title: Culture

text: The "Cambridge English Dictionary" states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that "Homo sapiens" became aware of when they acquired a larger brain.


title: Culture

text: The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans. However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form.


title: Culture

text: Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution, renovation, reconception, reform, innovation, revivalism, revolution, mutation, progress, diffusion, osmosis, borrowing, eclecticism, syncretism, modernization, indigenization, and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and the notion of progress. Rein Raud, building on the work of Umberto Eco, Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander, has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question.


title: Culture

text: Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society.


title: Culture

text: Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change.


title: Culture

text: Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.


title: Culture

text: Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing," on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.


title: Culture

text: Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation. The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.


title: Culture

text: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to the concept of "bildung": "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: "" ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of : "For Herder, was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people."


title: Culture

text: In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview" (). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures.


title: Culture

text: In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" (); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" (), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States.


title: Culture

text: In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world."


title: Culture

text: In practice, "culture" referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from ). Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore, which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling social group, and low culture. In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies.


title: Culture

text: Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of cultural evolution. Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects.


title: Culture

text: Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as "noble savages" living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly stratified capitalist systems of the West.


title: Culture

text: In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of religion.


title: Culture

text: Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology, where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and in the United States and Canada, archaeology. The term , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas, refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that , which allow a person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately."


title: Culture

text: The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society. For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present.


title: Culture

text: Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis. As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science.


title: Culture

text: The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) with the growing discipline of anthropology, wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.


title: Culture

text: In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies. Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production.


title: Culture

text: In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism.


title: Culture

text: From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. Cultural studies is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on a historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice.


title: Culture

text: In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups) and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies.


title: Culture

text: Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later that of Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy.


title: Culture

text: In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures, such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book "Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman" (by Paul du Gay "et al."), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.


title: Culture

text: In 2016, a new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud, who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with the tradition of textual theory.


title: Culture

text: Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture, and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive norms, culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in a culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation.


title: Culture

text: There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of culture and cultural heritage. UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation.


title: Culture

text: Basically, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Diversity deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on the other.


title: Culture

text: The protection of culture and cultural goods is increasingly taking up a large area nationally and internationally. Under international law, the UN and UNESCO try to set up and enforce rules for this. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in the event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality.


title: Culture

text: Another important issue today is the impact of tourism on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American Gothic horror film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1897 novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: "Dracula" was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 1992, to positive reviews, though Keanu Reeves' performance and English accent received criticism. The film opened at #1 in the United States, and grossed $215 million against a production budget of $40 million. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, of which it won three for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup while also being nominated for Best Art Direction. Its score was composed by Wojciech Kilar and its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", written and performed by Annie Lennox, became an international success.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his wife Elisabeta committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then drives his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks the blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R.M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's insane asylum. Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London. Jonathan meets Dracula who finds a picture of his fiancée Mina Murray and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to England with Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In London, Dracula hypnotically seduces, then bites Mina's best friend Lucy Westenra, with whom she is staying while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's deteriorating health and behavioral changes prompt former suitors Quincey Morris and Dr. Seward, along with her fiancé Arthur Holmwood to summon Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Seward's mentor, who recognizes Lucy as the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. Mina begins to develop feelings for Dracula, accompanying him on several outings. When Mina finally receives word from Jonathan — who has escaped the castle and recovered at a convent — she travels to Romania to marry him. Upon learning this, a heartbroken Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire. Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris kill and behead the undead Lucy the following night.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: After he and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum and kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. Though furious at first, Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life; at her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the gypsies transporting Dracula.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina succumbs to their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood, Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides, then kills them the following morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the hunters and gypsies ensues. Morris is stabbed in the back and Dracula bursts from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan slits his throat with a kukri knife while Morris stabs him in the heart. As Dracula staggers, Mina rushes to his defense. Van Helsing and Jonathan allow her to retreat with the Count. Morris dies from his wound, surrounded by his friends.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying in an ancient demonic form; he and Mina share a kiss as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the cross repairs itself. Dracula reverts to his younger self and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina thrusts the knife through his heart and as he dies, the mark on her forehead disappears. She then decapitates him and gazes up at a fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta, finally reunited and ascending to Heaven together.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Ryder initially brought the script (written by James V. Hart) to the attention of Coppola. The director had agreed to meet with her so the two could clear the air after her late withdrawal from "The Godfather Part III" caused production delays on that film and led her to believe Coppola disliked her. According to Ryder: "I never really thought he would read it. He was so consumed with "Godfather III". As I was leaving, I said, 'If you have a chance, read this script.' He glanced down at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favorite stories from camp." Ryder also explained that "what attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula. Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish". Coppola was also attracted to the sensual elements of the screenplay and said that he wanted portions of the picture to resemble an "erotic dream". In the months leading up to its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent and strange to succeed at the box office, and dubbed it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the notorious 1990 box-office bomb "The Bonfire of the Vanities". Due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as "Apocalypse Now" and "One from the Heart", Coppola was determined to bring the film in on time and on budget. To accomplish this he filmed on sound stages to avoid potential troubles caused by inclement weather.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature. He had an artist storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot, a process which created around a thousand images. He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film and added music, then spliced in scenes from the French version of "Beauty and the Beast" that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists. He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird". "'Weird' became a code word for 'Let's not do formula,'" he later recalled. "'Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares.' I gave them paintings, and I gave them drawings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: The film's hair and makeup designer, Michèle Burke, recalls: "Francis didn't want the typical Dracula that had already been done in Hollywood. He wanted something different; a new Dracula without the widow's peak, cape, or pale-white skin." Burke says she used her Catholic upbringing and angelic imagery for design inspiration, as well as the 19th-century attire created by costume designer Eiko Ishioka.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes as he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with the young actresses. However, he did ask Oldman to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming a scene in which she writhed alone in her bed in ecstasy. She later classified the things Oldman said to her as "very unrepeatable". Winona Ryder found the intensity of Oldman's acting style too much at times; the two fell out early in the filming process and had difficulty working together from then on. Coppola stated, "they got along and then one day they didn't—absolutely didn't get along. None of us were privy to what had happened." Ryder has referred to the "trauma" of the experience and said that she "felt there was a danger" while working with Oldman. However, she has also referred to her friction with Oldman as "teen drama", stating, "He [Gary] was going through a divorce, and I think I can say this because he's pretty open about it, but he's been sober for a long time now, and he's raised three kids, and he's a dream. He's a good friend of mine now..."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 2020, Winona Ryder also said that Reeves and Hopkins once refused Coppola's direction to verbally abuse her to make her cry during a scene that required an emotional reaction. However, Coppola denied that and described the situation as him instructing Oldman — in character — to whisper improvised words both to her and other actors on set to scare them. Ryder agreed with Coppola and a spokesperson for the actress stated that "He asked the actors in character to say horrible things to Winona as a technique to help her cry for the scene. Although that technique didn't work for her, she loves and respects him and considers it a great privilege to have worked with him."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Gary Oldman himself thinks that Dracula was never a "bucket list" role for him in the first place. He said about the main reason why his younger self said yes to the role: "It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience." Another reason why Oldman wanted to play Dracula was because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you" and to him it was worth playing the role just to say that line.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but he turned it down (a decision he later regretted). As for casting Keanu Reeves in the role Coppola said of his casting choice: "We tried to get some kind of matinée idol for the part of Jonathan, because it isn't such a great part. If we all were to go to the airport... Keanu is the one that the girls would just besiege." Coppola has stated that Reeves worked harder on his accent than most people realized: "He tried so hard. That was the problem, actually — he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical of him, but that's because I like him personally so much. To this day he's a prince in my eyes."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Coppola was insistent that he did not want to use any kind of contemporary special effects techniques such as computer-generated imagery when making the movie, instead wishing to use antiquated effects techniques from the early history of cinema, which he felt would be more appropriate given that the film's period setting coincides with the origin of film. He initially hired a standard visual effects team, but when they told him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible without using modern digital technology, Coppola disagreed and fired them, replacing them with his son Roman Coppola. As a result, all of the visual effects seen in the film were achieved without the use of optical or computer-generated effects, but were created using on-set and in-camera methods. For example, any sequences that would have typically required the use of compositing were instead achieved by either rear projection with actors placed in front of a screen with an image projected behind them, or through multiple exposure by shooting a background slate then rewinding the film through the camera and shooting the foreground slate on the same piece of film, all the while using matting techniques to ensure that only the desired areas of film were exposed. Forced perspectives were often employed to combine miniature effects or matte paintings with full-sized elements, or create distorted views of reality, such as holding the camera upside down or at odd angles to create the effect of objects defying the laws of physics.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 77% based on 65 critics with an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's consensus reads, "Overblown in the best sense of the word, Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" rescues the character from decades of campy interpretations—and features some terrific performances to boot." Vincent Canby described the film as having been created with the "enthusiasm of a precocious film student who has magically acquired a master's command of his craft." Richard Corliss said, "Coppola brings the old spook story alive...Everyone knows that Dracula has a heart; Coppola knows that it is more than an organ to drive a stake into. To the director, the count is a restless spirit who has been condemned for too many years to interment in cruddy movies. This luscious film restores the creature's nobility and gives him peace." Alan Jones in "Radio Times" said, "Eerie, romantic and operatic, this exquisitely mounted revamp of the undead legend is a supreme artistic achievement...as the tired count who has overdosed on immortality, Gary Oldman's towering performance holds centre stage and burns itself into the memory."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Roger Ebert awarded the film 3/4 stars, writing, "I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferretti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely he always seems to light with shadows." Ebert did, however, voice criticisms over the film's "narrative confusions and dead ends". Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film "not particularly scary, not very sexy and dramatically over the top", criticizing the tone and several of the casting decisions. Tom Hibbert of "Empire" was unimpressed. Awarding the film 2/5 stars, he said, "Has a film ever promised so much yet delivered so little?...all we're left with is an overly long bloated adaptation, instead of what might have been a gothic masterpiece." Geoffrey O'Brien of "The New York Review of Books" also had reservations: "[T]he romantic make-over of "Dracula" registers as little more than a marketing device designed to exploit the attractiveness of the movie's youthful cast...[it] rolls on a patina of the 'feel-good' uplift endemic in recent Hollywood movies."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: "Empire"s Tom Hibbert criticized Keanu Reeves's casting and was not the only critic to consider the resultant performance to be weak. In a career retrospective compiled by "Entertainment Weekly", Reeves was described as having been "out of his depth" and "frequently blasted off the screen by Gary Oldman". "Total Film" writer Nathan Ditum included Reeves in his 2010 countdown of "The 29 Worst Movie Miscastings", describing him as "a dreary, milky nothing...a black hole of sex and drama". Josh Winning, also of "Total Film", said that Reeves's work spoiled the motion picture. He mentioned it in a 2011 list of the "50 Performances That Ruined Movies", and wrote: "You can visibly see Keanu attempting not to end every one of his lines with 'dude'. The result? A performance that looks like the young actor's perpetually constipated. Painful for all parties." A feature by AskMen, called "Acting Miscasts That Ruined Movies", expressed a similar sentiment: "It's one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it's quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. The two Oscar nominees ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent and abysmal instincts for all to see."


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: Reeves's attempt at London vernacular has been cited as one of the worst accents, if not the worst, in the history of recorded film. Virgin Media journalist Limara Salt, in listing the "Top 10 worst movie accents", wrote: "Keanu Reeves is consistently terrible at delivering any accent apart from Californian surfer dude but it's his English effort in "Dracula" that tops the lot. Overly posh and entirely ridiculous, Reeves's performance is as painful as it is hilarious." Salt said that Winona Ryder is "equally rubbish", an opinion echoed by Glen Levy in "Time". In his "Top 10 Worst Fake British Accents", he said that both actors "come up short in the accent (and, some might argue, acting) department", and that their London dialect made for "a literal horror show". Conversely, Marc Savlov, writing for "The Austin Chronicle", opined that Ryder was more impressive than Reeves and suited the role: "Ryder, seemingly the perfect choice for Dracula's obscure object of desire, Mina Harker, is better by far than Reeves".


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: "Bram Stoker's Dracula" opened at number one at the US box office with a November record of $30,521,679, beating "Back to the Future Part II". This record wouldn't last long, as it was quickly surpassed by "". The film dropped off in subsequent weeks, losing 50.8% of its audience after its first weekend in release and exiting the top five after three weeks. It became a box-office hit, grossing $82,522,790 in the United States and Canada, becoming the 15th-highest-grossing film of the year. The film set an opening weekend record in the United Kingdom of $4 million, beating the record set by "Batman Returns". Internationally, the film grossed another $133,339,902 for a total worldwide gross of $215,862,692, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 2018 the soundtrack had 3-CD set Limited Edition re-release: Disc One and Two of this re-issue presented the premiere of Kilar's "composed score," his music as originally written for the film. Disc Two also featured a bounty of alternate bonus cues from this material. Disc Three showcases the original 1992 album assembly, remastered, with additional bonus tracks.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 1993, the film received both a standard VHS release and a limited edition VHS release, the latter being a box set in the shape of a coffin. The limited edition release contained the film on VHS, which included a behind-the-scenes documentary, and the original "Dracula" novel by Bram Stoker in paperback. Grey, gothic statue heads (as seen on the original film poster) adorned the front cover of the book against a gray stone background. That same year, the Criterion Collection released a special edition LaserDisc of the film.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: "Dracula" was first released to DVD in 1999 and again as a Superbit DVD in 2001. The DVD included several extra features: filmographies, the original theatrical trailer, a documentary ("Dracula: The Man, The Myth, The Legend"), costume designs and DVD trailers. The Superbit version did not contain any extra features.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: A two-disc "Collector's Edition" DVD and Blu-ray was released in 2007. Special features include an introduction and audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted and extended scenes, teaser and full-length trailers, and the documentaries "The Blood Is the Life: The Making of "Dracula"", "The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka", "In Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of "Dracula"", and "Method and Madness: Visualizing "Dracula"".


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: A novelization of the film was published, written by Fred Saberhagen. A four-issue comic book adaptation and 100 collectible cards based on the movie were released by the Topps company with art provided by Mike Mignola and a full script provided by Roy Thomas, using dialogue derived almost entirely from the film's script. In 2018, IDW Publishing collected all four issues and released them in a trade paperback. Various action figures and model sets were also produced. In addition to these items, accurate licensed replicas of Dracula's sword and Quincey's Bowie knife were available from Factory X. Other merchandising for the film included a board game; a pinball machine, which was also adapted as a digital pinball game and re-released as downloadable content for "The Pinball Arcade" until June 30, 2018; and video game adaptations for various platforms.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: In 2021 Funko POP vinyl figures from the film were announced for release: Van Helsing and three different versions of Dracula (in his old form, his young form in gray suit and top hat and as Vlad Tepes in red armor). Thus, the film became the third live-action adaptation of Dracula that got Funko POPs (previous ones were Nosferatu based on 1922 film, and Dracula based on 1931 film).


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: The film had a considerable impact on popular culture and vampire representation in media. Costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new image for the Count and for the first time freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in 1931. The film was also a landmark in vampire horror as it is the only "Dracula" adaptation to win Oscars.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: The film is seen as a game changer by many critics, which established a tone and style that redefined cinematic vampires. It created a host of new vampire film tropes, like retractable fangs, vampires turning into literal bat-men, and a steampunk aesthetic. "Bram Stoker's Dracula", its partisans contend, is significant in the way that "The Exorcist" and "The Shining" were significant, in showing that a horror story can be worthy of an A-list cast and production values, and that a truly imaginative filmmaker can take even a story as hoary as Dracula and give it a new luster.


title: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)

text: The film was ranked as the best vampire film ever in "Forbes"' "Top 10 Best Vampire Movies Of All Time" list. The film was also included in "Entertainment Weekly"s "5 best vampire movies", "Esquire"'s "20 Best Vampire Movies" and "Sexiest Horror Movies Ever Made", "IndieWire"s "The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time" and "The 12 Best Vampire Movies Ever Made". Oldman's Dracula featured in "Forbes"s list of "Hollywood's Most Powerful Vampires", as well as "The Guardian"s "10 best screen vampires". He also was ranked as best version of Dracula by "Screen Rant". In honor of Syfy's 25th anniversary in 2017, the channel compiled "25 greatest" lists celebrating the last 25 years of all science fiction, fantasy, and horror: Oldman's Dracula was included in "The 25 Greatest Movie Performances from the Last 25 years".


title: Looney Tunes

text: Looney Tunes is an American animated comedy short film series produced by Warner Bros. starting from 1930 to 1969, concurrently with its partner series "Merrie Melodies", during the golden age of American animation. Then some new cartoons were produced from the late 1980s to the mid 2010s as well as other made productions beginning in 1972. The two series introduced a large cast of characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. The term "Looney Tunes" has since been expanded to also refer to the characters themselves.


title: Looney Tunes

text: "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" were initially produced by Leon Schlesinger and animators Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising from 1930 to 1933. Schlesinger assumed full production from 1933 until selling his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944. The "Looney Tunes" title was inspired by that of Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies". The shorts initially showcased musical compositions owned by Warner's music publishing interests through the adventures of such characters as Bosko and Buddy. However, the shorts gained a higher profile upon the debuts of directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and voice actor Mel Blanc later in the decade. Porky Pig and Daffy Duck became the featured "Looney Tunes" characters, while "Merrie Melodies" featured one-shot cartoons and minor recurring characters.


title: Looney Tunes

text: After Bugs Bunny became popular in the "Merrie Melodies" shorts of the early 1940s, "Looney Tunes" moved from black and white to color production, "Merrie Melodies" having already been in color since 1934. The two series gradually lost their distinctions, and shorts were assigned to each series randomly. From 1942 to 1964, "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" were the most popular animated shorts in movie theaters.


title: Looney Tunes

text: "Looney Tunes" has since become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television series, feature films, comic books, music albums, video games, and amusement park rides. Many of the characters have made and continue to make cameo appearances in television shows, films, and other media. Bugs Bunny, in particular, is regarded as a cultural icon and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Many "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" films are ranked among the greatest animated cartoons of all time, and five of them have won Academy Awards.


title: Looney Tunes

text: "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" were so named because they were initially developed to showcase tracks from Warner Bros.' extensive music library; the title of the first "Looney Tunes" short, "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" (1930), is a pun on "Singin' in the Bathtub". Between 1934 and 1943, "Merrie Melodies" were produced in color and "Looney Tunes" in black and white. After 1943, both series were produced in color and became virtually indistinguishable, varying only in their opening theme music and titles. Both series made use of the various Warner Bros. characters. By 1937, the theme music for "Looney Tunes" was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin, and the theme music for "Merrie Melodies" was an adaptation of "Merrily We Roll Along" by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher and Eddie Cantor.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1929, to compete against Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse short cartoons, Warner Bros. became interested in developing a series of animated shorts to promote their music. They had recently acquired Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US$28 million (equivalent to $ million in ) and were eager to promote this material for the sales of sheet music and phonograph records. Warner made a deal with Leon Schlesinger to produce cartoons for them. Schlesinger hired Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman to produce the first series of cartoons. Schlesinger was impressed by Harman's and Ising's 1929 pilot cartoon, "Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid". The first "Looney Tunes" short was "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" starring Bosko, which was released in 1930.


title: Looney Tunes

text: When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933 over a budget dispute with Schlesinger, they took with them all the rights of the characters and cartoons they had created. A new character called Buddy became the only star of the "Looney Tunes" series for a couple of years.


title: Looney Tunes

text: New directors including Tex Avery, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett were brought in or promoted to work with animators in the Schlesinger studio, with Avery's unit housed in a bungalow the animators dubbed "Termite Terrace." In 1935 they debuted the first major "Looney Tunes" star, Porky Pig, along with Beans the Cat in the "Merrie Melodies" cartoon "I Haven't Got a Hat" directed by Friz Freleng. Beans was the star of the next Porky/Beans cartoon "Gold Diggers of '49", but it was Porky who emerged as the star instead of Beans. The ensemble characters of "I Haven't Got a Hat", such as Oliver Owl, and twin dogs Ham and Ex, were also given a sampling of shorts, but Beans and Porky proved much more popular. Beans was later phased out when his popularity declined, leaving Porky as the only star of the Schlesinger studio.


title: Looney Tunes

text: The debuts of other memorable "Looney Tunes" stars followed: Daffy Duck in "Porky's Duck Hunt" (1937), Elmer Fudd in the "Merrie Melodies" short "Elmer's Candid Camera" (1940), Bugs Bunny in the "Merrie Melodies" short "A Wild Hare" (1940), and Tweety in the "Merrie Melodies" short "A Tale of Two Kitties" (1942).


title: Looney Tunes

text: Bugs initially starred in the color "Merrie Melodies" shorts following the success of 1940's "A Wild Hare", and formally joined the "Looney Tunes" series with the release of "Buckaroo Bugs" in 1944. Schlesinger began to phase in the production of color "Looney Tunes" with the 1942 cartoon "The Hep Cat". The final black-and-white "Looney Tunes" short was "Puss n' Booty" in 1943 directed by Frank Tashlin. The inspiration for the changeover was Warner's decision to re-release only the color cartoons in the "Blue Ribbon Classics" series of "Merrie Melodies". Bugs made a cameo appearance in 1942 in the Avery/Clampett cartoon "Crazy Cruise" and also at the end of the Frank Tashlin 1943 cartoon "Porky Pig's Feat", which marked Bugs' only official appearance in a black-and-white "Looney Tunes" short. Schlesinger sold his interest in the cartoon studio in 1944 to Warner Bros. and went into retirement; he died five years later.


title: Looney Tunes

text: More popular "Looney Tunes" characters were created (most of which first appeared in "Merrie Melodies" cartoons) such as Pepé Le Pew (debuted in 1945's "Odor-able Kitty"), Sylvester (debuted in 1945's "Life with Feathers"), Yosemite Sam (debuted in 1945's "Hare Trigger"), Foghorn Leghorn (debuted in 1946's "Walky Talky Hawky"), Marvin the Martian (debuted in 1948's "Haredevil Hare"), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (debuted in 1949's "Fast and Furry-ous"), Granny (debuted in 1950's "Canary Row"), Speedy Gonzales (debuted in 1953's "Cat Tails for Two"), and the Tasmanian Devil (debuted in 1954's "Devil May Hare").


title: Looney Tunes

text: During the mid-late 1960s, the shorts were produced by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises (and Format Productions) (1964–1967) and Warner Bros.-Seven Arts (1967–1969) after Warner Bros. shut down their animation studio. The shorts from this era can be identified by their different title sequence, featuring stylized limited animation and graphics on a black background and a new arrangement, by William Lava, of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". The change in the introductory title cards was possibly to reflect the switch in the animation style of the shorts themselves.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts commissioned an animation studio in South Korea to redraw 79 black-and-white Looney Tunes produced from 1935 to 1943 in color to be syndicated to TV stations.


title: Looney Tunes

text: The original "Looney Tunes" theatrical series ran from 1930's "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" to 1969's "Injun Trouble" by Robert McKimson.


title: Looney Tunes

text: The "Looney Tunes" series' popularity was further strengthened when it began airing on network and syndicated television in the 1950s under various titles and formats. The "Looney Tunes" shorts were broadcast with edits to remove scenes of violence (particularly suicidal gags and scenes of characters performing dangerous stunts that impressionable viewers could easily imitate), stereotypes, and alcohol consumption.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Production of theatrical animated shorts was dormant from 1969 until 1979 when new shorts were made to introduce "Looney Tunes" to a new generation of audiences. New shorts have been produced and released sporadically for theaters since then, though usually as promotional tie-ins with various family movies produced by Warner Bros. While many have been released in limited releases theatrically for Academy Award consideration, only a few have gained theatrical releases with movies.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In the 1970s through the early 1990s, several feature-film compilations and television specials were produced, mostly centering on Bugs Bunny and/or Daffy Duck, with a mixture of new and old footage. These releases include "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie" (1979), "The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie" (1981), "" (1982), "Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island" (1983), and "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" (1988).


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1976, the "Looney Tunes" characters made their way into the amusement business when they became the mascots for the two Marriott's Great America theme parks (Gurnee and Santa Clara). After the Gurnee park was sold to Six Flags, they also claimed the rights to use the characters at the other Six Flags parks, which they continue to do presently.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1988, several "Looney Tunes" characters appeared in cameo roles in Disney's film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". The more significant cameos featured Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, and Yosemite Sam. It is the only time in which "Looney Tunes" characters have shared screen time with their rivals at Disney (producers of the film)—particularly in the scenes where Bugs and Mickey Mouse are skydiving, and when Daffy and Donald Duck are performing their "Dueling Pianos" sequence.


title: Looney Tunes

text: On July 10, 1989, after a battle with heart problems, Mel Blanc died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of cardiovascular disease. A picture depicting the "Looney Tunes" characters entitled "Speechless" was released shortly after his death.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Paramount-owned Nickelodeon aired all the unaired cartoons in a show called "Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon" between 1988 and 1999. In January 1999, it was reported that the cartoons shown on Nickelodeon would move to Cartoon Network in the fall of that year. To date, "Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon" is the longest-airing animated series on the network that was not a Nicktoon.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1996, "Space Jam", a live-action animated film, was released to theaters starring Bugs Bunny and basketball player Michael Jordan. Despite a mixed critical reception, the film was a major box-office success, grossing nearly $100 million in the U.S. alone, almost becoming the first non-Disney animated film to achieve that feat. For a two-year period, it was the highest grossing non-Disney animated film ever. The film also introduced the character Lola Bunny, who subsequently became another recurring member of the "Looney Tunes" cast, usually as a love interest for Bugs.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1997, Bugs Bunny was featured on a U.S. 32 cent postage stamp; the first of five "Looney Tunes" themed stamps to be issued.


title: Looney Tunes

text: The "Looney Tunes" also achieved success in the area of television during this era, with appearances in several originally produced series, including "Taz-Mania" (1991, starring Taz) and "The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries" (1995, starring Sylvester, Tweety, and Granny). The gang also made frequent cameos in the 1990 spinoff series "Tiny Toon Adventures", from executive producer Steven Spielberg, where they played teachers and mentors to a younger generation of cartoon characters (Plucky Duck, Hamton J. Pig, Babs and Buster Bunny, etc.), plus occasional cameos in the later Warner Bros. shows such as "Animaniacs" (also from Spielberg) and "Histeria!".


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1979, "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol" premiered. After "The Chocolate Chase", there would not be another short released for seven years. In 1990, it was made so there would be about one short per year until 1998. In 2003, there would be seven shorts produced. The first short released was "The Whizzard of Ow", premiering on Walmart and being on the DVD release of "", which these shorts were made to promote. Until 2004, when all the shorts were included on the Blu-ray release, only about half of the shorts would be available. In 2010, five computer-animated shorts would be released and directed by Matthew O'Callaghan, who would also direct another short, "Flash in the Pain", in 2014.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In March 2000, it was revealed that the entire "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" library would be exclusive to Cartoon Network starting fall of that year. "Looney Tunes" shorts were still airing on Disney's ABC as part of "The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" at the time, and the decision led to the show's cancellation. This decision would remain in effect for over 20 years, until MeTV began airing the classic Warner Bros. cartoons (along with MGM and Paramount's library) in January 2021. In 2003, another feature film was released, this time in an attempt to recapture the spirit of the original shorts: the live-action/animated "". Although the film was not financially successful, it was met with mixed-to-positive reviews from film critics and has been argued by animation historians and fans as the finest original feature-length appearance of the cartoon characters. In 2006, Warner Home Video released a new and Christmas-themed "Looney Tunes" direct-to-video film called "Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas", a parody of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Other "Looney Tunes" TV series made during this time were "Baby Looney Tunes" (2001–2006), "Duck Dodgers" (2003-2005) and "Loonatics Unleashed" (2005–2007).


title: Looney Tunes

text: On October 22, 2007, "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons became available for the first time in High-definition via Microsoft's Xbox Live service, including some in Spanish. From February 29 – May 18, 2008, many "Looney Tunes" artifacts, including original animation cels and concept drawings, were on display at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, just off the campus of Youngstown State University, near where the Warners lived early in life.


title: Looney Tunes

text: At the 2009 Cartoon Network upfront, "The Looney Tunes Show" was announced. After several delays, the series premiered on May 3, 2011. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, the series centers on Bugs and Daffy as they leave the woods and move to the suburbs with "colorful neighbors" including Sylvester, Tweety, Granny, Yosemite Sam, etc. The series introduced the character Tina Russo, a duck who becomes Daffy's girlfriend. The show also features 2-minute music videos titled respectfully "Merrie Melodies" (as a tribute to the "Looney Tunes" sister shorts) which features the characters singing original songs, as well as CGI animated shorts starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (which were removed after the first season). The series was cancelled after its second season.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Also, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner returned to the big screen in a series of 3-D shorts that preceded select Warner Bros. films. There were six in the works that began with the first short, "Coyote Falls", that preceded the film "", which was released on July 30, 2010. On September 24, 2010, "Fur of Flying" preceded the film, "", and on December 17, 2010, "Rabid Rider" preceded the film, "Yogi Bear". On June 8, 2011, Warner Bros. Animation announced that there will be more "Looney Tunes" 3-D theatrical shorts; the first titled "Daffy's Rhapsody" with Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd, the next being "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat" with Sylvester, Tweety, and Granny. "Daffy's Rhapsody" was to precede the film "Happy Feet Two", until the studio decided to premiere "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat" instead. "Daffy's Rhapsody" instead premiered in 2012, preceding "". All five shorts were directed by Matthew O'Callaghan.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 2012, several announcements were made about a "Looney Tunes" reboot film titled "Acme", in development. Former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Jenny Slate was said to be on board as writer for the new film. Jeffrey Clifford, "Harry Potter" producer David Heyman, and "Dark Shadows" writers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith were slated to produce the film. On August 27, 2014, writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz were hired to script the film, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa were in talks to direct the film, while actor Steve Carell was rumored to be starring in a lead role. Despite this, the film has yet to enter production.


title: Looney Tunes

text: At the 2014 Cartoon Network upfront, another series titled "Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production" (later "New Looney Tunes") was announced. Starring Bugs Bunny, the series premiered on both Cartoon Network and its sister channel Boomerang in late 2015. The series had an unusually slow rollout, with the series being moved to the Boomerang streaming service in 2017, and was eventually cancelled on January 30, 2020.


title: Looney Tunes

text: On June 11, 2018, another series, titled "Looney Tunes Cartoons", was announced by Warner Bros. Animation. It premiered on May 27, 2020, on the streaming service HBO Max. The series features "1,000 minutes of new one-to-six minute cartoons featuring the brand's marquee characters", voiced by their current voice actors in "simple, gag-driven and visually vibrant stories" that are rendered by multiple artists employing "a visual style that will resonate with fans", most noticeably having a style reminiscent of the styles of Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson. According to co-executive producer Peter Browngardt, "We're not doing guns, but we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in." Sam Register, president of Warner Bros. Animation also serves as co-executive producers for the series. However guns were implanted in Season 2.


title: Looney Tunes

text: On February 11, 2021, it was announced two new series are in the works: "Bugs Bunny Builders" and "Tweety Mysteries." "Bugs Bunny Builders" began airing on Cartoon Network as part of Cartoonito and HBO Max on July 25, 2022; "Tweety Mysteries" will also air on Cartoon Network. "Bugs Bunny Builders" is aimed towards preschoolers; while "Tweety Mysteries" is a live-action/animated hybrid.


title: Looney Tunes

text: A sequel to "Space Jam" titled "", starring basketball player LeBron James, was released on theaters and HBO Max on July 16, 2021, after a Los Angeles special screening on July 12, 2021. It is a film with a story of LeBron James' second son, Dom, gets kidnapped by an evil AI named Al. G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), into the Warner Bros. server-verse. LeBron then assembles the Tune Squad to play against the algorithm and get his son back. It received generally negative reviews and underperformed at the box office.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In the 1980s, the shorts received VHS releases, with the pre-August 1948 shorts released by MGM/UA Home Video and the post-July 1948 shorts released by Warner Home Video. In 2003, Warner Home Video began releasing select shorts on DVD, aimed at collectors, in four-disc sets known as the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" starting with . This continued until 2008, when was released. Then in 2010 until 2013, the company released the "Looney Tunes Super Stars" DVDs. There have been numerous complaints regarding the "Super Stars" releases however, particularly the first two, having the post-1953 shorts in a 16:9 widescreen format. The last DVD in the "Super Stars" series was "Sylvester and Hippety Hopper: Marsupial Mayhem", released on April 23, 2013. 2010 and 2011 saw the releases of "The Essential Bugs Bunny" and "The Essential Daffy Duck" DVDs. In 2011, the shorts were released on Blu-ray Disc for the first time with the "Looney Tunes Platinum Collection" series. On September 19, 2017, Warner Home Video's Warner Archive Collection released the five-disc "Porky Pig 101" DVD-set.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1933, Harman and Ising left, taking the rights to the Bosko characters with them. However, Warner Bros. retained the rights to the cartoons and the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" brand names, leaving their former producer Leon Schlesinger to start his own animation studio to continue the "Looney Tunes" series. With their retained Bosko rights, Harman and Ising began making cartoons at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934 until they were fired in 1937 due to a lack of success. MGM proceeded to form their own studio to create its own cartoons. Time Warner eventually acquired the Bosko characters from Harman and Ising's estates. Meanwhile, the Schlesinger studio continued to make popular cartoons until 1944 when Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. Since then, Warner Bros. has owned all rights to all post-1933 characters created by Leon Schlesinger Productions and Warner Bros. Cartoons. The rights to individual cartoons however are in other hands.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1955, Warner Bros. sold the television distribution rights to 191 of its cartoons (which included the black-and-white "Looney Tunes" and the black-and-white "Merrie Melodies" made after Harman and Ising left) to Guild Films. The copyrights to those cartoons were assigned to Sunset Productions, an entity owned by Warner Bros. The cartoons were distributed by Guild Films until it went bankrupt and was bought by Seven Arts. Seven Arts bought WB in 1967, and WB regained the TV distribution rights to the black and white cartoons.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1956, Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) acquired television distribution rights to most of Warner Bros' pre-1950 library, including all "Merrie Melodies" (except for those sold to Guild and "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!") and color "Looney Tunes" shorts that were released prior to August 1948, while Warner still owned the copyright to all of the cartoons. Unlike the previous TV package, this package had the Warner titles kept intact and an "Associated Artists Productions presents" title inserted at the head of each reel (as a result, each "Merrie Melodies" cartoon had the song "Merrily We Roll Along" playing twice). Two years later, United Artists bought a.a.p. (which had also bought Paramount's "Popeye" films) who merged the company into its television division, United Artists Television. In 1981, UA was sold to MGM, and five years later, Ted Turner acquired the pre-May 1986 MGM library, as well the rights to the a.a.p. library. In 1996, Turner's company, Turner Broadcasting System (whose Turner Entertainment division oversaw the film library), was purchased by Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery) who also owned Warner Bros. Today, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment holds the video rights to the entire "Looney Tunes"/"Merrie Melodies" animated output by virtue of Warner Bros.' ownership of Turner Entertainment. Turner's rights to some Looney Tunes cartoons was a motivation for the purchase.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Starting in 1960, the cartoons were repackaged into several different TV programs that remained popular for several decades before being purchased by Turner Broadcasting System. Turner's Cartoon Network reran the cartoons from its launch in 1992 until 2004, and again from 2009 until 2017. "The Looney Tunes Show" (not to be confused with the 2010s animated series of the same name), an early 2000s anthology produced by Warner Bros. Animation for the network, was broadcast from 2001 to 2004. The show featured shorts from the original "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" theatrical series. As of 2021, classic cartoons continue to air on Cartoon Network's sister channel, Boomerang and MeTV. Differing curated collections of "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" are available for streaming on both the Boomerang streaming service and HBO Max.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Five dozen "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" shorts from before December 1943 have lapsed into the public domain and are thus freely distributed through various unofficial releases.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Due to content considered offensive, stereotyped or insensitive, in 1968 Warner Bros. removed the "Censored Eleven" episodes of "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons from broadcast or distribution. Depictions included those of African Americans (as in "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" and "Jungle Jitters"), Native Americans, Asian Americans, (especially during WWII, as in "Tokio Jokio" and "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips"), Germans, Italians, White Southerners, and Mexicans.


title: Looney Tunes

text: In 1999, Cartoon Network ceased broadcast of all Speedy Gonzales segments, due to concerns about stereotyping of Mexicans. Many Hispanics protested that they were not offended, and expressed fondness for the Speedy Gonzales cartoons. These shorts were made available for Cartoon Network broadcast again in 2002.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Many Warner Bros. cartoons contain fleeting or sometimes extended gags that make reference to racial or ethnic stereotypes, or use ethnic humor. The release of the "" includes a disclaimer at the beginning of each DVD in the volume given by Whoopi Goldberg. She explains that the cartoons are products of their time and contain racial and ethnic stereotypes that "were wrong then and they are wrong today", but the cartoons are presented on the DVD uncut and uncensored because "editing them would be the same as denying that the stereotypes existed." A similarly phrased written disclaimer is shown at the beginning of each DVD in the "", "", and "" sets, as well as the Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn "Looney Tunes Super Stars" sets and the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Plus various one-shots, specials and appearances in anthology comics like "March of Comics", Top Comics and Dell Giant from various Western Publishing imprints. The numbering of the Dell issues generally includes 3-4 appearances in Dell's Four Color comics.


title: Looney Tunes

text: Video games based on "Looney Tunes" characters began in 1979 with the "Road Runner" pinball machine. More titles would continue to be released as video game hardware evolved throughout the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Prominent characters who have received multiple video games include Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Speedy Gonzales, and Sylvester and Tweety.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacteria and Archaea (both prokaryotes) make up the other two domains.


title: Eukaryote

text: The eukaryotes are usually now regarded as having emerged in the Archaea or as a sister of the Asgard archaea. This implies that there are only two domains of life, Bacteria and Archaea, with eukaryotes incorporated among archaea. Eukaryotes represent a small minority of the number of organisms, but, due to their generally much larger size, their collective global biomass is estimated to be about equal to that of prokaryotes. Eukaryotes emerged approximately 2.3–1.8 billion years ago, during the Proterozoic eon, likely as flagellated phagotrophs. Their name comes from the Greek εὖ ("eu", "well" or "good") and κάρυον ("karyon", "nut" or "kernel").


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotic cells typically contain other membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria and Golgi apparatus. Chloroplasts can be found in plants and algae. Prokaryotic cells may contain primitive organelles. Eukaryotes may be either unicellular or multicellular, and include many cell types forming different kinds of tissue. In comparison, prokaryotes are typically unicellular. Animals, plants, and fungi are the most familiar eukaryotes. Other eukaryotes are sometimes called protists.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotes can reproduce both asexually through mitosis and sexually through meiosis and gamete fusion. In mitosis, one cell divides to produce two genetically identical cells. In meiosis, DNA replication is followed by two rounds of cell division to produce four haploid daughter cells that act as sex cells or gametes. Each gamete has just one set of chromosomes, each a unique mix of the corresponding pair of parental chromosomes resulting from genetic recombination during meiosis.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotic cells are typically much larger than those of prokaryotes, having a volume of around 10,000 times greater than the prokaryotic cell. They have a variety of internal membrane-bound structures, called organelles, and a cytoskeleton composed of microtubules, microfilaments, and intermediate filaments, which play an important role in defining the cell's organization and shape. Eukaryotic DNA is divided into several linear bundles called chromosomes, which are separated by a microtubular spindle during nuclear division.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryote cells include a variety of membrane-bound structures, collectively referred to as the endomembrane system. Simple compartments, called vesicles and vacuoles, can form by budding off other membranes. Many cells ingest food and other materials through a process of endocytosis, where the outer membrane invaginates and then pinches off to form a vesicle. It is probable that most other membrane-bound organelles are ultimately derived from such vesicles. Alternatively some products produced by the cell can leave in a vesicle through exocytosis.


title: Eukaryote

text: The nucleus is surrounded by a double membrane known as the nuclear envelope, with nuclear pores that allow material to move in and out. Various tube- and sheet-like extensions of the nuclear membrane form the endoplasmic reticulum, which is involved in protein transport and maturation. It includes the rough endoplasmic reticulum where ribosomes are attached to synthesize proteins, which enter the interior space or lumen. Subsequently, they generally enter vesicles, which bud off from the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. In most eukaryotes, these protein-carrying vesicles are released and further modified in stacks of flattened vesicles (cisternae), the Golgi apparatus.


title: Eukaryote

text: Vesicles may be specialized for various purposes. For instance, lysosomes contain digestive enzymes that break down most biomolecules in the cytoplasm. Peroxisomes are used to break down peroxide, which is otherwise toxic. Many protozoans have contractile vacuoles, which collect and expel excess water, and extrusomes, which expel material used to deflect predators or capture prey. In higher plants, most of a cell's volume is taken up by a central vacuole, which mostly contains water and primarily maintains its osmotic pressure.


title: Eukaryote

text: Mitochondria are organelles found in all but one eukaryote, and are commonly referred to as "the powerhouse of the cell". Mitochondria provide energy to the eukaryote cell by oxidising sugars or fats and releasing energy as ATP. They have two surrounding membranes, each a phospholipid bi-layer; the inner of which is folded into invaginations called cristae where aerobic respiration takes place.


title: Eukaryote

text: The outer mitochondrial membrane is freely permeable and allows almost anything to enter into the intermembrane space while the inner mitochondrial membrane is semi permeable so allows only some required things into the mitochondrial matrix.


title: Eukaryote

text: Mitochondria contain their own DNA, which has close structural similarities to bacterial DNA, and which encodes rRNA and tRNA genes that produce RNA which is closer in structure to bacterial RNA than to eukaryote RNA. They are now generally held to have developed from endosymbiotic prokaryotes, probably Alphaproteobacteria.


title: Eukaryote

text: Some eukaryotes, such as the metamonads such as "Giardia" and "Trichomonas", and the amoebozoan "Pelomyxa", appear to lack mitochondria, but all have been found to contain mitochondrion-derived organelles, such as hydrogenosomes and mitosomes, and thus have lost their mitochondria secondarily. They obtain energy by enzymatic action on nutrients absorbed from the environment. The metamonad "Monocercomonoides" has also acquired, by lateral gene transfer, a cytosolic sulfur mobilisation system which provides the clusters of iron and sulfur required for protein synthesis. The normal mitochondrial iron-sulfur cluster pathway has been lost secondarily.


title: Eukaryote

text: Plants and various groups of algae also have plastids. Plastids also have their own DNA and are developed from endosymbionts, in this case cyanobacteria. They usually take the form of chloroplasts which, like cyanobacteria, contain chlorophyll and produce organic compounds (such as glucose) through photosynthesis. Others are involved in storing food. Although plastids probably had a single origin, not all plastid-containing groups are closely related. Instead, some eukaryotes have obtained them from others through secondary endosymbiosis or ingestion. The capture and sequestering of photosynthetic cells and chloroplasts occurs in many types of modern eukaryotic organisms and is known as kleptoplasty.


title: Eukaryote

text: Many eukaryotes have long slender motile cytoplasmic projections, called flagella, or similar structures called cilia. Flagella and cilia are sometimes referred to as undulipodia, and are variously involved in movement, feeding, and sensation. They are composed mainly of tubulin. These are entirely distinct from prokaryotic flagellae. They are supported by a bundle of microtubules arising from a centriole, characteristically arranged as nine doublets surrounding two singlets. Flagella also may have hairs, or mastigonemes, and scales connecting membranes and internal rods. Their interior is continuous with the cell's cytoplasm.


title: Eukaryote

text: Microfilamental structures composed of actin and actin binding proteins, e.g., α-actinin, fimbrin, filamin are present in submembranous cortical layers and bundles, as well. Motor proteins of microtubules, e.g., dynein or kinesin and actin, e.g., myosins provide dynamic character of the network.


title: Eukaryote

text: Centrioles are often present even in cells and groups that do not have flagella, but conifers and flowering plants have neither. They generally occur in groups that give rise to various microtubular roots. These form a primary component of the cytoskeletal structure, and are often assembled over the course of several cell divisions, with one flagellum retained from the parent and the other derived from it. Centrioles produce the spindle during nuclear division.


title: Eukaryote

text: The significance of cytoskeletal structures is underlined in the determination of shape of the cells, as well as their being essential components of migratory responses like chemotaxis and chemokinesis. Some protists have various other microtubule-supported organelles. These include the radiolaria and heliozoa, which produce axopodia used in flotation or to capture prey, and the haptophytes, which have a peculiar flagellum-like organelle called the haptonema.


title: Eukaryote

text: The cells of plants and algae, fungi and most chromalveolates have a cell wall, a layer outside the cell membrane, providing the cell with structural support, protection, and a filtering mechanism. The cell wall also prevents over-expansion when water enters the cell.


title: Eukaryote

text: The major polysaccharides making up the primary cell wall of land plants are cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. The cellulose microfibrils are linked via hemicellulosic tethers to form the cellulose-hemicellulose network, which is embedded in the pectin matrix. The most common hemicellulose in the primary cell wall is xyloglucan.


title: Eukaryote

text: There are many different types of eukaryotic cells, though animals and plants are the most familiar eukaryotes, and thus provide an excellent starting point for understanding eukaryotic structure. Fungi and many protists have some substantial differences, however.


title: Eukaryote

text: All animals are eukaryotic. Animal cells are distinct from those of other eukaryotes, most notably plants, as they lack cell walls and chloroplasts and have smaller vacuoles. Due to the lack of a cell wall, animal cells can transform into a variety of shapes. A phagocytic cell can even engulf other structures.


title: Eukaryote

text: Plant cells have a number of features that distinguish them from the cells of the other eukaryotic organisms. These include:


title: Eukaryote

text: Some groups of eukaryotes have unique organelles, such as the cyanelles (unusual plastids) of the glaucophytes, the haptonema of the haptophytes, or the ejectosomes of the cryptomonads. Other structures, such as pseudopodia, are found in various eukaryote groups in different forms, such as the lobose amoebozoans or the reticulose foraminiferans. Structures known as cortical alveoli are vesicles present under the cell membrane of many protists such as dinoflagellates, ciliates and apicomplexan parasites.


title: Eukaryote

text: Cell division generally takes place asexually by mitosis, a process that allows each daughter nucleus to receive one copy of each chromosome. Most eukaryotes also have a life cycle that involves sexual reproduction, alternating between a haploid phase, where only one copy of each chromosome is present in each cell and a diploid phase, wherein two copies of each chromosome are present in each cell. The diploid phase is formed by fusion of two haploid gametes to form a zygote, which may divide by mitosis or undergo chromosome reduction by meiosis. There is considerable variation in this pattern. Animals have no multicellular haploid phase, but each plant generation can consist of haploid and diploid multicellular phases.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotes have a smaller surface area to volume ratio than prokaryotes, and thus have lower metabolic rates and longer generation times.


title: Eukaryote

text: The evolution of sexual reproduction may be a primordial and fundamental characteristic of eukaryotes. Based on a phylogenetic analysis, Dacks and Roger proposed that facultative sex was present in the common ancestor of all eukaryotes. A core set of genes that function in meiosis is present in both "Trichomonas vaginalis" and "Giardia intestinalis", two organisms previously thought to be asexual. Since these two species are descendants of lineages that diverged early from the eukaryotic evolutionary tree, it was inferred that core meiotic genes, and hence sex, were likely present in a common ancestor of all eukaryotes. Eukaryotic species once thought to be asexual, such as parasitic protozoa of the genus "Leishmania", have been shown to have a sexual cycle. Also, evidence now indicates that amoebae, previously regarded as asexual, are anciently sexual and that the majority of present-day asexual groups likely arose recently and independently.


title: Eukaryote

text: In antiquity, the two lineages of animals and plants were recognized. They were given the taxonomic rank of Kingdom by Linnaeus. Though he included the fungi with plants with some reservations, it was later realized that they are quite distinct and warrant a separate kingdom, the composition of which was not entirely clear until the 1980s. The various single-cell eukaryotes were originally placed with plants or animals when they became known. In 1818, the German biologist Georg A. Goldfuss coined the word "protozoa" to refer to organisms such as ciliates, and this group was expanded until it encompassed all single-celled eukaryotes, and given their own kingdom, the Protista, by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. The eukaryotes thus came to be composed of four kingdoms:


title: Eukaryote

text: The protists were understood to be "primitive forms", and thus an evolutionary grade, united by their primitive unicellular nature. The disentanglement of the deep splits in the tree of life only really started with DNA sequencing, leading to a system of domains rather than kingdoms as top level rank being put forward by Carl Woese, uniting all the eukaryote kingdoms under the eukaryote domain. At the same time, work on the protist tree intensified, and is still actively going on today. Several alternative classifications have been forwarded, though there is no consensus in the field.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotes are a clade usually assessed to be sister to Heimdallarchaeota in the Asgard grouping in the Archaea. In one proposed system, the basal groupings are the Opimoda, Diphoda, the Discoba, and the Loukozoa. The Eukaryote root is usually assessed to be near or even in Discoba.


title: Eukaryote

text: A classification produced in 2005 for the International Society of Protistologists, which reflected the consensus of the time, divided the eukaryotes into six supposedly monophyletic 'supergroups'. However, in the same year (2005), doubts were expressed as to whether some of these supergroups were monophyletic, particularly the Chromalveolata, and a review in 2006 noted the lack of evidence for several of the supposed six supergroups. A revised classification in 2012 recognizes five supergroups.


title: Eukaryote

text: There are also smaller groups of eukaryotes whose position is uncertain or seems to fall outside the major groups – in particular, Haptophyta, Cryptophyta, Centrohelida, Telonemia, Picozoa, Apusomonadida, Ancyromonadida, Breviatea, and the genus "Collodictyon". Overall, it seems that, although progress has been made, there are still very significant uncertainties in the evolutionary history and classification of eukaryotes. As Roger & Simpson said in 2009 "with the current pace of change in our understanding of the eukaryote tree of life, we should proceed with caution." Newly identified protists, purported to represent novel, deep-branching lineages, continue to be described well into the 21st century; recent examples including "Rhodelphis", putative sister group to Rhodophyta, and "Anaeramoeba", anaerobic amoebaflagellates of uncertain placement.


title: Eukaryote

text: The rRNA trees constructed during the 1980s and 1990s left most eukaryotes in an unresolved "crown" group (not technically a true crown), which was usually divided by the form of the mitochondrial cristae; see crown eukaryotes. The few groups that lack mitochondria branched separately, and so the absence was believed to be primitive; but this is now considered an artifact of long-branch attraction, and they are known to have lost them secondarily.


title: Eukaryote

text: It has been estimated that there may be 75 distinct lineages of eukaryotes. Most of these lineages are protists.


title: Eukaryote

text: The known eukaryote genome sizes vary from 8.2 megabases (Mb) in "Babesia bovis" to 112,000–220,050 Mb in the dinoflagellate "Prorocentrum micans", showing that the genome of the ancestral eukaryote has undergone considerable variation during its evolution. The last common ancestor of all eukaryotes is believed to have been a phagotrophic protist with a nucleus, at least one centriole and cilium, facultatively aerobic mitochondria, sex (meiosis and syngamy), a dormant cyst with a cell wall of chitin and/or cellulose and peroxisomes. Later endosymbiosis led to the spread of plastids in some lineages.


title: Eukaryote

text: Although there is still considerable uncertainty in global eukaryote phylogeny, particularly regarding the position of the root, a rough consensus has started to emerge from the phylogenomic studies of the past two decades. The majority of eukaryotes can be placed in one of two large clades dubbed Amorphea (similar in composition to the unikont hypothesis) and the Diaphoretickes, which includes plants and most algal lineages. A third major grouping, the Excavata, has been abandoned as a formal group in the most recent classification of the International Society of Protistologists due to growing uncertainty as to whether its constituent groups belong together. The proposed phylogeny below includes only one group of excavates (Discoba), and incorporates the recent proposal that picozoans are close relatives of rhodophytes.


title: Eukaryote

text: In some analyses, the Hacrobia group (Haptophyta + Cryptophyta) is placed next to Archaeplastida, but in others it is nested inside the Archaeplastida. However, several recent studies have concluded that Haptophyta and Cryptophyta do not form a monophyletic group. The former could be a sister group to the SAR group, the latter cluster with the Archaeplastida (plants in the broad sense).


title: Eukaryote

text: The division of the eukaryotes into two primary clades, bikonts (Archaeplastida + SAR + Excavata) and unikonts (Amoebozoa + Opisthokonta), derived from an ancestral biflagellar organism and an ancestral uniflagellar organism, respectively, had been suggested earlier. A 2012 study produced a somewhat similar division, although noting that the terms "unikonts" and "bikonts" were not used in the original sense.


title: Eukaryote

text: A highly converged and congruent set of trees appears in Derelle et al. (2015), Ren et al. (2016), Yang et al. (2017) and Cavalier-Smith (2015) including the supplementary information, resulting in a more conservative and consolidated tree. It is combined with some results from Cavalier-Smith for the basal Opimoda. The main remaining controversies are the root, and the exact positioning of the Rhodophyta and the bikonts Rhizaria, Haptista, Cryptista, Picozoa and Telonemia, many of which may be endosymbiotic eukaryote-eukaryote hybrids. Archaeplastida acquired chloroplasts probably by endosymbiosis of a prokaryotic ancestor related to a currently extant cyanobacterium, "Gloeomargarita lithophora".


title: Eukaryote

text: Thomas Cavalier-Smith 2010, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018 places the eukaryotic tree's root between Excavata (with ventral feeding groove supported by a microtubular root) and the grooveless Euglenozoa, and monophyletic Chromista, correlated to a single endosymbiotic event of capturing a red-algae. He et al. specifically supports rooting the eukaryotic tree between a monophyletic Discoba (Discicristata + Jakobida) and an Amorphea-Diaphoretickes clade.


title: Eukaryote

text: The origin of the eukaryotic cell, also known as eukaryogenesis, is a milestone in the evolution of life, since eukaryotes include all complex cells and almost all multicellular organisms. A number of approaches have been used to find the first eukaryote and their closest relatives. The last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) is the hypothetical last common ancestor of all living eukaryotes, and was most likely a biological population.


title: Eukaryote

text: Eukaryotes have a number of features that differentiate them from prokaryotes, including an endomembrane system, and unique biochemical pathways such as sterane synthesis. A set of proteins called eukaryotic signature proteins (ESPs) was proposed to identify eukaryotic relatives in 2002: They have no homology to proteins known in other domains of life by then, but they appear to be universal among eukaryotes. They include proteins that make up the cytoskeleton, the complex transcription machinery, membrane-sorting systems, the nuclear pore, as well as some enzymes in the biochemical pathways.


title: Eukaryote

text: The timing of this series of events is hard to determine; Knoll (2006) suggests they developed approximately 1.6–2.1 billion years ago. Some acritarchs are known from at least 1.65 billion years ago, and the possible alga "Grypania" has been found as far back as 2.1 billion years ago. The "Geosiphon"-like fossil fungus "Diskagma" has been found in paleosols 2.2 billion years old.


title: Eukaryote

text: Organized living structures have been found in the black shales of the Palaeoproterozoic Francevillian B Formation in Gabon, dated at 2.1 billion years old. Eukaryotic life could have evolved at that time. Fossils that are clearly related to modern groups start appearing an estimated 1.2 billion years ago, in the form of a red algae, though recent work suggests the existence of fossilized filamentous algae in the Vindhya basin dating back perhaps to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago.