title: X Games

text: The X Games are an annual extreme sports event organized, produced and broadcast by ESPN. Coverage is also shown on ESPN's sister network, ABC. The inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Participants compete to win bronze, silver, and gold medals, as well as prize money.


title: X Games

text: The competition often features new tricks such as Tony Hawk's 900 in skateboarding, Shaun White's Double McTwist 1260 in snowboard, Dave Mirra’s Double Backflip in BMX, Travis Pastrana's Double Backflip in freestyle motocross, Heath Frisby's first snowmobile frontflip, Chuck Carothers's first body varial in Moto X Best Trick, Henrik Harlaut's first nose-butter triple cork in Ski Big Air, Gus Kenworthy's first switch triple rodeo in a ski slopestyle competition and Torstein Horgmo's first landed triple cork in a snowboard competition. Concurrent with competition is the "X Fest" sports and music festival, which offers live music, athlete autograph sessions, and interactive elements.


title: X Games

text: The X Games gained media exposure due to their big name sponsors, top-tier athletes, and consistent fan attendance. As the "Journal of Sport Management" (2006) explains, Generation X and Generation Y are the two demographics most highly valued by marketers. This creates a broad approach on marketing towards that certain demographic, which is why the X Games marketing and economic outlook is so "out of the box". According to a 2008 report by ESPN, in 1997, the Winter X Games inaugural year, 38,000 spectators attended the four-day event. In 1998, the attendance dropped to 25,000 spectators. But just two years later, a record attendance of 83,500 people attended the Winter X Games East Coast debut. The X Games and Winter X Games continue to grow with the popularity of action sports and the athletes who compete in them.


title: X Games

text: As part of the X Games, there have been performances by various rock bands over the years, as well as a DJ being on-site at all events. The X Games have made it a point since its founding to stage an eco-friendly event. Such measures include using biodiesel fuel in their vehicles and organizing recycling campaigns.


title: X Games

text: The X Games has never carried out drug tests on competitors, a position which has been criticized by the World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman and the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.


title: X Games

text: The Winter X Games VIII in 2002 was the first time an X Games event was televised live and also had coverage by ESPN's flagship news program, "SportsCenter". Viewership across the three networks that carried coverage of the event – ABC Sports, ESPN, and ESPN2 – exceeded 2001's household average by 30% according to Nielsen Media Research. The event also reached record highs in several demographic categories. To accommodate the first-time live coverage, nighttime competitions were added, resulting in record attendance for the Aspen/Snowmass venue in Colorado.


title: X Games

text: The 2002 Winter X Games was a significant year for ESPN and the X Games. It was the first year that the games were held in Aspen at Buttermilk Mountain. The Games continued to add new events including the ski slopestyle event, ski superpipe event, snowboarding, skateboarding etc. The most memorable incident of the 2002 Games was when the entire 2002 U.S. Olympic freestyle snowboarding team showed up to compete in the Winter X snowboard superpipe event, just weeks before the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Also in 2002, ESPN announced the establishment of the X Games Global Championship. The Global Championship featured two distinct venues hosting competitions in summer and winter action sports simultaneously. It consisted of six teams of the world's top athletes, grouped together by their region of origin, to compete in the four-day event. The winter sports were held in Whistler Blackcomb Resort in British Columbia, and the events included snowboarding and skiing.


title: X Games

text: The Winter X Games are mostly held in the United States in January, but can happen in February, while the Summer X Games are usually held in August. The location of the Winter X Games is in Aspen, Colorado, through 2019, while the location for the Summer X Games has been in Los Angeles, changing to Austin, Texas, in June 2014. The X Games also has international competitions and demos around the world that are held at varying times throughout the year. The games are shown live on television.


title: X Games

text: The Winter X Games are, as described by ESPN (2008), a competition compiled of the greatest winter action sport athletes from around the world competing on an annual basis. The competition has day and evening events including skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling. The first Winter X Games took place at Snow Summit ski resort in Big Bear Lake, California, in 1997. The following two years, the Games were held at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado. The two years following that, the Games were held in Mount Snow, Vermont. Since 2002, the Winter X Games have been held at Aspen's Buttermilk Mountain and will continue to be until 2024, according to ESPN.


title: X Games

text: During 2015's Winter X Games, ESPN used camera drones to capture aerial views of the athlete's runs. This was a first for ESPN.


title: X Games

text: In May 2003, the X Games held the Global Championships, a special event where five continents competed in 11 disciplines. The event was held in two locations: the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, and Whistler, British Columbia. The final team results, in order, were the United States, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America.


title: X Games

text: In May 2011, ESPN held a bid to select three host cities in addition to Los Angeles, Aspen, and Tignes, France, to form a six-event calendar for the next three years beginning in 2013. In May 2012, the selected cities were announced: Barcelona, Spain; Munich, Germany; and Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. The two European cities have hosted the Summer Olympic Games in the past, whereas Brazil has provided several X Games competitors. Since 2010, Winter X Games Europe has been held in Tignes and also began holding events in Norway in 2016. An event in Sydney, Australia was held in 2018 and winter and summer events were also planned for 2019 and 2020 in China and a return trip to Norway in 2020.


title: X Games

text: Two movies were filmed at the X Games. was filmed at the 2001 X Games in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was filmed at the 2008 X Games and Winter X Games in Los Angeles, California and Aspen, Colorado.


title: X Games

text: ESPN X Games Skateboarding was released for the PlayStation 2 & Game Boy Advance in North America on August 13, 2001, and September 12, 2001. The park course featured in the game was based on the one used at the 2000 X Games in San Francisco, California. The Xbox version of the 2004 video game MTX Mototrax had the 2003 X Games Freestyle Motocross course as one of the Freestyle levels. The Winter X Games level featured in the game ESPN Winter X-Games Snowboarding (released on October 26, 2000, in North America for the PlayStation 2) was based on the courses at Mount Snow, Vermont.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The Boeing 2707 was an American supersonic passenger airliner project during the 1960s. After winning a competition for a government-funded contract to build an American supersonic airliner, Boeing began development at its facilities in Seattle, Washington. The design emerged as a large aircraft with seating for 250 to 300 passengers and cruise speeds of approximately Mach 3. It was intended to be much larger and faster than competing supersonic transport (SST) designs such as Concorde.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The SST was the topic of considerable concern within and outside the aviation industry. From the start, the airline industry noted that the economics of the design were questionable, concerns that were only partially addressed during development. Outside the field, the entire SST concept was the subject of considerable negative press, centered on the issue of sonic booms and effects on the ozone layer.


title: Boeing 2707

text: A key design feature of the 2707 was its use of a swing wing configuration. During development the required weight and size of this mechanism continued to grow, forcing the team to start over using a conventional delta wing. Rising costs and the lack of a clear market led to its cancellation in 1971 before two prototypes had been completed.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Boeing had worked on a number of small-scale SST studies since 1952. In 1958, it established a permanent research committee, which grew to a $1 million effort by 1960. The committee proposed a variety of alternative designs, all under the name Model 733. Most of the designs featured a large delta wing, but in 1959 another design was offered as an offshoot of Boeing's efforts in the swing-wing TFX project (which led to the purchase of the General Dynamics F-111 instead of the Boeing offering). In 1960, an internal competition was run on a baseline 150-seat aircraft for trans-Atlantic routes, and the swing-wing version won.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Shortly after taking office, President John F. Kennedy tasked the Federal Aviation Administration with preparing a report on "national aviation goals for the period between now and 1970". The study was prompted in the wake of several accidents, which led to the belief that the industry was becoming moribund. Two projects were started, Project Beacon on new navigational systems and air traffic control, and Project Horizon on advanced civil aviation developments.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Only one month later the FAA's new director, Najeeb Halaby, produced the Commission on National Aviation Goals, better known as Project Horizon. Among other suggestions, the report was used as a platform to promote the SST. Halaby argued that a failure to enter this market would be a "stunning setback". The report was met with skepticism by most others. Kennedy had put Lyndon Johnson on the SST file, and he turned to Robert McNamara for guidance. McNamara was highly skeptical of the SST project and savaged Halaby's predictions; he was also afraid the project might be turned over to the DoD and was careful to press for further studies.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The basic concept behind the SST was that its fast flight would allow them to fly more trips than a subsonic aircraft, leading to higher utilization. However, it did this at the cost of greatly increased fuel use. If fuel costs were to change dramatically, SSTs would not be competitive. These problems were well understood within the industry; the IATA released a set of "design imperatives" for an SST that were essentially impossible to meet—the release was a warning to promoters of the SST within the industry.


title: Boeing 2707

text: By mid-1962, it was becoming clear that tentative talks earlier that year between the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) on a merger of their SST projects were more serious than originally thought. In November 1962, still to the surprise of many, the Concorde project was announced. In spite of marginal economics, nationalistic and political arguments had led to wide support for the project, especially from Charles de Gaulle. This set off something of a wave of panic in other countries, as it was widely believed that almost all future commercial aircraft would be supersonic, and it looked like the Europeans would start off with a huge lead. As if this were not enough, it soon became known that the Soviets were also working on a similar design.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Three days after the Concorde announcement, Halaby wrote a letter to Kennedy suggesting that if they did not immediately start their own SST effort, the US would lose 50,000 jobs, $4 billion in income, and $3 billion in capital as local carriers turned to foreign suppliers. A report from the Supersonic Transport Advisory Group (STAG) followed, noting that the European team was in the lead in basic development, and suggested competing by developing a more advanced design with better economics. At the time, more advanced generally meant higher speed. The baseline design in the report called for an aircraft with Mach 3 performance with 2,400 mile range in order to serve the domestic market. They felt that there was no way to build a transatlantic design with that performance in time to catch the Concorde's introduction, abandoning the trans-Atlantic market to the Europeans.


title: Boeing 2707

text: In spite of vocal opponents, questions about the technical requirements, and extremely negative reports about its economic viability, the SST project gathered strong backing from industry and the FAA. Johnson sent a report to the president asking for $100 million in funding for FY 1964. This might have been delayed, but in May, Pan Am announced they had placed 6 options on the Concorde. Juan Trippe leaked the information earlier that month, stating that the airline would not ignore the SST market, and would buy from Europe if need be. Pan Am's interest in Concorde angered Kennedy, who called his administration to get Pan Am to redirect its potential funding back to the US SST program.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Kennedy introduced the National Supersonic Transport program on June 5, 1963, in a speech at the US Air Force Academy.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Requests for proposals were sent out to airframe manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed, and North American for the airframes; and Curtiss-Wright, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney for engines. The FAA estimated that there would be a market for 500 SSTs by 1990. Despite not having a selected design, orders from air carriers started flowing in immediately. Preliminary designs were submitted to the FAA on January 15, 1964.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Boeing's entry was essentially identical to the swing-wing Model 733 studied in 1960; it was known officially as the Model , but also referred to both as the 1966 Model and the Model 2707. The latter name became the best known in public, while Boeing continued to use 733 model numbers internally. The design resembled the future B-1 Lancer bomber, with the exception that the four engines were mounted in individual nacelles instead of paired pods used on the Lancer. The blended wing root spanned almost all of cabin area, and this early version had a much more stubby look than the models that would ultimately evolve. The wing featured extensive high-lift devices on both the leading and trailing edges, minimizing the thrust required, and thus noise created, during climb out. The proposal also included optional fuselage stretches that increased capacity from the normal 150 seats to 227.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Lockheed's entry, designated CL-823, was essentially an enlarged Concorde. Like the Concorde, it featured a long and skinny fuselage, engines under the wing, and a compound delta planform. The only major design difference was the use of individual pods for the engines, rather than pairs. The CL-823 lacked any form of high-lift devices on the wings, relying on engine power and long runways for liftoff, ensuring a huge noise footprint. The CL-823 was the largest of the first-round entries, with typical seating for 218.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The North American NAC-60 was essentially a scaled-up B-70 with a less tapered fuselage and new compound-delta wing. The design retained the high-mounted canard above the cockpit area, and the box-like engine area under the fuselage. The use of high-lift devices on the leading edge of the wing lowered the landing angles to the point where the "drooping nose" was not required, and a more conventional rounded design was used. Compared to the other designs, the rounded nose profile and more cylindrical cross-section gave the NAC-60 a decidedly more conventional look than the other entries. This also meant it would fly slower, at Mach 2.65.


title: Boeing 2707

text: A "downselect" of the proposed models resulted in the NAC-60 and Curtiss-Wright efforts being dropped from the program, with both Boeing and Lockheed asked to offer SST models meeting the more demanding FAA requirements and able to use either of the remaining engine designs from GE or P&W. In November, another design review was held, and by this time Boeing had scaled up the original design into a 250-seat model, the "Model 733-290". Due to concerns about jet blast, the four engines were moved to a position underneath an enlarged tailplane. When the wings were in their swept-back position, they merged with the tailplane to produce a delta-wing planform.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Both companies were now asked for considerably more detailed proposals, to be presented for final selection in 1966. When this occurred, Boeing's design was now the 300-seat "Model 733-390". Both the Boeing and Lockheed L-2000 designs were presented in September 1966 along with full-scale mock-ups. After a lengthy review the Boeing design was announced as the winner on January 1, 1967. The design would be powered by the General Electric GE4/J5 engines. Lockheed's L-2000 was judged simpler to produce and less risky, but its performance was slightly lower and its noise levels slightly higher.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The 733-390 would have been an advanced aircraft even if it had been only subsonic. It was one of the earliest wide-body aircraft designs, with 2-3-2 row seating arrangement at its widest section in a fuselage that was considerably wider than aircraft then in service. The SST mock-up included both overhead storage for smaller items with restraining nets, as well as large drop-in bins between sections of the aircraft. In the main 247-seat tourist-class cabin, the entertainment system consisted of retractable televisions placed between every sixth row in the overhead storage. In the 30-seat first-class area, every pair of seats included smaller televisions in a console between the seats. Windows were only 6 inches due to the high altitudes the aircraft flew at maximizing the pressure on them, but the internal pane was 12" to give an illusion of size.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Boeing predicted that if the go-ahead were given, construction of the SST prototypes would begin in early 1967 and the first flight could be made in early 1970. Production aircraft could start being built in early 1969, with the flight testing in late 1972 and certification by mid-1974.


title: Boeing 2707

text: A major change in the design came when Boeing added canards behind the nose—which added weight. Boeing also faced insurmountable weight problems due to the swing-wing mechanism (a titanium pivot section having been fabricated with a weight of 4,600 pounds and measuring eleven feet long and 2.5 feet thick) and the design could not achieve sufficient range. Flexing of the fuselage (it would have been the longest ever built) threatened to make control difficult. In October 1968, the company was finally forced to abandon the variable geometry wing. The Boeing team fell back on a tailed delta fixed wing. The new design was also smaller, seating 234, and known as the "Model 2707-300". Work began on a full-sized mock-up and two prototypes in September 1969, now two years behind schedule.


title: Boeing 2707

text: A promotional film claimed that airlines would soon pay back the federal investment in the project, and it was projected that SSTs would dominate the skies with subsonic jumbo jets (such as Boeing's 747) being only a passing intermediate fad.


title: Boeing 2707

text: By October 1969, there were delivery positions reserved for 122 Boeing SSTs by 26 airlines, including Alitalia, Canadian Pacific Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Iberia, KLM, Northwest Airlines, and World Airways.


title: Boeing 2707

text: By this point, the opposition to the project was becoming increasingly vocal. Environmentalists were the most influential group, voicing concerns about possible depletion of the ozone layer due to the high altitude flights, and about noise at airports, as well as from sonic booms.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The latter became the most significant rallying point, especially after the publication of the anti-SST paperback, "SST and Sonic Boom Handbook" edited by William Shurcliff, which claimed that a single flight would "leave a 'bang-zone' 50 miles wide by 2,000 miles long" along with a host of associated problems. During tests in 1964 with the XB-70 near Oklahoma City, the path had a maximum width of 16 miles, but still resulted in 9,594 complaints of damage to buildings, 4,629 formal damage claims, and 229 claims for a total of $12,845.32, mostly for broken glass and cracked plaster. As the opposition widened, the claimed negative effects increased, including upsetting people who do delicate work (e.g., brain surgeons), and harming persons with nervous ailments.


title: Boeing 2707

text: One concern was that the water vapor released by the engines into the stratosphere would envelop the earth in a "global gloom". Presidential Adviser Russell Train warned that a fleet of 500 SSTs flying at 65,000 ft. for a period of years could raise stratospheric water content by as much as 50% to 100%. According to Train, this could lead to greater ground-level heat and hamper the formation of ozone. Later, an additional threat to the ozone was found in the exhaust's nitrogen oxides, a threat that was later validated by MIT. More recent analysis in 1995 by David W. Fahey, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others found that the drop in ozone would be from 1 to 2% if a fleet of 500 supersonic aircraft was operated. Fahey expressed the opinion that this would not be a fatal obstacle for an advanced SST development.


title: Boeing 2707

text: During the 1970s the alleged potential for serious ozone damage and the sonic boom worries were picked up by the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation and the Wilderness Society. Supersonic flight over land in the United States was eventually banned, and several states added additional restrictions or banned Concorde outright.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Halaby attempted to dismiss these concerns, stating "The supersonics are coming−as surely as tomorrow. You will be flying one version or another by 1980 and be trying to remember what the great debate was all about."


title: Boeing 2707

text: In March 1971, despite the project's strong support by the administration of President Richard Nixon, the U.S. Senate rejected further funding. A counterattack was organized under the banner of the "National Committee for an American SST", which urged supporters to send in $1 to keep the program alive. Afterward, letters of support from aviation buffs, containing nearly $1 million worth of contributions, poured in. Labor unions also supported the SST project, worried that the winding down of both the Vietnam War and Apollo program would lead to mass unemployment in the aerospace sector. AFL–CIO President George Meany suggested that the race to develop a first-generation SST was already lost, but the US should "enter the competition for the second generation—the SSTs of the 1980s and 1990s".


title: Boeing 2707

text: Despite this newfound support, the House of Representatives also voted to end SST funding on May 20, 1971. The vote was highly contentious. Gerald Ford, then Republican Leader, shouted Meany's claims that "If you vote for the SST, you are ensuring 13,000 jobs today plus 50,000 jobs in the second tier and 150,000 jobs each year over the next ten years." Sidney Yates, leading the "no" camp, offered a then-uncommon motion to instruct conferees and eventually won the vote against further funding, 215 to 204.


title: Boeing 2707

text: At the time, there were 115 unfilled orders by 25 airlines, while Concorde had 74 orders from 16 customers. The two prototypes were never completed. Due to the loss of several government contracts and a downturn in the civilian aviation market, Boeing reduced its number of employees by more than 60,000. The SST became known as "the airplane that almost ate Seattle." As a result of the mass layoffs and so many people moving away from the city in search of work, a billboard was erected near Sea-Tac airport in 1971 that read, "Will the last person leaving Seattle – turn out the lights".


title: Boeing 2707

text: The SST race has had several lasting effects on the industry as a whole. The supercritical wing was originally developed as part of the SST efforts in the U.S., but is now widely used on most jet aircraft. In Europe, the cooperation that allowed Concorde led to the formation of Airbus, Boeing's foremost competitor, with Aérospatiale becoming a main component of Airbus.


title: Boeing 2707

text: When Concorde was launched, sales were predicted to be 150 aircraft, but only 14 aircraft were built for commercial service. Service entry was only secured through large government funding subsidy. These few aircraft went on to have a very long in-service flight life and were claimed to be ultimately commercially successful for their operators, until finally removed from service in the aftermath of the type's only crash in 2000 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Airbus decided to end servicing arrangements.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Its Soviet counterpart, the Tupolev Tu-144, was less successful, operating for only 55 passenger flights before being permanently grounded for various reasons.


title: Boeing 2707

text: With the ending of the 2707 project, the entire SST field in the U.S. was moribund for some time. By the mid-1970s, minor advances, combined, appeared to offer greatly improved performance. Through the second half of the 1970s, NASA provided funding for the Advanced Supersonic Transport (AST) project at several companies, including McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed. Considerable wind tunnel testing of the various models was carried out at NASA's Langley Research Center.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Ultimately, supersonic passenger service was not economically competitive, and ceased with the retirement of Concorde in 2003; , no commercial supersonic aircraft operate in the world, due largely to poor fuel economy and high maintenance costs.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The Museum of Flight in Seattle parks a British Airways Concorde a few blocks from the building where the original 2707 mockup was housed in Seattle. While the Soviet Tu-144 had a short service life, Concorde was successful enough to fly as a small luxury fleet from 1976 until 2003, with British Airways lifetime costs of £1bn producing £1.75bn in revenues in the niche transatlantic market. As the most advanced supersonic transports became some of the oldest airframes in the fleet, profits eventually fell, due to rising maintenance costs.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The final-configuration Boeing 2707 mockup was sold to a museum and displayed at the SST Aviation Exhibit Center in Kissimmee, Florida, from 1973 to 1981. In 1983, the building, complete with SST, was purchased by the Faith World church. For years the Osceola New Life Assembly of God held services there with the airplane still standing above. In 1990, the mock-up was sold to aircraft restorer Charles Bell, who moved it, in pieces, to Merritt Island, in order to preserve it while it waited for a new home as the church now wanted the space for expansion. The forward fuselage was on display at the Hiller Aviation Museum of San Carlos, California, for many years, but in early 2013, was moved back to Seattle, where it is undergoing restoration at the Museum of Flight.


title: Boeing 2707

text: Seattle's NBA basketball team, formed in 1967, was named the Seattle SuperSonics (shortened to "Sonics"). The name was inspired by the newly won SST contract.


title: Boeing 2707

text: The Boeing 2707 was one of the first commercial aircraft designed with a glass cockpit. By the 1980s, glass cockpits became standard on all large commercial jets and by the 2000s, most light aircraft were equipped with them.


title: Sindarin

text: Sindarin is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves. The word is a Quenya word.


title: Sindarin

text: Called in English "Grey-Elvish" or "Grey-Elven", it was the language of the Grey Elves of Beleriand. These were Elves of the Third Clan who remained behind in Beleriand after the Great Journey. Their language became estranged from that of their kin who sailed over sea. Sindarin derives from an earlier language called Common Telerin, which evolved from Common Eldarin, the tongue of the Eldar before their divisions, e.g., those Elves who decided to follow the Vala Oromë and undertook the Great March to Valinor. Even before that the Eldar Elves spoke the original speech of all Elves, or Primitive Quendian.


title: Sindarin

text: In the Third Age (the setting of "The Lord of the Rings"), Sindarin was the language most commonly spoken by most Elves in the Western part of Middle-earth. Sindarin is the language usually referred to as "the Elf-Tongue" or "Elven-Tongue" in "The Lord of the Rings". When the Quenya-speaking Noldor returned to Middle-earth, they adopted the Sindarin language. Quenya and Sindarin were related, with many cognate words but differing greatly in grammar and structure. Sindarin is said to be more changeful than Quenya, and there were during the First Age a number of regional dialects. The tongue used in Doriath (home of Thingol, King of the Sindar), known as Doriathrin, was said by many Grey-elves to be the highest and most noble form of the language.


title: Sindarin

text: In the Second Age, many Men of Númenor spoke Sindarin fluently. Their descendants, the Dúnedain of Gondor and Arnor, continued to speak Sindarin in the Third Age. Sindarin was first written using the Cirth, an Elvish runic alphabet. Later, it was usually written in the Tengwar (Quenya for 'letters') – a script invented by the elf Fëanor. Tolkien based the phonology and some of the grammar of Sindarin on Literary Welsh, and Sindarin displays some of the consonant mutations that characterize the Celtic languages. The language was also influenced to a lesser degree by Old English and Old Norse.


title: Sindarin

text: The Dwarves rarely taught their language to others, so they learned both Quenya and Sindarin in order to communicate with the Elves, especially the Noldor and Sindar. By the Third Age, however, the Dwarves were estranged from the Elves and no longer routinely learned their language, preferring to use Westron.


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien was interested in languages from an early age, and developed several constructed languages while still a teen. Eventually, as a young adult, he created an entire family of constructed languages spoken by Elves and a secondary world where these could evolve.


title: Sindarin

text: One of these languages was created in around 1915, inspired by the Celtic languages, particularly Literary Welsh. Tolkien called it "Goldogrin" or "Gnomish" in English. He wrote a substantial dictionary of Gnomish and a grammar. This is the first conceptual stage of the Sindarin language. At the same time Tolkien conceived a History of the Elves and wrote it in the "Book of Lost Tales". Gnomish was spoken by the Gnomes or "Noldoli", the Second Clan of Elves, and "Elfin" was the other tongue spoken by the great majority of the Elves of the Lonely Isle.


title: Sindarin

text: The beginning of the "Name-list of the "Fall of Gondolin"", one of the "Lost Tales", gives a good example of both languages (Gnomish and Elfin):


title: Sindarin

text: A few years later, c. 1925, Tolkien began anew the grammar and lexicon of the tongue of his Gnomes. He abandoned the words "Goldogrin" and "lam Goldrin" in favour of "Noldorin" (a Quenya word already sparingly used for his Gnomish tongue). This is the second conceptual stage of Sindarin. Tolkien composed then a grammar of this new Noldorin, the "Lam na Ngoluith". In the early 1930s Tolkien wrote a new grammar of "Noldorin". This is the "late conceptual Noldorin". At the same time, Tolkien was developing the Ilkorin tongues of the Elves of the Third Clan who remained in Beleriand (those same Elves whom Tolkien would much later name "Sindar" in Quenya). "Noldorin" (the Welsh-style language) was at that time conceived as having evolved from the "Old Noldorin" spoken in Valinor to the many (not Welsh-like) dialects, later called "Lemberin", that were spoken in Beleriand. The Noldorin Elves wanted to speak a distinct tongue from the First Clan Elves who also lived with them and spoke Quenya, and so they developed "Old Noldorin" from what Tolkien called "Koreldarin": "the tongue of those who left Middle-earth, and came to "Kór", the hill of the Elves in Valinor."


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien created Sindarin in around 1944. He used much of Noldorin and blended it with "Ilkorin Doriathrin" and added in some new features. On that matter, he wrote a side note on his "Comparative Tables": "Doriath[rin], etc. = Noldorin ((?)viz. as it used to be)". The Ilkorin tongues of 1930–50 spoken in Beleriand, e.g. Doriathrin and the other dialects, were not as much based on Welsh as Noldorin was, and Tolkien wanted his new "tongue of Beleriand" to be a Welsh-type language. In Tolkien's words, "The changes worked on Sindarin [from Common Eldarin] very closely (and deliberately) resemble those which produced the modern and mediaeval Welsh from ancient Celtic, so that in the result Sindarin has a marked Welsh style, and the relations between it and Quenya closely resemble those between Welsh and Latin."


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien did not provide a detailed description of the language in published works such as "The Lord of the Rings", but he did say that


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien wrote many pieces in Sindarin. He made an effort to give to his Elvish languages the feel and taste of natural languages. He wanted to infuse in them a kind of life, while fitting them to a very personal aesthetic taste. He wanted to build languages primarily to satisfy his personal urge and not because he had some universal design in mind.


title: Sindarin

text: Two magazines—"Vinyar Tengwar", from issue 39 (July 1998), and "Parma Eldalamberon", from issue 11 (1995)—are exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of Tolkien's gigantic mass of unpublished linguistic papers. These are published at a slow pace and the editors have not published a comprehensive catalogue of these unpublished linguistic papers. Access to the original documents is severely limited as Christopher Tolkien omitted them from his 12-volume "The History of Middle-earth". Many new-found words of Sindarin, Noldorin and Ilkorin have been published and the grammar rules of these languages disclosed.


title: Sindarin

text: Attempts by Tolkien fans to write in Sindarin began in the 1970s, when the total corpus of published Elvish was only a few hundred words. Since then, usage of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts, phrases and names, and tattoos. But Tolkien himself never intended to make his languages complete enough for conversation; as a result, newly invented Elvish texts, such as dialogue written by the linguist David Salo for Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films, require conjecture and sometimes coinage of new words.


title: Sindarin

text: The divergence of Sindarin (Old Sindarin) begun first into a Northern or group and a Southern group. The Southern group had a much larger territory, and included or "Central Sindarin".


title: Sindarin

text: Doriathrin preserved many archaic features. Unlike the other dialects, it remained free from Quenya influences. The "accent" of Doriath was also quite recognisable, so that after Túrin had left Doriath he kept a Doriathrin accent until his death, which immediately pinpointed his origin to speakers of other dialects of Sindarin. "The post-war 'Beleriandic' as lingua franca and as a language of Noldor was strongly influenced by Doriath." Tolkien set out much about Doriathrin morphology, and how it contrasts with the other Sindarin dialects, in his linguistic writings:


title: Sindarin

text: The language of the followers of the Elf Círdan, called "Falathrin" ("Falassian" in English), is the other dialect of the Southern Sindarin group. It remained close to the tongue of Doriath because there was great trade between the two groups up to the time of the Wars of Beleriand.


title: Sindarin

text: North Sindarin was spoken by the , the northernmost group of the Grey-elves. It differed from the Central Sindarin of Beleriand in many aspects. Originally spoken in Dorthonion and Hithlum, it contained many unique words and was not fully intelligible to the other Elves. The Northern dialect was in many ways more conservative, and later divided itself into a North-Western dialect (Hithlum, Mithrim, Dor-lómin) and a North-Eastern dialect (the highlands of Taur-nu-Fuin, and the wide plains of Ard-galen to the north of the highlands). This language was at first adopted by the exiled Noldor after their return to Middle-earth at Losgar. Later Noldorin Sindarin changed, much owing to the adoption of Quenya features, and partially because of to the love of the Noldor for making linguistic changes. Beren's heritage was clear to Thingol of Doriath as he spoke the North Sindarin of his homeland.


title: Sindarin

text: With the exception of Doriathrin, Sindarin adopted some Quenya features after the return of the Noldor, as well as unique sound changes devised by the Noldor (who loved changing languages):


title: Sindarin

text: In the hidden city of Gondolin, an isolated land, a peculiar dialect developed: "This differed from the standard (of Doriath) (a) in having Western and some Northern elements, and (b) in incorporating a good many Noldorin-Quenya words in more a less Sindarized forms. Thus the city was usually called "Gondolin" (from Q. ) with simple replacement of "g-", not "Goenlin" or "Goenglin" [as it would have been in standard Sindarin]".


title: Sindarin

text: 'Beleriandic' Sindarin as a lingua franca of all Elves and many Men, and as the language of the Noldor in exile, was based on Western Sindarin but was strongly influenced by Doriathrin. During the Second Age Sindarin was a lingua franca for all Elves and their friends (thus it was used to inscribe the West-gate of Moria), until it was displaced for Men by Westron, which arose in the Third Age as a language heavily influenced by Sindarin. In Gondor at the end of the Third Age, Sindarin was still spoken daily by a few noble Men in the city Minas Tirith. Aragorn, raised in the safety of the Elvish stronghold of Rivendell, spoke it fluently.


title: Sindarin

text: Stress is as in Latin: on the penult if that is heavy (a closed syllable, long vowel or diphthong) and on the antepenult if the penult is light.


title: Sindarin

text: The phoneme is voiced to when final or before , but remains written as . The sound is written when final ("alph", "swan") or when used to spell a lenited ("i-pheriannath", "the halflings") which becomes . Old Sindarin, like Common Brittonic and Old Irish, also had a spirant "m" or nasal "v" (IPA: ), which was transcribed as "mh". This merged with in later Sindarin. Phonemically, Sindarin aligns with the other velar consonants like , , , etc. but is phonetically the voiceless uvular fricative .


title: Sindarin

text: An accent signifies a long vowel (á, é, etc.). In a monosyllabic word, a circumflex is used (â, ê, etc.).


title: Sindarin

text: In Old Sindarin, there was a vowel similar to German "ö" (IPA: ), which Tolkien mostly transcribed as "œ". Although this was meant to be distinct from the diphthong "oe", it was often simply printed "oe" in publications like "The Silmarillion", e.g. (read: "Nírnaeth Arnœdiad"), (read: "Gœlydh"). This vowel later came to be pronounced and is therefore transcribed as such (e.g. "Gelydh").


title: Sindarin

text: Diphthongs are "ai" (pronounced like aisle [aɪ]), "ei" (day [ɛɪ]), "ui" (ruin [ʊɪ]), and "au" (cow [aʊ]). If the last diphthong finishes a word, it is spelt "aw". There are also diphthongs "ae" and "oe" with no English counterparts, similar to pronouncing "a" or "o" respectively in the same syllable as one pronounces an "e" (as in pet); IPA . Tolkien had described dialects (such as Doriathrin) and variations in pronunciations (such as that of Gondor), and other pronunciations of "ae" and "oe" undoubtedly existed.


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien wrote that he gave Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".


title: Sindarin

text: Unlike the largely agglutinative Quenya, Sindarin is mainly a fusional language with some analytic tendencies. It can be distinguished from Quenya by the rarity of vowel endings, and the use of voiced plosives "b d g", rare in Quenya found only after nasals and liquids. Early Sindarin formed plurals by the addition of "-ī", which vanished but affected the preceding vowels (as in Welsh and Old English): S. , pl. , S. , pl. "Yrch". Sindarin forms plurals in multiple ways.


title: Sindarin

text: While Sindarin does not have a grammatical gender, it has like Welsh two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system just as of English. Sindarin noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways.


title: Sindarin

text: Some Sindarin (and Noldorin) nouns of one syllable form the plural with an ending (usually "-in"), e.g. , pl. "wild men, Woses, Púkel-Men". Others form the plural through vowel change, e.g. and , "lore master, sage" (obsolete as a tribal name before the Noldor came back to Beleriand); , pl. , "Dark-Elves". Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, and a few do not change in the plural: , "Beleriandic-Elf/Elves" is singular and plural.


title: Sindarin

text: The other system of number was called by Tolkien 2nd plural or collective number. The nouns in this system form it usually by adding a suffix to the plural (as in Welsh); for example -ath, as in , "all the stars (in the sky)", but not always as in . Another ending of the 2nd pl. is "-rim", used especially to indicate a race-group: "the race of the Dwarves", from pl. (sg. , "Dwarf"). There exist another such ending -lir, as in .


title: Sindarin

text: The endings -rim, -hoth, and waith, Sindarin words meaning 'multitude', 'host', and 'people' respectively, are added to a singular noun to form a 2nd plural, e. g. "the Werewolf-horde" from "Were-wolf"; "wolvish folk".


title: Sindarin

text: Most Sindarin plurals are formed by vowel change and are characterised by "i-mutation". The Noldorin term for this is "prestanneth" "affection of vowels". In an earlier stage of the language, plurals were marked by the suffix "-ī", to which the root assimilated, becoming fronted (and raised if low); later the final "-ī" was lost, leaving the changed root as the sole marker of the plural. (This process is very similar to the Germanic umlaut that produced the English forms "man/men", "goose/geese", and closer still to the Welsh i-affection plurals in forms like and .) The resulting plural patterns are:


title: Sindarin

text: Vowels not listed do not undergo any change, such as remains as , meaning that it is possible for some words to have the same form in the singular and plural.


title: Sindarin

text: The mutations of "early conceptual Noldorin" are defined in Tolkien's "Lam na Ngoluith, Early Noldorin Grammar".


title: Sindarin

text: The apostrophe ’ indicates elision, and is not necessarily written. Those forms of lenited "p" that are pronounced "f" are written "ph" as mentioned above.


title: Sindarin

text: Noldorin words beginning in "b-", "d-", or "g-", which descend from older "mb-", "nd-", or "ng-" are affected differently by the mutations:


title: Sindarin

text: Many of the mutations of Noldorin were taken into Sindarin a few years later. The Sindarin word gwath "shadow" becomes i 'wath, "the shadow".


title: Sindarin

text: David Salo's "A Gateway to Sindarin" proposes a more complex set of mutations, based on extrapolation from the Sindarin corpus, as follows (empty cells indicate no change):


title: Sindarin

text: The nasal mutation however does not affect 'd' and 'g' when found in the clusters 'dr', 'gr', 'gl' or 'gw'. By Salo's admission, the liquid mutation is speculative and not attested in Tolkien's writings at the time he wrote "A Gateway to Sindarin".


title: Sindarin

text: These are subjective forms used in conjugation. Sindarin used objective detached forms, like dhe (2nd pers. formal/polite singular).


title: Sindarin

text: Sindarin pronouns could combine with prepositions as in Celtic languages, Welsh: "to/for us" from 'to/for' and 'we/us'. annin "for/to me". The first person singular pronoun suffixes could combine with nouns: Lamm, "tongue" > lammen "my tongue".


title: Sindarin

text: Tolkien wrote that Quenya inflections were pretty regular, but that "Sindarin verbal history is complicated." About -ant, the 3rd person past tense ending of Sindarin, he wrote: "it is rather like that of Medieval Welsh "-as", or modern Welsh [3p sing.] "-odd"." So with "make marks of signs, write, inscribe", is the 3rd person singular past tense. Cf. Welsh , "he played" (< 'to play' + and 'he'). "-ant" is the Welsh 3p "plural" ending: 'they (will) play'.


title: Sindarin

text: Basic verbs form the infinitive by adding "-i": from . This ending causes an "a" or "o" in the stem to umlaut to "e": from . The infinitive is not used as a noun; the gerund is used instead.


title: Sindarin

text: For all persons except the third person singular, the present tense is formed by the insertion of "-i", and the proper enclitic pronominal ending: , , . As with the infinitive, "-i" causes an "a" or "o" in the stem to umlaut to "e": , , , from . The third person singular, because it has a zero-ending, does not require the insertion of "-i". This leaves the bare stem, which, because of Sindarin's phonological history, causes the vowel of the stem to become long: , , .


title: Sindarin

text: The past tense of basic verbs is very complicated and poorly attested. One common reconstructed system is to use "-n": . However, the only time this "-n" actually remains is after a stem in "-r". After a stem ending in "-l", "-n" becomes "-ll": . After "-b, -d, -g, -v," or "-dh", it is metathesized and then assimilated to the same place of articulation as the consonant it now precedes. The consonant then experiences what could be called a "backwards mutation": "-b, -d," and "-g" become "-p, -t," and "-c", and "-v" and "-dh" become "-m" and "-d". The matter is complicated even further when pronominal endings are added. Because "-mp, -mb, -nt, -nd," and "-nc" did not survive medially, they become "-mm-, -mm-, -nn-, -nn-," and "-ng". In addition, past tense stems in "-m" would have "-mm-" before any pronominal endings. These examples show the transformations step-by-step:


title: Sindarin

text: The future tense is formed by the addition of "-tha". An "-i" is also inserted between the stem and "-tha", which again causes "a" and "o" to umlaut to "e". Endings for all persons except for the first person singular can be added without any further modification: , . The first person singular ending "-n" causes the "-a" in "-tha" to become "-o": , , .


title: Sindarin

text: The Lexicons of "Gnomish", "Noldorin" and "Sindarin" lack modern vocabulary (television, motor, etc.). Tolkien fans have extended Sindarin to enable it to be spoken.


title: Sindarin

text: According to Tolkien, the elves preferred duodecimal counting (base 12) to the Dunedain's decimal system (base 10: Quenya "maquanotië", *"quaistanótië"), though the two systems seem to have coexisted. The numbers 1–12 are presented below (reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk *), as well as a few higher numbers.


title: Sindarin

text: The form * (extracted from ) appears in the King's Letter, but at the time the roots for ten were and , resulting in Sindarin *, . This was later changed to , , resulting in Sindarin , so that this older form must be updated. The word * is extracted from the name "Menegroth", "the Thousand Caves", although this could technically be a base-12 "thousand" (i.e., 12 or 1,728).


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Marjane Satrapi (; ; born 22 November 1969) is a French-Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children's book author. Her best-known works include the graphic novel "Persepolis" and its film adaptation, the graphic novel "Chicken with Plums", and the Marie Curie biopic "Radioactive".


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran in a middle-class Iranian family and attended the French-language school, Lycée Razi. Both her parents were politically active and supported leftist causes against the monarchy of the last Shah. When the Iranian Revolution took place in 1979, they underwent rule by the Islamic fundamentalists who took power.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: During her youth, Satrapi was exposed to the growing brutalities of the various regimes. Many of her family friends were persecuted, arrested, and even murdered. She found a hero in her paternal uncle, Anoosh, who had been a political prisoner and lived in exile in the Soviet Union for a time. Young Satrapi greatly admired her uncle, and he in turn doted on her, treating her more as a daughter than a niece. Once back in Iran, Anoosh was arrested again and sentenced to death. Anoosh was only allowed one visitor the night before his execution, and he requested Satrapi. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison. It is said that Anoosh was the nephew of Fereydun Ebrahimi, Minister of Justice of Azerbaijan People's Government, a secessionist government that tried to secede from Pahlavi Persia in 1945.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Although Satrapi's parents encouraged her to be strong-willed and defend her rights, they grew concerned for her safety. Barely in her teens by this time, she was skirting trouble with police for disregarding modesty codes and buying music banned by the regime.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: They arranged for her to live with a family friend, Zozo, to study abroad, and in 1983, at age fourteen, she arrived in Vienna, Austria, to attend the Lycée Français de Vienne. She stayed in Vienna through her high school years, often moving from one residence to another as situations changed, and sometimes stayed at friends' homes. Eventually, she was homeless and lived on the streets for three months, until she was hospitalized for an almost deadly bout of bronchitis. Upon recovery, she returned to Iran. She studied visual communication, eventually obtaining a master's degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi then married Reza, a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War, when she was 21, whom she later divorced. She then moved to Strasbourg, France. Her parents told her that Iran was no longer the place for her, and encouraged her to stay in Europe permanently.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi is currently married to Mattias Ripa, a Swedish national. They live in Paris. Apart from her native language, Farsi, she speaks French, English, Swedish, German, and Italian.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels, originally published in French in four parts in 2000–2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as "Persepolis and Persepolis 2", which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. "Persepolis" won the "Angoulême "Coup de Coeur" Award" at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. In 2013, Chicago schools were ordered by the district to remove "Persepolis" from classrooms because of the work's graphic language and violence. This banning incited protests and controversy. Her later publication, "Embroideries" ("Broderies"), was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award that her novel "Chicken with Plums" ("Poulet aux prunes") won. She has also contributed to the Op-Ed section of "The New York Times".


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Comics Alliance listed Satrapi as one of 12 women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi prefers the term "comic books" to "graphic novels." "People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'," she told the "Guardian" newspaper in 2011. "It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel' and that disappears. No: it's all comics."


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: "Persepolis" was adapted into an animated film of the same name. It debuted at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 and shared a Special Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas's "Silent Light" ("Luz silenciosa"). Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud, the French-language picture stars the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, and Simon Abkarian. The English version, starring the voices of Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn, and Iggy Pop, was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards in January 2008. Satrapi was the first woman to be nominated for the award. However, the Iranian government denounced the film and got it dropped from the Bangkok International Film Festival. Otherwise, "Persepolis" was a very successful film both commercially (with over a million admissions in France alone) as well as critically, winning Best First Film at the César Awards 2008. The film reflects many tendencies of first-time filmmaking in France (which makes up around 40% of all French cinema each year), notably in its focus on very intimate rites of passage, and quite ambivalently recounted coming-of-age moments.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Satrapi and Paronnaud continued their successful collaboration with a second film, a live-action adaptation of "Chicken with Plums", released in late 2011. In 2012, Satrapi directed and acted in the comedy crime film "Gang of the Jotas", from her own screenplay.


title: Marjane Satrapi

text: Following the Iranian elections in June 2009, Satrapi and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before Green Party members in the European Parliament to present a document allegedly received from a member of the Iranian electoral commission claiming that the reform candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, had actually won the election, and that the conservative incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had received only 12% of the vote.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: She's Having a Baby is a 1988 American romantic comedy film directed and written by John Hughes and starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern. It tells the story of a young newlywed couple who try to cope with married life and their parents' expectations.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: This film looks at the lives of Jefferson "Jake" (Kevin Bacon) and Kristy Briggs (Elizabeth McGovern), from their wedding day until the birth of their first child, mostly through Jake's eyes, with his voiceover commentaries and several imaginary scenes.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: Before their wedding day, Jake asks his best friend Davis McDonald (Alec Baldwin) if he thinks Jake will be happy to which Davis says "Yeah, you'll be happy. You just won't know it."


title: She's Having a Baby

text: After their wedding that was attended by Jake's parents Jim (James Ray) and Sarah (Holland Taylor), his grandparents (Bill Erwin and Reba McKinney), and Kristy's parents Russ (William Windom) and Gayle (Cathryn Damon), Jake and Kristy head off for New Mexico where Jake works toward gaining a Master's Degree, but leaves before finishing. They return to Chicago where Jake is hired as an advertising copywriter. Jake says he wants to be a writer, which amuses his boss Howard (Paul Gleason). Kristy is hired as a research analyst and they are able to buy a house in the suburbs. Meanwhile, Jake begins fantasizing about having an affair with a mysterious young French model (Isabel García Lorca).


title: She's Having a Baby

text: Jake and Kristy continue to adjust to their new lives, although Jake feels pressure from his parents, society, and his wife to have a child. Gayle (Cathryn Damon) casually informs them that she had a difficult birth with Kristy and nearly died. Later, Kristy informs Jake that she stopped taking contraceptives without telling him. After several months, they discover that the reason she hasn't gotten pregnant is because he has been unable to impregnate her.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: After not seeing Jake and Kristy for three years, Davis visits unexpectedly telling them that his father has died. Jake and Kristy are supportive, allowing him to stay the night. Things take a turn when Davis makes a pass at Kristy by proclaiming his feelings and trying to open her bathrobe, but Kristy turns him down telling him that she is in love with Jake.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The couple begins a fertility program, which eventually succeeds. During a traumatic labor, Jake must leave the delivery room and he worries about losing Kristy, realizing that his lack of satisfaction in life was due to his own selfishness and immaturity.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The last scene of the film reveals that Jake's voiceover was the new father reading his novel entitled "She's Having a Baby" to his wife and son.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: During the credits, Jake and Kristy talk about what to name their son as a montage of family members, people they know, Roman Craig, Chet Ripley, and Buck Ripley from the following film "The Great Outdoors", Ferris Bueller from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", and an assortment of different actors pitching their suggestions of boy names is shown before settling on the name Christopher.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: Besides some of the characters mentioned above, the following appear in the end credits pitching their ideas of boy names for Jake and Kristy's son where they are all uncredited:


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The film was shot in Winnetka, Illinois, and Evanston, Illinois, from September 1986 to December 1986. However, several scenes were shot directly in the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Most of John Hughes's films either take place in Chicago or the suburbs of Chicago, or are about people going to or coming from Chicago.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The She's Having a Baby soundtrack album was released in 1988 on I.R.S. Records label and produced by Dave Wakeling.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The song during the birth sequence is "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush and is featured on her 1989 album "The Sensual World". John Hughes is thanked in the album's liner notes.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: In the video for Dave Wakeling's title tune, he performs alongside a female backup singer; behind them, a huge screen displays various clips from the movie. All of this is alternated with footage of Wakeling as he shops at a music store for guitars.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: The film received mixed reviews from critics and has 41% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes based on 44 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern struggle to sustain a spark in "She's Having a Baby", a blase adult romance that lacks the specificity and style of writer-director John Hughes' more successful forays into teenage angst." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave "She's Having a Baby" a mixed 2 stars out of 4. He wrote that the film "begins with the simplest and most moving of stories and interrupts it with an amazing assortment of gimmicks," being salvaged only by strong performances from Bacon and McGovern.


title: She's Having a Baby

text: In "" director Kevin Smith cites "She's Having a Baby" as his favorite John Hughes film. He also cites it as a template for "Jersey Girl", joking that both films were financially unsuccessful.


title: Power outage

text: A power outage (also called a powercut, a power out, a power failure, a power blackout, a power loss, or a blackout) is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user.


title: Power outage

text: There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network. Examples of these causes include faults at power stations, damage to electric transmission lines, substations or other parts of the distribution system, a short circuit, cascading failure, fuse or circuit breaker operation.


title: Power outage

text: Power failures are particularly critical at sites where the environment and public safety are at risk. Institutions such as hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and mines will usually have backup power sources such as standby generators, which will automatically start up when electrical power is lost. Other critical systems, such as telecommunication, are also required to have emergency power. The battery room of a telephone exchange usually has arrays of lead–acid batteries for backup and also a socket for connecting a generator during extended periods of outage.


title: Power outage

text: Power outages are categorized into three different phenomena, relating to the duration and effect of the outage:


title: Power outage

text: Rolling blackouts occur when demand for electricity exceeds supply, and allow some customers to receive power at the required voltage at the expense of other customers who get no power at all. They are a common occurrence in developing countries, and may be scheduled in advance or occur without warning. They have also occurred in developed countries, for example in the California electricity crisis of 2000–2001, when government deregulation destabilized the wholesale electricity market. Blackouts are also used as a public safety measure, such as to prevent a gas leak from catching fire (for example, power was cut to several towns in response to the Merrimack Valley gas explosions), or to prevent wildfires around poorly maintained transmission lines (such as during the 2019 California power shutoffs).


title: Power outage

text: In power supply networks, the power generation and the electrical load (demand) must be very close to equal every second to avoid overloading of network components, which can severely damage them. Protective relays and fuses are used to automatically detect overloads and to disconnect circuits at risk of damage.


title: Power outage

text: Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can cause current fluctuations in neighboring segments of the network leading to a cascading failure of a larger section of the network. This may range from a building, to a block, to an entire city, to an entire electrical grid.


title: Power outage

text: Modern power systems are designed to be resistant to this sort of cascading failure, but it may be unavoidable (see below). Moreover, since there is no short-term economic benefit to preventing rare large-scale failures, researchers have expressed concern that there is a tendency to erode the resilience of the network over time, which is only corrected after a major failure occurs. In a 2003 publication, Carreras and co-authors claimed that reducing the likelihood of small outages only increases the likelihood of larger ones. In that case, the short-term economic benefit of keeping the individual customer happy increases the likelihood of large-scale blackouts.


title: Power outage

text: The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing in October 2018 to examine "black start", the process of restoring electricity after a system-wide power loss. The hearing's purpose was for Congress to learn about what the backup plans are in the electric utility industry in the case that the electric grid is damaged. Threats to the electrical grid include cyberattacks, solar storms, and severe weather, among others. For example, the "Northeast Blackout of 2003" was caused when overgrown trees touched high-voltage power lines. Around 55 million people in the U.S. and Canada lost power, and restoring it cost around $6 billion.


title: Power outage

text: Computer systems and other electronic devices containing logic circuitry are susceptible to data loss or hardware damage that can be caused by the sudden loss of power. These can include data networking equipment, video projectors, alarm systems as well as computers. To protect computer systems against this, the use of an uninterruptible power supply or 'UPS' can provide a constant flow of electricity if a primary power supply becomes unavailable for a short period of time. To protect against surges (events where voltages increase for a few seconds), which can damage hardware when power is restored, a special device called a surge protector that absorbs the excess voltage can be used.


title: Power outage

text: Restoring power after a wide-area outage can be difficult, as power stations need to be brought back online. Normally, this is done with the help of power from the rest of the grid. In the total absence of grid power, a so-called black start needs to be performed to bootstrap the power grid into operation. The means of doing so will depend greatly on local circumstances and operational policies, but typically transmission utilities will establish localized 'power islands' which are then progressively coupled together. To maintain supply frequencies within tolerable limits during this process, demand must be reconnected at the same pace that generation is restored, requiring close coordination between power stations, transmission and distribution organizations.


title: Power outage

text: It has been argued on the basis of historical data and computer modeling that power grids are self-organized critical systems. These systems exhibit unavoidable disturbances of all sizes, up to the size of the entire system. This phenomenon has been attributed to steadily increasing demand/load, the economics of running a power company, and the limits of modern engineering.


title: Power outage

text: While blackout frequency has been shown to be reduced by operating it further from its critical point, it generally is not economically feasible, causing providers to increase the average load over time or upgrade less often resulting in the grid moving itself closer to its critical point. Conversely, a system past the critical point will experience too many blackouts leading to system-wide upgrades moving it back below the critical point. The term critical point of the system is used here in the sense of statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, representing the point where a system undergoes a phase transition; in this case the transition from a steady reliable grid with few cascading failures to a very sporadic unreliable grid with common cascading failures. Near the critical point the relationship between blackout frequency and size follows a power-law distribution.


title: Power outage

text: Cascading failure becomes much more common close to this critical point. The power-law relationship is seen in both historical data and model systems. The practice of operating these systems much closer to their maximum capacity leads to magnified effects of random, unavoidable disturbances due to aging, weather, human interaction etc. While near the critical point, these failures have a greater effect on the surrounding components due to individual components carrying a larger load. This results in the larger load from the failing component having to be redistributed in larger quantities across the system, making it more likely for additional components not directly affected by the disturbance to fail, igniting costly and dangerous cascading failures. These initial disturbances causing blackouts are all the more unexpected and unavoidable due to actions of the power suppliers to prevent obvious disturbances (cutting back trees, separating lines in windy areas, replacing aging components etc.). The complexity of most power grids often makes the initial cause of a blackout extremely hard to identify.


title: Power outage

text: Leaders are dismissive of system theories that conclude that blackouts are inevitable, but do agree that the basic operation of the grid must be changed. The Electric Power Research Institute champions the use of smart grid features such as power control devices employing advanced sensors to coordinate the grid. Others advocate greater use of electronically controlled high-voltage direct current (HVDC) firebreaks to prevent disturbances from cascading across AC lines in a wide area grid.


title: Power outage

text: In 2002, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Power System Engineering Research Center of the University of Wisconsin (PSerc), and the University of Alaska Fairbanks proposed a mathematical model for the behavior of electrical distribution systems. This model has become known as the OPA model, a reference to the names of the authors' institutions. OPA is a cascading failure model. Other cascading failure models include Manchester, Hidden failure, CASCADE, and Branching. The OPA model was quantitatively compared with a complex networks model of a cascading failure – Crucitti–Latora–Marchiori (CLM) model, showing that both models exhibit similar phase transitions in the average network damage (load shed/demand in OPA, path damage in CLM), with respect to transmission capacity.


title: Power outage

text: The effects of trying to mitigate cascading failures near the critical point in an economically feasible fashion are often shown to not be beneficial and often even detrimental. Four mitigation methods have been tested using the "OPA" blackout model:


title: Power outage

text: In addition to the finding of each mitigation strategy having a cost-benefit relationship with regards to frequency of small and large blackouts, the total number of blackout events was not significantly reduced by any of the above-mentioned mitigation measures.


title: Power outage

text: A complex network-based model to control large cascading failures (blackouts) "using local information only" was proposed by A. E. Motter.


title: Power outage

text: In 2015, one of the solutions proposed to reduce the impact of power outage was introduced by M. S. Saleh.


title: Air France fleet

text: Air France operates a fleet of 205 aircraft, mostly Airbus aircraft. Its narrow-body fleet consists of all-four Airbus A320ceo family variants, on the other hand the wide-body aircraft of Airbus A330, Airbus A350, Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 serve as long-haul operations. The airline has also ordered the short-to-medium-haul Airbus A220 to replace their aging Airbus A318s and Airbus A319s.


title: Air France fleet

text: , Air France (excluding its subsidiaries Air France Hop and Transavia France) operates the following registered aircraft:


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: The diaeresis ( ; is a diacritical mark used to indicate the separation of two distinct vowels in adjacent syllables when an instance of diaeresis (or hiatus) occurs, so as to distinguish from a digraph or diphthong.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: It consists of two dots placed over a letter, generally a vowel; when that letter is an , the diacritic replaces the tittle: .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: The diaeresis diacritic indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph and be pronounced as one sound, are instead to be read as separate vowels in two syllables. For example, in the spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables "co-op-er-ate", not three, "*coop-er-ate". In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well. Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazine "The New Yorker". In English language texts it is perhaps most familiar in the spellings "naïve", "Noël", and "Chloë", and is also used officially in the name of the island Teän. Languages such as Dutch, Afrikaans, Catalan, French, Galician, and Spanish make regular use of the diaeresis.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: The word "trema" (), used in linguistics and also classical scholarship, is from the Greek () and means a "perforation", "orifice", or "pip" (as on dice), thus describing the form of the diacritic rather than its function.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Greek, two dots, called a "trema", were used in the Hellenistic period on the letters and , most often at the beginning of a word, as in , , and , to separate them from a preceding vowel, as writing was , where spacing was not yet used as a word divider. However, it was also used to indicate that a vowel formed its own syllable (in phonological hiatus), as in and .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: The diaeresis was borrowed for this purpose in several languages of western and southern Europe, among them Occitan, Catalan, French, Dutch, Welsh, and (rarely) English. As a further extension, some languages began to use a diaeresis whenever a vowel letter was to be pronounced separately. This included vowels that would otherwise form digraphs with consonants or simply be silent. For example, in the orthographies of Spanish, Catalan, French, Galician and Occitan, the graphemes "gu" and "qu" normally represent a single sound, or , before the front vowels "e" and "i" (or before nearly all vowels in Occitan). In the few exceptions where the "u" is pronounced, a diaeresis is added to it.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: 'Ÿ' is sometimes used in transcribed Greek, where it represents the Greek letter υ (upsilon) in hiatus with α. For example, it can be seen in the transcription of the Persian name () at the very end of Herodotus, or the name of Mount Taÿgetus on the southern Peloponnesus peninsula, which in modern Greek is spelled .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Catalan, the digraphs "ai", "ei", "oi", "au", "eu", and "iu" are normally read as diphthongs. To indicate exceptions to this rule (hiatus), a diaeresis mark is placed on the second vowel: without this the words ("grape") and ("diurnal") would be read * and *, respectively. The Occitan use of diaeresis is very similar to that of Catalan: "ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou" are diphthongs consisting of one syllable but "aï, eï, oï, aü, eü, oü" are groups consisting of two distinct syllables.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Dutch, spellings such as are necessary because the digraphs "oe" and "ie" normally represent the simple vowels and , respectively. However, hyphenation is now preferred for compound words so that (sea duck) is now spelled .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Modern English, the diaeresis, the grave accent and the acute accent are the only diacritics used apart from loanwords. It may be used optionally for words that do not have a morphological break at the diaeresis point, such as "naïve", "Boötes", and "Noël". It is far less commonly used in words such as "coördinate" and "reënter" except in a very few publicationsnotably "The New Yorker" and "MIT Technology Review" under Jason Pontinand this usage is considered by prescriptive writing guides to be largely archaic. The diaeresis mark is sometimes used in English personal first and last names to indicate that two adjacent vowels should be pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. Examples include the given names "Chloë" and "Zoë", which otherwise might be pronounced with a silent "e".


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In French, some diphthongs that were written with pairs of vowel letters were later reduced to monophthongs, which led to an extension of the value of this diacritic. It often now indicates that the second vowel letter is to be pronounced separately from the first, rather than merge with it into a single sound. For example, the French words and would be pronounced and , respectively, without the diaeresis mark, since the digraph "ai" is pronounced . The English spelling of "Noël" meaning "Christmas" ( ) comes from this use. "Ÿ" occurs in French as a variant of "ï" in a few proper nouns, as in the name of the Parisian suburb of L'Haÿ-les-Roses and in the surname of the house of Croÿ . In some names, a diaeresis is used to indicate two vowels historically in hiatus, although the second vowel has since fallen silent, as in Saint-Saëns and de Staël .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: The diaeresis is also used in French when a silent "e" is added to the sequence "gu", to show that it is to be pronounced rather than as a digraph for . For example, when the feminine "e" is added to "aigu" "sharp", the pronunciation does not change in most accents: "aiguë" as opposed to the city name "Aigues-Mortes" . Similar is the feminine noun "hemlock"; compare "fig". In the ongoing French spelling reform of 1990, this was moved to the "u" ("," ). (In the "e" is not silent, and so is not affected by the spelling reform.)


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Galician, diaeresis is employed to indicate hiatus in the first and second persons of the plural of the imperfect tense of verbs ended in "-aer", "-oer", "-aír" and "-oír" (, ). This stems from the fact that an unstressed "-i-" is left between vowels, but constituting its own syllable, which would end with a form identical in writing but different in pronunciation with those of the Present subjunctive ("," ), as those have said "i" forming a diphthong with the following "a".


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In German, in addition to the pervasive use of umlaut diacritics with vowels, diaeresis above "e" occurs in a few proper names, such as Ferdinand Piëch and Bernhard Hoëcker.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Modern Greek, and represent the diphthongs and , and the disyllabic sequence , whereas , , and transcribe the simple vowels , , and . The diacritic can be the only one on a vowel, as in (, "academic"), or in combination with an acute accent, as in (, "protein").


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Portuguese, a diaeresis () was used in (mainly Brazilian) Portuguese until the 1990 Orthographic Agreement. It was used in combinations and , in words like "sanguineous". After the implementation of the Orthographic Agreement, it was abolished altogether from all Portuguese words.


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: Spanish uses the diaeresis obligatorily in words such as and ; and optionally in some poetic (or, until 1950, academic) contexts in words like , and .


title: Diaeresis (diacritic)

text: In Welsh, where the diaeresis appears, it is usually on the stressed vowel, and this is most often on the first of the two adjacent vowels; typical examples are (to copy) and (to mop). It is also used on the first of two vowels that would otherwise form a diphthong ( ('created') rather than ('believed')) and on the first of three vowels to separate it from a following diphthong: is pronounced rather than .


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LLC (also known on the screen logo as RatPac Entertainment) was an American motion picture production company owned by producer-director Brett Ratner. RatPac was founded by Ratner and billionaire James Packer. RatPac is a partner in RatPac-Dune Entertainment with Dune Entertainment.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: RatPac-Dune Entertainment LLC was formed in September 2013 by RatPac and Dune with a four-year, 75 motion picture co-financing arrangement with Warner Bros. In December 2013, RatPac signed a deal starting as of January 1, 2014 to finance films as part of a production deal between Plan B Entertainment and New Regency. In April 2017, RatPac became a subsidiary of Access Entertainment with its purchase of James Packer's ownership share.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: In April 2018, Warner Bros. announced that they were cutting ties with the company after Ratner's sexual harassment allegations with "Rampage" as the final film to be co-financed by the company with Warner Bros., and also the final film produced by RatPac to date.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: In 2021, r/wallstreetbets founder Jaime Rogozinski sold the rights to his life story to the company following the short squeeze of GameStop's stocks. A couple weeks later, Ratner was reported to direct and produce a Milli Vanilli biopic through his company. Millennium Media was financing and producing the film, but later retracted their support after pushback from Time's Up.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: Dune Entertainment was led by Steven Mnuchin and had been co-financing Fox films since 2006. On March 17, 2006, Viacom agreed to sell a controlling interest in the DreamWorks Pictures live-action film library to Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Entertainment II. The sale was completed on May 8, 2006. The company is the result of a 2013 joint venture between RatPac Entertainment and Dune Entertainment, following a collapse in negotiations between Dune and 20th Century Fox – which led the company to close a deal with Warner Bros. instead, replacing Legendary Pictures as Warner's key co-financing partner.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LLC was a film financing company which is a joint venture of RatPac Entertainment and Dune Entertainment.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LLC was formed in September 2013 by RatPac and Dune with a multi-year 75-picture co-financing arrangement with Warner Bros. On November 26, 2013, RatPac-Dune finalized a $300 million credit facility with a group of banks, led by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, that has an option to be extended to $400 million. In April 2018, Warner Bros. announced that they will not renew its contract with RatPac-Dune Entertainment after Brett Ratner's sexual harassment allegations. In November 2018, RatPac-Dune's minority ownership stake in a library of 76 Warner Bros. films was put for sale, with investors in the fund backing the library to cash out. Vine Alternative Investments made a high bid for the library, but in January 2019, Warner Bros. exercised its rights to match the bid for the library, and essentially acquired RatPac-Dune's stakes. The cost was estimated at nearly $300 million.


title: RatPac-Dune Entertainment

text: The 75-picture deal passively covered all movies outside of other production financing deals including those with Village Roadshow Pictures, Gulfstream and Alcon Entertainment and all "Harry Potter" films. The deal was passive both financially and creatively as RatPac-Dune did not select which films to finance nor had any creative say over the films.


title: Miss Cleo

text: Youree Dell Harris (August 12, 1962 – July 26, 2016) was an American television personality and actress best known for portraying Miss Cleo, a spokeswoman for a psychic pay-per-call service called Psychic Readers Network, in a series of television commercials that aired from 1997 to 2003. Harris used various aliases, including Cleomili Harris and Youree Perris.


title: Miss Cleo

text: Harris was born in Los Angeles on August 12, 1962, and raised in a Catholic Afro-Caribbean family. She attended an all-girls boarding school.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In 1996, Harris opened a theatrical production company in Seattle, Washington, which produced several plays written by her. She also acted in her first project, an autobiographical play entitled "For Women Only".


title: Miss Cleo

text: Her last project, "Supper Club Cafe" in 1997, was not successful, and she "left town with a trail of debts and broken promises" according to the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer". Some of the cast of her productions claimed that they were never paid, and that Harris "told her cast members she had bone cancer" and "her medical costs would prevent her from paying people immediately", but she wrote each actor and crew member a letter telling him or her how much money she owed them.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In the late 1990s, Harris began work for the Psychic Readers Network under the name Cleo. She appeared as a television infomercial psychic in which she claimed to be a shaman from Jamaica. Her employers' website also stated that Harris had been born in Trelawny, Jamaica, and grown up there.


title: Miss Cleo

text: The network is said to have coined the title "Miss Cleo" and sent unsolicited emails, some of which stated, "[Miss Cleo has] been authorized to issue you a Special Tarot Reading!... it is vital that you call immediately!" Charges of deceptive advertising and of fraud on the part of the network began to surface around this time. Among the complaints were allegations that calls to Miss Cleo were answered by her "associates" who were actors reading from scripts, and that calls promoted as "free" were in fact charged for.


title: Miss Cleo

text: A tie-in book, "Keepin' It Real: A Practical Guide for Spiritual Living" appeared in 2001. Its authorship was attributed to Miss Cleo.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In 2001, Access Resource Services, doing business as Psychic Readers Network, was sued in various lawsuits originating in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and elsewhere, as well as the Federal Communications Commission, although a later report from Consumer Affairs said that "many customers were satisfied with the service." The report did not cite its source.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In 2002, the Federal Trade Commission charged the company's owners and Harris' promoters, Steven Feder and Peter Stotz, with deceptive advertising, billing, and collection practices; Harris was not indicted. The network had billed its victims for an estimated $1 billion. Her promoters agreed to settle by erasing $500 million of debt owed by its victims to the network and paying a $5 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission. It emerged during a lawsuit in Florida that Harris had been born in Los Angeles, and that her parents were American citizens.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In 2003, the "New York Daily News" reported that TV music network Fuse had signed Harris as a spokeswoman. In early 2005, Harris was reportedly appearing on television as Miss Cleo in advertisements for a used car dealership in Florida, according to the "Broward-Palm Beach New Times".


title: Miss Cleo

text: Under the name Cleomili Harris, she spoke about her experiences at the Psychic Readers Network in the 2014 documentary "Hotline," which focused on telephone relationships between strangers.


title: Miss Cleo

text: As Miss Cleo, Harris appeared in a 2015 series of advertisements for the General Mills breakfast cereal French Toast Crunch. The Psychic Readers Network intervened on the basis that they owned the character of Miss Cleo. The advertisements were discontinued.


title: Miss Cleo

text: Harris married at age 19, gave birth to a daughter, and divorced at age 21. She had a second daughter while in her late 20s. In 2006, she came out as a lesbian.


title: Miss Cleo

text: Harris developed colorectal cancer, which metastasized. She died under hospice care in Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2016, at the age of 53.


title: Miss Cleo

text: In December 2022, HBO Max released a feature documentary about Harris' life entitled "Call Me Miss Cleo".


title: Bruised (film)

text: Bruised is a 2020 sports drama film starring and directed by Halle Berry in her directorial debut, who also served as the producer. It co-stars Shamier Anderson, Adan Canto, Sheila Atim, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Adriane Lenox. The screenplay was written by Michelle Rosenfarb.


title: Bruised (film)

text: "Bruised" had its world premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2020 and was later released in select theaters and on Netflix in November 2021. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Berry's directing and acting, but criticized the screenplay, and inconsistent tone of the film. Following its release, viewership on Netflix generated a multipicture-deal for Berry.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Four years after forfeiting a major fight, former UFC fighter Jackie "Pretty Bull" Justice lives with her boyfriend and manager, Desi, in inner-city Newark. Earning a living as a housecleaner, Jackie relies on alcohol to cope with the tedium of her daily life. Desi pushes Jackie to start fighting again, but she refuses, angrily blaming him for mismanaging her career.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Desi takes Jackie to an illegal underground match, hoping to sign a new fighter. Recognized, the "Werewolf" provokes her into fighting. When Jackie finally loses her temper, she pins the Werewolf down and headbutts her unconscious. Catching the eye of Immaculate, a local promoter of the all-female MMA league Invicta Fighting Championships, he recruits Jackie and sets her up with Bobbi "Buddhakan" Berroa and Pops, his best trainers, to get back into fighting shape.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Heading home, Jackie and Desi are pulled over by Jackie's estranged mother Angel who has brought Manny, Jackie's son who she has not seen since he was an infant. Manny has been placed into her custody after his father, Jackie's former boyfriend, was killed in a shooting. The trauma caused Manny to stop speaking entirely.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Manny moves in with his mother, and Jackie, under Buddhakan's guidance, slowly regains her old form. Immaculate convinces her to sign a management contract with him; infuriating Desi, but they eventually patch things up. Growing closer to Buddhakan, Jackie learns she is also a mother, but has not seen her child in over two years following the breakdown of her marriage.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Jackie enrolls Manny into school while learning to be a mother, even dumping all of her alcohol down the sink. However, Jackie's relationship with Desi deteriorates, until he finally snaps, smashing Manny's keyboard and hitting Jackie in the face when she tries to stop him. Jackie moves out with Manny, leaving him for good. Angel reluctantly allows them to move in with her until the fight.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Jackie is pitted against face Lucia "Lady Killer" Chavez, Invicta FC's flyweight champion, in an Atlantic City title bout. Immaculate claims the fight is to get Jackie back into the UFC, but he later angrily admits he recruited her as a can against Chavez.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Jackie suffers a panic attack, reliving the memory of her last fight. Manny tries to comfort her, but she screams at him to go away. He runs off, and a stranger brings him to Angel. Already on bad terms with her daughter (as Jackie accused her of letting her boyfriends and Jackie's uncle rape her as a child), Angel scornfully tells Jackie she is an unfit mother and that she will take over caring for Manny.


title: Bruised (film)

text: With no one else to turn to, Jackie starts living with Buddhakan, throwing herself into her training. Confessing her fears of returning to the ring, they kiss and become intimate. However, when Buddhaken asks her to consider becoming official, Jackie admits she is not ready and Buddhakan goes on a bender, ending up hospitalized the day before the fight.


title: Bruised (film)

text: With only Pops in her corner, Jackie enters the fight against Chavez distracted, so the champion dominates the first round. In the second and third rounds, her confidence builds as she wears down Chavez and wins over the audience. In the fifth and final round, Jackie matches Chavez blow-for-blow, ending in a split decision, where Chavez narrowly retains her championship. Despite this, she and the audience celebrate Jackie's successful comeback.


title: Bruised (film)

text: After reconciling with Buddhakan, Jackie goes back to Angel's, promising her son she is going to get them their own place. The women part on good terms. As they walk down the street, Jackie stops to help Manny tie his shoes and he speaks to her for the first time, accepting her as his mother.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Additionally, MMA referee Keith Peterson cameos as himself for the referee of the final fight between Jackie and Lady Killer and UFC fighter Yves Edwards plays a commentator.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Reportedly, on August 16, 2021, the MMA star and former UFC fighter Cat Zingano filed a lawsuit against Berry, Bruised Film Productions LLC, Thunder Road Film Productions Inc. and Romulus Entertainment LLC in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking damages based upon claims of promissory estoppel. Zingano states that Berry has offered her a role in the film during a meeting in July 2019. According to Zingano, after she was offered a UFC fight slated for October, which would put her in title contention, she was advised by Berry not to take it for insurance reasons. She turned down the fight and was subsequently released by UFC in August 2019. Zingano further alleged that Berry informed her shortly afterwards that she could not appear in the film, as only current UFC fighters were allowed to take part. The suit also states that Berry ceased all communication with Zingano following the incident.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Court papers filed in November 2021, by Berry's attorneys, state that Zingano lost her UFC contract due to her poor record in the organization. The documents also allege that she made the decision to appear in the film without knowing what role she would play or how much would she be paid and did so based upon text message exchanges with Berry. According to Berry's attorneys, Zingano does not state what her damages are and that she is improperly seeking punitive damages.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Initially, Nick Cassavetes was slated to direct the mixed martial arts film "Bruised" written by Michelle Rosenfarb and produced by Guymon Casady, Basil Iwanyk, Linda Gottlieb, and Erica Lee. Blake Lively was originally cast as the main character in the film. On September 11, 2018, Halle Berry took over directing "Bruised," making it her directorial debut, and replaced Lively as the main character in the film. On December 4, 2019, Shamier Anderson and Adan Canto were cast in the film. On December 16, 2019, Sheila Atim was cast in the film.


title: Bruised (film)

text: Principal photography began in November 2019, in New Jersey. Filming locations included the Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City and a boxing gym in Newark. During filming, Berry suffered a minor injury, with filming being suspended for a few days. Production resumed on November 27. Production concluded on December 20, 2019.


title: Bruised (film)

text: In September 2021, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film for around $20 million. The film's world premiere was held at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2020. The film also screened at AFI Fest on November 14, 2021. It had a limited theatrical release on November 17, 2021, prior to streaming on Netflix on November 24.


title: Bruised (film)

text: On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Bruised (film)

text: Peter Hammond of "Deadline Hollywood" wrote that "there is no question Berry has thrown it all against the wall with this one and acquitted herself admirably, not just as you might expect acting-wise from the Oscar-winning star of "Monster's Ball" but also behind the camera. She keenly navigates a female-driven story of a disgraced MMA fighting superstar trying to claw her way back to the top while putting the pieces of her shattered personal life back together."


title: Michael Koman

text: Michael Koman (born February 2, 1977) is an American comedian and television writer and producer. His notable credits include writing for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" for seven years, and serving as co-creator, writer, and executive producer for "Nathan for You", which aired for four seasons.


title: Michael Koman

text: Koman grew up in San Diego and developed a strong interest in comedy from a young age. His early outlets for this interest included the sketch comedy show "SCTV", which he watched enthusiastically; the collection of classic vinyl comedy albums held at UCSD's library, to which he listened extensively; and The Comedy Store club near his home in La Jolla, where he secured an after-school job while he was still in high school. This job led to Koman performing his own short stand-up sets.


title: Michael Koman

text: Koman's screenwriting career began with a job submitting sketches for "MADtv". This opportunity materialized in 1999 after Koman, who was attending college in Los Angeles and occasionally performing at The Improv there, wrote and produced with his friend and fellow comic Todd Glass a sketch show called "Todd's Coma". Veteran comic actor Fred Willard appeared in the show, staged at the HBO Workspace (now the National Comedy Theatre), and Willard's manager later sent a tape on Koman's behalf to "MADtv", whose producers were seeking to hire young writing talent.


title: Michael Koman

text: While at "MADtv", Koman worked closely with Greg Cohen, who had written previously for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien". On Cohen's recommendation, Koman was hired to write for O'Brien's show. Between 2001 and 2008, Koman collaborated with fellow "Late Night" writers including Brian Stack and Andrew Weinberg, helping to create recurring characters and bits such as "The Interrupter" and "Hannigan the Traveling Salesman". He also developed the concept behind the frequently reprised "Walker, Texas Ranger Lever" and spearheaded a parody of Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" called "Studio 6A" (in reference to Conan's television studio in 30 Rockefeller Plaza), thus satirizing a program that was itself dramatizing a fictional version of the often satirical show "Saturday Night Live". When the show filmed a special episode in Finland following the discovery of O'Brien's rabid fan base there, Koman and Weinberg, together with head writer Mike Sweeney, accompanied the host and helped generate the material.