazine of Wall Street", founded "Forbes" magazine on September 15, 1917. Forbes provided the money and the name and Drey provided the publishing expertise. The original name of the magazine was "Forbes: Devoted to Doers and Doings". Drey became vice-president of the B.C. Forbes Publishing Company, while B.C. Forbes became editor-in-chief, a post he held until his death in 1954. B.C. Forbes was assisted in his later years by his two eldest sons, Bruce Charles Forbes (1916–1964) and Malcolm Forbes (1917–1990).


title: Forbes

text: Bruce Forbes took over after his father's death, and his strengths lay in streamlining operations and developing marketing. During his tenure, 1954–1964, the magazine's circulation nearly doubled.


title: Forbes

text: On Bruce's death, his brother Malcolm Forbes became president and chief executive of Forbes and editor-in-chief of "Forbes" magazine. Between 1961 and 1999 the magazine was edited by James Michaels. In 1993, under Michaels, "Forbes" was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. In 2006, an investment group Elevation Partners that includes rock star Bono bought a minority interest in the company with a reorganization, through a new company, Forbes Media LLC, in which Forbes Magazine and Forbes.com, along with other media properties, is now a part. A 2009 "New York Times" report said: "40 percent of the enterprise was sold... for a reported $300 million, setting the value of the enterprise at $750 million." Three years later, Mark M. Edmiston of AdMedia Partners observed, "It's probably not worth half of that now." It was later revealed that the price had been US$264 million.


title: Forbes

text: In January 2010, "Forbes" reached an agreement to sell its headquarters building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to New York University; terms of the deal were not publicly reported, but Forbes was to continue to occupy the space under a five-year sale-leaseback arrangement. The company's headquarters moved to the Newport section of downtown Jersey City, New Jersey, in 2014.


title: Forbes

text: In November 2013, Forbes Media, which publishes "Forbes" magazine, was put up for sale. This was encouraged by minority shareholders Elevation Partners. Sale documents prepared by Deutsche Bank revealed that the publisher's 2012 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization was US$15 million. "Forbes" reportedly sought a price of US$400 million. In July 2014, the Forbes family bought out Elevation and then Hong Kong-based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments purchased a 51 percent majority of the company.


title: Forbes

text: Isaac Stone Fish wrote in "The Washington Post", "Since that purchase, there have been several instances of editorial meddling on stories involving China that raise questions about Forbes magazine's commitment to editorial independence."


title: Forbes

text: On August 26, 2021, Forbes announced their plans to go public via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company called Magnum Opus Acquisition, and starting to trade at the New York Stock Exchange as FRBS. In February 2022, it was announced that Cryptocurrency exchange Binance would acquire a $200 million stake in Forbes as a result of the SPAC floatation.


title: Forbes

text: Apart from "Forbes" and its lifestyle supplement, "Forbes Life", other titles include "Forbes Asia" and 45 local language editions, including:


title: Forbes

text: Steve Forbes and his magazine's writers offer investment advice on the weekly Fox TV show "Forbes on Fox" and on "Forbes on Radio". Other company groups include Forbes Conference Group, Forbes Investment Advisory Group and Forbes Custom Media. From the 2009 "Times" report: "Steve Forbes recently returned from opening up a "Forbes" magazine in India, bringing the number of foreign editions to 10." In addition, that year the company began publishing "ForbesWoman", a quarterly magazine published by Steve Forbes's daughter, Moira Forbes, with a companion Web site.


title: Forbes

text: The company formerly published "American Legacy" magazine as a joint venture, although that magazine separated from Forbes on May 14, 2007.


title: Forbes

text: The company also formerly published "American Heritage" and "Invention & Technology" magazines. After failing to find a buyer, Forbes suspended publication of these two magazines as of May 17, 2007. Both magazines were purchased by the American Heritage Publishing Company and resumed publication as of the spring of 2008.


title: Forbes

text: In 2013, Forbes licensed its brand to Ashford University, and assisted them to launch the Forbes School of Business & Technology. Forbes Media CEO Mike Federle justified the licensing in 2018, stating that "Our licensing business is almost a pure-profit business, because it's an annual annuity." Forbes would launch limited promotions for the school in limited issues. Forbes would never formally endorse the school.


title: Forbes

text: On January 6, 2014, "Forbes" magazine announced that, in partnership with app creator Maz, it was launching a social networking app called "Stream". Stream allows Forbes readers to save and share visual content with other readers and discover content from "Forbes" magazine and Forbes.com within the app.


title: Forbes

text: Forbes.com is part of Forbes Digital, a division of Forbes Media LLC. Forbes's holdings include a portion of RealClearPolitics. Together these sites reach more than 27 million unique visitors each month. Forbes.com employs the slogan "Home Page for the World's Business Leaders" and claimed, in 2006, to be the world's most widely visited business web site. The 2009 "Times" report said that, while "one of the top five financial sites by traffic [throwing] off an estimated $70 million to $80 million a year in revenue, [it] never yielded the hoped-for public offering".


title: Forbes

text: Forbes.com uses a "contributor model" in which a wide network of "contributors" writes and publishes articles directly on the website. Contributors are paid based on traffic to their respective Forbes.com pages; the site has received contributions from over 2,500 individuals, and some contributors have earned over US$100,000, according to the company. The contributor system has been criticized for enabling "pay-to-play journalism" and the repackaging of public relations material as news. "Forbes" currently allows advertisers to publish blog posts on its website alongside regular editorial content through a program called BrandVoice, which accounts for more than 10 percent of its digital revenue. Forbes.com also publishes subscription investment newsletters, and an online guide to web sites, "Best of the Web". In July 2018 Forbes deleted an article by a contributor who argued that libraries should be closed, and Amazon should open bookstores in their place.


title: Forbes

text: David Churbuck founded "Forbes"s web site in 1996. The site uncovered Stephen Glass's journalistic fraud in "The New Republic" in 1998, an article that drew attention to internet journalism. At the peak of media coverage of alleged Toyota sudden unintended acceleration in 2010, it exposed the California "runaway Prius" as a hoax, as well as running five other articles by Michael Fumento challenging the entire media premise of Toyota's cars gone bad. The site, like the magazine, publishes many lists focusing on billionaires and their possessions, especially expensive homes, a critical aspect of the website's popularity.


title: Forbes

text: Currently, the website also blocks internet users using ad blocking software from accessing articles, demanding that the website be put on the ad blocking software's whitelist before access is granted. Forbes argues that this is done because customers using ad blocking software do not contribute to the site's revenue. Malware attacks have been noted to occur from Forbes site.


title: Forbes

text: In November 2019, Forbes launched its streaming platform Forbes8, an on-demand video network debuting a slate of original content aimed at entrepreneurs. The network currently features thousands of videos and according to Forbes is "a Netflix for entrepreneurs". In 2020, the network announced the release of several documentary series including "Forbes Rap Mentors", "Driven Against the Odds", "Indie Nation" and "Titans on the Rocks".


title: Forbes

text: Launched as an invite-only platform, Forbes Business Council is open to SMEs and MSMEs across the globe. There is a fee to join the Councils. The platform helps entrepreneurs and founders connect with like-minded people, collaborate, as well as publish posts on Forbes.com.


title: Great Recession

text: The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred between 2007 and 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.


title: Great Recession

text: The causes of the Great Recession include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005–2012. When housing prices fell and homeowners began to abandon their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed securities held by investment banks declined in 2007–2008, causing several to collapse or be bailed out in September 2008. This 2007–2008 phase was called the subprime mortgage crisis. The combination of banks unable to provide funds to businesses, and homeowners paying down debt rather than borrowing and spending, resulted in the Great Recession that began in the U.S. officially in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. As with most other recessions, it appears that no known formal theoretical or empirical model was able to accurately predict the advance of this recession, except for minor signals in the sudden rise of forecast probabilities, which were still well under 50%.


title: Great Recession

text: The recession was not felt equally around the world; whereas most of the world's developed economies, particularly in North America, South America and Europe, fell into a severe, sustained recession, many more recently developed economies suffered far less impact, particularly China, India and Indonesia, whose economies grew substantially during this period. Similarly, Oceania suffered minimal impact, in part due to its proximity to Asian markets.


title: Great Recession

text: Two senses of the word "recession" exist: one sense referring broadly to "a period of reduced economic activity" and ongoing hardship; and the more precise sense used in economics, which is defined operationally, referring specifically to the contraction phase of a business cycle, with two or more consecutive quarters of GDP contraction (negative GDP growth rate).


title: Great Recession

text: The definition of "great" is "amount or intensity considerably above the normal or average" and, contrary to some common beliefs, does not infer a positive connotation, merely large in size or scope. (e.g. the Great Depression).


title: Great Recession

text: Robert Kuttner argues, " 'The Great Recession,' is a misnomer. We should stop using it. Recessions are mild dips in the business cycle that are either self-correcting or soon cured by modest fiscal or monetary stimulus. Because of the continuing deflationary trap, it would be more accurate to call this decade's stagnant economy The Lesser Depression or The Great Deflation."


title: Great Recession

text: The Great Recession met the IMF criteria for being a global recession only in the single calendar year 2009. That IMF definition requires a "decline in annual real world GDP percapita". Despite the fact that quarterly data are being used as recession definition criteria by all G20 members, representing 85% of the world GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has decided—in the absence of a complete data set—not to declare/measure global recessions according to quarterly GDP data. The "seasonally adjusted PPPweighted real GDP" for the G20zone, however, is a good indicator for the world GDP, and it was measured to have suffered a direct quarter on quarter decline during the three quarters from Q32008 until Q12009, which more accurately mark when the recession took place at the global level.


title: Great Recession

text: According to the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of U.S. recessions) the recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, and thus extended over eighteen months.


title: Great Recession

text: The years leading up to the crisis were characterized by an exorbitant rise in asset prices and associated boom in economic demand. Further, the U.S. shadow banking system (i.e., non-depository financial institutions such as investment banks) had grown to rival the depository system yet was not subject to the same regulatory oversight, making it vulnerable to a bank run.


title: Great Recession

text: US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world, as they offered higher yields than U.S. government bonds. Many of these securities were backed by subprime mortgages, which collapsed in value when the U.S. housing bubble burst during 2006 and homeowners began to default on their mortgage payments in large numbers starting in 2007.


title: Great Recession

text: The emergence of sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. There was the equivalent of a bank run on the shadow banking system, resulting in many large and well established investment banks and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffering huge losses and even facing bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance (government bailouts).


title: Great Recession

text: The global recession that followed resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. Several economists predicted that recovery might not appear until 2011 and that the recession would be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economist Paul Krugman once commented on this as seemingly the beginning of "a second Great Depression".


title: Great Recession

text: Governments and central banks responded with fiscal policy and monetary policy initiatives to stimulate national economies and reduce financial system risks. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian' economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. Economists advise that the stimulus measures such as quantitative easing (pumping money into the system) and holding down central bank wholesale lending interest rate should be withdrawn as soon as economies recover enough to "chart a path to sustainable growth".


title: Great Recession

text: The distribution of household incomes in the United States became more unequal during the post-2008 economic recovery. Income inequality in the United States grew from 2005 to 2012 in more than two thirds of metropolitan areas. Median household wealth fell 35% in the US, from $106,591 to $68,839 between 2005 and 2011.


title: Great Recession

text: The majority report provided by US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, composed of six Democratic and four Republican appointees, reported its findings in January 2011. It concluded that "the crisis was avoidable and was caused by:


title: Great Recession

text: There were two Republican dissenting FCIC reports. One of them, signed by three Republican appointees, concluded that there were multiple causes. In his separate dissent to the majority and minority opinions of the FCIC, Commissioner Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) primarily blamed U.S. housing policy, including the actions of Fannie & Freddie, for the crisis. He wrote: "When the bubble began to deflate in mid-2007, the low quality and high risk loans engendered by government policies failed in unprecedented numbers."


title: Great Recession

text: In its "Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy," dated November 15, 2008, leaders of the Group of 20 cited the following causes:


title: Great Recession

text: Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified in September 2010 before the FCIC regarding the causes of the crisis. He wrote that there were shocks or triggers (i.e., particular events that touched off the crisis) and vulnerabilities (i.e., structural weaknesses in the financial system, regulation and supervision) that amplified the shocks. Examples of triggers included: losses on subprime mortgage securities that began in 2007 and a run on the shadow banking system that began in mid-2007, which adversely affected the functioning of money markets. Examples of vulnerabilities in the "private" sector included: financial institution dependence on unstable sources of short-term funding such as repurchase agreements or Repos; deficiencies in corporate risk management; excessive use of leverage (borrowing to invest); and inappropriate usage of derivatives as a tool for taking excessive risks. Examples of vulnerabilities in the "public" sector included: statutory gaps and conflicts between regulators; ineffective use of regulatory authority; and ineffective crisis management capabilities. Bernanke also discussed "Too big to fail" institutions, monetary policy, and trade deficits.


title: Great Recession

text: There are several "narratives" attempting to place the causes of the recession into context, with overlapping elements. Five such narratives include:


title: Great Recession

text: Underlying narratives #1–3 is a hypothesis that growing income inequality and wage stagnation encouraged families to increase their household debt to maintain their desired living standard, fueling the bubble. Further, this greater share of income flowing to the top increased the political power of business interests, who used that power to deregulate or limit regulation of the shadow banking system.


title: Great Recession

text: Narrative #5 challenges the popular claim (narrative #4) that subprime borrowers with shoddy credit caused the crisis by buying homes they couldn't afford. This narrative is supported by new research showing that the biggest growth of mortgage debt during the U.S. housing boom came from those with good credit scores in the middle and top of the credit score distribution—and that these borrowers accounted for a disproportionate share of defaults.


title: Great Recession

text: "The Economist" wrote in July 2012 that the inflow of investment dollars required to fund the U.S. trade deficit was a major cause of the housing bubble and financial crisis: "The trade deficit, less than 1% of GDP in the early 1990s, hit 6% in 2006. That deficit was financed by inflows of foreign savings, in particular from East Asia and the Middle East. Much of that money went into dodgy mortgages to buy overvalued houses, and the financial crisis was the result."


title: Great Recession

text: In May 2008, NPR explained in their Peabody Award winning program "The Giant Pool of Money" that a vast inflow of savings from developing nations flowed into the mortgage market, driving the U.S. housing bubble. This pool of fixed income savings increased from around $35 trillion in 2000 to about $70 trillion by 2008. NPR explained this money came from various sources, "[b]ut the main headline is that all sorts of poor countries became kind of rich, making things like TVs and selling us oil. China, India, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia made a lot of money and banked it."


title: Great Recession

text: Describing the crisis in Europe, Paul Krugman wrote in February 2012 that: "What we're basically looking at, then, is a balance of payments problem, in which capital flooded south after the creation of the euro, leading to overvaluation in southern Europe."


title: Great Recession

text: Another narrative about the origin has been focused on the respective parts played by the public monetary policy (in the US notably) and by the practices of private financial institutions. In the U.S., mortgage funding was unusually decentralised, opaque, and competitive, and it is believed that competition between lenders for revenue and market share contributed to declining underwriting standards and risky lending.


title: Great Recession

text: While Alan Greenspan's role as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has been widely discussed, the main point of controversy remains the lowering of the Federal funds rate to 1% for more than a year, which, according to Austrian theorists, injected huge amounts of "easy" credit-based money into the financial system and created an unsustainable economic boom), there is also the argument that Greenspan's actions in the years 2002–2004 were actually motivated by the need to take the U.S. economy out of the early 2000s recession caused by the bursting of the dot-com bubble—although by doing so he did not help avert the crisis, but only postpone it.


title: Great Recession

text: Another narrative focuses on high levels of private debt in the US economy. USA household debt as a percentage of annual disposable personal income was 127% at the end of 2007, versus 77% in 1990. Faced with increasing mortgage payments as their adjustable rate mortgage payments increased, households began to default in record numbers, rendering mortgage-backed securities worthless. High private debt levels also impact growth by making recessions deeper and the following recovery weaker. Robert Reich claims the amount of debt in the US economy can be traced to economic inequality, assuming that middle-class wages remained stagnant while wealth concentrated at the top, and households "pull equity from their homes and overload on debt to maintain living standards".


title: Great Recession

text: The IMF reported in April 2012: "Household debt soared in the years leading up to the downturn. In advanced economies, during the five years preceding 2007, the ratio of household debt to income rose by an average of 39 percentage points, to 138 percent. In Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway, debt peaked at more than 200 percent of household income. A surge in household debt to historic highs also occurred in emerging economies such as Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania. The concurrent boom in both house prices and the stock market meant that household debt relative to assets held broadly stable, which masked households' growing exposure to a sharp fall in asset prices. When house prices declined, ushering in the global financial crisis, many households saw their wealth shrink relative to their debt, and, with less income and more unemployment, found it harder to meet mortgage payments. By the end of 2011, real house prices had fallen from their peak by about 41% in Ireland, 29% in Iceland, 23% in Spain and the United States, and 21% in Denmark. Household defaults, underwater mortgages (where the loan balance exceeds the house value), foreclosures, and fire sales are now endemic to a number of economies. Household deleveraging by paying off debts or defaulting on them has begun in some countries. It has been most pronounced in the United States, where about two-thirds of the debt reduction reflects defaults."


title: Great Recession

text: The onset of the economic crisis took most people by surprise. A 2009 paper identifies twelve economists and commentators who, between 2000 and 2006, predicted a recession based on the collapse of the then-booming housing market in the United States: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones Steve Keen, Jakob Brøchner Madsen, Jens Kjaer Sørensen, Kurt Richebächer, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.


title: Great Recession

text: By 2007, real estate bubbles were still under way in many parts of the world, especially in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, The Netherlands, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, Argentina, the Baltic states, India, Romania, Ukraine and China. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in mid-2005 that "at a minimum, there's a little 'froth' [in the U.S. housing market]...it's hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles".


title: Great Recession

text: "The Economist", writing at the same time, went further, saying, "[T]he worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history". Real estate bubbles are (by definition of the word "bubble") followed by a price decrease (also known as a "housing price crash") that can result in many owners holding negative equity (a mortgage debt higher than the current value of the property).


title: Great Recession

text: Several analysts, such as Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute, have asserted that private lenders were encouraged to relax lending standards by government affordable housing policies. They cite The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, which initially required that 30 percent or more of Fannie's and Freddie's loan purchases be related to affordable housing. The legislation gave HUD the power to set future requirements. These rose to 42 percent in 1995 and 50 percent in 2000, and by 2008 a 56 percent minimum was established. To fulfill the requirements, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac established programs to purchase $5 trillion in affordable housing loans, and encouraged lenders to relax underwriting standards to produce those loans.


title: Great Recession

text: These critics also cite, as inappropriate regulation, "The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream ("Strategy"), which was compiled in 1995 by Henry Cisneros, President Clinton's HUD Secretary. In 2001, the independent research company, Graham Fisher & Company, stated: "While the underlying initiatives of the [Strategy] were broad in content, the main theme ... was the relaxation of credit standards." Critics of this argument have pointed out that loans to lower income people only represented a small percentage of these loans.


title: Great Recession

text: The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is also identified as one of the causes of the recession, by some critics. They contend that lenders relaxed lending standards in an effort to meet CRA commitments, and they note that publicly announced CRA loan commitments were massive, totaling $4.5 trillion in the years between 1994 and 2007.


title: Great Recession

text: However, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) Democratic majority report concluded that Fannie & Freddie "were not a primary cause" of the crisis and that CRA was not a factor in the crisis. Further, since housing bubbles appeared in multiple countries in Europe as well, the FCIC Republican minority dissenting report also concluded that U.S. housing policies were not a robust explanation for a wider global housing bubble. The hypothesis that a primary cause of the crisis was U.S. government housing policy requiring banks to make risky loans has been widely disputed, with Paul Krugman referring to it as "imaginary history".


title: Great Recession

text: One of the other challenges with blaming government regulations for essentially forcing banks to make risky loans is the timing. Subprime lending increased from around 10% of mortgage origination historically to about 20% only from 2004 to 2006, with housing prices peaking in 2006. Blaming affordable housing regulations established in the 1990s for a sudden spike in subprime origination is problematic at best. A more proximate government action to the sudden rise in subprime lending was the SEC relaxing lending standards for the top investment banks during an April 2004 meeting with bank leaders. These banks increased their risk-taking shortly thereafter, significantly increasing their purchases and securitization of lower-quality mortgages, thus encouraging additional subprime and Alt-A lending by mortgage companies. This action by its investment bank competitors also resulted in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taking on more risk.


title: Great Recession

text: The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (1999), which reduced the regulation of banks by allowing commercial and investment banks to merge, has also been blamed for the crisis, by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz among others.


title: Great Recession

text: Several sources have noted the failure of the US government to supervise or even require transparency of the financial instruments known as derivatives. Derivatives such as credit default swaps (CDSs) were unregulated or barely regulated. Michael Lewis noted CDSs enabled speculators to stack bets on the same mortgage securities. This is analogous to allowing many persons to buy insurance on the same house. Speculators that bought CDS protection were betting significant mortgage security defaults would occur, while the sellers (such as AIG) bet they would not. An unlimited amount could be wagered on the same housing-related securities, provided buyers and sellers of the CDS could be found. When massive defaults occurred on underlying mortgage securities, companies like AIG that were selling CDS were unable to perform their side of the obligation and defaulted; U.S. taxpayers paid over $100 billion to global financial institutions to honor AIG obligations, generating considerable outrage.


title: Great Recession

text: A 2008 investigative article in "The Washington Post" found leading government officials at the time (Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt) vehemently opposed any regulation of derivatives. In 1998, Brooksley E. Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, put forth a policy paper asking for feedback from regulators, lobbyists, and legislators on the question of whether derivatives should be reported, sold through a central facility, or whether capital requirements should be required of their buyers. Greenspan, Rubin, and Levitt pressured her to withdraw the paper and Greenspan persuaded Congress to pass a resolution preventing CFTC from regulating derivatives for another six months — when Born's term of office would expire. Ultimately, it was the collapse of a specific kind of derivative, the mortgage-backed security, that triggered the economic crisis of 2008.


title: Great Recession

text: Paul Krugman wrote in 2009 that the run on the shadow banking system was the fundamental cause of the crisis. "As the shadow banking system expanded to rival or even surpass conventional banking in importance, politicians and government officials should have realised that they were re-creating the kind of financial vulnerability that made the Great Depression possible – and they should have responded by extending regulations and the financial safety net to cover these new institutions. Influential figures should have proclaimed a simple rule: anything that does what a bank does, anything that has to be rescued in crises the way banks are, should be regulated like a bank." He referred to this lack of controls as "malign neglect".