title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Deodato grew up on a farm and at eighteen grew up in the neighborhood where Rome's major film studios are located. Through a friendship with the son of Rossellini, it was there that he learned how to direct under Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Corbucci; he helped to make Corbucci's "The Slave" and "Django" as an assistant director. Later on in the 1960s, he directed some comedy, musical, and thriller films, before leaving cinema to do TV commercials. In 1976 he returned to the big screen with his ultra-violent police flick "Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man".


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: In 1977 he directed a jungle adventure called "Last Cannibal World" (also known as "Jungle Holocaust") starring British actress Me Me Lai with which he 'rebooted' the cannibal film / mondo genre started years earlier by Italian director Umberto Lenzi.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Late in 1979 he returned to the cannibal subgenre with the incredibly controversial "Cannibal Holocaust". The film was shot in the Amazon Rainforest for a budget of about $100,000, and starred Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, and Carl Gabriel Yorke. The film is a mockumentary about a group of filmmakers who go into the Amazon Rainforest and subsequently stage scenes of extreme brutality for a Mondo-style documentary. During production, many cast and crew members protested the use of real animal killing in the film, including Kerman, who walked off the set.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Deodato created massive controversy in Italy and all over the world following the release of "Cannibal Holocaust", which was wrongly claimed by some to be a snuff film due to the overly realistic gore effects. Deodato was arrested on suspicion of murder, and was subsequently forced to reveal the secrets behind the film's special effects and to parade the lead actors before an Italian court in order to prove that they were still alive. Deodato also received condemnation, still ongoing, for the use of real animal torture in his films. Despite the numerous criticisms, "Cannibal Holocaust" is considered a classic of the horror genre and innovative in its found footage plot structure.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Deodato's film license was temporarily revoked and he would not get it back until three years later, which then allowed him to release his 1980 thriller "The House on the Edge of the Park", which was the most censored of the 'video nasties' in the United Kingdom for its graphic violence. His "Cut and Run" is a jungle adventure thriller, containing nudity, extreme violence and the appearance of Michael Berryman as a crazed, machete-wielding jungle man.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: In the 1980s, he made some other slasher/horror films, including "Body Count", "Phantom of Death" and "Dial Help". In the 1990s he turned to TV movies and dramas with some success. In 2007, he made a cameo appearance in "" in the role of a cannibal.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Deodato has made about two dozen films and TV series, his films covering many different genres, including many action films, a western, a barbarian film and even a family film called "Mom I Can Do It". He is also helping to develop a cannibal-themed video game called "Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare"."


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Deodato was married to actress Silvia Dionisio from 1971 to 1979. He has a son from the marriage. His current partner is Micaela Rocco.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: In 2019, the filmmaker was honored with a documentary about his life and career called "Deodato Holocaust". Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Felipe M. Guerra, it was released in May of that year at the Fantaspoa Film Festival, in Brazil, with the presence of Ruggero. The documentary consists of a series of interviews that Guerra made with the Italian director, edited with images from Deodato's movies and personal photos. In 2021, "Deodato Holocaust]" was released on Blu-Ray in Sweden and Germany.


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Throughout his career Deodato was attached to a number of projects which either did not come to fruition or for various reasons were assigned to other directors. He was originally attached to The New York Ripper, The Last Shark, Casablanca Express, and .


title: Ruggero Deodato

text: Unmade projects included, a snake thriller, Rattles, and a 1983 sequel to Cannibal Holocaust entitled Cannibal Fury, which was to enter production in 1983.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: A neuromuscular junction (or myoneural junction) is a chemical synapse between a motor neuron and a muscle fiber.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Muscles require innervation to function—and even just to maintain muscle tone, avoiding atrophy. In the neuromuscular system nerves from the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system are linked and work together with muscles. Synaptic transmission at the neuromuscular junction begins when an action potential reaches the presynaptic terminal of a motor neuron, which activates voltage-gated calcium channels to allow calcium ions to enter the neuron. Calcium ions bind to sensor proteins (synaptotagmins) on synaptic vesicles, triggering vesicle fusion with the cell membrane and subsequent neurotransmitter release from the motor neuron into the synaptic cleft. In vertebrates, motor neurons release acetylcholine (ACh), a small molecule neurotransmitter, which diffuses across the synaptic cleft and binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) on the cell membrane of the muscle fiber, also known as the sarcolemma. nAChRs are ionotropic receptors, meaning they serve as ligand-gated ion channels. The binding of ACh to the receptor can depolarize the muscle fiber, causing a cascade that eventually results in muscle contraction.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Neuromuscular junction diseases can be of genetic and autoimmune origin. Genetic disorders, such as Congenital myasthenic syndrome, can arise from mutated structural proteins that comprise the neuromuscular junction, whereas autoimmune diseases, such as myasthenia gravis, occur when antibodies are produced against nicotinic acetylcholine receptors on the sarcolemma.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: At the neuromuscular junction presynaptic motor axons terminate 30 nanometers from the cell membrane or sarcolemma of a muscle fiber. The sarcolemma at the junction has invaginations called postjunctional folds, which increase its surface area facing the synaptic cleft. These postjunctional folds form the motor endplate, which is studded with nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) at a density of 10,000 receptors/micrometer. The presynaptic axons terminate in bulges called terminal boutons (or presynaptic terminals) that project toward the postjunctional folds of the sarcolemma. In the frog each motor nerve terminal contains about 300,000 vesicles, with an average diameter of 0.05 micrometers. The vesicles contain acetylcholine. Some of these vesicles are gathered into groups of fifty, positioned at active zones close to the nerve membrane. Active zones are about 1 micrometer apart.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: The 30 nanometer cleft between nerve ending and endplate contains a meshwork of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) at a density of 2,600 enzyme molecules/micrometer, held in place by the structural proteins dystrophin and rapsyn. Also present is the receptor tyrosine kinase protein MuSK, a signaling protein involved in the development of the neuromuscular junction, which is also held in place by rapsyn.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: About once every second in a resting junction randomly one of the synaptic vesicles fuses with the presynaptic neuron's cell membrane in a process mediated by SNARE proteins. Fusion results in the emptying of the vesicle's contents of 7000–10,000 acetylcholine molecules into the synaptic cleft, a process known as exocytosis. Consequently, exocytosis releases acetylcholine in packets that are called quanta. The acetylcholine quantum diffuses through the acetylcholinesterase meshwork, where the high local transmitter concentration occupies all of the binding sites on the enzyme in its path. The acetylcholine that reaches the endplate activates ~2,000 acetylcholine receptors, opening their ion channels which permits sodium ions to move into the endplate producing a depolarization of ~0.5 mV known as a miniature endplate potential (MEPP). By the time the acetylcholine is released from the receptors the acetylcholinesterase has destroyed its bound ACh, which takes about ~0.16 ms, and hence is available to destroy the ACh released from the receptors.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: When the motor nerve is stimulated there is a delay of only 0.5 to 0.8 msec between the arrival of the nerve impulse in the motor nerve terminals and the first response of the endplate The arrival of the motor nerve action potential at the presynaptic neuron terminal opens voltage-dependent calcium channels and Ca ions flow from the extracellular fluid into the presynaptic neuron's cytosol. This influx of Ca causes several hundred neurotransmitter-containing vesicles to fuse with the presynaptic neuron's cell membrane through SNARE proteins to release their acetylcholine quanta by exocytosis. The endplate depolarization by the released acetylcholine is called an endplate potential (EPP). The EPP is accomplished when ACh binds the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) at the motor end plate, and causes an influx of sodium ions. This influx of sodium ions generates the EPP (depolarization), and triggers an action potential that travels along the sarcolemma and into the muscle fiber via the T-tubules (transverse tubules) by means of voltage-gated sodium channels. The conduction of action potentials along the T-tubules stimulates the opening of voltage-gated Ca channels which are mechanically coupled to Ca release channels in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. The Ca then diffuses out of the sarcoplasmic reticulum to the myofibrils so it can stimulate contraction. The endplate potential is thus responsible for setting up an action potential in the muscle fiber which triggers muscle contraction. The transmission from nerve to muscle is so rapid because each quantum of acetylcholine reaches the endplate in millimolar concentrations, high enough to combine with a receptor with a low affinity, which then swiftly releases the bound transmitter.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter synthesized from dietary choline and acetyl-CoA (ACoA), and is involved in the stimulation of muscle tissue in vertebrates as well as in some invertebrate animals. In vertebrates, the acetylcholine receptor subtype that is found at the neuromuscular junction of skeletal muscles is the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR), which is a ligand-gated ion channel. Each subunit of this receptor has a characteristic "cys-loop", which is composed of a cysteine residue followed by 13 amino acid residues and another cysteine residue. The two cysteine residues form a disulfide linkage which results in the "cys-loop" receptor that is capable of binding acetylcholine and other ligands. These cys-loop receptors are found only in eukaryotes, but prokaryotes possess ACh receptors with similar properties. Not all species use a cholinergic neuromuscular junction; e.g. crayfish and fruit flies have a glutamatergic neuromuscular junction.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: AChRs at the skeletal neuromuscular junction form heteropentamers composed of two α, one β, one ɛ, and one δ subunits. When a single ACh ligand binds to one of the α subunits of the ACh receptor it induces a conformational change at the interface with the second AChR α subunit. This conformational change results in the increased affinity of the second α subunit for a second ACh ligand. AChRs, therefore, exhibit a sigmoidal dissociation curve due to this cooperative binding. The presence of the inactive, intermediate receptor structure with a single-bound ligand keeps ACh in the synapse that might otherwise be lost by cholinesterase hydrolysis or diffusion. The persistence of these ACh ligands in the synapse can cause a prolonged post-synaptic response.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: The development of the neuromuscular junction requires signaling from both the motor neuron's terminal and the muscle cell's central region. During development, muscle cells produce acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) and express them in the central regions in a process called prepatterning. Agrin, a heparin proteoglycan, and MuSK kinase are thought to help stabilize the accumulation of AChR in the central regions of the myocyte. MuSK is a receptor tyrosine kinase—meaning that it induces cellular signaling by binding phosphate molecules to self regions like tyrosines, and to other targets in the cytoplasm. Upon activation by its ligand agrin, MuSK signals via two proteins called "Dok-7" and "rapsyn", to induce "clustering" of acetylcholine receptors. ACh release by developing motor neurons produces postsynaptic potentials in the muscle cell that positively reinforces the localization and stabilization of the developing neuromuscular junction.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: These findings were demonstrated in part by mouse "knockout" studies. In mice which are deficient for either agrin or MuSK, the neuromuscular junction does not form. Further, mice deficient in Dok-7 did not form either acetylcholine receptor clusters or neuromuscular synapses.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: The development of neuromuscular junctions is mostly studied in model organisms, such as rodents. In addition, in 2015 an all-human neuromuscular junction has been created in vitro using human embryonic stem cells and somatic muscle stem cells. In this model presynaptic motor neurons are activated by optogenetics and in response synaptically connected muscle fibers twitch upon light stimulation.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: José del Castillo and Bernard Katz used ionophoresis to determine the location and density of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) at the neuromuscular junction. With this technique, a microelectrode was placed inside the motor endplate of the muscle fiber, and a micropipette filled with acetylcholine (ACh) is placed directly in front of the endplate in the synaptic cleft. A positive voltage was applied to the tip of the micropipette, which caused a burst of positively charged ACh molecules to be released from the pipette. These ligands flowed into the space representing the synaptic cleft and bound to AChRs. The intracellular microelectrode monitored the amplitude of the depolarization of the motor endplate in response to ACh binding to nicotinic (ionotropic) receptors. Katz and del Castillo showed that the amplitude of the depolarization (excitatory postsynaptic potential) depended on the proximity of the micropipette releasing the ACh ions to the endplate. The farther the micropipette was from the motor endplate, the smaller the depolarization was in the muscle fiber. This allowed the researchers to determine that the nicotinic receptors were localized to the motor endplate in high density.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Toxins are also used to determine the location of acetylcholine receptors at the neuromuscular junction. α-Bungarotoxin is a toxin found in the snake species Bungarus multicinctus that acts as an ACh antagonist and binds to AChRs irreversibly. By coupling assayable enzymes such as horseradish peroxidase (HRP) or fluorescent proteins such as green fluorescent protein (GFP) to the α-bungarotoxin, AChRs can be visualized and quantified.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Botulinum toxin (aka botulinum neurotoxin, and sold under the trade name Botox) inhibits the release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction by interfering with SNARE proteins. This toxin crosses into the nerve terminal through the process of endocytosis and subsequently interferes with SNARE proteins, which are necessary for ACh release. By doing so, it induces a transient flaccid paralysis and chemical denervation localized to the striated muscle that it has affected. The inhibition of the ACh release does not set in until approximately two weeks after the injection is made. Three months after the inhibition occurs, neuronal activity begins to regain partial function, and six months, complete neuronal function is regained.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Tetanus toxin, also known as tetanospasmin is a potent neurotoxin produced by "Clostridium tetani" and causes the disease state, tetanus. The LD of this toxin has been measured to be approximately 1 ng/kg, making it second only to botulinum toxin D as the deadliest toxin in the world. It functions very similarly to botulinum neurotoxin by attaching and endocytosing into the presynaptic nerve terminal and interfering with SNARE protein complexes. It differs from botulinum neurotoxin in a few ways, most apparently in its end state, wherein tetanospasmin demonstrates a rigid / spastic paralysis as opposed to the flaccid paralysis demonstrated with botulinum neurotoxin.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Latrotoxin (α-Latrotoxin) found in venom of widow spiders also affects the neuromuscular junction by causing the release of acetylcholine from the presynaptic cell. Mechanisms of action include binding to receptors on the presynaptic cell activating the IP3/DAG pathway and release of calcium from intracellular stores and pore formation resulting in influx of calcium ions directly. Either mechanism causes increased calcium in presynaptic cell, which then leads to release of synaptic vesicles of acetylcholine. Latrotoxin causes pain, muscle contraction and if untreated potentially paralysis and death.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Snake venoms act as toxins at the neuromuscular junction and can induce weakness and paralysis. Venoms can act as both presynaptic and postsynaptic neurotoxins.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Presynaptic neurotoxins, commonly known as β-neurotoxins, affect the presynaptic regions of the neuromuscular junction. The majority of these neurotoxins act by inhibiting the release of neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, into the synapse between neurons. However, some of these toxins have also been known to enhance neurotransmitter release. Those that inhibit neurotransmitter release create a neuromuscular blockade that prevents signaling molecules from reaching their postsynaptic target receptors. In doing so, the victim of these snake bite suffer from profound weakness. Such neurotoxins do not respond well to anti-venoms. After one hour of inoculation of these toxins, including notexin and taipoxin, many of the affected nerve terminals show signs of irreversible physical damage, leaving them devoid of any synaptic vesicles.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Postsynaptic neurotoxins, otherwise known as α-neurotoxins, act oppositely to the presynaptic neurotoxins by binding to the postsynaptic acetylcholine receptors. This prevents interaction between the acetylcholine released by the presynaptic terminal and the receptors on the postsynaptic cell. In effect, the opening of sodium channels associated with these acetylcholine receptors is prohibited, resulting in a neuromuscular blockade, similar to the effects seen due to presynaptic neurotoxins. This causes paralysis in the muscles involved in the affected junctions. Unlike presynaptic neurotoxins, postsynaptic toxins are more easily affected by anti-venoms, which accelerate the dissociation of the toxin from the receptors, ultimately causing a reversal of paralysis. These neurotoxins experimentally and qualitatively aid in the study of acetylcholine receptor density and turnover, as well as in studies observing the direction of antibodies toward the affected acetylcholine receptors in patients diagnosed with myasthenia gravis.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Any disorder that compromises the synaptic transmission between a motor neuron and a muscle cell is categorized under the umbrella term of neuromuscular diseases. These disorders can be inherited or acquired and can vary in their severity and mortality. In general, most of these disorders tend to be caused by mutations or autoimmune disorders. Autoimmune disorders, in the case of neuromuscular diseases, tend to be humoral mediated, B cell mediated, and result in an antibody improperly created against a motor neuron or muscle fiber protein that interferes with synaptic transmission or signaling.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disorder where the body makes antibodies against either the acetylcholine receptor (AchR) (in 80% of cases), or against postsynaptic muscle-specific kinase (MuSK) (0–10% of cases). In seronegative myasthenia gravis low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 4 is targeted by IgG1, which acts as a competitive inhibitor of its ligand, preventing the ligand from binding its receptor. It is not known if seronegative myasthenia gravis will respond to standard therapies.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Neonatal MG is an autoimmune disorder that affects 1 in 8 children born to mothers who have been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis (MG). MG can be transferred from the mother to the fetus by the movement of AChR antibodies through the placenta. Signs of this disease at birth include weakness, which responds to anticholinesterase medications, as well as fetal akinesia, or the lack of fetal movement. This form of the disease is transient, lasting for about three months. However, in some cases, neonatal MG can lead to other health effects, such as arthrogryposis and even fetal death. These conditions are thought to be initiated when maternal AChR antibodies are directed to the fetal AChR and can last until the 33rd week of gestation, when the γ subunit of AChR is replaced by the ε subunit.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) is an autoimmune disorder that affects the presynaptic portion of the neuromuscular junction. This rare disease can be marked by a unique triad of symptoms: proximal muscle weakness, autonomic dysfunction, and areflexia. Proximal muscle weakness is a product of pathogenic autoantibodies directed against P/Q-type voltage-gated calcium channels, which in turn leads to a reduction of acetylcholine release from motor nerve terminals on the presynaptic cell. Examples of autonomic dysfunction caused by LEMS include erectile dysfunction in men, constipation, and, most commonly, dry mouth. Less common dysfunctions include dry eyes and altered perspiration. Areflexia is a condition in which tendon reflexes are reduced and it may subside temporarily after a period of exercise.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: 50–60% of the patients that are diagnosed with LEMS also have present an associated tumor, which is typically small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC). This type of tumor also expresses voltage-gated calcium channels. Oftentimes, LEMS also occurs alongside myasthenia gravis.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Treatment for LEMS consists of using 3,4-diaminopyridine as a first measure, which serves to increase the compound muscle action potential as well as muscle strength by lengthening the time that voltage-gated calcium channels remain open after blocking voltage-gated potassium channels. In the US, treatment with 3,4-diaminopyridine for eligible LEMS patients is available at no cost under an expanded access program. Further treatment includes the use of prednisone and azathioprine in the event that 3,4-diaminopyridine does not aid in treatment.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Neuromyotonia (NMT), otherwise known as Isaac's syndrome, is unlike many other diseases present at the neuromuscular junction. Rather than causing muscle weakness, NMT leads to the hyperexcitation of motor nerves. NMT causes this hyperexcitation by producing longer depolarizations by down-regulating voltage-gated potassium channels, which causes greater neurotransmitter release and repetitive firing. This increase in rate of firing leads to more active transmission and as a result, greater muscular activity in the affected individual. NMT is also believed to be of autoimmune origin due to its associations with autoimmune symptoms in the individual affected.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) are very similar to both MG and LEMS in their functions, but the primary difference between CMS and those diseases is that CMS is of genetic origins. Specifically, these syndromes are diseases incurred due to mutations, typically recessive, in 1 of at least 10 genes that affect presynaptic, synaptic, and postsynaptic proteins in the neuromuscular junction. Such mutations usually arise in the ε-subunit of AChR, thereby affecting the kinetics and expression of the receptor itself. Single nucleotide substitutions or deletions may cause loss of function in the subunit. Other mutations, such as those affecting acetylcholinesterase and acetyltransferase, can also cause the expression of CMS, with the latter being associated specifically with episodic apnea. These syndromes can present themselves at different times within the life of an individual. They may arise during the fetal phase, causing fetal akinesia, or the perinatal period, during which certain conditions, such as arthrogryposis, ptosis, hypotonia, ophthalmoplegia, and feeding or breathing difficulties, may be observed. They could also activate during adolescence or adult years, causing the individual to develop slow-channel syndrome.


title: Neuromuscular junction

text: Treatment for particular subtypes of CMS (postsynaptic fast-channel CMS) is similar to treatment for other neuromuscular disorders. 3,4-Diaminopyridine, the first-line treatment for LEMS, is under development as an orphan drug for CMS in the US, and available to eligible patients under an expanded access program at no cost.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Cruel Intentions 2 (also known as Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep or simply as Manchester Prep) is a 2000 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Roger Kumble, starring Robin Dunne, Sarah Thompson, Keri Lynn Pratt, and Amy Adams. It is a prequel to "Cruel Intentions" (1999) and was released direct-to-video on March 13, 2001. Both films are based on "Les Liaisons dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Originally planned as a television series called "Manchester Prep", a re-imagined prequel series to the first film, it was picked up by Fox, however, it was cancelled prior to broadcast in September 1999. Due to the cancellation, the three completed episodes were edited together into film re-titled "Cruel Intentions 2," and sexual content scenes involving nudity were added for the DVD release. This film is about how Sebastian Valmont and Kathryn Merteuil met and how they started their reign of terror.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Troublemaker student Sebastian Valmont is transferring to Manchester Prep following his father's new marriage to a wealthy divorcee. His current principal is insistent on having Sebastian's permanent record relayed to his new school, hampering his chance for a fresh start, but Sebastian retaliates by pulling a cruel stunt on his wife. This is similar in the first movie that got him in trouble.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Following his arrival in New York, Sebastian discovers the wealth of his new family and first meets his deceitful and determined step-sister Kathryn Merteuil. He is quickly able to better her both at piano and vocabulary. This leads to a confrontation between Kathryn and Sebastian whereby she says he "better not interfere" with her comfortable lifestyle.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: While waiting to meet his new headmaster, Sebastian encounters Danielle Sherman, who turns out to be Headmaster Sherman's daughter. Predictably, Sebastian swapped his permanent record for an excelling one before it was sent to the headmaster's office, and he can now start with a clean slate.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: At the school assembly, Kathryn delivers a speech to her classmates. She's persistently interrupted by uncontrollable hiccups from a student, who then begins to choke on the gum that she was chewing to stop her hiccups. She is saved by the quick action of Danielle who performs the Heimlich, allowing her to expel the gum, which flies into Kathryn's hair. A meeting of a secret society of student elites, presided by Kathryn, takes place, deciding upon the fate of the new students. This leads them to Cherie, the student with the hiccups, as well as the discovery that Cherie's family is wealthier than that of Kathryn; this, along with the events of the assembly, causes Kathryn to seek a vendetta against Cherie.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Sebastian and Danielle become fast friends and Sebastian has a crush on her. They swap stories about their lives. Sebastian's mother was a drug addict and his parents split up when he was a kid. His father was chartering boats in Miami, met Kathryn's mother and married her. Sebastian is living one day at a time with all that wealth. Sebastian and Kathryn are bickering step siblings. Sebastian already caught his father sleeping around in his yacht behind Kathryn's mother's back.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Sebastian, being from a more humble upbringing, wishes to befriend the house staff. Doing so angers Kathryn, as she couldn't contact her driver. This, combined with her jealousy of Sebastian, causes her to admit that she is unhappy with her life. Sebastian attempts to woo Danielle: first, asking her for coffee at her work; then later, calling. It eventually evolves into a relationship, but Kathryn, seeing this, uses it as a way to get back at Sebastian. She tries to lure him away from Danielle by tempting him with identical twins, who confide to Sebastian that Danielle is the only virgin at Manchester.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Kathryn's attempt to sabotage Cherie backfires, when Kathryn's mother tells her to befriend her, to encourage Cherie's mother to donate a large amount of money to the school. In the end, Sebastian stays with Danielle; professes his love for her, only to discover she does not reciprocate. In fact Danielle is alongside Kathryn in a secret plan to dupe Sebastian. Defeated, Sebastian states "if you can't beat them, join them", leading to a threesome with Danielle and Kathryn, followed by an alliance of the three to dominate and manipulate others. Danielle gave Sebastian a journal to write down everything. In the last scene, Cherie is seen riding her bike, which is run over by Sebastian's car. He offers to give her a ride, having sex with her. Kathryn and Danielle are seen, in the front of the car, pleased with the results.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: Originally produced for the Fox network as television series titled "Manchester Prep" for the 1999-2000 television season, 13 episodes were ordered with original "Cruel Intentions" director Roger Kumble writing and executive producing the series. During production, the show was setback by conflicts between production company Columbia TriStar Television and the Fox network. Only the pilot and one further episode were filmed before the series was cancelled due to network executives uncertainty of the long term viability of the project. In addition to creative concerns, executives were also uncomfortable with the themes of teen sexuality and incest, with Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox parent News Corporation, said to be outraged after seeing a newsstory on “Prep” that previewed a scene in which one of the young female characters is sexually aroused by a horse. With the cancellation, Columbia TriStar Home Video repackaged the two existing episodes of the show as a direct-to-video film.


title: Cruel Intentions 2

text: In the film credits, Edward Shearmur's music from "Cruel Intentions" and Stephen Endelman's music from "Jawbreaker" are listed as being used in the film.


title: Sacrebleu

text: Sacrebleu or sacre bleu is a French profanity used as a cry of surprise, irritation or displeasure. It is a minced oath form of the profane "sacré dieu", ""holy God"", which is, by some religions, considered a profanity, due to one of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, which reads "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."


title: Sacrebleu

text: The expression today is not used in France. In the English-speaking world, it is well known, perhaps from Agatha Christie's books about the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.


title: Sacrebleu

text: The phrase originated from the words "sacré dieu". At varying points in history this was considered to be taking God's name in vain, which is forbidden in the Ten Commandments. It was then changed to 'bleu' (blue) which rhymes with Dieu.


title: Sacrebleu

text: Other sources propose it coming from old blasphemous curses relating to God, used from the late Middle-Age (some are attested as early as the 11th century) to the 14th (at the latest), with many variants: "morbleu" or "mordieu", "corbleu", "palsambleu", "jarnidieu", "tudieu", respectively standing for "mort [de] Dieu" (God's death), "corps [de] Dieu" (God's body), "par le sang [de] Dieu" (by God's blood, the two latter possibly referring to the Eucharistic bread and wine), "je renie Dieu" (I deny God), "tue Dieu" (kill God) ... Those curses may be compared to the archaic English [God']"sdeath", "sblood", "struth" or "zounds" (God's wounds). They were considered so offensive that "Dieu" was sublimated into the similar-sounding neutral syllable "bleu". The verb "sacrer" has several meanings, including to crown, to anoint, to name someone [champion, best actor, etc.], and in the past, rarely in France but more common in French Canada, of swear, curse. Therefore, "sacrebleu" could be in modern French "Je jure par Dieu" and in English "I curse by God", or the more common "I swear to God".


title: Law school rankings in the United States

text: Law school rankings are a specific subset of college and university rankings dealing specifically with law schools. Like college and university rankings, law school rankings can be based on empirical data, subjectively-perceived qualitative data (often survey research of educators, law professors, lawyers, students, or others), or some combination of these. Such rankings are often consulted by prospective students as they choose which schools they will apply to or which school they will attend. There are several different law school rankings, each of which has a different emphasis and methodology.


text: "U.S. News & World Report" (USNWR) is considered to be the most influential ranking among law schools. USNWR organizes rankings into two main sections: the first is a "Top 145" listing the top 145 schools in order from highest to lowest ranked. "U.S. News" groups the remaining schools, or the bottom 25 percent of those that are ranked, into a "Rank Not Published" group. Schools that fall into this category are listed alphabetically and not by actual ranking. "U.S. News" also ranks each school's specialty programs using a similar method, if applicable. U.S. News ranked 196 schools in 2016. Each school's "U.S. News" ranking tends to fluctuate annually.


text: "U.S. News" published its first attempt at ranking U.S. law schools in 1987, and it has released annual rankings beginning in 1990. There has been great consistency at the top of the "U.S. News" rankings since their inception, with Yale Law School consistently ranking first. While Yale, University of Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford have historically clustered at the top of the list, Harvard was recently replaced by the University of Chicago in the third place spot.


text: There exists an informal category known as the "Top Fourteen" or "T14", which has historically referred to the fourteen institutions that regularly claim the top spots in the yearly "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of American law schools. Furthermore, the "T14" schools remain the only ones to have ever placed within the top ten spots in these rankings. Although "T14" is not a designation used by "U.S. News" itself, the term is "widely known in the legal community." While these schools have seen their position within the top fourteen spots shift frequently, they have generally not placed outside of the top fourteen since the inception of the rankings. There have been rare exceptions: Texas and UCLA appeared in the 1987 list, before the start of the annual rankings (ahead of Northwestern and Cornell); Texas and UCLA displaced Georgetown in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Because of their relatively consistent placement at the top of these rankings, the schools that have taken the annual top spots since 1990 are commonly referred to as the "Top Fourteen" by published books on law school admissions, undergraduate university pre-law advisers, professional law school consultants, and newspaper articles on the subject.


text: The 14 schools that most consistently appear at the top of the "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of American law schools, commonly known as the "Top 14" or "T14" are, in alphabetical order:


text: In 2017, ARWU released its rankings of world universities in the subject of law by taking into account only the academic strength of the institution. In 2021, ARWU ranked all T-14 US Law Schools within the world's top 20 law schools.


text: Several ranking systems are explicitly designed to focus on employment outcomes at or shortly after graduation, including rankings by the "National Law Journal" and Law.com.


text: The "National Law Journal" ranks the top 50 law schools by the percentage of juris doctor graduates who took jobs at NLJ 250 firms, the nation's largest by headcount as identified by "The National Law Journal"’s annual survey. It provides an alternative comparison of its own employment-based rankings to the "U.S. New"s rankings.


text: The 2020 QS World University Rankings for Law ranked 14 U.S. institutions in the top 50 worldwide. The U.S. institutions in the top 10 were Harvard Law School, which ranked first, with Yale Law School ranked fourth, Stanford Law School ranked fifth, NYU School of Law ranked sixth, UC Berkeley School of Law ranked seventh, and Columbia Law School ranked tenth. Every other law school in "U.S. News & World Report"s T14 rankings except University of Virginia School of Law made the QS Top 50. The UCLA School of Law was the only other U.S. school ranked in the top 50.


text: Social Science Research Network—a repository for draft and completed scholarship in law and the social sciences—publishes monthly rankings of law schools based on the number of times faculty members' scholarship was downloaded. Rankings are available by total number of downloads, total number of downloads within the last 12 months, and downloads per faculty member to adjust for the size of different institutions. SSRN also provides rankings of individual law school faculty members on these metrics.


text: Among the criticisms of law school rankings is that they are arbitrary in the characteristics they measure and the value given to each one. Another complaint is that a prospective law student should take into account the "fit" and appropriateness of each school, and that there is not a "one size fits all" ranking. Others complain that common rankings shortchange schools due to geographical or demographic reasons. One critic has gone so far as to create a website that sarcastically ranks US magazines. "U.S. News" is placed alone in the "Third Tier."


text: The American Bar Association, which has consistently refused to support or participate in law school rankings, has issued disclaimers on law school rating systems, and encourages prospective law students to consider a variety of factors in making their choice among schools. Further, the Association of American Law Schools has also voiced criticisms of "U.S. News"'s ranking system. Carl Monk, its former executive director, once went so far as to say "these rankings are a misleading and deceptive, profit-generating commercial enterprise that compromises "U.S. News & World Report"'s journalistic integrity."


text: As a response to the prevalence of law school rankings, the ABA and the LSAC publish an annual law school guide. This guide, which does not seek to rank or sort law schools by any criteria, instead seeks to provide the reader with a set of standard, important data on which to judge law schools. It contains information on all 200 ABA-Approved Law Schools. This reference, called The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools is provided free online and also in print for a small cost. A similar guide for Canadian Law Schools is also published by the Law School Admission Council and is called Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools. These guides seek to serve as an alternative to the "U.S. News" Rankings and law school rankings in general.


text: Additionally, the American Bar Association issued the MacCrate Report in 1992, which outlined many fundamental problems with modern legal education and called for reform in American law schools. While the report was hailed as a "template for modern legal education", its practice-oriented tenets have met resistance by law schools continually ranked in the "top 13."


text: Ranking systems, most prominently that of "U.S. News", has not allowed these criticisms to go unanswered. They regularly outline and justify their methodology alongside the rankings, and have even published defenses of their value. Additionally, law professors William Henderson and Andrew Morriss have come out with a study criticizing law schools' (and the ABA's) refusal to adopt any better objective comparison method for the continued widespread reliance on "U.S. News". Henderson and Morriss allege that law schools' attempts to "game" their "U.S. News" ranking by manipulating postgraduation employment statistics or applicant selectivity have led "U.S. News" to adjust its methodology accordingly, resulting in a counter-productive cycle. They go on to suggest that the ABA should use its accreditation power to mandate greater transparency in law schools' statistical reporting.


text: In March 2011, Loyola Law School Dean Victor Gold penned an op-ed in the "Huffington Post", accusing "U.S. News & World Report" of "refus[ing] to consider diversity as a factor in its ranking system." Gold asserted that "[t]here is a broad consensus among law school deans and professors that diversity enriches law school education." Loyola, which has a large Asian student body, claims 37% of its students are "minorities," but it does not provide any specifics.


text: In November 2022, 11 of the 14 ""T14"" law Schools announced that they would no longer participate in the "U.S. News" rankings by declining to submit admissions data. One of their criticism was that the rankings don’t give enough credit to programs that train lawyers interested in public service. In response, "U.S. News" said the magazine will continue ranking all fully accredited law schools, regardless of whether schools agree to submit their data.


text: Despite these criticisms, law school rankings in general and those by "U.S. News" in particular play a role in the world of legal education. This pressure has also resulted in various schools "gaming the rankings." In a March 2003 article in "Student Lawyer", Jane Easter Bahls stated that, in order to appear more selective, some law schools reject applicants whose high LSAT scores indicate that they probably would go somewhere else. Other schools, in an attempt to increase the amount of money spent per student, increase tuition and return it to the students as financial aid.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, (26 December 1887 – 31 January 1966) was a senior British Army officer. He saw service in the First World War and built a successful military career during the interwar period but is most noted for his defeat in the Second World War, when he commanded British Empire forces during the Japanese Malayan Campaign and the subsequent Battle of Singapore.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival's surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army force, the largest surrender in British military history, undermined Britain's prestige as an imperial power in East Asia. His defenders, such as Sir John Smyth, have argued that under-funding of Malaya's defences and the inexperienced, under-equipped nature of the Empire army in Malaya, not Percival's leadership, were ultimately to blame.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Arthur Ernest Percival was born on 26 December 1887 in Aspenden Lodge, Aspenden near Buntingford in Hertfordshire, England, the second son of Alfred Reginald and Edith Percival (née Miller). His father was the Land Agent of the Hamel's Park estate and his mother came from a Lancashire cotton family. By 1891 the family was living in nearby Thundridge at "Sprangewell" on Poles Lane, his father being listed as "Land Agent" in the 1891 census, although it is unclear if this is still for Hamel's Park, or for E.S. Hanbury's Poles estate (now "Hanbury Manor"), which is adjacent to Sprangewell.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival was initially schooled locally in Bengeo. Then in 1901, he was sent to Rugby with his more academically successful brother, where he was a boarder in School House. A moderate pupil, he studied Greek and Latin but was described by a teacher as "not a good classic". Percival's only qualification on leaving in 1906 was a higher school certificate. He was a more successful sportsman, playing cricket and tennis and running cross country. He also rose to colour sergeant in the school's Volunteer Rifle Corps. However, his military career began at a comparatively late age: although a member of Youngsbury Rifle Club, he was working as a clerk for the iron ore merchants Naylor, Benzon & Company Limited in London, which he had joined in 1914, when the First World War broke out.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival enlisted on the first day of the war as a private in the Officer Training Corps of the Inns of Court, at the age of 26, and was promoted after five weeks' basic training to temporary second lieutenant. Nearly one third of his fellow recruits would be dead by the end of the war. By November Percival had been promoted to captain. The following year he was despatched to France with the newly formed 7th (Service) Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment, which became part of the 54th Brigade, 18th (Eastern) Division in February 1915. The first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916) left Percival unscathed, but in September he was badly wounded in four places by shrapnel, as he led his company in an assault on the Schwaben Redoubt, beyond the ruins of Thiepval village, and was awarded the Military Cross.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival took a regular commission as a captain with the Essex Regiment in October 1916, whilst recovering from his injuries in hospital. He was appointed a temporary major in his original regiment. In 1917, he became battalion commander with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. During Germany's Spring Offensive, Percival led a counter-attack that saved a unit of French artillery from capture, winning a Croix de Guerre. For a short period in May 1918, he acted as commander of the 54th Brigade. He was given brevet promotion to major, and awarded the Distinguished Service Order, with his citation noting his "power of command and knowledge of tactics". He ended the war as a respected soldier, described as "very efficient" and was recommended for the Staff College.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival's studies were delayed in 1919 when he decided to volunteer for service with the Archangel Command of the British Military Mission during the North Russia Campaign of the Russian Civil War. Acting as second-in-command of the 45th Royal Fusiliers, he earned a bar to his DSO in August, when his attack in the Gorodok operation along the Dvina netted 400 Red Army prisoners. The citation reads:


title: Arthur Percival

text: He commanded the Gorodok column on 9–10 August 1919, with great gallantry and skill, and owing to the success of this column the forces on the right bank of the Dvina were able to capture all its objectives. During the enemy counter-attack from Selmenga on Gorodok he handled his men excellently. The enemy were repulsed with great loss, leaving 400 prisoners in our hands.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In 1920 Percival served in Ireland against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence, first as a company commander and later the intelligence officer of the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, in Kinsale, County Cork.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival proved himself an energetic counter-guerrilla, noted for his aptitude for intelligence-gathering and the establishment of bicycle-riding 'Mobile Columns'. He was accused of brutality towards prisoners, including the use of strikes of a rifle butt to the head, pincers to pull fingernails and burning cigarettes on the body. These accusations were substantiated by prisoners' testimony but the veracity of the accounts has been challenged by a journalist.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Following the IRA killing of a Royal Irish Constabulary sergeant outside Bandon church in July 1920, Percival captured Tom Hales, commander of the IRA's 3rd Cork Brigade, and Patrick Harte, the brigade's quartermaster, for which he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Both prisoners later claimed to have been repeatedly beaten and tortured while in custody. Hales alleged that a pair of pliers had been used on his lower body and to extract his fingernails. Harte suffered brain injury and died in a mental hospital in 1925. Ormonde Winter, the head of British Intelligence in Dublin Castle, later named Hales as an informer who had invented the story as an excuse for providing the names of his fellow IRA members in return for a lesser sentence.


title: Arthur Percival

text: IRA commandant Tom Barry later stated that Percival was "easily the most vicious anti-Irish of all serving British officers".


title: Arthur Percival

text: David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill met Percival in 1921, when he was called as an expert witness during an inquiry into the Anglo-Irish War.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival would later deliver a series of lectures on his experiences in Ireland in which he stressed the importance of surprise and offensive action, intelligence-gathering, maintaining security and co-operation between the security forces.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In his reports Percival was scathing of the government's policy of repeatedly releasing IRA prisoners between 1916 and 1920, claiming that "these men immediately returned to their homes and organised the murder of those members of the RIC who had been instrumental in effecting their arrests".


title: Arthur Percival

text: Historian J.B.E. Hittle wrote that of all the British officers in Ireland "Percival stood out for his violent, sadistic behaviour towards IRA prisoners, suspects and innocent civilians...He also participated in reprisals, burning farms and businesses in response to IRA attacks. However, Clifford Kinvig, Percival's biographer considers him to have been unfairly vilified by Republican propaganda due to him being "tireless in his attempt to destroy the spirit of the people and the organisation of the IRA".


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival attended the Staff College, Camberley from 1923 to 1924, which had Major-General Edmund Ironside as its Commandant, where he was taught by J. F. C. Fuller, who was one of the few sympathetic reviewers of his book, "The War in Malaya", twenty-five years later. He impressed his instructors, who picked him out as one of eight students for accelerated promotion, and his fellow students who admired his cricketing skills. Following an appointment as major with the Cheshire Regiment, he spent four years with the Nigeria Regiment of the Royal West African Frontier Force in West Africa as a staff officer. He was given brevet promotion to lieutenant-colonel in 1929.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In 1930, Percival spent a year studying at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. From 1931 to 1932, Percival was a General Staff Officer Grade 2, an instructor at the Staff College. The college's commandant was by now Major-General Sir John Dill, who became Percival's mentor over the next decade, helping to ensure his protégé's advancement. Dill regarded Percival as a promising officer and wrote that "he has an outstanding ability, wide military knowledge, good judgment and is a very quick and accurate worker" but added "he has not altogether an impressive presence and one may therefore fail, at first meeting him, to appreciate his sterling worth". With Dill's support, Percival was appointed to command the 2nd Battalion, the Cheshire Regiment from 1932 to 1936, initially in Malta. In 1935, he attended the Imperial Defence College in London.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival was made a full colonel in March 1936, and until 1938 he was General Staff Officer Grade 1 in Malaya, the Chief of Staff to General Dobbie, the General Officer Commanding in Malaya. During this time, he recognised that Singapore was no longer an isolated fortress. He considered the possibility of the Japanese landing in Thailand to "burgle Malaya by the backdoor and conducted an appraisal of the possibility of an attack being launched on Singapore from the North, which was supplied to the War Office, and which Percival subsequently felt was similar to the plan followed by the Japanese in 1941. He also supported Dobbie's unexecuted plan for the construction of fixed defences in Southern Johore. In March 1938, Percival returned to Britain and was (temporarily) promoted to brigadier on the General Staff, Aldershot Command.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival was appointed Brigadier, General Staff, of the I Corps, British Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Dill, from 1939 to 1940. He was then promoted to acting Major-General, and in February 1940 briefly became General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division. He was made Assistant Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the War Office in 1940 but asked for a transfer to an active command after the Dunkirk evacuation. Given command of the 44th (Home Counties) Infantry Division, he spent 9 months organising the protection of of the English coast from invasion. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1941 King's Birthday Honours.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In 1936, Major-General William Dobbie, then General Officer Commanding (Malaya), made an inquiry into whether more forces were required on mainland Malaya to prevent the Japanese from establishing forward bases to attack Singapore. Percival, then his Chief Staff Officer, was tasked to draw up a tactical assessment of how the Japanese were most likely to attack.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In late 1937, his analysis duly confirmed that north Malaya might become the critical battleground. The Japanese were likely to seize the east coast landing sites on Thailand and Malaya in order to capture aerodromes and achieve air superiority. This could serve as a prelude to further Japanese landings in Johore to disrupt communications northwards and enable the construction of another main base in North Borneo. From North Borneo, the final sea and air assault could be launched against eastern Singapore—in particular the Changi area.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In April 1941 Percival was promoted to acting Lieutenant-General, and was appointed General Officer Commanding (GOC) Malaya. This was a significant promotion for him as he had never commanded an army corps. He left Britain in a Sunderland flying boat and embarked on an arduous fortnight-long, multi-stage flight via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria (where he was delayed by the Anglo-Iraqi War), Basra, Karachi, and Rangoon, where he was met by an RAF transport.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival had mixed feelings about his appointment, noting that "In going to Malaya I realised that there was the double danger either of being left in an inactive command for some years if war did not break out in the East or, if it did, of finding myself involved in a pretty sticky business with the inadequate forces which are usually to be found in the distant parts of our Empire in the early stages of a war."


title: Arthur Percival

text: For much of the interwar period, Britain's defensive plan for Malaya had centred on the dispatch of a naval fleet to the newly built Singapore Naval Base. Accordingly, the army's role was to defend Singapore and Southern Johore. While this plan had seemed adequate when the nearest Japanese base had been away, the outbreak of war in Europe, combined with the partial Japanese occupation of the northern part of French Indochina and the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, had underlined the difficulty of a sea-based defence. Instead it was proposed to use the RAF to defend Malaya, at least until reinforcements could be dispatched from Britain. This led to the building of airfields in northern Malaya and along its east coast and the dispersal of the available army units around the peninsula to protect them.


title: Arthur Percival

text: On arrival, Percival set about training his inexperienced army; his Indian troops were particularly raw, with most of their experienced officers having been withdrawn to support the formation of new units as the Indian army expanded. Relying upon commercial aircraft or the Volunteer air force to overcome the shortage of RAF planes, he toured the peninsula and encouraged the building of defensive works around Jitra. A training manual approved by Percival, "Tactical Notes on Malaya", was distributed to all units.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In July 1941 when the Japanese occupied southern Indochina, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands imposed economic sanctions, freezing Japanese financial assets and cutting Japan from its supplies of oil, tin and rubber. The sanctions were aimed at pressuring Japan to abandon its involvement in China; instead, the Japanese government planned to seize the resources of South-East Asia from the European nations by force. Both the Japanese navy and army were mobilised, but for the moment an uneasy state of cold war persisted. British Commonwealth reinforcements continued to trickle into Malaya. On 2 December, the battleship HMS "Prince of Wales" and the battle-cruiser HMS "Repulse", escorted by four destroyers, arrived in Singapore, the first time a battle fleet had been based there. (They were to have been accompanied by the aircraft carrier to provide air cover but she had run aground in the Caribbean en route.) The following day Rear-Admiral Spooner hosted a dinner attended by the newly arrived Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, and Percival.


title: Arthur Percival

text: On 8 December 1941 the Japanese 25th Army under the command of Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita launched an amphibious assault on the Malay Peninsula (one hour before the attack on Pearl Harbor; the difference in date was because the two places lie on opposite sides of the international date line). That night the first Japanese invasion force arrived at Kota Bharu on Malaya's east coast. This was just a diversionary force, and the main landings took place the next day at Singora and Pattani on the south-eastern coast of Thailand, with troops rapidly deploying over the border into northern Malaya.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In this hour of trial the General Officer Commanding calls upon all ranks Malaya Command for a determined and sustained effort to safeguard Malaya and the adjoining British territories. The eyes of the Empire are upon us. Our whole position in the Far East is at stake. The struggle may be long and grim but let us all resolve to stand fast come what may and to prove ourselves worthy of the great trust which has been placed in us.


title: Arthur Percival

text: The Japanese advanced rapidly, and on 27 January 1942 Percival ordered a general retreat across the Johore Strait to the island of Singapore and organised a defence along the length of the island's coast line. But the Japanese did not dawdle, and on 8 February Japanese troops landed on the northwest corner of Singapore island. After a week of fighting on the island, Percival held his final command conference at 9 am on 15 February in the Battle Box of Fort Canning. The Japanese had already occupied approximately half of Singapore and it was clear that the island would soon fall. Having been told that ammunition and water would both run out by the following day, Percival agreed to surrender. The Japanese at this point were running low on artillery shells, but Percival did not know this.


title: Arthur Percival

text: The Japanese insisted that Percival himself march under a white flag to the Old Ford Motor Factory in Bukit Timah to negotiate the surrender. A Japanese officer present noted that he looked "pale, thin and tired". After a brief disagreement, when Percival insisted that the British keep 1,000 men under arms in Singapore to preserve order, which Yamashita finally conceded, it was agreed at 6:10 pm that the British Empire troops would lay down their arms and cease resistance at 8:30 pm. This was in spite of instructions from Prime Minister Winston Churchill for prolonged resistance.


title: Arthur Percival

text: A common view holds that 138,708 Allied personnel surrendered or were killed by fewer than 30,000 Japanese. However, the former figure includes nearly 50,000 troops captured or killed during the Battle of Malaya, and perhaps 15,000 base troops. Many of the other troops were tired and under-equipped following their retreat from the Malayan peninsula. Conversely, the latter number represents only the front-line troops available for the invasion of Singapore. British Empire battle casualties since 8 December amounted to 7,500 killed and 11,000 wounded. Japanese losses totalled around 3,500 killed and 6,100 wounded.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Churchill viewed the fall of Singapore to be "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." However, the British defence was that the Middle East and the Soviet Union had all received higher priorities in the allocation of men and material, so the desired air force strength of 300 to 500 aircraft was never reached, and whereas the Japanese invaded with over two hundred tanks, the British Army in Malaya did not have a single tank. In "The War in Malaya" Percival himself cites this as the major factor for the defeat stating that the 'war material which might have saved Singapore was sent to Russia and the Middle East'. However he also concedes that Britain was engaged in 'a life and death struggle in the West' and that 'this decision, however painful and regrettable, was inevitable and right'.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In 1918, Percival had been described as "a slim, soft spoken man... with a proven reputation for bravery and organisational powers" but by 1945 this description had been turned on its head with even Percival's defenders describing him as "something of a damp squib". The fall of Singapore switched Percival's reputation to that of an ineffective "staff wallah", lacking ruthlessness and aggression. Over six feet in height and lanky, with a clipped moustache and two protruding teeth, and unphotogenic, Percival was an easy target for a caricaturist, being described as "tall, bucktoothed and lightly built". There was no doubt his presentation lacked impact as "his manner was low key and he was a poor public speaker with the cusp of a lisp".


title: Arthur Percival

text: Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command, refused Percival permission to launch Operation Matador, a pre-emptive invasion of Thailand, in advance of the Japanese landings there; he did not wish to run any risk of provoking the coming war. Brooke-Popham was accused by his detractors of not arguing forcefully for air reinforcements required to defend Malaya.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Peter Wykeham suggested that the government in London was more to blame than any of the British commanders in the Far East. Despite repeated requests, the British government did not provide the necessary reinforcements and they denied Brooke-Popham – and therefore Percival – permission to enter neutral Thailand before it was too late to put in place forward defences.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Moreover, Percival had difficulties with his subordinates Sir Lewis "Piggy" Heath, commanding Indian III Corps, and the independent-minded Gordon Bennett, commanding the Australian 8th Division. The former officer had been senior to Percival prior to his appointment as GOC (Malaya).


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival was ultimately responsible for the men who served under him, and with other officers – notably Major-General David Murray-Lyon, commander of the Indian 11th Infantry Division – he had shown a willingness to replace them when he felt their performance was not up to scratch. Perhaps his greatest mistake was to resist the building of fixed defences in either Johore or the north shore of Singapore, dismissing them in the face of repeated requests to start construction from his Chief Engineer, Brigadier Ivan Simson, with the comment "Defences are bad for morale – for both troops and civilians".


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival also insisted on defending the north-eastern shore of Singapore most heavily, against the advice of the Allied supreme commander in South East Asia, General Archibald Wavell. Percival was perhaps fixed on his responsibilities for defending the Singapore Naval Base. He also spread his forces thinly around the island and kept few units as a strategic reserve. When the Japanese attack came in the west, the Australian 22nd Brigade took the brunt of the assault. Percival refused to reinforce them as he continued to believe that the main assault would occur in the north east. The attacking Japanese were down to the last of their ammunition when Percival surrendered. Before surrendering, besides taking his own counsel, he consulted his own officers.


title: Arthur Percival

text: In the post-war Percival Report (written in 1946, published in 1948) the "imminent collapse" of the water supply, estimated by David J. Murnane, the Municipal Water Engineer, on 14 February to occur within 24–48 hours, was highlighted as a direct cause for surrender. According to oral history records, quoted by Louis Allen (author of Singapore 1941–42), Murnane asked for and was promised by General Percival "ten lorries and a hundred Royal Engineers" so he could fix the water supply leaks caused by Japanese bombing and shelling. He never got what he needed: Louis Allen says Murnane got 'one lorry and ten frightened Sikhs'. When confronted again, all that Percival delivered (on 14 February) was one lorry and ten Royal Engineers but it was too late.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival himself was briefly held prisoner in Changi Prison, where "the defeated GOC could be seen sitting head in hands, outside the married quarters he now shared with seven brigadiers, a colonel, his ADC and cook-sergeant. He discussed feelings with few, spent hours walking around the extensive compound, ruminating on the reverse and what might have been". In the belief that it would improve discipline, he reconstituted a Malaya Command, complete with staff appointments, and helped occupy his fellow prisoners with lectures on the Battle of France.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Along with the other senior British captives above the rank of colonel, Percival was removed from Singapore in August 1942. First he was imprisoned in Formosa and then sent on to Manchuria, where he was held with several dozen other VIP captives, including the American General Jonathan Wainwright, in a prisoner-of-war camp near Hsian, about to the north east of Mukden.


title: Arthur Percival

text: As the war drew to an end, an OSS team removed the prisoners from Hsian. Percival was then taken, along with Wainwright, to stand immediately behind General Douglas MacArthur as he confirmed the terms of the Japanese surrender aboard in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. Afterwards, MacArthur gave Percival a pen he had used to sign the treaty.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival and Wainwright then returned together to the Philippines to witness the surrender of the Japanese army there, which in a twist of fate was commanded by General Yamashita. Yamashita was momentarily surprised to see his former captive at the ceremony; on this occasion Percival refused to shake Yamashita's hand, angered by the mistreatment of POWs in Singapore. The flag carried by Percival's party on the way to Bukit Timah was also a witness to this reversal of fortunes, being flown when the Japanese formally surrendered Singapore back to Lord Louis Mountbatten.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival returned to the United Kingdom in September 1945 to write his despatch at the War Office but this was revised by the UK Government and only published in 1948. He retired from the army in 1946 with the honorary rank of lieutenant-general but the pension of his substantive rank of major-general. Thereafter, he held appointments connected with the county of Hertfordshire, where he lived at Bullards in Widford: he was Honorary Colonel of 479th (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, (T.A.) from 1949 to 1954 and acted as one of the Deputy Lieutenants of Hertfordshire in 1951. He continued his relationship with the Cheshire Regiment being appointed Colonel of the Cheshire Regiment between 1950 and 1955; an association continued by his son, Brigadier James Percival who became Colonel of the Regiment between 1992 and 1999.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival was respected for the time he had spent as a Japanese prisoner of war. Serving as life president of the Far East Prisoners of War Association (FEPOW), he pushed for compensation for his fellow captives, eventually helping to obtain a token £5 million of frozen Japanese assets for this cause. This was distributed by the FEPOW Welfare Trust, on which Percival served as Chairman. He led protests against the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" when it was released in 1957, obtaining the addition of an on-screen statement that the movie was a work of fiction. He also worked as President of the Hertfordshire British Red Cross and was made an Officer of the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1964.


title: Arthur Percival

text: Percival died at the age of 78 on 31 January 1966, in King Edward VII's Hospital for Officers, Beaumont Street in Westminster, and is buried in the churchyard at Widford in Hertfordshire.


title: Arthur Percival

text: On 27 July 1927 Percival married Margaret Elizabeth "Betty" MacGregor Greer in Holy Trinity Church, Brompton. She was the daughter of Thomas MacGregor Greer of Tallylagan Manor, a Protestant linen merchant from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. They had met during his tour of duty in Ireland but it had taken Percival several years to propose. They had two children. A daughter, Dorinda Margery, was born in Greenwich and became Lady Dunleath. Alfred James MacGregor, their son, was born in Singapore and served in the British Army.


title: Cheez-It

text: Cheez-It is a brand of cheese cracker manufactured by the Kellogg Company through its Sunshine Biscuits division. Approximately , the rectangular crackers are made with wheat flour, vegetable oil, cheese made with skim milk, salt, and spices.


title: Cheez-It

text: Cheez-It crackers were introduced in 1921 by the Green & Green Company, a manufacturer of snack crackers based in Dayton, Ohio, and were marketed using the tagline "A Baked Rarebit." Sunshine Biscuits acquired Green & Green in 1932. Sunshine Biscuits became a subsidiary of the Keebler Company in 1996. Keebler, in turn, was acquired by Kellogg in 2001.


title: Cheez-It

text: Cheez-It crackers are rectangles, though they are often believed to be squares. Cheez-It crackers are made with actual cheese, and are marketed by Kellogg's as such.


title: Angus Stone

text: Angus Stone (born 27 April 1986) is an Australian soul and pop singer, record producer and audio engineer. He is one half of the musical sibling duo Angus & Julia Stone, with whom he has released four studio albums. His debut solo album, "Smoking Gun", was released in April 2009 under the pseudonym Lady of the Sunshine, and reached the top 50 on the ARIA Albums Chart. His second solo album, "Broken Brights", was released under his name on 13 July 2012 and peaked at number 2. Stone currently records under the moniker of Dope Lemon.


title: Angus Stone

text: Angus Stone was born on 27 April 1986 and grew up in Sydney. His parents, John and Kim Stone, were both folk musicians. Stone's older sisters are Catherine (born ca. 1982) and Julia Stone (born 13 April 1984). Stone attended Newport Primary School and Barrenjoey High School. At primary school he joined the school band with his father teaching and his sisters accompanying. At family gatherings when the children performed, Stone played trombone, Catherine on saxophone and Julia on trumpet with Kim singing and John on keyboard or guitar. At about the age of 14 years his parents separated and soon after he started writing pop songs. Stone joined a band in high school as lead singer playing both covers and original songs. The band performed at numerous local community events.


title: Angus Stone

text: While on a holiday with his sister to South America, Stone showcased his musical side to Julia, "[Angus] was writing amazing songs ... [he] had shown me how to play guitar in Bolivia, and those songs had gotten me through that year". By 2005 Stone was playing at open mic nights, sometimes Julia performed backing vocals – their first such gig, at the Coogee Bay Hotel, they performed "Tears". After playing split sets with each singing backing vocals to the other's material, in 2006, they formed a duo, Angus & Julia Stone. In March that year the pair recorded their debut extended play, "Chocolates and Cigarettes", which was released in August. Since then the group has released two EPs, two compilation albums and four studio albums.


title: Angus Stone

text: In April 2009, after touring for over a year in support of the duo's first studio album, "A Book Like This" (September 2007), Stone released his debut solo album, "Smoking Gun", under the pseudonym, Lady of the Sunshine. It was recorded over six weeks during 2008 with Finn (Govinda Doyle) – who also provided drums and bass guitar – in a converted old water tank on Finn's property in North Queensland. In an interview on national radio station, Triple J, with Richard Kingsmill, Stone said that the album came out of "growing an appetite for wanting to rock out". Stone explained that he had played in rock bands while in high school, they covered material by Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers – these influences are loosely present on "Smoking Gun". To accompany the album Stone wrote "Every emotion in my head has its own voice and this record is what came of them ... I wanted these songs to have their own style. I enjoyed watching how the songs took on their own ride, most from the simplest of ideas". The album reached the top 50 on the ARIA Albums Chart. One of his tracks, "Big Jet Plane", from "Smoking Gun" was later re-recorded by Angus & Julia Stone and released by the duo as a single in May 2010.


title: Angus Stone

text: In March 2010 the duo's second album, "Down the Way", debuted at No. 1. By 2011 it was certified 3× platinum by ARIA. It was the highest-selling album by an Australian artist in 2010. "Down the Way" peaked in the top 30 on the French Albums Chart and stayed in the top 200 for 86 weeks. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2010 the duo won 'Album of the Year' for "Down the Way" and 'Single of the Year' for "Big Jet Plane". Their single "Big Jet Plane" was voted No. 1 in the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2011. After a world tour promoting "Down the Way", Stone and his sister parted ways, according to Stone with a "tip of the hat and strolled in different directions". In a "Rolling Stone" (Australia) interview, Julia revealed the duo had started recording tracks for a third album, in January 2011, but shelved them indefinitely: "It was too much to think we could only pick six songs each… We were both in a place where we really wanted creative space to go in whatever direction we wanted so we were like 'let’s just take a year out'". She elaborated that those songs were unlikely to be heard, but maintained the pair would reunite after their solo projects.


title: Angus Stone

text: In late 2011 Stone began working on his second solo album, "Broken Brights". He told "Surfing World Magazine", "[r]ecording with Julia is cool but we both have our hands on the wheel. This was an opportunity to grab the wheel and do some burn-outs". It was released in Australia on 13 July 2012 which peaked at No. 2. The title track from the album was released as the lead single in March that year as a free download on Triple J's Home and Hosed. The second single, "Bird on the Buffalo", is a metaphor for a musing relationship between lovers. and the video features the actress Isabel Lucas. According to "Indie London"s Jack Foley, the third single, "Wooden Chair" is "mesmerising in a low-key, effortlessly brilliant manner that also manages to include an intoxicating background whistle. It’s breezy and romantic without really even trying to be". It was featured in the US TV show, "Private Practice", in Season 6, Episode 3 "Good Grief". The fourth single, "Monsters", had its video premiered on "The Huffington Post". The album was certified gold by ARIA for shipment of 35,000 copies.


title: Angus Stone

text: The album was built upon childhood influences such as Bob Dylan and The Eagles, the end result being very Dylanesque, laid-back with some rockier elements. When speaking to the "Vancouver Weekly" about the creation of "Broken Brights" he said he "discovered a lot about time". Further elaborating, he said, "Just in general. To take a step back and let something unfold and breathe and become ripe when it says it's time".


title: Angus Stone

text: "Broken Brights" was released in Australia on 13 July. The album was released on Nettwerk Records, in the US, EMI in Australia and UK, and Discograph in France. Foley lauded the release as "[n]othing short of stunning ... his most personal work to date ... demonstrates his versatility. It’s steeped in classic song-writing values, sound-checking without directly referencing the likes of the great American song-writers, from Petty to Dylan via Neil Young". Jen Wilson reviewed "Broken Brights" for "Beat Magazine" saying, "within minutes you’re transported to another time ... Stone appears as a chameleon storyteller throughout "Broken Brights", adapting with each theme and musical genre". Tony Hardy from Consequence of Sound said "There’s always something unexpected around the corner". Triple J made "Broken Brights" their Album of the Week upon its release, and described it as "a dreamy, chilled, nostalgic record which shows off Angus' unique songwriting".


title: Angus Stone

text: The "Monsters" single was released on 26 February 2013 by Nettwerk Productions. It contains an edited version of the song that was previously released on "Broken Brights". The song was cut from 5 minutes and 20 seconds to only 4 minutes and 3 seconds. The single also contains a previously unreleased tune titled "In the Glow".


title: Angus Stone

text: In 2016, Stone began recording under the moniker Dope Lemon. The album "Honey Bones" was recorded with Rohin Brown (of The Walking Who) and Elliot Hammond in Stone's own farm studio. The song "Uptown Folks" was released as the first song from the album in February 2016, with Triple J describing the track as "laidback coastal rock", while "Marinade" was released as a single on the American iTunes Store in May. The album was released on 10 June 2016.


title: Angus Stone

text: On 27 February 2017, Stone released his second set of studio recordings as Dope Lemon, the four-track EP "Hounds Tooth".


title: Angus Stone

text: In September 2021, Stone announce the release of the third studio album by Dope Lemon, titled "Rose Pink Cadillac". The album was preceded by the singles "Every Day Is a Holiday", "Kids Fallin' in Love", "Rose Pink Cadillac" and "Stingray Pete" and was released in January 2022.


title: Angus Stone

text: Angus Stone began to play his new solo music at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay in July 2012. In September that year he embarked on a solo tour of the US, UK, continental Europe, and Australia with sold out shows including Brussels, Utrecht, Berlin and both his Los Angeles and New York shows. Upon the start of his solo tour Angus said, "To play live as my own in front of those people, it's going to be a different trail of gravel and gold, but none the less very exciting ... it's a whole different trip". His live performances have garnered praise, "The Stanford Daily"s Sasha Arijanto reported being "bewitched by the dulcet sounds from the stage". After Stone's show in Montreal, Caitlin Grimes from "Confront Magazine" stated, "don’t think I can name another artist who can manage to grab you by the wrist and pull you into such stories with him". Stone played his first solo shows in Australia including at Enmore Theatre in Sydney on 1 November. He performed at the Australian summer festivals including Homebake, Woodford, Falls (both Lorne and Marion Bay), and Southbound in Western Australia. In early 2013 he is due to start a European tour including London's Shepherd's Bush Empire.


title: Angus Stone

text: The APRA Awards are several award ceremonies run in Australia by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) to recognise composing and song writing skills, sales and airplay performance by its members annually.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Guitar Hero Live is a 2015 music rhythm video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It is the seventh main installment in the "Guitar Hero" series. The game was released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One in November 2015. As with previous games in the series, the goal is to use a special guitar controller to match fret patterns displayed on a scrolling note pattern on screen in time with the music.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: The game serves as a reboot of the "Guitar Hero" franchise, being the first new entry in the series since "" in 2010. Activision wanted to bring back "Guitar Hero" for the next generation of video game consoles but wanted the new game to be innovative. These innovations included a new guitar controller featuring a 6 button, 3-fret layout in contrast to the 5 button controller of previous games. The game featured two main modes; "GH Live", the games career mode, featured the note pattern displayed atop full motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist during a concert, with the crowd and other band members dynamically reacting to the player's performance. In the other main mode, "GHTV", songs are presented with the note track overlaid atop their music video or from live concert footage. The mode also allows players to pick up and play currently-streamed songs at any time or use money and in-game credits to play any song within the library, forgoing traditional downloadable content. The game was shipped with forty-two songs on disc and 200 songs within the "GHTV" library; new content has been added to "GHTV" on a weekly basis, provided through premium shows that earn players unique rewards.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: "Guitar Hero Live" was released to mostly positive reception, with critics praising the new controller design for providing trickier and more realistic gameplay in comparison to previous "Guitar Hero" games, as well as the wider variety of content available via the "GHTV" mode. The main "Live" portion of the game received mixed reviews, with critics panning its weak soundtrack, lack of multiplayer and the live action videos. The "GHTV" mode also received mixed reception for its reliance on microtransactions, and the inability to permanently purchase songs to own.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Due to the game's underwhelming sales and reception, Activision laid off many employees of FreeStyleGames and sold the company to Ubisoft in 2017. The "GHTV" mode was shut down on 1 December 2018, reducing the available "Guitar Hero" songs from 484 to the 42 present on-disc.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: "Guitar Hero Live" follows similar gameplay to previous installments in the series, requiring players to use a guitar-shaped controller with buttons and a strum bar to match notes on a scrolling "highway" corresponding to notes played in a song. In contrast to the previous five-button design, the "Guitar Hero Live" controller features six buttons arranged into two rows of three. The frets are represented by a "note highway", three scrolling lanes on-screen, containing either black or white notes representing the two rows. Lower difficulty levels use one row of buttons, while higher difficulties may include "chords" that use a combination of buttons from both rows. The game typically maps out power chords to use the top row of buttons, while modifications of those chords include others from the bottom row. Notes may be held and sustained, indicated by trailing lines after the note markers, during which the player can use the guitar's whammy bar to alter the held note's pitch for effect. Fast-moving sections of songs may employ the use of hammer-on and pull-off notes, marked with a special outline, which can be played without using the strum bar. The game also retains the concept of open strumming introduced in previous "Guitar Hero" titles, represented as a horizontal bar across the lanes and requiring the player to hit the strum bar without pressing any fret keys. The player is able to select one of four difficulty levels which affect the number and complexity of the note patterns they have to hit, and the speed at which the on-screen display scrolls. "Guitar Hero Live" can also be played by two players, both playing on separate guitar controllers with split-screen separate note highways, competing for the better score. Songs in "GH Live" mode (below) also includes vocals, allowing players to sing along in tone with the song's lyrics using a connected microphone.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: The game is playable via an app on iOS mobile devices, including the fourth-generation Apple TV. This version supports both "touch" mode and support for an optional Bluetooth-enabled guitar controller that provides "[the] full game in an uncompromised way" according to Activision. When in touch mode, the note display geared towards the 6-button controller is replaced with four touch-screen buttons but otherwise retains the same gameplay; with the controller, the game otherwise plays the same. Due to the size of the game relative to storage space on most mobile devices, "Guitar Hero Live" on iOS units requires a persistent Internet connection as all songs, including those that are normally part of the console on-disc soundtrack, are streamed from Activision's servers when played.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In the game's primary single-player mode, titled "GH Live" within the game, the player completes songs while experiencing full-motion video taken from the first-person perspective of a band's lead guitarist. The video includes shots of the audience and the band members. As the player performs the songs, the audience responds positively to good performances when few mistakes are made. If the player makes several mistakes in a row, the audience will become critical and start to jeer at the performer. To win back the crowd, the player can either match more notes correctly, or can use collected Hero Power to rapidly regain their interest. Hero Power, replacing Star Power from previous "Guitar Hero" games, is collected by correctly playing marked series of notes on the track; Hero Power can be accumulated, marked as on-screen guitar picks next to the track, to be used at later times. The player can release Hero Power for a limited time by either tilting the guitar controller upward or hitting a special button on the controller.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: The career mode is broken up into a dozen-some show sets, each set consisting of about 3–5 songs. The video for each set includes the band's introduction, banter between the band and crowd between songs, and final ovations on conclusion of the show. The player must unlock each set in order as to move forward. Once a set is complete, the player is shown the game's ranking of their performance and for each song, based on factors such as percentage of notes hit correctly, the longest streak of properly played consecutive notes, and how long they kept the virtual crowd excited about their performance. The player then unlocks the ability to play the individual songs outside of sets.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In addition to songs that were shipped on disc, additional songs were introduced to the game through "Guitar Hero TV" ("GHTV"). On starting "GHTV" mode, the player was given a choice of a number of themed channels, which broadcast playable songs curated programs on a rotating schedule similar to a radio broadcast. One such channel always presented new songs that had been added to "GHTV". Songs in "GHTV" were played over the music video for the song or live concert footage of the band playing the song, instead of the custom visuals for the main single player game. The player could pick up and play on any song that was shown, but was also able to use earned Plays to replay a specific song outside of the channel's rotation.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: While playing in "GHTV", the player was scored to track their performance, and their scores were compared to other players - both those playing at the same time as well as asynchronous scores from other players. To help boost their score, players could accumulate Hero Power in the same fashion as in the "GH Live" mode. Prior to a song, the player could choose to use Coins, the in-game currency, to purchase one of several Hero Powers which they could deploy during the song, improving their score and performance. Hero Powers included temporary boosts in scoring multipliers, ability to clear all notes for a short distance on the track, or to increase or decrease the density of notes. When a song was complete, the player was ranked based on their performance with the other tracked players, and awarded experience points, Coins, and other bonuses. Experience points are used to raise the player's rank in the "GHTV" metagame, allowing them to unlock player card skins and other features of "GHTV", including Play tokens. Alternatively, players can use the paid, microtransaction currency Hero Cash to purchase access to content. In an update in December 2015, players on "GHTV" had an opportunity to be randomly pitted in a head-to-head challenge against another player of similar skill level, about twice every half-hour. Winning this head-to-head challenge could give the player an experience point boost.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: New songs to "GHTV" were typically introduced via limited-time "Premium Shows", which ran for a week or more; these songs were then moved into the on-demand catalog and later into the normal "GHTV" rotation. Access to Premium Shows could be purchased with Hero Cash, or by completing several specific songs in either on-demand or on rotation play. Within the Premium Shows, players competed in the same manner as with normal "GHTV" songs and could earn unique in-game rewards, such as coins or alternate skins for the on-screen note "highway".


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Players could purchase a "Party Pass" that allowed full access to all of "GHTV"s on-demand songs and paid features for 24 hours, a mode that FreeStyleGames envisioned to be used when players are hosting large parties or similar events. As first held on the weekend of 6 November 2015, Activision could offer promotional periods that similarly offer full access.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In addition to regular content, "GHTV" was used to provide specialty programming. "GHTV" offered curated music video shows with host segments wrapped around playable songs; the first such show features songs selected by the band Avenged Sevenfold and included commentary by the band on these selections. Def Leppard used "GHTV" to premiere their new music video for their single "Dangerous" in January 2016. Activision offered a contest for players to win prizes by participating in a special "Shred-a-Thon" premium show, highlighting the addition of DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames"—one of the most notoriously difficult songs that has appeared in other "Guitar Hero" titles—to the "GHTV" setlist.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Activision announced in June 2018 that the GHTV servers will be shut down on 1 December 2018, rendering this functionality unusable. Players will still be able to play songs on disc. The iOS app was also delisted as its functionality would also cease with the shut down of the GHTV servers.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: The on-disc soundtrack of "Guitar Hero Live" includes 42 songs and spans across a diverse selection of genres, the developers recognizing that challenging guitar tracks are not strictly limited to rock music. The game's soundtrack include songs by The Black Keys, Blitz Kids, Ed Sheeran, Fall Out Boy, Gary Clark Jr., Green Day, The Killers, The Lumineers, My Chemical Romance, Pierce the Veil, The Rolling Stones, Skrillex, and The War on Drugs.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Pre-orders of the game offered access to a time-limited premium show featuring three live recordings by Avenged Sevenfold, including "Shepherd of Fire", "Buried Alive" and "Nightmare", filmed from their performances at the Download Festival in England and Mexico City.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Additional songs are provided through "GHTV". Two hundred songs were playable on "GHTV" at launch, and the developers plan on adding new songs to "GHTV" on a regular basis. There is no backward compatibility with songs or controllers from previous editions of the franchise; FreeStyleGames' developer Jamie Jackson justified the decision, explaining that "Guitar Hero Live" was a "completely new game" that existing content would not work with due to the change in core gameplay. There is not any traditional downloadable content for the game in the form of additional songs, instead using the streaming nature of "GHTV" to provide new songs. FreeStyleGames does not expect to make "GHTV" content available for offline play.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: Rhythm games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" had been widely popular between 2005 and 2008, but due to oversaturation of the market and the onset of the recession in 2009, the rhythm genre suffered major setbacks, and the genre's popularity had quickly waned. Sales of the previous installment "" were below estimates and lower than previous games in the series. Weak sales of "Warriors of Rock", in part, led to Activision cancelling a planned 2011 sequel, and shuttering the "Guitar Hero" franchise.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In a July 2011 interview with "Forbes.com", Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stated that they were going to try to "reinvent" the series, but a former teammember of Vicarious Visions has stated that as of 2012, all development of "Guitar Hero" has come to an end within Activision. Another source close to Vicarious Visions had reported to "Kotaku" that while "Guitar Hero 7" was in development under an Activision studio, the game was considered a "disaster". The cancelled game omitted the additional instruments and used only a guitar peripheral, redesigning the unit to include six strings replacing the strum bar; the resulting unit was considered too expensive to manufacture and purchase. The developers had started from scratch to try to create new characters and venues that would be more reactive to the actual songs being played, to give the feel of a music video, but ultimately this proved too much of a challenge and had to be scrapped. Further, with a limited budget, the song selection was limited to "low-budget" hits of the 1990s, or at times reusing songs that had previously been included in "Guitar Hero" games. Though the team had a two-year development cycle, it was closed down after Activision president Eric Hirshberg had seen the current state of the project at the one-year point. Daniel Dilallo, a developer for Vicarious Visions at the time of cancellation, stated that he had come up with an idea of revitalizing the series using a first-person perspective approach, and had developed a prototype that he had called "Guitar Hero Live" at the time, though neither Activision nor FreeStyleGames have confirmed if this prototype was used as inspiration for the revived series.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In February 2015, rumors surfaced that new entries in both the "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" franchises for eighth generation consoles were in development; Harmonix announced "Rock Band 4" on 5 March 2015. On 14 April 2015, Activision officially announced a reboot of the "Guitar Hero" franchise, "Guitar Hero Live", with development by FreeStyleGames.


title: Guitar Hero Live

text: In an interview with "Fortune" magazine, Activision's CEO of Publishing Eric Hirshberg found that even after five years without a game, the "Guitar Hero" brand still enjoyed high social media attention, with over 10 million followers on the "Guitar Hero"s Facebook page. However, Hirshberg stated that Activision realized they needed to reinvent the series so that consumers would not consider it much the same as previous games and to help sway those that were turned off by the earlier saturation of music games.