title: Copolymer

text: A common application of block copolymers is to develop thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs). Early commercial TPEs were developed from polyurethranes (TPUs), consisting of alternating soft segments and hard segments, and are used in automative bumpers and snowmobile treads. Styrenic TPEs entered the market later, and are used in footwear, bitumen modification, thermoplastic blending, adhesives, and cable insulation and gaskets. Modifying the linkages between the blocks resulted in newer TPEs based on polyesters (TPES) and polyamides (TPAs), used in hose tubing, sport goods, and automative components.


title: Copolymer

text: Amphiphilic block copolymers have the ability to form micelles and nanoparticles. Due to this property, amphiphilic block copolymers have garnered much attention in research on vehicles for drug delivery. Similarly, amphiphilic block copolymers can be used for the removal of organic contaminants from water either through micelle formation or film preparation.


title: Copolymer

text: The styrene-maleic acid (SMA) alternating copolymer displays amphiphilicity depending on pH, allowing it to change conformations in different environments. Some conformations that SMA can take are random coil formation, compact globular formation, micelles, and nanodiscs. SMA has been used as a dispersing agent for dyes and inks, as drug delivery vehicles, and for membrane solubilization.


title: Copolymer

text: Copolymerization is used to modify the properties of manufactured plastics to meet specific needs, for example to reduce crystallinity, modify glass transition temperature, control wetting properties or to improve solubility. It is a way of improving mechanical properties, in a technique known as rubber toughening. Elastomeric phases within a rigid matrix act as crack arrestors, and so increase the energy absorption when the material is impacted for example. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene is a common example.


title: Macedonian front

text: The Macedonian front, also known as the Salonica front (after Thessaloniki), was a military theatre of World War I formed as a result of an attempt by the Allied Powers to aid Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, against the combined attack of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The expedition came too late and in insufficient force to prevent the fall of Serbia, and was complicated by the internal political crisis in Greece (the "National Schism"). Eventually, a stable front was established, running from the Albanian Adriatic coast to the Struma River, pitting a multinational Allied force against the Bulgarian Army, which was at various times bolstered with smaller units from the other Central Powers. The Macedonian front remained quite stable, despite local actions, until the great Allied offensive in September 1918, which resulted in the capitulation of Bulgaria and the liberation of Serbia.


title: Macedonian front

text: Following the assassination of the Crown Prince by a Bosnian Serb, Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia in August 1914 but had failed to overcome Serbian resistance. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers (November 1914), the decisive factor in the Balkans became the attitude of Bulgaria. Bulgaria occupied a strategically important position on the Serbian flank and its intervention on either side of the belligerents would be decisive. Bulgaria and Serbia had fought each other twice in the previous thirty years: in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 and in the Second Balkan War of 1913. Bulgaria had suffered defeat in 1913 and the Bulgarian government and people generally felt that Serbia had stolen land which rightfully belonged to Bulgaria. While the Allies could only offer Bulgaria small territorial concessions from Serbia and neutral Greece, the Central Powers' promises appeared far more enticing, as they offered to cede most of the land which Bulgaria claimed. With the Allied defeats at the Battle of Gallipoli (April 1915 to January 1916) and the Russian defeat at Gorlice-Tarnów (May to September 1915) demonstrating the Central Powers' strength, King Ferdinand signed a treaty with Germany and on 21 September 1915 Bulgaria began mobilising for war.


title: Macedonian front

text: After the victory of the Serbian army in the Battle of Kolubara in December 1914, the Serbian front saw a lull until the early autumn of 1915. Under the command of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, the Austro-Hungarian Balkan Army, the German 11th Army and river flotillas on the Danube and the Sava began an offensive on 6 October 1915, the largest offensive against Serbia. By September 1915, despite the extreme sacrifice of the Serbian army, the Austro-Hungarian Balkan Army, having crossed the rivers Sava and Drina and the German 11th Army after crossing the Danube, occupied Belgrade, Smederevo, Požarevac and Golubac, creating a wide bridgehead south of the Sava and Danube rivers, and forcing Serbian forces to withdraw to southern Serbia.


title: Macedonian front

text: On 15 October 1915, two Bulgarian armies attacked, over-running Serbian units, penetrating into the valley of the South Morava river near Vranje up to 22 October 1915. The Bulgarian forces occupied Kumanovo, Štip, and Skopje, and prevented the withdrawal of the Serbian army to the Greek border and Thessaloniki (Salonika).


title: Macedonian front

text: For a year, the Allies (Britain and France) had repeatedly promised to send serious military forces to Serbia, while nothing had materialised. But with Bulgaria's mobilisation to its south, the situation for Serbia became desperate. The developments finally forced the French and the British to decide upon sending a small expedition force of two divisions from Gallipoli (156th Infantry Division (France) and 10th (Irish) Division respectively). The first troops landed in the port of Salonika on 5 October, in order to combine into an Army of the Orient under the French commander Maurice Sarrail, but even these arrived too late in the Greek port of Thessaloniki (Salonica) to have any impact in the operations to help Serbia. The main reason for the delay was the lack of available Allied forces due to the critical situation in the Western Front. The Entente used Greek neutrality as an excuse, although they could have used the Albanian coast for a rapid deployment of reinforcements and equipment during the first 14 months of the war. (As the Serbian Marshal Putnik had suggested, the Montenegrin army gave adequate cover to the Albanian coast from the north—at a safe distance from any Bulgarian advance in the south in the event of a Bulgarian intervention.) The Entente also delayed due to protracted secret negotiations aiming at bringing Bulgaria into the Allied camp, which event would have alleviated Serbia's need for Franco-British help.


title: Macedonian front

text: In the event the lack of Allied support sealed the fate of the Serbian Army. Against Serbia the Central Powers marshalled the Bulgarian Army, a German Army, and an Austro-Hungarian Army, all under the command of Field Marshal Mackensen. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians began their attack on 7 October with a massive artillery barrage, followed by attacks across the rivers. Then, on 11 October, the Bulgarian Army attacked from two directions, one from the north of Bulgaria towards Niš, the other from the south towards Skopje (see map). The Bulgarian Army rapidly broke through the weaker Serbian forces which tried to block its advance. With the Bulgarian breakthrough, the Serbian position became hopeless; their main army in the north faced either encirclement and enforced surrender, or retreat.


title: Macedonian front

text: Marshal Putnik ordered a full Serbian retreat, southwards and westwards through Montenegro and into Albania. The Serbs faced great difficulties: terrible weather, poor roads and the need for the army to help the tens of thousands of civilians who retreated with them. Only soldiers reached the Adriatic coast and embarked on Italian transport ships that carried the army to Corfu and other Greek islands before it travelled on to Thessaloniki. Marshal Putnik had to be carried during the whole retreat; he died just over a year later in a French hospital.


title: Macedonian front

text: The French and British divisions marched north from Thessaloniki in October 1915 under the joint command of French General Maurice Sarrail, and British General Bryan Mahon (Commander, British Salonika Force, 1915). However, the War Office in London was reluctant to advance too deep into Serbia. So the French divisions advanced on their own up the Vardar River. This advance gave some limited help to the retreating Serbian Army, as the Bulgarians had to concentrate larger forces on their southern flank to deal with the threat, which led to the Battle of Krivolak (October–November 1915). By the end of November, General Sarrail had to retreat in the face of massive Bulgarian assaults on his positions. During his retreat, the British at Kosturino were also forced to retreat. By 12 December, all allied forces were back in Greece. The Germans ordered the Bulgarians not to cross the Greek borders, reluctant to risk a Greek entry into the war in response to a Bulgarian invasion in Macedonia. The Allies for their part took advantage of that, reinforcing and consolidating their positions behind the borders.


title: Macedonian front

text: Thus there resulted a clear, albeit incomplete victory for the Central Powers. As a consequence they opened the railway line from Berlin to Constantinople, allowing Germany to prop up its weaker partner, the Ottoman Empire. Despite the Central Powers' victory, the Allies managed to save a part of the Serbian Army, which although battered, seriously reduced and almost unarmed, escaped total destruction and after reorganising resumed operations six months later. And most damagingly for the Central Powers, the Allies—using the moral excuse of saving the Serbian Army—managed to replace the impossible Serbian front with a viable one established in Macedonia (albeit by violating the territory of an officially neutral country); a front which would prove key to their final victory three years later.


title: Macedonian front

text: On 5 January 1916, the Austro-Hungarian Army attacked Serbia's ally Montenegro. The small Montenegrin army offered strong resistance in the Battle of Mojkovac, which greatly helped the withdrawal of the Serbian Army, but soon faced impossible odds and was compelled to surrender on 25 January. The Austro-Hungarians advanced down the coast of the Adriatic Sea into Italian-controlled Albania. By the end of the winter, the small Italian army in Albania had been forced out of nearly the whole country. At this point, with the war in the Balkans almost lost, the British General Staff wanted to withdraw all British troops from Greece, but the French government protested strongly and the troops remained. The Allied armies entrenched around Thessaloniki, which became a huge fortified camp, earning themselves the mocking nickname "the Gardeners of Salonika". The Serbian Army (now under the command of General Petar Bojović), after rest and refit on Corfu, was transported by the French to the Macedonian front.


title: Macedonian front

text: In the meantime, the political situation in Greece was confused. Officially, Greece was neutral, but King Constantine I was pro-German, while Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos was pro-Allied. Venizelos invited the Entente into Thessaloniki.


title: Macedonian front

text: With knowledge that Romania was about to join the Allied side, General Sarrail began preparations for an attack on the Bulgarian armies facing his forces. The Germans made plans of their own for a "spoiling attack". The German offensive was launched on 17 August, just three days before the French offensive was scheduled to start. In reality, this was a Bulgarian offensive, as the Austro-Hungarian Army was in Albania and only one German division was on the Greek border. The Bulgarians attacked on two fronts. In the east, they easily conquered all Greek territory east of the river Struma (see Struma Offensive), since the Greek Army was ordered not to resist by the pro-German King Constantine. In the west, the attack achieved early success thanks to surprise but the Allied forces held a defensive line after two weeks. Having halted the Bulgarian offensive, the Allies staged a counter-attack starting on 12 September (Battle of Kaymakchalan). The terrain was rough and the Bulgarians were on the defensive but the Allied forces made steady gains. Slow advances by the Allies continued throughout October and on into November, even as the weather turned very cold and snow fell on the hills. The Germans sent two more divisions to help bolster the Bulgarian Army but by 19 November the French and Serbian Army captured Kaymakchalan, the highest peak of Nidže mountain, and compelled the Central powers to abandon Bitola to the Entente; Bulgarians and Germans were killed, wounded or captured. The Allies suffered c. 50,000 battle casualties but another 80,000 men died or were evacuated due to sickness. The front moved about .


title: Macedonian front

text: The unopposed Bulgarian advance into Greek-held eastern Macedonia precipitated a crisis in Greece. The royalist government ordered its troops in the area (the demobilised IV Corps) not to resist and to retreat to the port of Kavala for evacuation, but no naval vessels turned up to permit the evacuation to take place. Despite occasional local resistance from a few officers and their nucleus units, most of the troops, along with their commander, surrendered to a token German force and were interned for the remainder of the war at Görlitz, Germany. The surrender of territory recently won with difficulty in the Second Balkan War of 1913 was the last straw for many Venizelist army officers. With Allied assistance, they launched a coup which secured Thessaloniki and most of Greek Macedonia for Venizelos. From that point Greece had two governments: the "official" royal government at Athens, which maintained Greek neutrality, and the "revolutionary" Venizelist "Provisional Government of National Defence" at Thessaloniki. At the same time, the Italians had deployed more forces to Albania and these new troops managed to push the Austrian corps back through very hilly country south of Lake Ostrovo.


title: Macedonian front

text: By spring 1917, General Sarrail's "Allied Army of the Orient" had been reinforced to six French, six Serbian, seven British, one Italian, three Greek and two Russian brigades. An offensive was planned for late April but the initial attack failed with major losses and the offensive was called off on 21 May. The Venizelists and the Entente, wishing to exert more pressure on Athens, occupied Thessaly, which had been evacuated by the royalists, and the Isthmus of Corinth, dividing the country. After an attempt to occupy Athens by force, which caused the reaction of the local royalist forces and ended in a fiasco in December (see Noemvriana), the Allies established a naval blockade around southern Greece which was still loyal to King Constantine, causing extreme hardship to the people in those areas. Six months later in June, the Venizelists presented an ultimatum, resulting in the exile of the Greek king (on 14 June, his son Alexander became king) and the reunification of the country under Venizelos. The new government immediately declared war on the Central Powers and created a new Army.


title: Macedonian front

text: On 30 May 1918, the Allies launched an offensive on the heavily fortified Skra salient, commencing the battle of Skra-di-Legen.


title: Macedonian front

text: The battle marked the first major Greek action on the Allied side in the war. Utilizing the cover of heavy artillery a Franco-Hellenic force made a rapid push into the enemy trenches, conquering Skra and the surrounding system of fortifications. Greek casualties amounted to 434–440 killed in action, 154–164 missing in action and 1,974–2,220 wounded, France lost approximately 150 men killed or injured. A total of 1,782 soldiers of the Central Powers became prisoners of war, including a small number of German engineers and artillery specialists that served in Bulgarian units; considerable amounts of military equipment also fell into Entente hands. The plan for a Bulgarian counterattack against Skra remained unfulfilled as the Bulgarian soldiers refused to take part in the operation. Both the Greek and the French press used the opportunity to extol the efforts of the Greek army, favourably influencing the Greek mobilisation.


title: Macedonian front

text: The fall of Skra prompted Bulgarian prime minister Vasil Radoslavov to resign on 21 June 1918. Aleksandar Malinov who assumed office immediately afterwards pursued secret negotiations with Britain, offering Bulgaria's exit from the war with the condition that Bulgaria fully retain eastern Macedonia. However, British prime minister David Lloyd George rejected the proposal, assuring the Greek ambassador in London Ioannis Gennadius, that Britain would not act against Greek interests.


title: Macedonian front

text: With the German spring offensive threatening France, Guillaumat was recalled to Paris and replaced by General Franchet d'Esperey. Although d'Esperey urged an attack on the Bulgarian Army, the French government refused to allow an offensive unless all the countries agreed. General Guillaumat, no longer needed in France, travelled from London to Rome, trying to win approval for an attack. Finally in September, agreement was reached and d'Esperey was allowed to launch his grand offensive.


title: Macedonian front

text: The Allied forces were now large, despite the Russian exit from the war due to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Greece and its army (nine divisions) were fully committed to the Entente, while 6,000 Czech and Slovak former prisoners of war held on the Italian front were re-armed, re-organized, and transferred to the Macedonian front to fight for the Entente. The Bulgarians had also increased their army during 1917, and in total manpower, the two sides were roughly equal battalions vs. battalions, plus ten German battalions). However, as 1918 progressed, it was clear that the Entente had momentum the Central Powers lacked. Russian defeat had yielded no meaningful benefit to the Central Powers. The Ottoman Empire faced progressive loss of Arab lands. In Austria-Hungary, non-German and non-Hungarian parts of the multinational empire grew more openly restive. On the Western Front, intense German spring offensives had not defeated France, while American deployment was increasingly effective, with US forces operating under independent command from June 1918. Though Bulgaria and the United States were not at war with each other, German victory over the United States appeared conceptually infeasible. Finally, and most importantly for Bulgaria, almost all of its territorial war aims were already achieved, but as World War I was not merely a third Balkan War, Bulgaria could not quit. Alongside its partners, Bulgaria continued to suffer high casualties and civilian privation, including food shortages, seemingly to achieve the unrealized objectives of its allies. As a constitutional monarchy, Bulgaria depended on the consent of its people to keep fighting, while stress and discontent with the war grew.


title: Macedonian front

text: The preparatory artillery bombardment of Bulgarian and Central Powers positions for the Battle of Dobro Pole began on 14 September. The following day, the French and Serbians attacked and captured their objective. On 18 September, the Greeks and the British attacked but were stopped with heavy losses by the Bulgarians in the Battle of Doiran. The Franco-Serbian army continued advancing vigorously and next day, some Bulgarian units started surrendering positions without a fight and the Bulgarian command ordered a retreat.


title: Macedonian front

text: In the official British government history of the Macedonian campaign, Cyril Falls wrote a detailed analysis of the situation of the Bulgarian forces and the situation of the front. Although a breakthrough was achieved at Dobro Pole and the allied forces continued their advance, the Bulgarian army was not routed and managed an orderly retreat. By 29 September (a day before Bulgaria exited World War I), Skopje fell but a strong Bulgarian and German force had been ordered to try and retake it the next day; the number of Bulgarian prisoners-of-war in allied hands around that day was only


title: Macedonian front

text: Another major factor contributed to the Bulgarian request for an armistice. A mass of retreating Bulgarian mutineers had converged on the railway centre of Radomir in Bulgaria, just from the capital city of Sofia. On 27 September, leaders of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union took control of these troops and proclaimed the overthrow of the monarchy and a Bulgarian republic. About rebellious troops threatened Sofia the next day. Under those chaotic circumstances a Bulgarian delegation arrived in Thessaloniki to ask for an armistice. On 29 September, the Bulgarians were granted the Armistice of Thessaloniki by General d'Esperey, ending their war. The Macedonian front was brought to an end at noon on 30 September 1918 when the ceasefire came into effect. The Soldiers' Uprising was finally put down by 2 October.


title: Macedonian front

text: German Emperor Wilhelm II in his telegram to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I stated: “Disgraceful! 62,000 Serbs decided the war!" On 29 September 1918, the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria abdicated and went into exile on 3 October.


title: Macedonian front

text: The British Army headed east towards the European side of the Ottoman Empire, while the French and Serbian forces continued north and liberated Serbia, Albania and Montenegro. The British Army neared Constantinople and with no serious Ottoman forces to stop it the Ottoman government asked for an armistice (the Armistice of Mudros) on 26 October; Enver Pasha and his partners had fled several days earlier to Berlin. The Serbo-French Army re-captured Serbia and overran several weak German divisions that tried to block its advance near Niš. On 3 November Austria-Hungary was forced to sign an armistice on the Italian front and the war there ended. On 10 November, d'Esperey's army crossed the Danube river and was poised to enter the heartland of Hungary. At the request of the French general, Count Károlyi, leading the Hungarian government, came to Belgrade and signed another armistice, the Armistice of Belgrade.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Michael Frank Park (born July 20, 1968) is an American actor, best known for his roles as Jack Snyder on "As the World Turns" (1997– 2010), Larry Murphy in the original Broadway cast of "Dear Evan Hansen" (2016), and reporter Tom Holloway in the third season of the Netflix series "Stranger Things" (2019).


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park won back-to-back (2010, 2011) Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. In 2018, for his work in "Dear Evan Hansen", Park earned a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park was born in Canandaigua, New York, but spent a year of his childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park attended Nazareth College, Rochester, New York, originally intending to become an architect, before deciding to become an actor. He worked in the 1992 New Plays Festival at Geva Theatre in Rochester. He appeared in regional productions including "Ellen Universe Joins The Band" and "Peephole".


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: In 1994, Park appeared in the musical "Hello Again" at Lincoln Center Theater. In August 1994, Park was in the Goodspeed Opera House production of "Shenandoah", and "Good News" at the North Shore Music Theatre (1994). After understudying Billy Bigelow in the 1994 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel", he made his Broadway debut in 1995 in "Smokey Joe's Cafe". In 1997, Park played Monty in the Playwrights Horizons production of "Violet".


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: The day after "Violet" opened was Park's first day in the long-running daytime soap opera "As the World Turns" as Jack Snyder, joining in April 1997. Park received three Emmy nominations and several other soap-opera acting awards, including winning the 2010 and 2011 Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: During his 13-year tenure in "As the World Turns", he continued to work in theatre, playing Lucky Malone in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Little Me" (1998). He made two New York City Center Encores! appearances: "Bloomer Girl" in 2001 as Jeff Calhoun, and "Applause" in 2008 as Bill Sampson.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: With "As the World Turns" coming to an end in June 2010, Park returned to the stage, and played the role of Pete's ghost father who appeared to his son as three "Alamo" characters in the coming-of-age musical "The Burnt Part Boys" at Playwrights Horizon. In the summer of 2010, he appeared as Lord Capulet in the musical "The Last Goodbye" at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Park then appeared as the cop in Will Eno's play "Middletown" at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre (2010).


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park performed in the role of Bert Bratt in the Broadway revival "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (2011), starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: In the 2012 independent financial thriller film "Supercapitalist", Park appears as Morris Brown, co-starring along with Linus Roache.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: On December 5, 2013, he participated as a cast member of the NBC telecast production of "The Sound of Music Live!" starring Carrie Underwood. He played Cecco, one of Captain Hook's pirates, in the NBC presentation of "Peter Pan Live!" starring Allison Williams and Christopher Walken; the musical was broadcast on December 4, 2014.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park has appeared in episodes of numerous television series, including "The Good Wife" (2012), "The Blacklist" (2016), "You" (2018, two episodes), "Blue Bloods" (2018), and "FBI" (2021).


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: In 2015, he created the role of Larry Murphy in the world premiere of the stage musical "Dear Evan Hansen" at Washington, DC's Arena Stage. He was not in the off-Broadway run, starting in early 2016, as he was appearing in the Broadway musical, "Tuck Everlasting". He returned to "Dear Evan Hansen" in the fall of 2016 when the musical made its debut on Broadway. For his work in "Dear Evan Hansen", Michael Park earned the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and his third Daytime Emmy Award, this one a Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program for his and the rest of the cast's "Today Show" performance that was broadcast on April 25, 2017.


title: Michael Park (actor)

text: Park has been married to music therapist Laurie Nowak since January 6, 1996. They have three children.


title: Carmela Corleone

text: Carmela Corleone (1897–1959) is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel "The Godfather." Carmela is portrayed by Italian-American Morgana King in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film adaptation of the novel, and in "The Godfather Part II" (1974).


title: Carmela Corleone

text: She and her husband Vito, a crime boss, have four children: Santino ("Sonny"), Frederico ("Fredo"), and Michael, and one daughter Constanzia ("Connie").


title: Carmela Corleone

text: Carmela was born in Sicily in 1897 and emigrated to the United States shortly after the turn of the century. She married Vito Corleone in 1915; they were married for 40 years until Vito's death in 1955. They had four children – Sonny, Fredo, Michael and Connie. They also took in Sonny's friend Tom Hagen, who later served as the family "consigliere".


title: Carmela Corleone

text: In the book, Carmela Corleone is portrayed as a traditional Italian immigrant woman who speaks in very broken English. In the movies, however, she speaks fluent English as an adult, with a marked New York accent. In the novel, she develops a close relationship with Michael's girlfriend and future wife, Kay. She is given more expansive dialogue in "The Godfather Part II", notably when she confronts her daughter Connie about her behavior early in the film, and when she discusses family life with Michael, who fears that his role as Don of the Corleone criminal empire will cost him his family. Carmela Corleone dies toward the end of the sequel.


title: Carmela Corleone

text: Carmela was disturbed by Vito's change from a kind, quiet young man to a pragmatic and ruthless criminal. However Carmela seems to forgive Vito for his many crimes, because he remains essentially a good man who is devoted to his family. Devoutly Catholic, Carmela attends Mass every day to pray for her husband's soul to keep him from "going down there."


title: Carmela Corleone

text: Her first name is almost never mentioned, in either the movies or the book, though it is referenced in the sequel books.


title: Carmela Corleone

text: Carmela is a major character in the 2012 prequel novel "The Family Corleone", which portrays their early years together raising a family as Vito becomes a crime boss.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: Sidney Iking Bateman (born March 13, 1993) is an American professional wrestler and former acrobat. Better known by the ring name Reggie, he is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the NXT brand under the ring name Scrypts.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: Bateman signed with WWE in 2020 and began appearing on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Reginald Thomas, which was soon shortened to Reginald, a French sommelier. He later dropped the sommelier gimmick and his name was changed to Reggie. While on WWE's main roster, he became a four-time WWE 24/7 Champion—his 112-day first reign was the longest reign for the now-defunct title. After taking a hiatus in mid-2022, he returned in November under a mysterious gimmick of Scrypts in WWE's developmental brand NXT.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: Sidney Iking Bateman was born one of eight siblings in Memphis, Tennessee on March 13, 1993 - but was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He played football and basketball with circus as a side hobby, but gave those up when, at the age of 16, he joined a gang called the Crips from the 50 Hundred GST (Geraldine Street Thugs). During his junior year in high school, one of his friends was shot to death by a member of a rival gang, leading to Bateman to quit living a gang life and go back to focusing on his circus aspirations.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: On January 14, 2020, Bateman signed a contract with WWE. On the December 11 episode of "SmackDown", Bateman, under the ring name Reginald Thomas, soon after shortened to Reginald, debuted as the French sommelier of Carmella, where he would assist her throughout her feud with Sasha Banks. On the January 22, 2021, episode of "SmackDown", Reginald made his in-ring debut in an intergender match, facing Banks in a losing effort. His relationship with Carmella ended on the March 5 episode of "SmackDown", when she fired him. After a short alliance with Sasha Banks, Reginald then managed the team of Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler from March to July, but the team turned on him on the July 19 episode of "Raw". Later that night, he won the WWE 24/7 Championship when he pinned Akira Tozawa, marking his first title win in WWE.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: On the July 30 episode of "SmackDown", his ring name was shortened to Reggie. Along with shortening his name, he also dropped his French accent, stating he was not actually French and had only acted like he was because Carmella needed a sommelier and it got his foot in the door to becoming a wrestler for the company. On September 25, 2021, he became the longest reigning 24/7 Champion. On the November 8 episode of "Raw", Reggie lost the 24/7 Championship to Drake Maverick, ending his reign at 112 days; however, he regained the title back from Maverick a minute later following a series of title changes. On the November 22 episode of "Raw", Reggie lost the title to Cedric Alexander, ending his second reign at 12 days.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: After losing the title, Reggie then helped Dana Brooke retain the title for a few months, then asked her out on Valentine's Day 2022, though she turned him down. He pinned Brooke in revenge to win the title for the 3rd time. A week later, Reggie lost the title back to Brooke after he laid down in the ring despite kicking out of a two-count twice, as well as playing mind games. They later began dating, with Reggie once again helping her retain the title. On March 28, they got (kayfabe) engaged. On the April 18 episode of "Raw", during their wedding, Reggie pinned his partner to win the 24/7 title, losing to Tamina shortly after. On May 2, Brooke lost the 24/7 title to Nikki A.S.H. during a backstage attack. Brooke soon regained the title via pinfall in a 24/7 Championship match. Brooke also requested a divorce from Reggie, after he attempted to pin her. This was his last appearance before taking a hiatus.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: In late October, mysterious vignettes began airing on "NXT" that were done by a person under the alias Scrypts, a seemingly rebellious character who claimed to have unparalleled skills and would bring down NXT. More vignettes aired over the next few weeks and on the November 22 episode of "NXT", Reggie debuted for the brand as the mysterious Scrypts, officially changing his ring name and gimmick.


title: Reggie (wrestler)

text: Bateman is a father of two. He used to perform in the circus, notably for Cirque du Soleil, training at Circus Harmony for seven years and in Montreal for another three.


title: Universal testing machine

text: A universal testing machine (UTM), also known as a universal tester, materials testing machine or materials test frame, is used to test the tensile strength and compressive strength of materials. An earlier name for a tensile testing machine is a tensometer. The "universal" part of the name reflects that it can perform many standard tensile and compression tests on materials, components, and structures (in other words, that it is versatile).


title: Universal testing machine

text: The set-up and usage are detailed in a test method, often published by a standards organization. This specifies the sample preparation, fixturing, gauge length (the length which is under study or observation), analysis, etc.


title: Universal testing machine

text: The specimen is placed in the machine between the grips and an extensometer if required can automatically record the change in gauge length during the test. If an extensometer is not fitted, the machine itself can record the displacement between its cross heads on which the specimen is held. However, this method not only records the change in length of the specimen but also all other extending / elastic components of the testing machine and its drive systems including any slipping of the specimen in the grips.


title: Universal testing machine

text: Once the machine is started it begins to apply an increasing load on specimen. Throughout the tests the control system and its associated software record the load and extension or compression of the specimen.


title: Mujer de nadie

text: Mujer de nadie (English title: "A Woman of Her Own") is a Mexican telenovela that aired on Las Estrellas from 13 June 2022 to 12 August 2022. The series is produced by Giselle González for TelevisaUnivision, and is based on the 2004 telenovela "Amarte es mi pecado" created by Liliana Abud. It stars Livia Brito and Marcus Ornellas.


title: Mujer de nadie

text: Lucía (Livia Brito) lives in Cholula, with her father Jacobo and her stepmother Isaura, an ambitious and cruel woman. She is in love with Alfredo, but he only wants to take advantage of her innocence and purity. When Jacobo suffers a heart attack, Alfredo and Isaura seek to offer Lucía to Heriberto, the richest and most powerful man in town, who is in love with Lucía. While trying to escape from Heriberto, Lucía meets Fernando, whom she falls in love with. Lucia is evicted from her home by Heriberto's orders and has to live with her aunt Alejandra, her mother's sister, who lives with Casilda, her goddaughter. Lucía and Fernando must face several enemies that oppose their happiness.


title: Mujer de nadie

text: Filming of the series began on 7 March 2022, and concluded on 6 July 2022. The first teaser was shown on 16 May 2022.


title: Kate Snow

text: Kate Snow (born June 10, 1969) is an American television journalist for NBC News, serving as Senior National Correspondent to various NBC platforms, including "Today", "NBC Nightly News", "Dateline NBC", and MSNBC. Snow also anchors the Sunday edition of "NBC Nightly News", and frequently substitutes for the weekday and Saturday broadcast. Snow also previously hosted "MSNBC Live".


title: Kate Snow

text: Before joining NBC News in 2010, she was a co-anchor for the weekend edition of "Good Morning America" on ABC from 2004 to 2010. Snow had also appeared on its weekday edition and "World News" as a fill-in anchor and correspondent. She was also a correspondent for the now-canceled NBC newsmagazine "Rock Center with Brian Williams".


title: Kate Snow

text: Snow was born June 10, 1969, in Bangor, Maine, and moved with her family to Burnt Hills, New York when she was six months old. She is a 1987 graduate of Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School. She graduated from Cornell University, and holds a master's in foreign service from Georgetown University.


title: Kate Snow

text: Snow joined ABC in 2003 as "Good Morning America"s White House reporter before she was tapped to co-host the morning show's weekend edition. She had previously worked at NPR and NBC Radio, and also worked as a reporter at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 1995 to 1998 and at CNN from 1998 to 2003.


title: Kate Snow

text: During the 2008 presidential race, Snow was ABC News' correspondent covering Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and Sarah Palin's campaign for vice president.


title: Kate Snow

text: Snow joined NBC News in 2010 as correspondent for "Dateline NBC" and a contributor to other NBC programming. In September 2015, Snow began anchoring the Sunday broadcast of "NBC Nightly News". That same month, Snow began hosting a two-hour block on "MSNBC Live". One year later, she won a News & Documentary Emmy Awards for her interview of numerous women including Andrea Constand who had accused Bill Cosby of committing sexual assault, which had aired on "Dateline NBC". In April 2017, she left her anchoring duties at MSNBC to become a Senior National Correspondent at NBC News, covering various stories for "NBC Nightly News", "Today" and "Dateline NBC".


title: Kate Snow

text: In October 2019, Snow began hosting a true-crime television series titled "Relentless", which airs on Oxygen. In September 2022, Snow began co-anchoring a two-hour block of "NBC News Daily", alongside Aaron Gilchrist. The first hour of the program assumed the timeslot held by "Days of Our Lives" (which was moved to the streaming service Peacock) and will simulcast on NBC News Now and Peacock.


title: Kate Snow

text: Snow is a member of the Department of Communication's advisory council at Cornell University and is on the national board of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: The Gold Coast was the name for a region on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa that was rich in gold, petroleum, sweet crude oil and natural gas. This former region is now known as the country Ghana.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: The Gold Coast, Slave Coast, Pepper Coast (or Grain Coast) and Ivory Coast were named after the main export resources found there, respectively.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: Early uses of the term "Gold Coast" refer strictly to the coast and not the interior. It was not until the 19th century that the term came to refer to areas that are far from the coast.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: "Ghana" is the legal name for the region loosely referred to as the Gold Coast comprising the following four separate parts, which immediately before independence had distinct constitutional positions:


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: The United Kingdom government was responsible for shepherding through the Ghana Independence Act 1957 with Charles Arden-Clarke Lord Listowel explained that the name was chosen "in accordance with the wishes of the Gold Coastian population".


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: Europeans reached this region of Africa in 1482, and for centuries afterwards, various European empires and trading companies set up trading posts, known as factories there. They used these colonies to exploit the resources rather than to settle large numbers of subjects.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: The Portuguese Gold Coast was the first claim. The Dutch arrived in 1598 and in 1642 incorporated the Portuguese territory into the Dutch Gold Coast. The Dutch stayed in the region until 1871, when the last of their settlements were taken over by the British Gold Coast.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: There was also the Brandenburger Gold Coast, which established a colony in the area in 1682. It later became the Prussian Gold Coast. In 1721 the Dutch purchased it. The Swedish Gold Coast settlements date to 1650. The Danes arrived in 1663 and later seized the Swedish territory and incorporated it into the Danish Gold Coast. In 1850 all of the settlements became part of the British Gold Coast.


title: Gold Coast (region)

text: In 1774 a London commercial expert references a witness that "the king of Guinea, the greatest city in all the countries of Negroland, has a mass of gold of thirty pounds weight as it was naturally produced in the mines which is completely pure, tough and malleable without having been smelted". The British had taken over all of Gold Coast by 1871. They captured more territory inland in the late 19th century after the Anglo-Ashanti wars. In 1957, the territory comprising the Gold Coast Crown Colony, the Ashanti Crown Colony, the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Protectorate and British Togoland were united as an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations under the name Ghana.


title: Roundel

text: A roundel is a circular disc used as a symbol. The term is used in heraldry, but also commonly used to refer to a type of national insignia used on military aircraft, generally circular in shape and usually comprising concentric rings of different colours. Other symbols also often use round shapes.


title: Roundel

text: In heraldry, a "roundel" is a circular charge. "Roundels" are among the oldest charges used in coats of arms, dating from at least the twelfth century. Roundels in British heraldry have different names depending on their tincture. Thus, while a roundel may be blazoned by its tincture, e.g., "a roundel vert" (literally "a roundel green"), it is more often described by a single word, in this case "pomme" (literally "apple", from the French) or, from the same origins, "pomeis"—as in "Vert; on a cross Or five pomeis".


title: Roundel

text: One special example of a named roundel is the fountain, depicted as "a roundel barry wavy argent and azure", that is, containing alternating horizontal wavy bands of blue and silver (or white).


title: Roundel

text: The French Air Service originated the use of roundels on military aircraft during the First World War. The chosen design was the French national cockade, whose colours are the blue-white-red of the flag of France. Similar national cockades, with different ordering of colours, were designed and adopted as aircraft roundels by their allies, including the British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service, and (in the last few months of the war) the United States Army Air Service. After the First World War, many other air forces adopted roundel insignia, distinguished by different colours or numbers of concentric rings.


title: Roundel

text: The term "roundel" is often used even for those military aircraft insignia that are not round, like the Iron Cross-Balkenkreuz symbol of the Luftwaffe or the red star of the Russian Air Force.


title: Roundel

text: Among national flags which display a roundel are the flags of Bangladesh, Belize, Brazil, Dominica, Ethiopia, Grenada, India, Japan, Laos, Niger, North Korea, Palau, Paraguay, South Korea, Tunisia, and Uganda.


title: Roundel

text: Flags for British Overseas Territories used a British Blue Ensign defaced with a white roundel displaying the arms or badge of the dependency until 1999. The same pattern is still used for all the states of Australia except Victoria.


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald is an American animated miniseries of retail direct-to-video episodes produced by Klasky Csupo in association with the McDonald's Corporation, centering on McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald and the gang in McDonaldland. A total of six 40-minute episodes were produced and released on VHS with five of them being available exclusively in participating McDonald's restaurants from October 9, 1998 to January 30, 2003.


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh (best known as members of the band Devo and composers of the music for "Rugrats", another Klasky Csupo series) composed the score of the series while John Holmquist (who has also directed some "Rugrats" episodes) directed the first episode of the series. The artistic style of the series has a similar look to "Rugrats", "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters", "The Wild Thornberrys", and "Rocket Power" (another Klasky Csupo series). The background music was recycled from later episodes of Nickelodeon's "Rugrats".


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: In a format similar to both "The New 3 Stooges", "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" and "Back to the Future: The Animated Series", each episode starts and ends with a live-action segment.


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: By various accounts, the episodes turned out to be rather popular, to which individual McDonald's locations frequently ran out of VHS tapes, which were sold individually for $3.49 and could be bought with a small vanilla ice cream cone or Diet Coke. Klasky Csupo also sold them through their online gift shop, which was shut down in fall 2005.


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: A Happy Meal featuring Lego vehicles to build was released at the restaurant chain in 1999, a year after the series originally premiered. The front of each vehicle had an image of one of the McDonaldland characters in the Klasky Csupo style, as depicted in the series.


title: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald

text: Voice talent on the series includes K-C veterans Christine Cavanaugh, Kath Soucie, and Charlie Adler. The role of Ronald McDonald is credited as "Himself."


title: Risk matrix

text: A risk matrix is a matrix that is used during risk assessment to define the level of risk by considering the category of probability or likelihood against the category of consequence severity. This is a simple mechanism to increase visibility of risks and assist management decision making.


title: Risk matrix

text: Risk is the lack of certainty about the outcome of making a particular choice. Statistically, the level of downside risk can be calculated as the product of the probability that harm occurs (e.g., that an accident happens) multiplied by the severity of that harm (i.e., the average amount of harm or more conservatively the maximum credible amount of harm). In practice, the risk matrix is a useful approach where either the probability or the harm severity cannot be estimated with accuracy and precision.


title: Risk matrix

text: Although standard risk matrices exist in certain contexts (e.g. US DoD, NASA, ISO), individual projects and organizations may need to create their own or tailor an existing risk matrix. For example, the harm severity can be categorized as:


title: Risk matrix

text: The probability of harm occurring might be categorized as 'certain', 'likely', 'possible', 'unlikely' and 'rare'. However it must be considered that very low probabilities may not be very reliable.


title: Risk matrix

text: The company or organization then would calculate what levels of risk they can take with different events. This would be done by weighing the risk of an event occurring against the cost to implement safety and the benefit gained from it.


title: Risk matrix

text: The following is an example matrix of possible personal injuries, with particular accidents allocated to appropriate cells within the matrix:


title: Risk matrix

text: The risk matrix is approximate and can often be challenged. For example, the likelihood of death in an aircraft crash is about 1:11 million but death by motor vehicle is 1:5000, but nobody usually survives a plane crash, so it is far more catastrophic.


title: Risk matrix

text: On January 30 1978, a new version of US Department of Defense Instruction 6055.1 ("Department of Defense Occupational Safety and Health Program") was released. It is said to have been an important step towards the development of the risk matrix.


title: Risk matrix

text: In August 1978, business textbook author David E Hussey defined an investment "risk matrix" with risk on one axis, and profitability on the other. The values on the risk axis were determined by first determining risk impact and risk probability values in a manner identical to completing a 7 x 7 version of the modern risk matrix.


title: Risk matrix

text: A 5 x 4 version of the risk matrix was defined by the US Department of Defense on March 30 1984, in "MIL-STD-882B System Safety Program Requirements".


title: Risk matrix

text: The risk matrix was in use by the acquisition reengineering team at the US Air Force Electronic Systems Center in 1995.


title: Risk matrix

text: In his article 'What's Wrong with Risk Matrices?', Tony Cox argues that risk matrices experience several problematic mathematical features making it harder to assess risks. These are:


title: Risk matrix

text: Thomas, Bratvold, and Bickel demonstrate that risk matrices produce arbitrary risk rankings. Rankings depend upon the design of the risk matrix itself, such as how large the bins are and whether or not one uses an increasing or decreasing scale. In other words, changing the scale can change the answer.


title: Risk matrix

text: An additional problem is the imprecision used on the categories of likelihood. For example; 'certain', 'likely', 'possible', 'unlikely' and 'rare' are not hierarchically related. A better choice might be obtained through use of the same base term, such as 'extremely common', 'very common', 'fairly common', 'less common', 'very uncommon', 'extremely uncommon' or a similar hierarchy on a base "frequency" term.


title: Risk matrix

text: Another common problem is to assign rank indices to the matrix axes and multiply the indices to get a "risk score". While this seems intuitive, it results in an uneven distribution.


title: Risk matrix

text: Douglas W. Hubbard and Richard Seiersen take the general research from Cox, Thomas, Bratvold, and Bickel, and provide specific discussion in the realm of cybersecurity risk. They point out that since 61% of cybersecurity professionals use some form of risk matrix, this can be a serious problem. Hubbard and Seiersen consider these problems in the context of other measured human errors and conclude that "The errors of the experts are simply further exacerbated by the additional errors introduced by the scales and matrices themselves. We agree with the solution proposed by Thomas et al. There is no need for cybersecurity (or other areas of risk analysis that also use risk matrices) to reinvent well-established quantitative methods used in many equally complex problems."


title: Balaji Sakthivel

text: Balaji Sakthivel is an Indian director of Tamil films. He is best known for directing the 2004 film, "Kaadhal".


title: Balaji Sakthivel

text: Balaji Sakthivel began as an assistant director to S. Shankar. In 2002, he directed his first film, "Samurai" for Vikram. After a two-year break, he released "Kaadhal" under the S Pictures banner, the production house of Shankar. His "Vazhakku Enn 18/9" won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Blame! (stylized as BLAME!) is a 2017 Japanese CGI anime science fiction action film directed by Hiroyuki Seshita, produced by Polygon Pictures, written by Tsutomu Nihei and based on the manga series "Blame!", which was written and illustrated by Tsutomu Nihei. It was released globally by Netflix on May 20, 2017.


title: Blame! (film)

text: In the distant technological future, civilization has reached its ultimate Net-based form. An "infection" in the past caused the automated systems to spiral out of control, resulting in a multi-leveled city structure that replicates itself infinitely in all directions. Now humanity has lost access to the city's controls and is hunted down to be purged as "illegal" by the defense system known as the Safeguard. In a village, a group known as the Electro-Fishers is facing eventual extinction, trapped between the threat of the Safeguard and dwindling food supplies. A girl named Zuru goes on a journey to find food for her village with a group of friends, only to inadvertently cause doom when a Watchtower senses her and spawns a Safeguard pack to eliminate them. With her companions dead and all escape routes blocked, the sudden arrival of Killy the Wanderer, on his quest to find a human who possesses the Net Terminal Gene, saves her along with Tae, her close friend.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Killy is brought back to the village, where he meets Pop, leader of the village, who expresses interest in him after they hear that he has been from '6000 levels below'. Killy even helps to assist with the village's food problem by passing them a large amount of rations. Abruptly, he leaves for an area below the village named the Rotting Shrine, and followed by Zuru and Tae, he finds the spoilt machine-corpse of Cibo, a former scientist from before the disaster. Cibo reveals that it is she that built a shield generator that protects the village from the Safeguard, and tells the villagers that it is possible to produce more of the rations by going to a nearby 'automated factory'.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Heeding her words, a group of Electro-Fishers including Tae and Zuru travel to the automated factory in search of more rations. Arriving there, Cibo assists in logging into the system and produces a large amount of rations, much to the delight of the Electro-Fishers. However, right after she produces a machine for Killy, the system rejects her log-in and starts to mass-produce Exterminators to eliminate the Electro-Fishers. Cibo, who remakes herself using the system in a cyborg form, leads the villagers, with Tae now having broken her arm, to a railway car and escapes back to the village. During the ride, Killy is knocked unconscious trying to save the Electro-Fishers.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Arriving at the village, the villagers celebrate the sudden amount of food while also mourning their loss. While holding the celebration, Cibo secretly wakes Killy up with only Zuru as a witness and leads him down towards the shield generator with the machine. While heading down, Tae takes her gun to the observatory platform and shoots the shield generator, whereupon it is revealed that the real Tae was killed and replaced by a cyborg representative for the Safeguard back at the factory. Sanakan, as she now calls herself, proceeds to kill most of the villagers, deeming them illegal residents while destroying the village in the process.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Killy, realizing what has occurred, runs back up to the village on his own. Cibo travels further down at a faster pace, where she sets the machine right next to the destroyed Shield Generator and connects herself to it. Back at the top, Sanakan is killing villagers, but the village elders frantically lead the rest of the villagers to the top of the village where they resist her using their remaining weapons. Killy himself enters combat with Sanakan, who after knocking him down, notes that he is a body 'stolen from the Safeguard'. Killy is saved at the last minute by Zuru, who throws his gun to him; which he shoots and destroys Sanakan, but not before Sanakan destroys Cibo.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Cibo, in an alternate dimension, pleads with the Authority, which controls the Safeguard, to let the villagers go. Unable to do so, they allow her to access the City's map, revealing an abandoned level safe from Safeguard control where the villagers can evacuate to.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Cibo, now functioning through her only remaining arm, leads the remaining villagers to a trans-level railway car, but right after the villagers get in, a Watchtower spots them and spawns a gigantic Exterminator. Killy throws the device which has been keeping him safe from the Safeguard to Zuru, upon which he says that he still wants to find the Net Terminal Gene, which enables human control of the city and all machines, including the Safeguard. Killy seemingly sacrifices himself so that the villagers could escape.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Later it is revealed that Zuru and other villagers successfully reached the abandoned level and established a new village there. Her granddaughter reminisces of the times when her grandmother Zuru used to tell about Killy, and it seems that the device Killy gave them is still in her possession. As she thinks how she believes that Killy should still be alive somewhere it is shown that he continues his journey even to this day, wandering in search of the Net Terminal Gene.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Plans for a full-length CG animated film were announced in 2007. However, this proposed CG film project was not released before Micott and Basara (the studio hired) filed for bankruptcy in 2011.


title: Blame! (film)

text: It was announced in November 2015 that the series would get an anime theatrical film adaptation. The film was directed by Hiroyuki Seshita and written by Tsutomu Nihei and Sadayuki Murai, with animation by Polygon Pictures and character designs by Yuki Moriyama. It was released globally as a Netflix original on the 20th of May 2017.


title: Blame! (film)

text: "Blame!" was released by Polygon Pictures on May 19, 2017. It was made available to subscribers on Netflix on May 20, 2017.


title: Blame! (film)

text: On October 5, 2017, Viz Media announced at their New York Comic Con panel that they had licensed the home video rights to "Blame!" They released the film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on March 27, 2018.


title: Blame! (film)

text: Michael Nordine of "IndieWire" rated it B− and wrote that its worth a watch, but the "world-building is more engaging than its plotting". Toussaint Egan of "Paste" praised the adaptation for being both faithful and opening it to wider appeal, concluding that it is "one of the most conceptually entertaining anime films of late". James Brusuelas of "Animation World Network" wrote that although the plot is familiar, it is "definitely worth your time".


title: Blame! (film)

text: "Blame!" won "VFX-Japan Awards"' 2018 "Excellence" and "Best" awards in the "Animated Theatrical Film" category. It was part of the Jury Selections of the 21st Japan Media Arts Festival in the Animation category.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Feminist pornography is a genre of film developed by or for those within the Sex-positive feminist movement. It was created for the purpose of promoting gender equality by portraying more bodily movements and sexual fantasies of women and members of the LGBT Community.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Feminists have debated pornography ever since the women's movement commenced. The debate was particularly vehement during the feminist sex wars of the 1980s, which is when feminist porn originated. It acquired momentum in the 2000s because of the Feminist Porn Awards, originated by Good For Her in Toronto in 2006. These awards spread awareness amongst a broader audience, extra media exposure, and assistance in uniting a community of filmmakers, performers, and fans. Many third-wave feminists are open to seeking freedom and rights of sexual equality through entering the adult entertainment workforce. However, many second-wave feminists believe that the oppression and/or sexual objectification of women is inherent in all pornography involving them. The conflict between the two waves causes many struggles between these different feminist views of pornography.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Tristan Taormino, who is a sex educator, feminist pornographer, and co-editor of "The Feminist Porn Book", defines feminist pornography as dedicated to gender equality and social justice. Feminist pornography is porn that is produced in a fair manner, where performers are paid a reasonable salary and treated with care and esteem, their consent, safety, and well-being are vital, and what they bring to the production is appreciated. Feminist porn seeks to challenge ideas about desire, beauty, gratification, and power through unconventional representations, aesthetics, and film making styles. The overall aim of feminist porn is to empower the performers who produce it and the people who view it.


title: Feminist pornography

text: From the mid-1970s up until 1983, it was mostly a theoretical discussion amongst feminists (including some self-identified feminist men) whether making feminist porn was even possible. Some feminists, later known as sex-positive feminists, argued that it was, but it still had to be made, sometimes giving a rough sketch of what that should or would look like (for example, Ann Garry's plot in 1983). Others in the middle said it may be possible, but they had not seen any examples of it yet (1981). A third group, the anti-porn feminists, maintained throughout the 1980s that it was in principle impossible, because 'feminist pornography is a contradiction in terms' or 'an oxymoron', and that whatever was feminist but appeared to be pornographic should instead be labelled 'erotica' Feminist, Gloria Steinem, discussed how pornography promoted unequal power dynamics, while erotica represents sex as a positive expression of sexuality. Although some of them, such as Andrea Dworkin, claimed that even 'erotica' was too much like pornography to be considered feminist.


title: Feminist pornography

text: The majority of the feminist debates on pornography were initiated by events such as the 1976 presentation of the film "Snuff", in which a woman was shown being mutilated for the audience's sexual satisfaction. Two of the first American feminists to suggest the development of feminist pornography were Deb Friedman and Lois Yankowski (members of the Feminist Alliance Against Rape) in a 1976 article in "Quest: A Feminist Quarterly". Claiming that the oppression of and violence against women portrayed in pornography had gone too far (citing the recent controversy around "Snuff"), but considering that censorship may not be the proper tactic to deal with it, they wrote:


title: Feminist pornography

text: The Friedman-Yankowski essay became very popular and was widely reprinted. On the other hand, erroneously believing that its scenes of eroticized torture were real, Andrea Dworkin organized nightly vigils at locations where the film was being shown. She became the main theorist of the U.S. anti-pornography campaign. Well-known feminists, including Susan Brownmiller and Gloria Steinem, joined her to establish the campaign group Women Against Pornography. The anti-porn campaign escalated with Take Back the Night marches around locations such as Times Square, which contained ‘adult’ book stores, massage parlors (a euphemism for a brothel) and strip clubs. Dworkin and other feminists arranged conferences and lecture tours, showing slide-shows featuring hard- and soft-core porn to women's awareness groups.


title: Feminist pornography

text: In the United States, production of explicitly feminist pornography began in 1984, initiated by two independently formed groups. Dissatisfied with working in mainstream male-centred porn, Candida Royalle founded her own adult film studio Femme Productions and hired performers from the porn actresses support group 'Club 90', which originated in 1983 when they started informally talking about what they wished to change about the industry. Separately, in reaction to the 1983 Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance, lesbian feminists founded the sex-positive lesbian sex magazine "On Our Backs." This was in reaction to feminist magazine "off our backs", which had been campaigning for banning porn in preceding years, and "On Our Backs" started producing erotic videos the next year under the leadership of Susie Bright. Others including Annie Sprinkle followed in the years thereafter, and by 1990 a small group of feminist pornographers, some of them united in the Manhattan-based Club 90, could be distinguished. Between 1984 and 1990, sex-positive feminists claimed these directors and producers had made feminist pornography a reality, increasingly referring to their works as examples of it. Anti-pornography feminists remained adamant in their opposition, claiming that these productions were either still following the patterns of 'mainstream' or 'male-dominated' porn, or were in fact erotica, a legitimate genre that was separate from pornography.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Meanwhile in Europe, feminists such as Monika Treut (Germany), Cleo Uebelmann (Switzerland), Krista Beinstein (Germany and Austria) and Della Grace (England) started using sexually explicit pornography and film in order to explore themes such as female pleasure, BDSM, gender roles, and queer desire.


title: Feminist pornography

text: The successes of Royalle and Hartley had made an impact on the mainstream adult industry by the 1990s, leading major U.S. studios such as Vivid, VCA, and Wicked to also make couples porn, as well as developing 'a formula of softer, gentler, more romantic porn with storylines and high production values.'


title: Feminist pornography

text: In 1997, the Danish company Zentropa became the first mainstream film production company in the world to make explicit porn under its Puzzy Power subsidiary, aimed at a female audience. The next year, Zentropa published the Puzzy Power Manifesto, which set guidelines for creating porn for women, similar to the standards established by Royalle.


title: Feminist pornography

text: In the 1990s and early 2000s, many feminists perceived Dworkin and her anti-porn perspectives as excessively polarized and anti-sex. Feminists continued to debate the extent to which pornography is harmful to women. Some feminists have emphasized the way cybersex encourages its participants to play with identity, as users are able to take on diverse characteristics (e.g. gender, age, sexuality, race, and physical exterior). They point out a number of other benefits from new technologies, such as enhanced access to sex education and ‘safe’ sex, and opportunities for women and minorities to make contact and to manufacture and allocate their own representations.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Mireille Miller-Young researched the porn industry between 2003 and 2013. In addition, Miller-Young also interviewed a vast amount of performers and encountered several positive aspects of pornography in women's lives. According to Miller-Young, "For some performers, pornography is a path to college and out of poverty. For others, it is a chance to make a statement about female pleasure." Miller-Young states that the women she interviewed were excited to enter the pornography industry and viewed it as a profitable opportunity as well as an accommodating job that would grant them independence. Women who had worked in retail or in nursing discovered that pornography gave them more control over their labor and greater respect in the workplace. Some women believed being part of the pornography industry had granted them the ability to escape poverty, provide for their families and attend college. Others stressed the inventive features of pornography and stated it grants them the ability to boost their economic mobility while also creating a strong statement about female sexual pleasure. Miller-Young claims that according to the performers she interviewed, the most difficult challenge they dealt with was social stigma, as well as gender and racial inequality.


title: Feminist pornography

text: At both large and small pornography studios, men typically marginalize the viewpoints and concerns of women. The studios place more emphasis on what men wanted because they felt that their products would sell more. Furthermore, these companies often created a competitive environment which pit women against each other. Black performers often received only half to three-quarters of what white performers are paid. Just as in other industries, women and men of color face discrimination and disparities in structural and interpersonal forms. Porn industry workers are striving to get more control over their labor and the products they create. The Internet was by far the most efficient and rapid way to democratize the porn industry. There are a range of women from diverse backgrounds who enter the pornography business, such as soccer moms, single mothers, and college students, who filmed themselves and presented their own pornographic fantasies. The majority of women in pornography felt strongly that society should not treat porn as problematic and socially immoral. However, women in the industry highlight that conditions could be improved, particularly with regard to workers’ rights.


title: Feminist pornography

text: In 2012, Royalle argued that viewing pornography is not intrinsically damaging to men or women. However, she claimed that there are people who perhaps should not view porn; for example, those with poor body image or those have experienced sexual abuse. Royalle stated that some individuals may develop impractical ideas about sex or what people enjoy, and how they may be expected to perform. She added that watching porn with another individual requires permission. Counselors at times will advise it to assist people in becoming comfortable with a certain fantasy they or their partner may have. Pornography may re-energize a couple's sex life. It can offer stimulating ideas, or assist individuals and couples to get in touch with their personal fantasies. Porn can supply individuals with great satisfaction or at worst, disgust. Royalle emphasized that this all relies on what couples or individuals decide to view. She added that porn is not the issue when it comes to unhealthy sexual behaviors, but rather the compulsive personality of an individual.


title: Feminist pornography

text: With regard to the performers, Royalle explained that there are some women who prefer to be in porn because they enjoy sex and deem it to be a great way of making a living. On the other hand, there are some who approach porn as a mode of acting out or coping with psychological issues, such as searching for their father's love or receiving punishment for being an immoral woman. For some women, it may be a bit of each.


title: Feminist pornography

text: In 2013, Royalle rejected the notion that pornography is automatically 'feminist' whenever it is made by women: 'Rather than creating a new vision, it seems that many of today's young female directors, often working under the tutelage of the big porn distributors, seek only to prove that they can be even nastier than their male predecessors. (...) if they're not concerned with what women want, should it then be considered feminist? (...) What bothers me is the media identifying their work as feminist when it has nothing to do with speaking for women and advancing the principles of feminism.'


title: Feminist pornography

text: Tristan Taormino has stated that pornography created by women for women can give women control over what is being presented about female sexuality and how it is represented and distributed. She argues that feminist pornography allows women to have a voice in a male-dominated industry. Taormino states:


title: Feminist pornography

text: Feminist pornography is less likely to be filmed due to a lack of audience demand since a majority of pornography viewers are male. The scope of the adult entertainment industry depends on the preferences of the majority of their viewers, which creates the need for female actresses to be young and overtly sexualized. The increase in this mainstream mass-produced media puts both actresses and producers of feminist pornography at a disadvantage. Some misconceptions of feminist porn that add to their disadvantage are that it is only for queer women, 'vanilla', and 'man-hating'. When working on feminist porn projects, Ingrid Ryberg, feminist porn producer, wanted to make sure to address these stereotypes, while also staying in the realm of feminist pornography. Some producers, like Tristan Taormino, address this by staying away from stereotypical, mainstream tropes, like 'cum shots', while still respecting the expression of rougher sex. The rise of on-screen appropriations, such as items like a strap-on dildo used by and for the pleasure of females during sexual intercourse, has allowed for more agency for women within the industry. Annie Sprinkle is one example of a woman who chooses to partake in many forms of feminist pornography in order to counter-appropriate patriarchal mainstream pornography. Films in which Sprinkle stars contain scenes of her having orgasms instead of her male on-screen partners.


title: Feminist pornography

text: According to Tristan Taormino, "Feminist porn both responds to dominant images with alternative ones and creates its own iconography."


title: Feminist pornography

text: What sets feminist porn from mainstream porn is its intentions. Mainstream pornography is made for mass consumption, profit and arousal; feminist pornography is also made for arousal and profit, but also to create content that purposely shows agency, genuine pleasure, and challenges mainstream standards, like beauty and gender roles. One way to conceptualize these differences is through defining sexual objectification and sexual agency. Feminist pornography focuses on promoting sexual agency.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Some pornographic actresses such as Nina Hartley, Ovidie, and Madison Young are also self-described sex-positive feminists, and state that they do not see themselves as victims of sexism. They defend their decision to perform in pornography as freely chosen, and argue that much of what they do on camera is an expression of their sexuality. It has also been pointed out that in pornography, women generally earn more than their male counterparts. Hartley is active in the sex workers' rights movement.


title: Feminist pornography

text: Since 2006, the Feminist Porn Awards have been held annually in Toronto, sponsored by a local feminist sex toy business, Good for Her. The awards are given in a number of categories and have three guiding criteria:


title: Feminist pornography

text: Feminist artist Jasmin Hagendorfer and her team are organizing the "Porn Film Festival Vienna", an event dedicated to feminist and queer approaches to pornography.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (, "Nizhegorodskaya oblast"), is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Nizhny Novgorod. It has a population of 3,310,597 as of the 2010 Census. From 1932 to 1990 it was known as Gorky Oblast.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The oblast is crossed by the Volga River. Apart from Nizhny Novgorod's metropolitan area (including Dzerzhinsk, Bor and Kstovo) the biggest city is Arzamas. Near the town of Sarov there is the Serafimo-Diveyevsky Monastery, one of the largest convents in Russia, established by Saint Seraphim of Sarov. The Makaryev Monastery opposite of the town of Lyskovo used to be the location of the largest fair in Eastern Europe. Other historic towns include Gorodets and Balakhna, located on the Volga to the north from Nizhny Novgorod.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The oblast covers an area of , which is approximately equal to the entire area of the Benelux countries or Czech Republic. Agricultural land occupies 41% of this area; forests, 48%, lakes and rivers, 2%; and other lands, 9%. Nizhny Novgorod Oblast borders Kostroma Oblast (N), Kirov Oblast (NE), the Mari El Republic (E), the Chuvash Republic (E), the Republic of Mordovia (S), Ryazan Oblast (SW), Vladimir Oblast (W), and Ivanovo Oblast (NW).


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is not rich in natural resources, which are limited to commercial deposits of sand (including titanium-zirconium sands), clay, gypsum, peat, mineral salt, and timber.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The sites of Pustyn I and the settlement of Naumovka I, Krasny Bor 5 and others belong to the Mesolithic era in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Burial grounds of the Fatyanovo culture of the Bronze Age were found in the Chkalovsky, Vetluzhsky and Krasnobakovsky districts.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: In the course of the regional reform of Peter I in 1708, Nizhny Novgorod with the surrounding lands was added to the Kazan province. In 1714, the Nizhny Novgorod province was created.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: On January 14, 1929, the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast was formed. On July 15 of the same year, it was transformed into the Nizhny Novgorod Territory.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: On October 7, 1932, the Nizhny Novgorod Territory was renamed the Gorky Territory (in honor of the writer Maxim Gorky). On December 5, 1936, the Gorky Territory was transformed into the Gorky Oblast (the Mari and Chuvash Republics were taken from the former territory).


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: On January 7, 1954, the Arzamas Oblast was separated from the Gorky Oblast. On April 23, 1957, the Arzamas Oblast was abolished, and its territory was returned to the Gorky Oblast.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: On October 22, 1990, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, the Gorky Oblast was renamed the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. On April 21, 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia approved the decision of the presidium of the parliament to rename the region, amending Art. 71 of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978, which entered into force on May 16, 1992.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: During the Soviet period, the high authority in the oblast was shared between three persons: the first secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod (then Gorki) CPSU Committee (who in reality had the greatest authority); the chairman of the oblast Soviet (legislative power); and the chairman of the oblast Executive Committee (executive power). After the abolition of Article 6 of the Constitution of the USSR in March 1990, the CPSU lost its monopoly on power. The head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor, was appointed/elected alongside the elected regional parliament.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The Charter of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is the fundamental law of the region. The Legislative Assembly of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is the province's standing legislative (representative) body. The Legislative Assembly exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. The highest executive body is the Oblast Government, which includes territorial executive bodies such as district administrations, committees, and commissions that facilitate development and run the day to day matters of the province. The Oblast administration supports the activities of the Governor who is the highest official and acts as guarantor of the observance of the oblast Charter in accordance with the Constitution of Russia.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The unique architectural construction—the steel lattice hyperboloid tower built by the Russian engineer and scientist Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov in 1929—is located near the town of Dzerzhinsk on the left bank of the Oka River.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: According to the 2010 Census, ethnic Russians at 3,109,661 made up 95.1% of the oblast's population. Other ethnic groups included Tatars (44,103, or 1.4%), Mordva (19,138, or 0.6%), Ukrainians (17,657, or 0.5%), and various smaller groups, each accounting for less than 0.5% of the total. Additionally, 42,349 people were registered from administrative databases, and could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: 2009 – 1.43 | 2010 – 1.42 | 2011 – 1.44 | 2012 – 1.55 | 2013 – 1.56 | 2014 – 1.59 | 2015 – 1.67 | 2016 – 1.65(e)


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: According to the Federal Migration Service, 20,450 foreign citizens were registered in the oblast in 2006. The actual number of foreigners residing in the oblast as of June 1, 2006 was estimated to be over 22,000.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: According to a 2012 survey 69.2% of the population of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church, 2% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 2% are Orthodox Christian believers without belonging to any church or members of other Orthodox churches, and 1% are adherents of the Slavic native faith (Rodnovery). In addition, 15% of the population declares to be "spiritual but not religious", 10% is atheist, and 0.8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The oblast ranks seventh in Russia in industrial output. Processing industries predominate in the local economy. More than 650 industrial companies employ nearly 700,000 people, or 62% of the workforce involved in material production. Industry generates 83% of the regional GDP and accounts for 89% of all material expenditures. The leading sectors are engineering and metalworking, followed by chemical and petrochemical industries and forestry, woodworking, and paper industries. The first three sectors account for about 75% of all industrial production.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The oblast has traditionally been attractive to investors. In 2002, Moody's rating agency confirmed a Caa1rating based on the region's long-term foreign currency liabilities.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The region maintains trade relations with many countries and has an export surplus. The largest volume of exports goes to Ukraine, Belarus, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Belgium, and France. Imports come mainly from Ukraine, Germany, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Austria, Netherlands, China, and the United States.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: The stock market infrastructure is quite well developed in Nizhny Novgorod, and the exchange business is expanding. Companies and organizations registered in the region include 1153 joint-stock companies, 63 investment institutions, 34 commercial banks, 35 insurance companies, 1 voucher investment fund, 1 investment fund, 17 nongovernmental pension funds, 2 associations of professional stock market dealers, and 3 exchanges (stock, currency, and agricultural). The oblast is noted for having relatively highly developed market relations.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: Today, the region needs serious partners interested in equitable, long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships.


title: Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

text: These key industries are supplemented by other sectors of the economy such as agriculture, trade, services, communications and transport.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Ripley's Game is a 2002 thriller film directed by Liliana Cavani. It is adapted from the 1974 novel "Ripley's Game", the third in Patricia Highsmith's series about the murderous adventures of the anti-hero Tom Ripley. John Malkovich stars as Ripley, opposite Dougray Scott and Ray Winstone. It received positive reviews. Highsmith's novel was previously adapted in 1977 as "The American Friend" by director Wim Wenders, starring Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Tom Ripley is involved in an art forgery scheme in Berlin, in partnership with British gangster Reeves. Upon finding out that Reeves has attempted to cheat him, Ripley forces Reeves' customer at gunpoint to give him the money intended for the forgeries, and kills the man’s bodyguard. He also steals back the artwork for himself, and curtly tells Reeves that their partnership is over.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Three years later, Ripley is living in a lush villa in Veneto with his wife Luisa, a harpsichordist. Invited by a neighbour to a party, Ripley overhears the host, Jonathan Trevanny, insulting his taste and alluding to his shady reputation. Ripley briefly confronts him, then sullenly leaves the party.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Reeves resurfaces, much to Ripley's annoyance, asking him to eliminate a rival mobster. Ripley recommends Trevanny for the job as revenge for the slight. Believing Trevanny, a law-abiding art framer who is dying of leukemia, to be an assassin, Reeves offers him the job for a large fee. A bewildered Trevanny initially refuses, but eventually agrees, to make sure that his wife and son are provided for after his death. Trevanny travels to Berlin under the pretense of seeing a leukemia specialist, and kills the mobster at a museum. He refuses Reeves' offer of even more money to kill another mobster, this time on a train, but relents after Reeves threatens his family.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Trevanny freezes up on the train and contemplates suicide. Ripley intervenes and the two dispatch the target and his two bodyguards in the train's toilet. Together they return home, where Trevanny vainly attempts to persuade his wife Sarah that he won the money playing roulette.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Reeves ignores Ripley's warnings to keep a low profile, fearing that the Mafia will seek reprisal for the killing and deduce who was involved. The mobsters' associates come to Italy seeking revenge, killing Reeves and leaving his body in the boot of their car. They storm Ripley's villa, but Ripley has boobytrapped his home. With Trevanny's help, Ripley kills them all.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Ripley leaves Trevanny under the assumption that all the killers have been dispatched. However, Trevanny returns home to find two surviving gangsters holding Sarah captive. Ripley spots the killers' car outside in the bushes and doubles back to Trevanny's in time to save his wife. A wounded assassin fires at Ripley, but Trevanny sacrifices himself by jumping in front of the bullet. Puzzled by Trevanny's selflessness, Ripley tries to give Sarah her husband's share of the blood money, but she spits in his face. When he leaves Sarah, the packet of money is still on the floor. That night, Ripley attends Luisa's concert as if nothing has happened, but smiles briefly at the memory of Trevanny's sacrifice.


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: The film received positive critical reviews, with a 92% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 24 reviews. Roger Ebert added "Ripley's Game" to his "Great Movies" list, calling it "the best of the four" Ripley films he had seen (the other three being "Purple Noon", "The American Friend", and "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and Malkovich "precisely the Tom Ripley I imagine when I read the novels," praising what he felt to be "one of [his] most brilliant and insidious performances; a study in evil that teases the delicate line between heartlessness and the faintest glimmers of feeling." Ebert criticized the decision not to release the film theatrically in North America, writing: "The failure to open it theatrically was a shameful blunder."


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing: "John Malkovich, oozing danger and sinister charm, gives one of the year’s most memorable and mesmerizing performances in Ripley’s Game... Malkovich oils himself around the plot – icy cool one moment, blazingly violent the next – with a master's finesse. Highsmith wrote five Ripley novels, and other actors have played the part, most recently and most blandly Matt Damon in "The Talented Mr. Ripley". But Malkovich owns the role. He plays it for keeps." David Rooney of "Variety" wrote "Malkovich's elegantly malicious performance gives "Ripley's Game" a magnetic center, complemented by Liliana Cavani's efficient direction and an enjoyable retro feel that recalls the British Cold War thrillers of the 1960s. Despite some pedestrian plotting and a final act that could be tighter, this is suspenseful adult entertainment that should find a receptive audience."


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: Other critics were less favorable, such as Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian", who gave the film two stars out of five. Some critics compared the film unfavorably to Wim Wenders' 1977 adaptation, "The American Friend". Nathan Rabin of "A.V. Club" wrote ""Ripley's Game" fatally lacks the squirmy, desperate humanity that made Wenders' take on the same material so hauntingly tragic. Like Malkovich's suavely generic international criminal, it's all craft and no soul, with complexity and depth functioning as collateral damage for its slick thriller mechanics." "Neil Young's Film Lounge" gave "Ripley's Game" a score of 6 out of 10, calling the film a "largely uninspired" adaptation by a "pedestrian" director. This critic referred to "The American Friend" as "brilliant" by comparison, feeling that "any viewer who is a fan of Highsmith and/or "The American Friend" will have major problems with this version."


title: Ripley's Game (film)

text: "Ripley's Game" is the fourth big-screen adaptation of the Ripley character, following "Purple Noon", "The American Friend", and "The Talented Mr. Ripley". It was followed in 2005 by the film "Ripley Under Ground".


title: Africa Addio

text: Africa Addio (also known as Africa: Blood and Guts in the United States and Farewell Africa in the United Kingdom) is a 1966 Italian mondo documentary film co-directed, co-edited and co-written by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi with music by Riz Ortolani. Jacopetti and Prosperi had gained fame (along with co-director Paolo Cavara) as the directors of "Mondo Cane" in 1962.


title: Africa Addio

text: "Africa Addio" documents the end of the colonial era in Africa, and the violence and chaos that followed. The film was a huge success, which ensured the viability of the so-called "Mondo film" genre, a cycle of "shockumentaries"- documentaries featuring sensational topics. The film encountered criticism and praise due to its controversial content, but is nevertheless considered to be a very important film in the history of documentary filmmaking.[Citation needed]


title: Africa Addio

text: The film includes footage of the civil war in Congo, the final days of colonial rule in Kenya, revolutions in Angola and the Zanzibar revolution, which included the massacre of 1964, which claimed the lives of approximately 5,000 Arab and South Asian civilians (estimates range up to 20,000 in the aftermath), as well as of the aftermath of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, European-descent settler exodus from White Highlands area. The film also depicts racial and tribal violence in Dar es Salaam, the Hutu violence against the Rwandan Tutsi during the Bugesera invasion, the battles fought by government soldiers and mercenaries against rebel insurgents during the Simba rebellion in Stanleyville, Congo, the mass slaughter of endangered animals in game enclaves, and life in apartheid South Africa.


title: Africa Addio

text: The film was shot over the course of three years across most of sub-Saharan Africa. Most notably, the film features footage from the Congo, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Angola, Kenya and South Africa. The documentary also includes some behind-the-scenes footage from the 1964 film "Zulu". Production was done on 35mm, a rarity for documentaries, which were almost always shot on 16mm at the time. Even more unique was the filmmakers' use of 2-perf Techniscope film. This gave the film a wide 2.35:1 aspect ratio despite using standard spherical lenses. Most documentaries were usually seen in the standard 1.33:1 aspect ratio, so a documentary being filmed on such a wide aspect ratio is something that wasn't seen for decades.


title: Africa Addio

text: The filmmakers were in near-constant danger for most of filming, with Tanganyika and Zanzibar being especially dangerous. In Zanzibar, their planes were shot at and they witnessed rebels lighting a plane crewed by Germans on fire and capturing the people inside. In Dar es Salaam, they were almost shot for photographing a genocide. Jacopetti suffered a cut after a soldier smashed their vehicle's windshield with the butt of his rifle. However, the soldiers let them go because they saw on their passports that they were Italian, and thus, "not whites." Jacopetti would refer to this as "a miracle."


title: Africa Addio

text: A soundtrack of the music used in the film was later released. The composer was Riz Ortolani (who had scored "Mondo Cane" that featured the tune later used for the hit single "More"). When making "Africa Addio", lyrics were added to Ortolani's title theme, making a song called "Who Can Say?" that was sung by Jimmy Roselli. The song did not appear in the film, but (unlike the successful song "More" spawned by "Mondo Cane") did appear on the United Artists Records soundtrack album.


title: Africa Addio

text: Prior to the film's release, allegations that a scene depicting the execution of a Congolese Simba Rebel was actually a murder done for the cameras. This resulted in co-director Gualtiero Jacopetti being arrested on charges of snuff filming. The film's footage was seized by police, and the editing process was halted during the legal proceedings. He was acquitted after he and co-director Franco Prosperi produced documents proving they had arrived at the scene just before the execution took place.


title: Africa Addio

text: A tie-in book with the same title, written by John Cohen, was released by Ballantine to coincide with the film's release.


title: Africa Addio

text: Various cuts of the film have appeared over the years. The Italian and French versions were edited and were provided with narration by Jacopetti himself. The American version, with the explicitly shocking title "Africa: Blood and Guts", was re-released in 1970 by Jerry Gross' company Cinemation Industries and had 40 minutes cut out, mainly traces of political context, and was edited and translated without the approval of Jacopetti. Indeed, the differences are such that Jacopetti has called this film “a betrayal of the original idea”. Notable differences are thus present between the Italian and English-language versions in terms of the text of the film. Many advocates of the film feel that it has unfairly maligned the original intentions of the filmmakers. For example, the subtitled translation of the opening crawl in the Italian version reads:


title: Africa Addio

text: "The Africa of the great explorers, the huge land of hunting and adventure adored by entire generations of children, has disappeared forever. To that age-old Africa, swept away and destroyed by the tremendous speed of progress, we have said farewell. The devastation, the slaughter, the massacres which we assisted belong to a new Africa – one which if it emerges from its ruins to be more modern, more rational, more functional, more conscious – will be unrecognizable.


title: Africa Addio

text: "On the other hand, the world is racing toward better times. The new America rose from the ashes of a few white man, all the redskins, and the bones of millions of buffalo. The new, carved up Africa will rise again upon the tombs of a few white men, millions of black men, and upon the immense graveyards that were once its game reserves. The endeavor is so modern and recent that there is no room to discuss it at the moral level. The purpose of this film is only to bid farewell to the old Africa that is dying and entrust to history the documentation of its agony"


title: Africa Addio

text: "The old Africa has disappeared. Untouched Jungles, huge herds of game, high adventure, the happy hunting ground – those are the dreams of the past. Today there is a new Africa - modern and ambitious. The old Africa died amidst the massacres and devastations we filmed. But revolutions, even for the better, are seldom pretty. America was built over the bones of thousands of pioneers and revolutionary soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Indians, and millions of Bison. The new Africa emerges over the graves of thousands of whites and Arabs, and millions of blacks, and over the bleak boneyards that once were the game reserves.


title: Africa Addio

text: "What the camera sees, it films pitilessly, without sympathy, without taking sides. Judging is for you to do, later. This film only says farewell to the old Africa, and gives to the world the pictures of its agony."


title: Africa Addio

text: IMDb lists the total runtime as 140 minutes, and a 'complete' version on YouTube runs closest to that at 138 minutes, 23 seconds. This is an Italian language version, with a clear soundtrack and legible English subtitling. IMDb lists the different runtimes for previously released versions: USA- 122'; Norway- 124'; and Sweden- 116'. An English-language version currently released by Blue Underground runs 128 minutes. The film was released as "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA in 1970, at only 83 minutes (over 45 minutes removed in order to focus exclusively on scenes of carnage); according to the text of the box for the Blue Underground release, directors Jacopetti and Prosperi both disowned this version. An R-rated version runs at 80 minutes.