title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: Principal photography began on October 31, 2016, and concluded on December 7, 2016. Exterior scenes were shot on the grounds of the Madewood Plantation House, near Napoleonville, Louisiana. Interiors were filmed in actress Jennifer Coolidge's house in New Orleans.


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: The film had its world premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival; Coppola won the Best Director Award, making her the second woman to ever win in that category, 56 years after the first female director won. The film began a limited release on June 23, 2017, before expanding to a wide release on June 30, 2017.


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: "The Beguiled" grossed $10.6 million in the United States and Canada and $16.1 million in other territories for a total of $26.7 million.


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: In the film's limited opening weekend, it made $240,545 from four theaters (a per-theater gross of $60,136), finishing 20th at the box office. In its wide opening, it made $3.2 million from 674 theaters (an average of $4,694), finishing 8th at the box office.


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 78% based on 330 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""The Beguiled" adds just enough extra depth to its source material to set itself apart, and director Sofia Coppola's restrained touch is enlivened by strong performances from the cast." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film an "A−", saying, "Coppola's film is told with surgical precision and savage grace." Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" stated: "Other than to place slightly more emphasis on the female empowerment angle ... it's hard to detect a strong raison d'etre behind Sofia Coppola's slow-to-develop melodrama."


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: The film faced a wave of controversy and division, including accusations of 'whitewashing' the original story after she chose to both remove the supporting role of a black female slave from the film, as well as to choose Kirsten Dunst to portray a character who was biracial in the original novel. Coppola also faced criticism for minimizing the story of the people experiencing actual hardship in favor of depicting, albeit authentically, the lavish lifestyle of her protagonists, thus minimizing the importance of a weighty topic, which was not the first time one of Coppola's films was said to expose the sociocultural affordances of her own childhood. Coppola responded to these allegations by stating that she made the changes so as "not [to] brush over such an important topic in a light way," and that "[y]oung girls watch my films and this was not the depiction of an African American character I would want to show them." She furthermore cited the presence of young girls among her moviegoing audience, and described her version of the film as a reinterpretation, rather than a remake, of Don Siegel's 1971 adaption of the same book. Coppola wanted to tell the story of the male soldier entering into a classically southern and female environment from the point of view of the women in order to represent that experience. Coppola thought that the earlier version made the characters out to be unrealistic caricatures, which did not allow the viewer to connect with them.


title: The Beguiled (2017 film)

text: While some critics stated that Coppola intended "The Beguiled" as a feminist work, Coppola has explained that she was not in favor of that labeling. Though she has said she is happy if others see the film in this way, she sees it as a film, rather, that possesses a female perspective—an important distinction. "The Beguiled" was also made as a contrast to "The Bling Ring", and Coppola has explained the need to correct that film's harsh Los Angeles aesthetic with something more beautiful and poetic.


title: Scanners

text: Scanners is a 1981 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O'Neill, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan. In the film, "scanners" are psychics with unusual telepathic and telekinetic powers. ConSec, a purveyor of weaponry and security systems, searches out scanners to use them for its own purposes. The film's plot concerns the attempt by Darryl Revok (Ironside), a renegade scanner, to wage a war against ConSec. Another scanner, Cameron Vale (Lack), is dispatched by ConSec to stop Revok.


title: Scanners

text: "Scanners" premiered in January 1981 to lukewarm reviews from critics but became one of the first films produced in Canada to successfully compete with American films at the international box office. It brought Cronenberg and his controversial style of body horror attention from mainstream film audiences for the first time and has since been reevaluated as a cult classic. It is particularly well known for a scene that depicts Revok psychically causing a rival scanner's head to explode.


title: Scanners

text: Cameron Vale is a downtrodden vagrant who suffers from voices manifesting in his head. After involuntarily causing a woman to have a seizure with his telepathy, Vale is captured by the private military company ConSec and brought to Dr. Paul Ruth, who explains that Vale is one of 237 super-powered individuals known as "scanners" capable of telepathy, empathy, biopathy and psychokinesis. Ruth injects Vale with a drug called "ephemerol", which restores his sanity by temporarily inhibiting his scanning ability, and teaches him to control his abilities. ConSec is attempting to recruit scanners to stop a malevolent underground ring of scanners led by Darryl Revok, a former mental patient who trepanned his own skull to cope with the same uncontrollable stream of thoughts. Ruth explains that Revok's uncontrolled powers drove him mad and asks Vale to help infiltrate Revok's group. Revok, who is killing all opposing scanners, infiltrates a ConSec marketing event and psychically explodes the head of a domesticated ConSec scanner. ConSec security head Braedon Keller advocates shutting down ConSec's scanner research program but Ruth, who believes the scanners' abilities are the next stage of human evolution, disagrees and notes that the assassination demonstrates Revok's danger. Ruth brings in Vale and asks him to help infiltrate Revok's group.


title: Scanners

text: Unknown to Ruth, Keller is working for Revok as a mole and informs him of Ruth's infiltration plan. Revok dispatches assassins to follow Vale as he visits an unaffiliated scanner named Benjamin Pierce, a successful yet reclusive sculptor who copes with his abilities through his art. Revok's assassins murder Pierce, but Vale reads Pierce's dying brain and learns of a group of scanners, led by Kim Obrist, who oppose Revok's group. Vale tracks down Obrist and attends a meeting, but Revok's assassins strike again; only Vale and Obrist survive. Vale learns of a pharmaceutical company Biocarbon Amalgamate, which he soon discovers Revok is using to distribute large quantities of ephemerol under a ConSec computer program called "Ripe." Vale and Obrist return to ConSec to investigate, and Ruth admits that he founded Biocarbon Amalgamate and suggests Vale cyberpathically scan the computer system to learn more. Keller attacks Obrist and kills Ruth while Vale and Obrist flee the ConSec building. Vale cyberpathically hacks into the computer network through a telephone booth and downloads ephemerol shipment information directly into his mind. Keller is killed when the computer explodes during his attempt to intercept Vale.


title: Scanners

text: Vale and Obrist visit a doctor on the list of ephemerol recipients, where they discover that it is being prescribed to pregnant women, causing their children to become scanners. Revok and his men ambush and abduct Vale and Obrist, taking them to the Biocarbon Amalgamate plant. Revok reveals to Vale that they are both Ruth's children, and their father developed ephemerol as a sedative for pregnant women; Ruth learned about the drug's side-effect during his wife's pregnancies, and he made them the most powerful scanners in the world by administering a prototype dosage prior to abandoning them. Revok plans to create and lead a new generation of scanners to take over the world by mass-distributing ephemerol, but Vale refuses to join the plot accusing Revok of acting like his father, causing him to become enraged. A telepathic duel ensues between the brothers, during the course of which Vale's body is destroyed and burned. However, when Obrist encounters Revok, his head scar has vanished, his eyes are now blue, and he speaks in Vale's voice; Vale had somehow managed to switch his consciousness with Revok's at the last minute.


title: Scanners

text: William Hope, Christopher Britton, and Leon Herbert have uncredited appearances as Bicarbon Amalgamate employees. Neil Affleck has a minor role as a medical student.


title: Scanners

text: Scanners was based on David Cronenberg's scripts "The Sensitives" and "Telepathy 2000", which he planned to pitch to Roger Corman before beginning work on "The Brood". Cronenberg has called "Scanners" one of his most difficult films to make; most Canadian film productions of the 1970s and the early 1980s were funded through a 100-percent Capital Cost Allowance tax shield for investors passed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1974, and the film was rushed into production without a finished script or constructed sets in order to claim the subsidies. According to Cronenberg, he would spend mornings prior to filming writing scenes.


title: Scanners

text: The film was shot primarily on-location in Montreal, Quebec; and Toronto, Ontario. The lecture scene was filmed at Concordia University, and the Charles J. Des Baillets Water Treatment Plant doubled as the 'Bicarbon Amalgamate' compound. The "Future Electronique" building in Vaudreuil-Dorion provided the exterior of 'ConSec' headquarters. The sequence of Revok (Michael Ironside) hijacking a car and causing another to crash were shot on Rue de la Commune. Additional scenes were filmed in the Yorkville neighborhood. However, since the United States dominated the film industry and Canadian films were being marketed for international audiences, the film downplays its Canadian origin in favor of a generic "North American" setting. The only indicators of its location are a scene of Revok and Keller meeting at the Yorkdale station of the Toronto subway and some visible bilingual signs.


title: Scanners

text: Make-up artist Dick Smith ("The Exorcist", "Amadeus") provided prosthetics for the climactic scanner duel and the iconic exploding head effect.


title: Scanners

text: The iconic head explosion scene was the product of trial and error, eventually settling on a plaster skull and a gelatin exterior packed with "latex scraps, some wax, and just bits and bobs and a lot of stringy stuff that we figured would fly through the air a little better" as well as "leftover burgers." When other explosive techniques failed to give the desired effect, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told the crew to roll cameras and get inside the trucks with doors and windows closed; he then lay down behind the dummy and shot it in the back of the head with a shotgun.


title: Scanners

text: "Scanners" was released in the United States on January 14, 1981, by Avco Embassy Pictures, and grossed $2,758,147 from 387 theatres in its opening weekend. It grossed a total of $14,225,876 at the box office. A novelization by Leon Whiteson, "David Cronenberg's Scanners", was also released in 1981.


title: Scanners

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 70% based on , with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Scanners" is a dark sci-fi story with special effects that'll make your head explode." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 60% based on reviews from 8 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Scanners

text: Film professor Charles Derry, in his overview of the horror genre "Dark Dreams", cited "Scanners" as "an especially important masterwork" and calling it the "Psycho" of its day. In a contemporary review for "Ares Magazine", Christopher John commented that ""Scanners" is top-notch entertainment. It is haunting, exciting, shocking and literate – an unusual combination to discover in a film these days."


title: Scanners

text: Some reviews were less positive. Film critic Roger Ebert gave "Scanners" two out of four stars and wrote, "Scanners" is so lockstep that we are basically reduced to watching the special effects, which are good but curiously abstract, because we don't much care about the people they're happening around". In his review for "The New York Times", Vincent Canby wrote, "Had Mr. Cronenberg settled simply for horror, as John Carpenter did in his classic "Halloween" (though not in his not-so-classic "The Fog"), "Scanners" might have been a Grand Guignol treat. Instead he insists on turning the film into a mystery, and mystery demands eventual explanations that, when they come in "Scanners", underline the movie's essential foolishness". John Simon of "National Review" described "Scanners" as trash.


title: Scanners

text: A reassessment of "Scanners" in the 2012 issue of "CineAction" looks at the film in light of Cronenberg's use of allegory and parables in much of his work. The argument is made that Cronenberg uses iconic imagery that refers directly and indirectly to the thirty-something Scanners as 1960s political radicals, counterculture hippies, and as nascent Young Urban Professionals. As a result, the film can be seen "as an oblique reflection on what might happen when the counterculture becomes the dominant culture". Kim Newman noted in an essay for The Criterion Collection that at the same time the film rejects the conservative values of the 1980s and the nostalgia for the 1950s present in contemporary science-fiction films such as "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and "Back to the Future". The film's fictional drug ephemerol also mirrors the real-life thalidomide scandal, in which the popular West German medication thalidomide caused severe birth defects in children born to mothers prescribed the drug for morning sickness in Western Europe and Canada.


title: Scanners

text: Although "Scanners" was not nominated for any major awards, it did receive some recognition. The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films gave the film its Saturn Award in 1981 for "Best International Film", and, in addition, the "Best Make-Up" award went to Dick Smith in a tie with "Altered States". The film had also been nominated for "Best Special Effects".


title: Scanners

text: "Scanners" also won "Best International Fantasy Film" from Fantasporto in 1983, and was nominated for eight Genie Awards in 1982, but did not win any.


title: Scanners

text: Mondo released the Howard Shore score for "Scanners", alongside "The Brood", on vinyl; it features cover art by Sam Wolfe Conelly.


title: Scanners

text: "Scanners" spawned sequels and a series of spin-offs; a remake was announced in 2007, but had not gone into production. None of these projects has involved Cronenberg as director.


title: Scanners

text: In February 2007, Darren Lynn Bousman (director of "Saw II", "Saw III", and "Saw IV") was announced as director of a remake of the film, to be released by The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films. David S. Goyer was assigned to script the film. The film was planned for release on October 17, 2008, but the date came and went without further announcements and all of the parties involved have since moved on to other projects. In an interview with Bousman in 2013, he recalled that he would not make the film without Cronenberg's approval, which was not granted.


title: Scanners

text: Attempts to make a series include Dimension in 2011, Media Res and Bron Studios in 2017, and HBO, Media Res Studio, and Wayward Films in 2022.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: Michael Reeves (born November 20, 1997) is an American YouTuber and Twitch streamer best known for his “comedy-tech” YouTube videos. He is a member of OfflineTV, an online social entertainment group of content creators.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: Reeves was born to an American father and a Filipino mother. He grew up on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Reeves struggled academically, and directed his energy instead towards teaching himself to code. He briefly attended Northern Arizona University upon graduating high school but dropped out to focus on work, securing a job as a software contractor for the U.S. government.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: While Reeves was attending Northern Arizona University, he released his first video on YouTube, "The Robot That Shines a Laser in Your Eye," which went viral. His subsequent videos included a Roomba that swore upon colliding with a wall, a taser camera that shocked its subjects, a Twitter bot that purchased items from the replies that received the most likes, and a modification of Boston Dynamics’s robot dog Spot that urinated beer into a cup on command. In September 2018, Reeves moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles to pursue YouTube full time. Newsweek described Reeves as an "internet edge lord and coding genius."


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: In December 2019, it was announced that Reeves had joined OfflineTV, a collective of Twitch streamers creating content and living together in Los Angeles, California. In his first video with the group, Reeves created an iteration of laser tag titled "tazer tag" where players get shocked by a taser after being shot.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: In June 2020, Reeves began streaming on Twitch, where he streams both video games and technology work. His debut stream attracted over 30,000 concurrent viewers.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: With the financial support of a sponsor, OfflineTV purchased the canine-inspired robotic platform Spot from Boston Dynamics in late 2020. It has featured in several videos on both OfflineTV and Reeves' channel.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: In May 2022, as part of the charity boxing event "Creator Clash" hosted by iDubbbz, Reeves participated in a boxing match against fellow content creator Graham Stephan. Reeves won the bout by TKO in the second of five rounds.


title: Michael Reeves (Internet personality)

text: In September 2018, Reeves moved to Los Angeles and began rooming with fellow comedy-tech YouTuber William Osman. In February 2020, Reeves announced his relationship with fellow OfflineTV member, LilyPichu.


title: Sarah

text: Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woman, renowned for her hospitality and beauty, the wife and half-sister of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac. Sarah has her feast day on 1 September in the Catholic Church, 19 August in the Coptic Orthodox Church, 20 January in the LCMS, and 12 and 20 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church.


title: Sarah

text: According to Book of Genesis 20:12, in conversation with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar, Abraham reveals Sarah to be both his wife and his half-sister, stating that the two share a father but not a mother. Such unions were later explicitly banned in the Book of Leviticus ().


title: Sarah

text: This would make Sarah the daughter of Terah and the half-sister of not only Abraham but Haran and Nahor. She would also have been the aunt of Lot, Milcah, Iscah, and Bethuel, by both blood and marriage. By her union with Abraham, she had one child, Isaac. After her death, Abraham married Keturah, whose identity biblical scholars debate (that is, whether or not she was actually Hagar), and by her had at least six more children.


title: Sarah

text: In the biblical narrative, Sarah is the wife of Abraham. In two places in the narrative he says Sarah is his sister (Genesis 12:10 through 13:1, in the encounter with Pharaoh, and Genesis 20, in the encounter with Abimelech). Knowing Sarah to be a great beauty and fearing that the Pharaoh would kill Abraham to be with Sarah, Abraham asks Sarah to tell the Pharaoh that she is his sister (Genesis 17).


title: Sarah

text: She was originally called Sarai. In the narrative of the covenant of the pieces in Genesis 17, during which Yahweh promises Abram that he and Sarai will have a son, Abram is renamed as Abraham and Sarai is renamed as Sarah. There are folk etymologies that explain their old and new names.


title: Sarah

text: Terah, with Abram (as he was then called), Sarai and Lot, departed for Canaan, but stopped in a place named Haran, where Terah remained until he died at the age of 205. Yahweh had told Abram to leave his country and his father's house for a land that he would show him, promising to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless those who blessed him, and curse "him" that curses him. Following God's command, Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and the wealth and slaves that they had acquired, and traveled to Shechem in Canaan. Abram was 75 at this time.


title: Sarah

text: There was a severe famine in the land of Canaan, so Abram and Lot and their households travelled south to Egypt. On the journey to Egypt, Abram instructed Sarai to identify herself only as his sister, fearing that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his wife, saying,


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a 2004 action horror film directed by Alexander Witt and written by Paul W. S. Anderson. A direct sequel to "Resident Evil" (2002), it is the second installment in the "Resident Evil" film series, which is loosely based on the video game series of the same name. The film marks Witt's feature directorial debut; Anderson, the director of the first film, turned down the job due to other commitments, though stayed on as one of its producers. Milla Jovovich reprises her role as Alice, and is joined by Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine and Oded Fehr as Carlos Olivera.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" is set directly after the events of the first film, where Alice escaped from an underground facility overrun by zombies. She now bands together with other survivors to escape the zombie outbreak which has spread to the nearby Raccoon City. The film borrows elements from several games in the "Resident Evil" series, such as the characters Valentine and Olivera and the villain Nemesis. Filming took place in Toronto at locations including Toronto City Hall and Prince Edward Viaduct.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" received "generally unfavorable reviews" on Metacritic, and became the lowest-rated film in the "Resident Evil" series on Rotten Tomatoes, with a rating of 19%. Earning $129 million worldwide on a $45 million budget, it surpassed the box office gross of the original film. It was followed by "" in 2007.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: In the previous film, former security operative Alice and environmental activist Matt Addison fought to escape an underground genetic research facility called the Hive, the source of a zombie outbreak. The pair were part of an attempt to expose illegal experiments being performed there by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation. The film ended as Alice and Addison were taken into custody by Umbrella and separated.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Umbrella sends a team to the Hive to investigate what happened there; the team is overrun by zombies who quickly spread to the nearby Raccoon City. Umbrella reacts by quarantining the city and evacuating vital personnel from it. Angela Ashford, the daughter of Umbrella researcher Dr. Charles Ashford, goes missing after her security car is involved in a collision while being extracted from the city. Meanwhile, disgraced Raccoon City Police Department Special Tactics And Rescue Squad (STARS) operative Jill Valentine returns to her former precinct to encourage her fellow officers to evacuate Raccoon City. Alice awakens in a deserted hospital and wanders the city in search of supplies, while Umbrella uses the only bridge out of the area to evacuate civilians. At the bridge, Valentine meets with her former partner, Sgt. Payton Wells. A civilian turns into a zombie, biting and infecting Wells. In response to the virus reaching the bridge, Major Timothy Cain, leader of the Umbrella forces in Raccoon City, seals the exit and forces the residents to return to the city.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: After being abandoned by their employer following a failed attempt to rescue a civilian, Umbrella soldiers Carlos Olivera and Nicholai Ginovaef team up with the surviving STARS operatives to repel zombie attacks. Their position is overrun, and Olivera is bitten and infected. At a separate location, Valentine, Wells, and news reporter, Terri Morales, are about to be overrun, though they are saved by Alice. Umbrella deploys a heavily mutated experimental supersoldier, Nemesis, who kills the remaining STARS members before searching for Alice. Dr. Ashford hacks into the city's CCTV system and uses it to contact Alice and the other survivors, offering to arrange their evacuation from the city in exchange for help in locating his daughter. He makes an identical offer to Olivera and Ginovaef and explains that Umbrella intends to rid Raccoon City of the zombie infection by destroying it using a nuclear bomb.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: On their way to Angela's location, Alice and the others are ambushed by Nemesis. Valentine kills Wells after he turns into a zombie. Alice engages Nemesis but is wounded and forced to retreat separately, luring Nemesis away from the rest of the group. Valentine and Morales continue, picking up stranded civilian L.J. en route. Valentine meets Olivera, and they find and rescue Angela, although Morales and Ginovaef are both killed. Angela reveals that the zombie outbreak is the result of a virus created by her father to treat the genetic disease from which she suffers: only by regularly injecting herself with the virus is Angela able to survive, though she must also take anti-virus serum to prevent turning into a zombie. Alice uses some of the anti-virus to cure Olivera. Dr. Ashford gives Alice the location of an extraction point where a helicopter awaits. The group makes it to the rendezvous point, but are ambushed by Umbrella forces. Major Cain kills Dr. Ashford and forces Alice, whom he reveals was augmented by the T-virus, to fight Nemesis. Alice gains the upper hand over the supersoldier, though she ceases fighting after realizing that he is Matt Addison, mutated by Umbrella's experiments.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Nemesis turns on Major Cain and attacks the Umbrella troops, but is killed protecting Alice. The rest of the survivors seize the helicopter; they eject Major Cain from it, and he gets killed by the zombies, including a zombified Dr. Ashford. As the survivors escape, the nuclear bomb detonates over the city, and the resulting blast wave causes the helicopter to crash. Alice sacrifices herself to save Angela and is impaled on a metal pole. T.V. footage attributes the nuclear attack to a meltdown of the city's nuclear power plant, covering up Umbrella's involvement. Alice wakes up in an Umbrella research facility and escapes with help from Olivera, Valentine, L.J., and Angela. As they are escaping, Dr. Alexander Isaacs, a top-ranking Umbrella employee, reveals that Alice's escape is part of Umbrella's plan for her.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Media studies scholar Stephen Harper said that both "Apocalypse" and the first "Resident Evil" film present "highly ambiguous" perspectives on the themes of corporate power, race, gender and sexuality. Describing them both as postmodern and postfeminist texts, Harper argued that, despite containing some progressive elements including feminist themes that undermine patriarchal power, the films also played into several stereotypes. He said the relationship between Alice and Valentine differs from interactions between male characters in action films as seen by a lack of camaraderie and co-operation between the two and, unlike male characters in "Apocalypse", both Valentine and Alice are separately shown being "protective and nurturing" of the young Angela; Harper stated even violent action heroines are often portrayed with such characteristics. Harper also criticized how their revealing clothing and camera angles objectified Alice and Valentine throughout the film, and noted that through the African-American character L.J. "Apocalypse" showed an "ironic awareness" of racist stereotypes, though "it stops short of challenging them and, indeed, often deploys them".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Douglas Kellner from the University of California in Los Angeles argued the film's ending played "on fears of out of control nuclear technology and government cover-ups". A news segment shown in the film, which claimed that reports of corporate wrongdoing were false and that people should instead be thanking the Umbrella Corporation, was "a barely disguised allegory of lying by corporations and the state during the Bush-Cheney era".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: While promoting the first "Resident Evil" film in late February 2002, Milla Jovovich and director Paul W. S. Anderson discussed a potential sequel. Anderson said he began writing the screenplay for the second film after completing the first, and had plans for Alice to meet up with Jill Valentine. Jovovich confirmed her character would return in the sequel if the first film was successful. In early March, Eric Mabius, who played Matt Addison in the first film, stated a sequel was confirmed, would be set in Raccoon City, and would feature the Nemesis character. The sequel was officially greenlit by Sony Pictures in mid-2002 but Anderson chose not to direct due to his commitments to "Alien vs. Predator" (2004). He stayed on as the film's screenwriter and as one of its producers. Anderson used the game "" as the basis of the story and wrote in elements from his favorite films, such as the perimeter wall in "Escape from New York" and the deserted city in "The Omega Man". Alexander Witt was hired to direct the film, marking his feature film directorial debut. The script had already been completed when Witt was hired. He made some suggestions to Anderson and fellow producer Jeremy Bolt, which resulted in some minor script changes.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Jovovich was the only person to reprise a role from the first film. It was initially reported that Mabius would be reprising his role as Matt Addison in the form of portraying Nemesis, but the part ended up going to Matthew G. Taylor. Mabius still appears via stock footage from the previous film used in a flashback scene. The original film did not feature any characters from the games, but it had always been the intention to add several to "Apocalypse". Gina Philips was originally to appear in the film portraying the character Claire Redfield, but she eventually turned down the role which was then given to Emily Bergl, who left before production began. The character was dropped, but did appear in the film's sequel, "" (2007), portrayed by Ali Larter. For the role of Valentine, Anderson first considered Natasha Henstridge, but she was unavailable; he then considered Mira Sorvino though she declined. The role eventually went to Sienna Guillory who prepared for the role by studying Valentine's movements and posture in the games. The role of L.J. was written specifically for Snoop Dogg, though he dropped out of production and was replaced by Mike Epps; the character was rewritten to suit Epps's personality. Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody was given a cameo as a zombie Ginovaef kills.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: The film was shot in Ontario, Canada; Toronto and its surrounding suburbs stood in for Raccoon City. Cinematography was performed by Christian Sebaldt and Derek Rogers, and filming took place at 47 locations. Very few sets were made for the film. Several city blocks were closed down and the Prince Edward Viaduct bridge was closed for three days so scenes could be filmed on it. Scenes were shot outside Toronto City Hall for two weeks. Jovovich and Matthew Taylor spent several hours a day for six weeks practicing martial arts together for the fight scene between Alice and Nemesis. The fight was originally scripted to appear in a train station and focus heavily on interaction with props, though was eventually shot in an open space outside Toronto City Hall after Witt decided to give the fight less screen time. Actors portraying zombies spent four days training with choreographers at a zombie "boot camp" to make sure they all had consistent behavior and movements. Anderson and other crew members considered making the zombies move faster but decided that it would be breaking a fundamental element of the games. Anderson only appeared on set for a couple of days due to other commitments, though he communicated with Witt via email about several dialogue and production changes during filming. The script's original ending had Alice escaping from Umbrella on her own via greater use of her telekinetic powers before meeting up with Valentine. Half of the scene was filmed before the ending was rewritten.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: The original "Resident Evil" film took only broad elements from the games; "Apocalypse" incorporated many specific features from them, such as the re-enactment of scenes. The introductory cutscene of "" featuring Claire Redfield inspired the scene where Alice runs through a building while an Umbrella helicopter fires. The introduction of "Resident Evil 3: Nemesis" inspired another scene where Raccoon City is overrun by zombies, and the police and Umbrella soldiers are fighting back. Valentine's outfit in the film, which consisted of a tube top and miniskirt, is based on her costume from "Nemesis". Anderson considered several ways to justify having the revealing costume in the storyline, such as making it her undercover outfit, though eventually decided to ignore the issue on the grounds that anyone questioning her attire "probably shouldn't be watching a "Resident Evil" movie". The film also references several aspects from the original game and "Resident Evil 2", such as locations, place names, character moves, props, and camera perspectives.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Special effects for the film included green screens, computer-generated imagery (CGI), matte paintings, tracking, wire removal and scale models. The Nemesis character was created with a costume, and the only CGI effect added was an adjustment to his eye. Taylor was chosen as his height at and weight of made him suitable to portray the character. The costume was specifically built for his body and weighed about . Despite the character's height, aspect ratios were still modified to make him appear 10–20% larger in certain scenes. The Lickers, a type of mutated zombie, were completely CGI. The effects team had originally used animatronics for some of the scenes, but were unhappy with the results. C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures won the contract to animate the Lickers, beating several other effects companies who had submitted preliminary designs, and described it as the most challenging special effect they created for the film. The studio created over 250 special effects including superimposing Jovovich's face onto a stunt double; Jovovich performed most of her own stunts though her insurance company would not allow her to attempt several of the more dangerous ones. Frantic Films created 78 special effects for the film including tracer fire, muzzle flashes, lasers and slow motion, using effects programs Eyeon Fusion, Autodesk 3ds Max as well as in-house software. Mr. X Inc. created additional effects including the scene showing the destruction of the Toronto City Hall building. Four months were spent making a 1/6 scale model of the building with 1,600 panes of glass, each of which was wired with an explosive to create the final effect. Digital intermediate work was completed by the Computer Film Company. Colors in the film were edited heavily in post-production, giving it a darker look overall while enhancing the brightness of blood and gore. The colors of the Nemesis costume were also tweaked to make it look more lifelike and Alice and Valentine were given modifications such as increasing the glow of their skin and redness of their lips.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: The soundtrack for "Apocalypse" was released on August 31, 2004, and contained alternative metal songs both featured in the film and "inspired" by it. Johnny Loftus of AllMusic gave the soundtrack three stars out of five, saying it was an "unscrupulous moneymaker" that predictably catered to the film's target audience of teenage boys, adding the "aggression, mania, and generally apocalyptic tone of this material fits well with a movie based on a video game about blowing away crazy zombies".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Jeff Danna composed the film's score performed by the London Philharmonia Orchestra. It was released on September 28, 2004. Mike Brennan from Soundtrack.net gave the score 2½ stars out of five, praising the blend of orchestral and electronic styles, though saying it "could have easily benefited from some more thematic development and a bit more variation in the sound of the music".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Marcus Nispel was hired to create a teaser trailer, titled "Regenerate". It purports to be advertising a skin rejuvenation product created by the Umbrella Corporation, before the woman in the commercial turns into a zombie. By May 2004, the teaser had been downloaded 8.5million times from the film's official website. Part of the teaser was shown in the film briefly on a television in the background and a part of it also appears in a mid-credits scene. The film's theatrical trailer was released on Yahoo! Movies in July 2004. A novelization of the film written by Keith DeCandido was published by Simon & Schuster the following month. Screen Gems created a faux newspaper, "The Raccoon City Times", to promote the film.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: "Apocalypse" opened at number one in the United States on September 10, 2004, where it grossed over $23million on its opening weekend. The film also opened at number one in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Mexico, and performed well in Japan, France and Brazil, though the horror film "Saw" overshadowed it at the box office in the United Kingdom, and it received a lackluster reception in Sweden, where it grossed $473,550. Earning over $6million in Canada, "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" was the highest grossing, domestically produced Canadian film in 2004. "Apocalypse" went on to earn $129,394,835 worldwide against a budget of $45million, surpassing the earnings of the first film which generated $102,984,862.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, of critic reviews are positive, which makes this film the lowest-rated entry in the series. The site's critics consensus reads: ""Resident Evil: Apocalypse" has lots of action, but not much in terms of plot or creativity." According to Metacritic, which sampled 26 reviews and calculated a score of 35 out of 100 based on 26 reviews, the film received "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on a scale of A to F.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Leonard Maltin rated the film a "bomb" in his book "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide" and called it a "tiresome" sequel that ended up playing more like a remake. Roger Ebert gave the film a score of half a star out of four, calling it "an utterly meaningless waste of time" that lacked any wit or imagination and also failed to provide entertaining violence or special effects. He subsequently named the film the eighth worst film of 2004. Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" gave the film one star out of four, concluding that even for people interested in the biological horror genre, "Apocalypse" was "pretty generic stuff".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Dave Kehr of "The New York Times" gave the film a positive review, praising Anderson's screenplay and describing Witt's direction as "fast, funny, smart and highly satisfying in terms of visceral impact". M. E. Russell of "The Oregonian" said, "The bad news? The movie is monumentally stupid. The good news? It's a fun kind of stupid". "The A.V. Club"s Nathan Rabin said that it progressed too slowly to be considered a good film, "but when Jovovich finally starts kicking zombified ass, it becomes good enough". Ben Kenigsberg of "The Village Voice" said the film is "not without its moments of elemental dread" though he complained there was too much action and padding and not enough irony.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Gregory Kirschling of "Entertainment Weekly", who gave the film a 'D−' rating, praised Jovovich but felt that "the rest of the cast was strictly straight-to-DVD"; "Cinefantastique", on the other hand, commented that Jovovich looked bored and that Guillory's portrayal of Jill Valentine was the film's "saving grace".


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: In 2009, "Time" ranked the film as one of the top ten worst video game films. While criticizing all three films released in the "Resident Evil" series at the time, they concluded that "Apocalypse" deserved their vote "Because, like any sequel, it’s an enabler ... sequels to bad movies just enable further sequels to be considered". In 2016, separate journalists from Bloody Disgusting ranked it as both the best and worst film in the series. In 2017, Michael Nordine of "TheWrap" ranked it as the worst film in the series, saying its only redeeming features were the fact it expanded the series and the "awesomely stupid" fight between Alice and Nemesis.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" won Best Sound Editing and the Golden Reel Award at the 25th Genie Awards, and was also nominated for Best Overall Sound. It was nominated for Best Sound Editing in a feature film by the Directors Guild of Canada, and for Best Make-Up at the 31st Saturn Awards. For composing the film's score, Jeff Danna was awarded the SOCAN International Film Music Award in 2007 and 2009.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: The film was released on DVD and VHS in North America on December 28, 2004. The DVD release included three audio commentaries, 20 deleted scenes, several featurettes and a blooper reel. DVD Talk awarded the film 3½ stars out of five for both video quality and special features. Releases on UMD and Blu-ray Disc formats followed in 2005 and 2007, respectively. High-Def Digest gave the Blu-ray release three stars out of five for video quality and 3½ stars for special features.


title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

text: Special "Resurrection Editions" of both "Resident Evil" (2002) and "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" were released in a two-disc set on September 4, 2007. An exclusive scene for the then upcoming sequel "Resident Evil: Extinction" (2007) was included, along with several other bonus features. Trilogy sets containing the first three films were released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2008. "The Resident Evil Collection" consisting of the first four films was released in September 2012 on DVD and Blu-ray, a version containing the first five films was released on DVD and Blu-ray in December 2012, and "Resident Evil The Complete Collection" containing all six films was released on Blu-ray in May 2017.


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: Shibani Dandekar Akhtar (born 27 August 1980) is an Indian-born Australian singer, actress, host and model. She began her career working as a television host on American television. Following her return to India, she began hosting several shows and events on Hindi television, besides working as a model and singer. She was one of the co-hosts of the "2019 ICC Cricket World Cup". She was also a contestant on "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 5" (2012) and "" (2017).


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: Dandekar was born in Pune as the eldest daughter into a Marathi family. Her father Shashidhar Dandekar is a theatre actor in Australia and her mother Sulabha Dandekar works in Qantas Airways, Australia. She has two sisters, Anusha Dandekar, an actress-singer working in Bollywood, and Apeksha Dandekar. Dandekar along with her sisters formed a music band named D-Major. Dandekar grew up in Australia and Africa for the majority of her childhood.


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: Dandekar started dating Bollywood filmmaker and actor Farhan Akhtar in 2018, just after his divorce from Adhuna Bhabani in 2017. On 19 February 2022, they got married in a non-religious ceremony at Farhan's father's farmhouse in Khandala.


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: In 2001, she moved to New York City and began working in American television. She hosted three nationally syndicated television shows, "Namaste America", "V Desi" and the "Asian Variety Show". In this role, she introduced Bollywood's biggest stars to American audiences and also hosted "An Evening With Shah Rukh Khan in Atlantic City". She has been a contestant on "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa", the India-based "Dancing With the Stars" on the BBC network and hosted in India on Colors TV.


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: She returned to India and continued her work as a television host, while venturing into modelling as well.


title: Shibani Dandekar

text: Apart from music and modeling, Dandekar's love for anchoring shows saw her as host for major events such as the Maxim Hot 100, Nike, Rolls Royce, Puma, Mercedes, Toyota, Horlicks, HSBC, Spice Mobile, JBL, MTV Coke Studio, Nivea and the Sony Launch of the tribute to Michael Jackson's "This is It". Dandekar has anchored popular shows including the lifestyle shows "After Hours" on Zee Cafe, "Men 2.0" on AXN, ZoOm's "Let's Design", "India's Sexiest Bachelor" on Big CBS Prime, as well as its extension "India's Glam Diva" on Big CBS Love. Dandekar also anchored the Indian produced "Grammy Nominees Special" on VH1 as a lead-up to the 53rd Grammy Awards. Since 2011, she has been co-hosting the show "Extraa Innings – T20" on Sony Max Television during the Indian Premier League matches; she won a nomination at the 11th Indian Television Academy Awards in the category Best Anchor Game/Quiz Show. She is hosting the Mission cover shot for National Geography channel. She did a dance number "Hi Poli Saajuk " for 2014's Marathi movie "Timepass", followed by "36 Nakhrewali" in "Sangharsh". She played the role 'Zoya' in the movie "Roy" which was released on 13 February 2015. In 2017, Shibani participated in and eliminated in the first week at 12th place. In 2019, she hosted the opening ceremony of ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 along with Andrew Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness in which her husband Farhan Akhtar also appeared as a guest representing India.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a 1953 American musical comedy film based on the 1949 stage musical of the same name. It was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, with Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, George Winslow, Taylor Holmes and Norma Varden in supporting roles.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: The film is filled with comedic situations and musical numbers, choreographed by Jack Cole, while the music was written by Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Adamson, Jule Styne and Leo Robin. The songs by Styne and Robin are from the Broadway show, while the songs by Carmichael and Adamson were written especially for the film. Despite the film's title, Monroe was paid her usual contract salary of $500 a week, while Russell, the better known actress at the time, earned $200,000.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: While Russell's down-to-earth, sharp wit has been observed by most critics, it was Monroe's turn as the gold-digging Lorelei Lee for which the film is often remembered. Monroe's rendition of the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" and her pink dress are considered iconic, and the performance has inspired homages by Madonna, Beyoncé, Geri Halliwell, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Anna Nicole Smith, Christina Aguilera, Ariana Grande, Kylie Jenner, Rachel Bloom, Miss Piggy, Normani and Megan Thee Stallion.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are American showgirls and best friends, although the two are very different. Lorelei thinks more of a man's financial wealth and likes men who can support her passion for diamonds, like her fiancé, Gus, who can provide all of her financial "needs". Dorothy prefers men who are good-looking and fit, and does not care about their wealth.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Lorelei plans to wed Gus in France, but the two are forbidden to travel together by Gus's strict father, Esmond Sr., who despises Lorelei. Lorelei decides to travel to France with or without Gus, and before she leaves he gives her a letter of credit to cover expenses upon her arrival, and promises to later meet her in France. However, he also warns her to behave, noting that his father will prohibit their marriage if rumors of misdeeds make their way to Esmond Sr. Unbeknownst to both of them, Esmond Sr. has hired a private detective, Ernie Malone, to spy on Lorelei.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: During the Atlantic crossing, Malone immediately falls in love with Dorothy, but Dorothy has already been drawn to the members of the (all-male) Olympic team. Lorelei meets the rich and foolish Sir Francis "Piggy" Beekman, the owner of a diamond mine, and is attracted by his wealth; although Piggy is married, Lorelei naively returns his geriatric flirtations, which annoys his wife, Lady Beekman.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Lorelei invites Piggy to the cabin she shares with Dorothy, whereupon he recounts his travels to Africa. While Piggy demonstrates how a python squeezes a goat by hugging Lorelei, Malone spies on them through the window and takes pictures of the two, but is caught by Dorothy as he walks away nonchalantly. She tells Lorelei, who fears for her reputation. They come up with a scheme to intoxicate Malone and then search him to recover the incriminating film while he is unconscious. They find the film in his pants, and Lorelei promptly prints and hides the negatives. Revealing her success to Piggy, she persuades him to give her Lady Beekman's tiara as a thank you gift. However, Malone reveals he had planted a recording device in Lorelei's cabin, and has heard her discussion with Piggy about the pictures and the tiara. Malone implies that Lorelei is a golddigger and, when Dorothy scolds him for his actions, admits that he himself is a liar. However, Dorothy reveals to Lorelei she is falling for Malone, after which Lorelei chastises her for choosing a poor man when she could easily have a rich one.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: The ship arrives in France, and Lorelei and Dorothy spend time shopping. However, the pair discover that Lorelei's letter of credit has been cancelled and are then kicked out of their hotel due to the information Malone shared with Esmond Sr. The duo are forced to find work as showgirls in Paris, headlining a lavish revue. When Gus shows up at their show, Lorelei rebuffs him, after which she performs "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend", the musical number whose lyrics explain why and how women need to pursue men with money. Meanwhile, Lady Beekman has filed charges regarding her missing tiara, and Lorelei is arraigned for theft. Dorothy persuades Lorelei to return the tiara, but the pair discover it is missing from her jewelry box. Piggy tries to weasel out of his part in the affair when Malone catches him at the airport.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Dorothy stalls for time in court by pretending to be Lorelei, disguised in a blonde wig and mimicking her friend's breathy voice and mannerisms. When Malone appears in court and is about to unmask "Lorelei" as Dorothy, she reveals to Malone in covert language that she, Dorothy, loves him but would never forgive him if he were to do anything to hurt her best friend, Lorelei. Malone withdraws his comments, but then reveals Piggy has the tiara, exonerating Lorelei.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Back at the nightclub, Lorelei impresses Esmond Sr. with a speech on the subject of paternal money, and also makes an argument that if Esmond Sr. had a daughter instead of a son, he would want the best for her, to which he agrees and consents to his son's marriage to Lorelei. The film closes with a double wedding for Lorelei and Dorothy, who marry Gus and Malone, respectively.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Although Hawks is credited as the sole director of the film, Russell and assistant choreographer Gwen Verdon contend that Monroe's iconic musical number, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", was actually directed by choreographer Cole. Russell said, "Howard Hawks had nothing to do with the musical numbers. He was not even there." Hawks himself confirmed as much in an interview with author Joseph McBride, "I did a musical called "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", and I didn't do the production numbers. I didn't have any desire to." According to Monroe's last interview before her death, Russell was paid $200,000 for the film, while Monroe was paid her then usual $500-per-week salary.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: The film earned $5.3 million at the box office worldwide, and was the seventh highest-grossing film of 1953, with $5.1 million grossed in North America, while Monroe's next feature, "How to Marry a Millionaire", was the fourth-highest.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: The film received positive reviews from critics. Monroe and Russell were both praised for their performances as Lorelei and Dorothy even among those critics who were not otherwise impressed by the film; the characters have entered pop culture. Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" called Howard Hawks' direction "uncomfortably cloddish and slow" and found the gags for Russell "devoid of character or charm," but concluded, "And yet, there is that about Miss Russell and also about Miss Monroe that keeps you looking at them even when they have little or nothing to do." "Variety" wrote that Hawks "maintains a racy air that brings the musical off excellently at a pace that helps cloak the fact that it's rather lightweight, but sexy, stuff. However, not much more is needed when patrons can look at Russell-Monroe lines as displayed in slick costumes and Technicolor." "Harrison's Reports" wrote: "Both Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are nothing short of sensational in the leading roles. They not only act well, but the sexy manner in which they display their song, dance and pulchritude values just about sets the screen on fire and certainly is crowd-pleasing, judging by the thunderous applause at the preview after each of the well-staged musical numbers." John McCarten of "The New Yorker" wrote that the two leads "have a good deal of enthusiasm, and occasionally their exuberance offsets the tedium of one long series of variations on the sort of anatomical joke that used to amuse the customers of Minsky so inordinately." Britain's "Monthly Film Bulletin" praised Jane Russell for her "enjoyable Dorothy, full of gusto and good nature," but thought that the film had been compromised from the play "by the casting of Marilyn Monroe, by the abandonment of the 20s period and the incongruous up-to-date streamlining, by inflating some bright, witty songs into lavish production numbers, and by tamely ending the whole thing by letting two true loves conventionally come true. There is too, a lack of grasp in Howard Hawks' handling, which is scrappy and uninventive."


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 98% based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell's sparkling magnetism, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" is a delightfully entertaining 1950s musical." German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder declared it one of the ten best films ever made.


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Recent criticism has noted the film is groundbreaking for its depiction of female friendships and agency. Writing for "Bust" magazine, Samantha Mann wrote, “Throughout the entire film, the main characters Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy (Jane Russell) display consistent loyalty to one another. There is no back-stabbing, shit-talking, or degrading one another to come out on top or gain the affection of a man. The women remain steadfast in their loyalty to one another, and tolerate no one speaking ill of the other. Providing support and comfort to one another takes priority over finding ways to secure their desired men.” Caroline Siede of "The A.V. Club" wrote the story may appear to be a “90-minute misogynistic punchline about the desperate schemes of two devious social-climbing showgirls, ditzy Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and witty man-eater Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell). Thankfully, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" is quite the opposite. It’s a cheeky social satire about gender and class that doubles as a celebration of female ingenuity and solidarity, all glammed up in a ballgown and diamonds.”


title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953 film)

text: Monroe and Russell were accorded the honor of putting their hand and foot prints in cement in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a spectacle that got a lot of publicity for both actresses and for the film.


title: 2

text: 2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultures.


title: 2

text: The digit used in the modern Western world to represent the number 2 traces its roots back to the Indic Brahmic script, where "2" was written as two horizontal lines. The modern Chinese and Japanese languages (and Korean Hanja) still use this method. The Gupta script rotated the two lines 45 degrees, making them diagonal. The top line was sometimes also shortened and had its bottom end curve towards the center of the bottom line. In the Nagari script, the top line was written more like a curve connecting to the bottom line. In the Arabic Ghubar writing, the bottom line was completely vertical, and the digit looked like a dotless closing question mark. Restoring the bottom line to its original horizontal position, but keeping the top line as a curve that connects to the bottom line leads to our modern digit.


title: 2

text: The word "two" is derived from the Old English words (feminine), (neuter), and (masculine, which survives today in the form twain).


title: 2

text: The pronunciation , like that of "who" is due to the labialization of the vowel by the "w" (combare from womb), which then disappeared before the related sound. The successive stages of pronunciation for the Old English would thus be , , , , and finally .


title: 2

text: Two is the smallest prime number, and the only even prime number, and for this reason it is sometimes called "the oddest prime". As the smallest prime number, it is also the smallest non-zero pronic number, and the only pronic prime. The next prime is three, which makes two and three the only two consecutive prime numbers. Two is the first prime number that does not have a proper twin prime with a difference two, while three is the first such prime number to have a twin prime. In consequence, the first pair of twin primes, three and five, encase four in-between, which is the square of two, or formula_1. Two is the first Sophie Germain prime, the first factorial prime, the first Lucas prime, and the first Ramanujan prime. It is also a Motzkin number, a Bell number, an all-Harshad number, a meandric number, a semi-meandric number, an open meandric number, and the third (or fourth) Fibonacci number.


title: 2

text: An integer is called "even" if it is divisible by 2. For integers written in a numeral system based on an even number such as decimal, divisibility by 2 is easily tested by merely looking at the last digit. If it is even, then the whole number is even. In particular, when written in the decimal system, all multiples of 2 will end in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8.


title: 2

text: Two is the base of the binary system, the numeral system with the fewest tokens that allows denoting a natural number substantially more concisely (with formula_2 formula_3 tokens) than a direct representation by the corresponding count of a single token (with formula_3 tokens). This binary number system is used extensively in computing.


title: 2

text: The square root of 2 was the first known irrational number. Taking the square root of a number is such a common and essential mathematical operation, that the spot on the root sign where the index would normally be written for cubic and other roots, may simply be left blank for square roots, as it is tacitly understood.


title: 2

text: Powers of two are central to the concept of Mersenne primes, and important to computer science. Two is the first Mersenne prime exponent. They are also essential to Fermat primes and Pierpont primes, which have consequences in the constructability of regular polygons using basic tools.


title: 2

text: In a set-theoretical construction of the natural numbers, two is identified with the set formula_5. This latter set is important in category theory: it is a subobject classifier in the category of sets.


title: 2

text: A Cantor space is a topological space formula_6 homeomorphic to the Cantor set. The countably infinite product topology of the simplest discrete two-point space, formula_7, is the traditional elementary example of a Cantor space.


title: 2

text: An number is "deficient" when the sum of its divisors is less than twice the number, whereas an abundant number has a sum of its proper divisors that is larger than the number itself. Primitive abundant numbers are abundant numbers whose proper divisors are all deficient.


title: 2

text: An number is "perfect" if it is equal to its aliquot sum, or the sum of all of its positive divisors excluding the number itself. This is equivalent to describing a perfect number formula_3 as having a sum of divisors formula_9 equal to formula_10.


title: 2

text: Two has the unique property that formula_11 up through any level of hyperoperation, here denoted in Knuth's up-arrow notation, all equivalent to formula_12


title: 2

text: Two consecutive twos (as in "22" for "two twos"), or equivalently "2-2", is the only fixed point of John Conway's look-and-say function.


title: 2

text: Two is the only number formula_3 such that the sum of the reciprocals of the natural powers of formula_3 equals itself. In symbols,


title: 2

text: There are no formula_19 magic squares, and as such they are the only null formula_3 by formula_3 magic square set.


title: 2

text: In two dimensions, a digon is a polygon with two sides (or edges) and two vertices. On a circle, it is a tessellation with two antipodal points and 180° arc edges.


title: 2

text: The simplest tessellation in two-dimensional space, though an improper tessellation, is that of two formula_22-sided apeirogons joined along all their edges, coincident about a line that divides the plane in two. This order-2 apeirogonal tiling is the arithmetic limit of the family of dihedra formula_23.


title: 2

text: For any polyhedron homeomorphic to a sphere, the Euler characteristic is formula_24, where formula_25 is the number of vertices, formula_26 is the number of edges, and formula_27 is the number of faces. A double torus has a Euler characteristic of formula_28, on the other hand, and a non-orientable surface of like genus formula_29 has a characteristic formula_30.


title: 2

text: The long diagonal of a regular hexagon is of length two when its sides are of unit length. Whereas a square of unit side length has a diagonal equal to the square root of two, and a cube of unit side length has a space diagonal equal to the square root of three, a space diagonal inside a tesseract measures two when its side lengths are of length one.


title: 2

text: There are two known sublime numbers, which are numbers with a perfect number of factors, whose sum itself yields a perfect number. 12 is one of the two sublime numbers, with the other being 76 digits long.


title: 2

text: In pre-1972 Indonesian and Malay orthography, "2" was shorthand for the reduplication that forms plurals: "orang" (person), "orang-orang" or "orang2" (people). In Astrology, Taurus is the second sign of the Zodiac. For Pythagorean numerology (a pseudoscience) the number 2 represents duality, the positive and negative poles that come into balance and seek harmony.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The Golden Triangle is the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. The name "Golden Triangle"—coined by the CIA—is commonly used more broadly to refer to an area of approximately that overlaps the mountains of the three adjacent countries.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent, it has been one of the largest opium-producing areas of the world since the 1950s. Most of the world's heroin came from the Golden Triangle until the early 21st century when Afghanistan became the world's largest producer. The majority of the region's opium is now produced in Myanmar and, to a lesser extent, Laos.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Opium production in Myanmar is the world's second-largest source of opium after Afghanistan, producing some 25% of the world's opium, forming part of the Golden Triangle. In recent times however, opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar has declined year-on-year since 2015. According to latest data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), an estimated 405 metric tons (mt) of opium were produced in Myanmar in 2020, representing less than half of the estimate of 2013 (870 mt), while the area of opium poppy cultivation declined by 11% from 33,100 in 2019 to 29,500 hectares (ha). With that said, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned that opium production in Myanmar may rise again if the economic crunch brought on by COVID-19 and the 2021 military coup persists, with fallout for much of Asia.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: As the Chinese Communist Party gained power, they ordered ten million addicts into compulsory treatment, had dealers executed, and opium-producing regions planted with new crops. Consequently, opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Small-scale opium production in Myanmar dated back to the Konbaung dynasty in 1750, chiefly for the consumption of foreigners.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The Chinese troops of the Kuomintang in Burma (KMT) were in effect the forebears of the private narcotic armies operating in the Golden Triangle. In 1949, thousands of the defeated Kuomintang troops crossed over the border from Yunnan province into Burma, a nation with a weak government, where the Kuomintang seized control of the border regions. Almost all the KMT opium was sent south to Thailand.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The KMT-controlled territories made up Burma's major opium-producing region, and the shift in KMT policy allowed them to expand their control over the region's opium trade. Furthermore, Communist China's eradication of illicit opium cultivation in Yunnan by the early 1950s effectively handed the opium monopoly to the KMT army in the Shan State. The main consumers of the drug were the local ethnic Chinese and those across the border in Yunnan and the rest of Southeast Asia. They coerced the local villagers for recruits, food and money, and exacted a heavy tax on the opium farmers. This forced the farmers to increase their production to make ends meet. One American missionary to the Lahu tribesmen of Kengtung State testified that the KMT tortured the Lahu for failing to comply with their regulations.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Annual production increased twenty-fold, from 30 tons at the time of Burmese independence to 600 tons in the mid-1950s.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: "The Golden Triangle, and specifically Shan State of Myanmar, is believed to be the largest methamphetamine producing area in the world (modest sized geographic area with highly concentrated production)." The growing signs of an intensification of methamphetamine manufacturing activity within and around the Golden Triangle, and a corresponding decrease in the number of production facilities dismantled in other parts of the region, suggests that methamphetamine manufacture in East and Southeast Asia is now consolidated into the lower Mekong region. Countries in East and Southeast Asia have collectively witnessed sustained increases in seizures of methamphetamine over the last decade, totalling over 140 tons in 2019 according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, more than any other part of the world. In April and May 2020, Myanmar authorities reported Asia's largest ever drug operation in Shan State totalling what was believed to be 193 million methamphetamine tablets, hundreds of kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine as well as some heroin, and over 162,000 litres and 35.5 tons of drug precursors as well as sophisticated production equipment and several staging and storage facilities.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Myanmar is the world's second largest producer of illicit opium, after Afghanistan and has been a significant cog in the transnational drug trade since World War II. According to the UNODC it is estimated that in 2005 there wеrе of opium cultivation in Myanmar.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The surrender of drug lord Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army in January 1996 was hailed by Yangon as a major counter-narcotics success. Lack of government will and ability to take on major narcotrafficking groups and lack of serious commitment against money laundering continues to hinder the overall anti-drug effort. Most of the tribespeople growing the opium poppy in Myanmar and in the Thai highlands are living below the poverty line.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: In 1996, the United States Embassy in Rangoon released a "Country Commercial Guide", which states "Exports of opiates alone appear to be worth about as much as all legal exports." It goes on to say that investments in infrastructure and hotels are coming from major opiate-growing and opiate-exporting organizations and from those with close ties to these organizations.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: A four-year investigation concluded that Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) was "the main channel for laundering the revenues of heroin produced and exported under the control of the Myanmar Army." In a business deal signed with the French oil giant Total in 1992, and later joined by Unocal, MOGE received a payment of $15 million. "Despite the fact that MOGE has no assets besides the limited installments of its foreign partners and makes no profit, and that the Myanmar state never had the capacity to allocate any currency credit to MOGE, the Singapore bank accounts of this company have seen the transfer of hundreds of millions of US dollars," reports François Casanier. According to a confidential MOGE file reviewed by the investigators, funds exceeding $60 million and originating from Myanmar's most renowned drug lord, Khun Sa, were channeled through the company. "Drug money is irrigating every economic activity in Myanmar, and big foreign partners are also seen by the SLORC as big shields for money laundering." Banks in Rangoon offered money laundering for a 40% commission.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Poppy cultivation in the country decreased more than 80 percent from 1998 to 2006 following an eradication campaign in the Golden Triangle. Officials with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime have confirmed that opium poppy farming has decreased since 2014, as synthetic drug production has expanded. A United Nations report also cites corruption, poverty and a lack of government control as typical causes for impoverished farmers to engage in drug production.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Opium and heroin base produced in northeastern Myanmar are transported by horse and donkey caravans to refineries along the Thailand–Burma border for conversion to heroin and heroin base. Most of the finished products are shipped across the border into various towns in North Thailand and down to Bangkok for further distribution to international markets.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: Heroin from Southeast Asia is most frequently brought to the United States by couriers, typically Thai and U.S. nationals, travelling on commercial airlines. California and Hawaii are the primary U.S. entry points for Golden Triangle heroin, but small percentages of the drug are trafficked into New York City and Washington, D.C. While Southeast Asian groups have had success in trafficking heroin to the United States, they initially had difficulty arranging street level distribution. However, with the incarceration of Asian traffickers in American prisons during the 1970s, contacts between Asian and American prisoners developed. These contacts have allowed Southeast Asian traffickers access to gangs and organizations distributing heroin at the retail level.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The Golden Triangle is now one of the world's leading areas for the production of synthetic drugs and particularly methamphetamine as production has scaled up of Yaba tablets and crystalline methamphetamine, including for export to Australia, New Zealand, and across East and Southeast Asia. With respect to the accelerating synthetic drug production in the region, and specifically in Shan State, Myanmar, Sam Gor, also known as "The Company", is understood to be one of the main international crime syndicates responsible for this shift. Made up of members of five different triads and understood to be headed by Tse Chi Lop, a Canadian gangster born in Guangzhou, China, the Cantonese Chinese syndicate is primarily involved in drug trafficking, potentially earning up to $8 billion per year. Sam Gor is alleged to control 40% of the Asia-Pacific methamphetamine market, while also trafficking heroin and ketamine. The organization is active in a variety of countries in addition to Myanmar, including Thailand, Lao PDR, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China and Taiwan.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: The Chinese Muslim Panthay are the same ethnic group as the Muslims among the Chinese Chin Haw. Both are descendants of Chinese Hui Muslim immigrants from Yunnan province in China. They often work with each other in the Golden Triangle Drug Trade. Both Chinese Muslim and non-Muslim Jeen Haw and Panthay are known to be members of Triad secret societies, working with other Chinese groups in Thailand like the TeoChiew and Hakka and the 14K Triad. They engaged in the heroin trade. Ma Hseuh-fu, from Yunnan province, was one of the most prominent Jeen Haw heroin drug lords.


title: Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)

text: A Panthay from Burma, Ma Zhengwen, assisted the Han Chinese drug lord Khun Sa in selling his heroin in north Thailand. The Panthay monopolized opium trafficking in Burma. They also created secret drug routes to reach the international market with contacts to smuggle drugs from Burma via south China.


title: Stone of Scone

text: The Stone of Scone (; ; )—also known as the Stone of Destiny, and often referred to in England as The Coronation Stone—is an oblong block of red sandstone that has been used for centuries in the coronation of the monarchs of Scotland. It is also known as Jacob's Pillow Stone and the Tanist Stone, and as in Scottish Gaelic.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Historically, the artefact was kept at the now-ruined Scone Abbey in Scone, near Perth, Scotland. It was seized by Edward I's forces from Scone during the English invasion of Scotland in 1296, and was used in the coronation of the monarchs of England as well as the monarchs of Great Britain and the United Kingdom, following the Treaty of Union of 1707. Its size is by by and its weight is approximately . A roughly incised cross is on one surface, and an iron ring at each end aids with transport. Monarchs used to sit on the Stone of Scone itself until a wooden platform was added to the Coronation Chair in the 17th century.


title: Stone of Scone

text: In 1996, the British Government decided to return the stone to Scotland, when not in use at coronations, and it was transported to Edinburgh Castle, where it is now kept with the Scottish Crown Jewels. However, it has been announced that the stone is to be used for the coronation of Charles III at Westminster Abbey in 2023.


title: Stone of Scone

text: In the 14th century the English cleric and historian Walter Hemingford identified the previous location of the Scottish coronation stone as the monastery of Scone, north of Perth:


title: Stone of Scone

text: Various theories and legends exist about the stone's history prior to its placement in Scone. One story concerns Fergus, son of Erc, the first King of the Scots () in Scotland, whose transport of the Stone from Ireland to Argyll, where he was crowned on it, was recorded in a 15th-century chronicle. Some versions identify the stone brought by Fergus with the Lia Fáil (Irish for "stone of destiny") used at Tara for inaugurating the High Kings of Ireland. Other traditions contend that the Lia Fáil remains at Tara. ("Inis Fáil", "The Island of Destiny", is one of the traditional names of Ireland.) Other legends place the origins of the Stone in Biblical times and identify it as the Stone of Jacob, taken by Jacob from Bethel while on the way to Haran (Genesis 28:10–22). This very same Stone of Jacob was then supposedly taken to ancient Ireland by the prophet Jeremiah.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Contradicting these legends, geologists have proven that the stone taken by Edward I of England to Westminster is a "lower Old Red Sandstone", which was quarried in the vicinity of Scone. Doubts over the authenticity of the stone at Westminster have existed for a long time: a blog post by retired Scottish academic and writer of historical fiction, Marie MacPherson, shows that they date back at least two hundred years.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Dunsinane Hill has the remains of a late prehistoric hill fort, and this has historical associations with Macbeth, but no remains dating to the 11th century have been identified on the hill.


title: Stone of Scone

text: In 1296, during the First Scottish War of Independence, King Edward I of England took the stone as spoils of war and removed it to Westminster Abbey, where it was fitted into a wooden chair – known as the Coronation Chair or King Edward's Chair – on which most subsequent English and then British sovereigns have been crowned. Edward I sought to claim the status of the "Lord Paramount" of Scotland, with the right to oversee its King.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Some doubt exists over the stone captured by Edward I. The Westminster Stone theory posits that the monks at Scone Palace hid the real stone in the River Tay, or buried it on Dunsinane Hill, and that the English troops were tricked into taking a substitute. Some proponents of this theory claim that historic descriptions of the stone do not match the present stone.


title: Stone of Scone

text: In the 1328 Treaty of Northampton between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, England agreed to return the captured stone to Scotland; rioting crowds prevented it from being removed from Westminster Abbey. The stone remained in England for another six centuries. When King James VI of Scotland assumed the English throne as James I of England, he was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the stone. For the next century, the Stuart kings and queens of Scotland once again sat on the stone – but at their coronation as kings and queens of, and in, England.


title: Stone of Scone

text: On 11 June 1914, as part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign of 1912-1914, suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union planted a bomb loaded with nuts and bolts to act as shrapnel next to the Coronation Chair and Stone; no serious injuries were reported in the aftermath of the subsequent explosion despite the building having been busy with 80-100 visitors, but the deflagration blew off a corner of the Coronation Chair and caused the Stone to break in half – although this was not discovered until 1950, when four Scottish nationalists broke into the church to steal the stone and return it to Scotland. Two days after the Westminster Abbey bombing, a second suffragette bomb was discovered before it could explode in St Paul's Cathedral.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Concerns about it being damaged or destroyed by German air raids during the Second World War resulted in the Coronation Chair being moved to Gloucester Cathedral for the duration of the war. Meanwhile, concerns about the propaganda implications of the stone falling into German hands led to it being hidden behind ancient lead coffins in a burial vault under Abbot Islip’s Chapel, situated off the north ambulatory of the abbey. Other than the Dean, Paul de Labilliere and the Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, Charles Peers, only a few other people knew of its hiding place. Worried that the secret could be lost if all of them were killed during the war, Peers drew up three maps showing its location. Two were sent in sealed envelopes to Canada, one to the Canadian Prime Minister William King, who deposited it in the Bank of Canada’s vault in Ottawa. The other went to the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, who stored his envelope in the Bank of Montreal in Toronto. Once he had received word that the envelopes had been received, Peers destroyed the third map, which he had been keeping at his bank.


title: Stone of Scone

text: Peers later received a suggestion via the Office of Works that the Stone should be sent to Scotland for safekeeping:


title: Stone of Scone

text: On Christmas Day 1950, a group of four Scottish students (Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson, and Alan Stuart) removed the stone from Westminster Abbey, intending to return it to Scotland. During the removal process, the stone broke into two pieces. After burying the greater part of the Stone in a Kent field, where they camped for a few days, they uncovered the buried stone and returned to Scotland, along with a new accomplice, John Josselyn.


title: Stone of Scone

text: According to one American diplomat who was posted in Edinburgh at the time, the stone was briefly hidden in a trunk in the basement of the consulate's Public Affairs Officer, unbeknownst to him, then brought up further north. The smaller piece was similarly brought north at a later time. The entire stone was passed to a senior Glasgow politician, who arranged for the Glasgow stonemason Robert Gray to repair it professionally.


title: Stone of Scone

text: The British Government ordered a major search for the stone, but was unsuccessful. The stone was left by those that had been hiding it on the altar of Arbroath Abbey on 11 April 1951, a property owned by the Church of Scotland. Once the London police were informed of its whereabouts, the stone was returned to Westminster four months after its removal. Afterward, rumours circulated that copies of the stone had been made, and that the returned stone was not the original.


title: Stone of Scone

text: On 3 July 1996, in response to a growing discussion around Scottish cultural history, the British Government announced that the stone would return to Scotland, 700 years after it had been taken. On 15 November 1996, after a handover ceremony at the border between representatives of the Home Office and of the Scottish Office, the stone was transported to Edinburgh Castle. An official handover ceremony occurred in the Castle on 30 November 1996, St Andrew's Day, to mark the arrival of the stone. Prince Andrew, Duke of York, representing Queen Elizabeth II, formally handed over the Royal Warrant transferring the stone into the safekeeping of the Commissioners for the Regalia. It currently remains alongside the crown jewels of Scotland, the Honours of Scotland, in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle.


title: Stone of Scone

text: As part of a consultation in 2019, the Scottish Government asked the public for their views on the preferred future location for public display of the Stone of Scone. Two options were proposed: featuring as the centrepiece of a proposed new museum in Perth (a £23 million redevelopment of the former Perth City Hall) or remaining at the present location at Edinburgh Castle in a major redevelopment of the existing display.


title: Stone of Scone

text: In September 2022 and following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, it was announced that the stone would be temporarily returned to Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Charles III.


title: Match Group

text: Match Group, Inc. is an American internet and technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It owns and operates the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish,UPWARD, Ship, and OurTime, totalling over 45 global dating companies. The company was owned by parent company IAC and in 2019, the company had 9.283 million subscribers, of which 4.554 million were in North America. Japan is the company's second largest market, after the United States. In July 2020, Match Group became a separate, public company.


title: Match Group

text: In February 2009, IAC incorporated Match Group as a conglomerate of Match.com and other dating sites it owned. In July 2009, Match Group's Match.com acquired People Media from American Capital for $80 million in cash. People Media operated dating sites BlackPeopleMeet.com and OurTime, which became part of Match Group's portfolio, and powered AOL Personals.


title: Match Group

text: In February 2010, Match.com acquired dating site Singlesnet. In February 2011, Match Group acquired OkCupid for $50 million. OkCupid was the first free, advertising-based product added to the Match Group portfolio.


title: Match Group

text: In 2012, online dating application Tinder was founded within Hatch Labs, a startup incubator run by parent company IAC. The application allowed users to anonymously swipe to like or dislike other profiles based on their photos, common interests and a small bio. On November 19, 2015, the company became a public company via an initial public offering.


title: Match Group

text: In 2017, Match Group launched Tinder Gold, which established Tinder as the highest grossing non-gaming app globally. In the summer of 2017, the company offered to acquire Bumble for $450 million.


title: Match Group

text: In January 2018, Mandy Ginsberg, formerly the CEO of Match North America, replaced Greg Blatt as CEO of the company.


title: Match Group

text: In June 2018, Match Group acquired 51% ownership in dating app Hinge. The acquisition was intended to help diversify Match's portfolio and appeal to a wider array of singles. In February 2019, Match Group fully bought out the company.


title: Match Group

text: In July 2018, Match Group launched a Safety Advisory Council comprising a group of experts focused on preventing sexual assault across its portfolio of products. The council included movement founder Tarana Burke and worked with organizations like the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.


title: Match Group

text: In August 2018, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad filed a $2 billion lawsuit against Match Group, claiming that Match Group and its parent company IAC purposely undervalued Tinder to avoid paying out stock options to the company's original team. Rad and his co-plaintiffs also accused the former Tinder CEO, Greg Blatt, of sexual harassment. The company said that the allegations are "meritless". In October 2019, Blatt filed a defamation lawsuit against Rad and Tinder founding member Rosette Pambakian seeking at least $50 million in damages.


title: Match Group

text: In January 2019, Match Group partnered with media brand Betches to launch a dating app, called Ship, that allowed users to help their friends pick out potential dates.


title: Match Group

text: In January 2020, Match Group announced an investment and partnership with safety platform Noonlight. The partnership incorporated new safety tools in Match Group's products, including emergency assistance, location tracking and photo verification.


title: Match Group

text: In January 2020, Mandy Ginsberg stepped down as chief executive officer due to personal reasons. Shar Dubey, then President of Match Group, became the CEO of the company effective March 1, 2020.


title: Match Group

text: In March 2020, Match Group became the first tech company to support Earn It Act of 2020, a bipartisan bill with the support of President Trump to combat online child sexual exploitation but widely criticized for its predicted negative impact on privacy and computer security.


title: Match Group

text: In July 2020, the company completed the separation from IAC. The separation was the largest ever for IAC, as Match Group then had a market capitalization of $30 billion. After the separation, four new members joins Match Group's board of directors: Stephen Baily, Melissa Brenner, Ryan Reynolds and Wendi Murdoch.


title: Match Group

text: In August 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Match Group reported growing profit and revenue and surpassed 10 million subscribers across its portfolio.


title: Match Group

text: In September 2020, "Match Group" joined others companies like Spotify and Epic Games to form the Coalition for App Fairness. The purpose is to combat Apple over its app store policies.


title: Match Group

text: In February 2021, Match Group announced that it would be acquiring Seoul, Korea-based social network company Hyperconnect for $1.73 billion in both cash and stock. This deal is reportedly Match Group's largest acquisition to date.


title: Match Group

text: Also in February 2021, Match Group took legal action against dating app Muzmatch, the online Muslim dating app, calling the app a "Tinder Clone". The Match Group won the legal battle in London courts in April 2022.


title: Match Group

text: In April 2022, Shar Dubey stepped down from her position as CEO while remaining on the board of directors. Bernard Kim, the former president of Zynga, became CEO effective from May 31st, 2022.


title: Match Group

text: In 2019, the company was sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegations of unfair and deceptive trade practices. According to the FTC's civil complaint, the company used fake love interest ads to encourage free users to pay for premium subscription services on Match.com. Accounts that were flagged as suspicious or potentially fraudulent by the site were prevented from messaging paid subscribers but were allowed to continue messaging free users who were tricked into believing that the suspicious accounts were real users encouraging them to subscribe and connect with them. The company denied the allegations. The FTC further alleged that the company offered false promises of guarantees, failed to provide support to customers who unsuccessfully disputed charges, and made it overly difficult for users to cancel their subscriptions, which Match Group disputed as cherry-picked and misrepresenting internal emails. In September 2020, it was reported that the Department of Justice had closed its investigation into the FTC complaint.


title: Match Group

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Match Group refused to join the international community and withdraw from the Russian market. Research from Yale University updated on April 28, 2022 identifying how companies were reacting to Russia's invasion identified Match Group in the worst category of "Digging In", meaning Defying Demands for Exit: companies defying demands for exit/reduction of activities.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: Magical creatures are an aspect of the fictional Wizarding World contained in the "Harry Potter" series and connected media, all created by British author J. K. Rowling. Throughout the seven main books of the series, Harry and his friends encounter many of these creatures on their adventures in Hogwarts, the Forbidden Forest, or other locations throughout the Wizarding World. In addition, students learn to take care of creatures such as hippogriffs and unicorns in the Care of Magical Creatures class at Hogwarts. Rowling has also written "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", a guide to the magical beasts found in the series, and based on the fictional textbook of the same name written by Newt Scamander and used by students at Hogwarts. Many of these creatures are derived primarily from Greek mythology and other folklore, namely British and Scandinavian folklore. Many of the legends surrounding these mythical creatures are also incorporated in the books. "Children ... know that I didn't invent unicorns, but I've had to explain frequently that I didn't actually invent hippogriffs," Rowling told Stephen Fry in an interview for BBC Radio 4. "When I do use a creature that I know is a mythological entity, I like to find out as much as I can about it. I might not use it, but to make it as consistent as I feel is good for my plot."


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: Some creatures in the series are ordinary animals that may be imbued with magical properties or possess certain magical abilities. Owls, for example, deliver mail and have the ability to find the recipient regardless of their location. Other animals such as cats, dogs, frogs, toads, rats and mice do not necessarily have magical abilities.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: In the "Harry Potter" franchise, Magizoology (a portmanteau of "magic" and "zoology") is the study of magical creatures. A person who studies Magizoology is known as a magizoologist. There are magizoologists who work in the Ministry of Magic, particularly in the department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. One notable magizoologist is Newt Scamander, who is the in-universe author of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and the protagonist of the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise, which serves as a prequel to the "Harry Potter" story.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures of the Ministry of Magic is responsible for overseeing and regulating magical creatures. It is divided into three divisions: the Beast Division, the Being Division, and the Spirit Division.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: A "being" is generally defined, according to "Fantastic Beasts", as "any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws." This includes humans, dwarves, house-elves, giants, goblins, hags, veelas, and vampires. Fairies, pixies, gnomes, and most other creatures are classified as "beasts." Affairs related to ghosts are relegated to the Spirit Division.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: These definitions are not without problems: Werewolves and Animagi are typically in human form, but may transform into an animal. (A werewolf transforms from the human state only at the full moon, but an Animagus is a human who has learned to transform into an animal at will.) Their classification is unclear, and offices responsible for werewolves exist in both the Beast and Being Divisions. Dangerous creatures such as Banshees and Dementors have never been officially classified. In addition, creatures such as centaurs, leprechauns and merpeople (mermaids and mermen) have been rejected from the "being" status in favour of "beast" status.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" also assigns a threat rating to each creature, in the form of "X" marks. Five Xs means "Known wizard killer/impossible to domesticate". Four Xs means "Dangerous/requires specialist knowledge/skilled wizard may handle". Three Xs means "Competent wizard should cope". Two Xs means "Harmless/may be domesticated". One X means "boring". Creatures that need to be treated with a sophisticated amount of respect, e.g. centaurs, unicorns, phoenixes, and merpeople, are also given a XXXX rating.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: Below is a list of magical creatures mentioned in the "Harry Potter" universe. For a list of magical plants mentioned in the series, such as mandrakes and devil's snares, see List of fictional plants.


title: Magical creatures in Harry Potter

text: In the "Harry Potter" universe, the Acromantula is a monstrous spider capable of human speech. It originated in Borneo, where it inhabits dense jungle. Its distinctive features include the thick black hair that covers its body; its legspan, which may reach up to fifteen feet; its pincers, which produce a distinctive clicking sound when the Acromantula is excited or angry; and a venomous secretion. The Acromantula is carnivorous and prefers large prey. It spins dome-shaped webs on the ground. The female is bigger than the male and may lay up to one hundred eggs at a time. Soft and white, these are as large as beach balls. The young hatch in six to eight weeks. Acromantula eggs are defined as Class A Non-Tradeable Goods by the department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, meaning that severe penalties are attached to their importation or sale.