title: Ann Dunham

text: In 2009, an exhibition of Dunham's Javanese batik textile collection ("A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks") toured six museums in the United States, finishing the tour at the Textile Museum of Washington, D.C., in August. Early in her life, Dunham explored her interest in the textile arts as a weaver, creating wall hangings for her own enjoyment. After moving to Indonesia, she was attracted to the striking textile art of the batik and began to collect a variety of different fabrics.


title: Ann Dunham

text: In December 2010 Dunham was awarded the Bintang Jasa Utama, Indonesia's highest civilian award; the Bintang Jasa is awarded at three levels, and is presented to those individuals who have made notable civic and cultural contributions.


title: Ann Dunham

text: A lengthy major biography of Dunham by former "New York Times" reporter Janny Scott, titled "A Singular Woman", was published in 2011.


title: Ann Dunham

text: The University of Hawaii Foundation has established the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment, which supports a faculty position housed in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships, providing funding for students associated with the East–West Center (EWC) in Honolulu, Hawaii.


title: Ann Dunham

text: In 2010 the Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship was established for young women graduating from Mercer Island High School, Ann's alma mater. In its first six years the scholarship fund has awarded eleven college scholarships.


title: Ann Dunham

text: On January 1, 2012, President Obama and his family visited an exhibition of his mother's anthropological work on display at the East–West Center.


title: Ann Dunham

text: Filmmaker Vivian Norris's feature length biographical film of Ann Dunham entitled "Obama Mama" (La mère d'Obama-French title) premiered on May 31, 2014, as part of the 40th annual Seattle International Film Festival, not far from where Dunham grew up on Mercer Island.


title: Ann Dunham

text: In his 1995 memoir "Dreams from My Father", Barack Obama wrote, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess... In a land [Indonesia] where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship ... she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." In his 2006 book "The Audacity of Hope" Obama wrote, "I was not raised in a religious household ... My mother's own experiences ... only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones ... And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I've ever known." "Religion for her was "just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives," Obama wrote:


title: Ann Dunham

text: Dunham's best friend in high school, Maxine Box, said that Dunham "touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't." On the other hand, Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, when asked later if her mother was an atheist, said, "I wouldn't have called her an atheist. She was an agnostic. She basically gave us all the good books—the Bible, the Hindu "Upanishads" and the Buddhist scripture, the "Tao Te Ching"—and wanted us to recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute." "Jesus, she felt, was a wonderful example. But she felt that a lot of Christians behaved in un-Christian ways."


title: Ann Dunham

text: In a 2007 speech, Obama contrasted the beliefs of his mother to those of her parents, and commented on her spirituality and skepticism: "My mother, whose parents were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution."


title: Ann Dunham

text: Obama also described his own beliefs in relation to the religious upbringing of his mother and father:


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: George Gordon Battle Liddy (November 30, 1930 – March 30, 2021) was an American lawyer, FBI agent, talk show host, actor, and convicted felon in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon administration. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the scandal.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Working alongside E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in May and June 1972. After five of Liddy's operatives were arrested inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, subsequent investigations of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and refusing to testify to the Senate committee investigating Watergate. He served nearly fifty-two months in federal prisons.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: He later joined with Timothy Leary for a series of debates on multiple college campuses, and similarly worked with Al Franken in the late 1990s. Liddy served as a radio talk show host from 1992 until his retirement on July 27, 2012. His radio show was syndicated in 160 markets by Radio America and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States. He was a guest panelist for Fox News Channel in addition to appearing in a cameo role or as a guest celebrity talent on several television shows.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was born in Brooklyn on November 30, 1930. His father, Sylvester James Liddy, was a lawyer; his mother was Maria (Abbaticchio). His family was of Irish and Italian descent. Liddy was named for George Gordon Battle, a noted attorney and Tammany Hall leader. He was raised in Hoboken and West Caldwell, New Jersey. He attended St. Benedict's Preparatory School, his father's alma mater, in Newark.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was educated at Fordham University, graduating in 1952. While at Fordham he was a member of the National Society of Pershing Rifles. Following graduation, Liddy joined the United States Army, serving for two years as an artillery officer during the Korean War. He was assigned to an antiaircraft radar unit in Brooklyn for medical reasons. In 1954, he was admitted to the Fordham University School of Law, earning a position on the "Fordham Law Review". After graduating in 1957, he worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy joined the FBI in 1957, initially serving as a field agent in Indiana and Denver. In Denver, on September 10, 1960, Liddy apprehended Ernest Tait, one of two persons to be a two-time Ten Most Wanted fugitive. At age 29, Liddy became the youngest bureau supervisor at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. A protege of deputy director Cartha DeLoach, Liddy became part of director J. Edgar Hoover's personal staff and became his ghostwriter. Among his fellow agents he had a reputation for recklessness and was known primarily for two incidents. The first was an arrest in Kansas City, Missouri, during a black bag job; he was released after calling Clarence M. Kelley, former FBI agent and chief of the Kansas City Police. The second was running an FBI background check on his future wife before their marriage in 1957, which Liddy later referred to as "purely a routine precautionary measure".


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Before leaving the FBI in 1962, Liddy pursued his contacts for bar admissions. Furthermore, his admission to the United States Supreme Court was moved by Solicitor General Archibald Cox.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy resigned from the FBI in 1962 and worked under his father as a patent attorney in New York City until 1966. He was then hired by District Attorney Raymond Baratta as a prosecutor in exurban Dutchess County, New York, after providing references from the FBI. In 1966, he led a drug raid on the Hitchcock Estate (then occupied by Timothy Leary) in Millbrook, New York, leading to an unsuccessful trial. Although the case generated much publicity, other lawyers complained that Liddy received credit for something in which he played a relatively small role. He was also reprimanded for firing a revolver at the ceiling in a courtroom. In 1969, a drug raid, directed by Liddy, at Bard College, scooped up, among others, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who later formed the band Steely Dan and wrote the song "My Old School" about the raid. Liddy is referred to in the lyrics as "Daddy Gee".


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: During that period, Liddy ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney. In 1968, he ran in the Republican Party's primary election for New York's 28th congressional district. Employing the slogan "Gordon Liddy doesn't bail them out; he puts them in", he lost to Hamilton Fish IV in a close race. Liddy then accepted the nomination of the Conservative Party of New York State and ran in the general election against Fish and the Democratic candidate, Millbrook businessman John S. Dyson. Fearing that Liddy might tip the election to Dyson, Fish turned to the district's Republican leader, State Assemblyman Kenneth L. Wilson, to try and get Liddy out of the race. After Wilson's office discussed the matter with the Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, Liddy was offered a position with the Treasury Department which he accepted and withdrew from the campaign. Liddy's name remained on the ballot and while he received almost five per cent of the vote, it was not enough to stop Fish's election.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: After serving as county director of Richard Nixon's successful presidential campaign, he received a political appointment as a special assistant for narcotics and gun control at the United States Department of the Treasury's headquarters in Washington, D.C.. In that capacity, he helped to establish the country's contemporary sky marshal program under the aegis of the United States Marshals Service.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Beginning in 1970, he served with Gordon Strachan and David Young as an aide to Domestic Affairs Advisor John D. Ehrlichman in the Executive Office of the President at the behest of Egil "Bud" Krogh, who worked on initiatives with Liddy at the Treasury Department. He nominally served as general counsel to the finance committee of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) from 1971 to 1972. Subsequently, Krogh, Liddy, Young, and Erlichman were indicted for conspiracy to commit burglary in September 1973.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House Plumbers "special investigations unit", which had been created in response to damaging leaks of information to the press.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: At CRP, Liddy concocted several plots in early 1972, collectively known under the title "Operation Gemstone". Some of these were far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. These included kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), as well as luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Miami, where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with prostitutes. Most of Liddy's ideas were rejected by Attorney General John N. Mitchell (who became campaign manager in March 1972), but a few were given the go-ahead by Nixon administration officials, including the 1971 break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in Los Angeles. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to "The New York Times". At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Complex.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was the Nixon administration liaison and leader of the group of five men who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex. At least two separate entries were made in May and June 1972; the burglars were apprehended on June 17. The purposes of the break-in were never conclusively established. The burglars sought to place wiretaps and planned to photograph documents. Their first attempt had led to improperly-functioning recording devices being installed. Liddy did not actually enter the Watergate Complex at the time of the burglaries; rather, he admitted to supervising the second break-in which he coordinated with E. Howard Hunt, from a room in the adjacent Howard Johnson Hotel. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was sentenced to a 20-year prison term and was ordered to pay $40,000 in fines. He began serving the sentence on January 30, 1973. He claimed that on arrival he sang the Horst Wessel Song, the Nazi Party anthem. On April 12, 1977, President Jimmy Carter commuted Liddy's sentence to eight years, "in the interest of equity and fairness based on a comparison of Mr. Liddy's sentence with those of all others convicted in Watergate related prosecutions", leaving the fine in effect. Carter's commutation made Liddy eligible for parole as of July 9, 1977. Liddy was released on September 7, 1977, after serving a total of four and a half years of incarceration.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress in March 1974, on the same day that he, Liddy, and the three Cuban burglars were charged with the Watergate-related crimes. Following a bench trial on May 10, 1974, Liddy was convicted of contempt for his refusal to answer questions of the Special Subcommittee of Intelligence of the House Armed Services Committee, which was investigating the CIA's links to the break-in of the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg. Liddy was found guilty and was handed a suspended jail sentence and probation; the judge stated that the sentence was lenient because Liddy was already sentenced to prison on the Watergate charges. Liddy became one of very few people in American history to be convicted of criminal contempt of Congress.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In 1980, Liddy published an autobiography, titled "Will", which sold more than a million copies and was made into a . In it, he states that he was willing to kill during the Ellsberg break-in, and that he once made plans with Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement, "we need to get rid of this Anderson guy".


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In the mid-1980s Liddy went on the lecture circuit, being listed as the top speaker on the college circuit in 1982 by "The Wall Street Journal". He later joined onetime foil Timothy Leary in a series of debates billed as "Nice Scary Guy vs. Scary Nice Guy" on the college circuit as well; Leary had once been labeled by Liddy's ex-employer Richard Nixon as "the most dangerous man in America". The lectures were the subject of a 1983 documentary film, "Return Engagement". Liddy remained in the public eye with two guest appearances on the television series "Miami Vice" as William "Captain Real Estate" Maynard, a shadowy former covert operations officer whom Sonny Crockett knew from his military service in South Vietnam.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In 1994, the British documentary company Brian Lapping Associates sent producers Norma Percy and Paul Mitchell to interview many of the conspirators for its series titled "Watergate", in which an unrepentant Liddy talked frankly about his role. He was filmed at home while sitting in front of his sizeable collection of firearms and describing "how he had been ready, if ordered, to go straight out and kill Jack Anderson, the Washington D.C. columnist." At one point he was filmed wielding one of his pistols before the TV camera. It was made clear that, at the time of filming, the gun collection was registered in his wife's name, as he was ineligible for a license.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In 1994 and 1995, Liddy repeatedly told listeners of his radio program to shoot federal law enforcement officers, giving instructions to aim for their heads. In many of these statements he referenced shooting in self-defense. After the Oklahoma City bombing, when President Clinton denounced the "many loud and angry voices" in conservative talk radio, Liddy responded that the head is a difficult target to hit and that he used pictures of the President and Hillary Clinton for target practice.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy appeared in the 1993 Golden Book Video release of "Encyclopedia Brown: The Case of the Burgled Baseball Cards" as Corky Lodato. In "Miami Vice", he acted with John Diehl, who would later go on to portray Liddy himself in Oliver Stone's movie "Nixon" (1995). Liddy's other television guest credits include "Airwolf", "MacGyver", and the short-lived "The Highwayman". Comic book author Alan Moore has stated that the character of The Comedian (a.k.a. Edward Blake) from his graphic novel "Watchmen" was based in a large part on Liddy. In the 1979 TV adaptation of John Dean's book "Blind Ambition", Liddy was played by actor William Daniels. In "Gaslit", the 2022 television adaptation of the podcast "Slow Burn", Liddy was played by actor Shea Whigham.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In the early 1980s, Liddy joined forces with former Niles, Illinois, policeman and co-owner of the Protection Group, Ltd., Thomas E. Ferraro Jr., to launch a private security and countersurveillance firm called G. Gordon Liddy & Associates.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy emerged to host his own talk radio show in 1992. Less than a year later, its popularity led to national syndication through Viacom's Westwood One Network and through Radio America, in 2003. Liddy's show ended on July 27, 2012.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was sued for defamation in 1999 by Ida "Maxie" Wells, a secretary whose desk at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate was said to have been a target of the last Watergate break-in in order to find evidence related to an alleged prostitution ring kept in Wells' desk. Wells' suit accused Liddy of defamation. Liddy denied the allegation, and the judge dismissed the suit, commenting that "no 'reasonable jury' could have found in favor of the plaintiff."


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: In addition to "Will", he wrote the nonfiction books, "When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country" (2002), and "Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style" (2006, with his son, Cdr. James G. Liddy, along with J. Michael Barrett and Joel Selanikio). He also published two novels: "Out of Control" (1979) and "The Monkey Handlers" (1990). Liddy was one of many people interviewed for the biography of Abbie Hoffman, "Steal this Dream", by Larry "Ratso" Sloman.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy acted in several films, including "Street Asylum", "Feds", "Adventures in Spying", "Camp Cucamonga", and "Rules of Engagement". He appeared on such television shows as "The Highwayman", "Airwolf", "Fear Factor", "Perry Mason", and "MacGyver". He had recurring roles in "Miami Vice" and "Super Force", and guest starred in Al Franken's "LateLine". On April 7, 1986, he appeared at "WrestleMania II" as a guest judge for a boxing match between Mr. T (with Joe Frazier and The Haiti Kid) versus Roddy Piper (with Bob Orton and Lou Duva). In April 1987 he appeared as a celebrity partner for a week on the game show "Super Password", playing against Betty White.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy co-starred on "18 Wheels of Justice" as the crime boss Jacob Calder from January 12, 2000, to June 6, 2001. He appeared on a celebrity edition "Fear Factor", the show's series finale, on September 12, 2006 (filmed in November 2005). At 75, Liddy was the oldest contestant ever to appear on the show. He beat the competition in the first two stunts, winning two motorcycles custom built by Metropolitan Chopper.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was also an interviewee in the 2006 documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon", as well as a commercial spokesman for Rosland Capital, selling gold on television commercials.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy was married to Frances Purcell-Liddy, a native of Poughkeepsie, New York, for 53 years until her death on February 5, 2010. She was a teacher. The couple had five children: Thomas, Alexandra, Grace, James, and Raymond.


title: G. Gordon Liddy

text: Liddy died on March 30, 2021, at his daughter's house in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was 90, and had suffered from Parkinson's disease.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Crash is a 1996 psychological drama film written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name. Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette, it follows a film producer who, after surviving a car crash, becomes involved with a group of symphorophiliacs who are aroused by car crashes, and tries to rekindle his sexual relationship with his wife.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Prize, a unique award that is distinct from the Jury Prize as it is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury (for example, the previous year, both a Jury Prize and a Special Jury Prize were awarded). When then-jury president Francis Ford Coppola announced the award "for originality, for daring and for audacity", he stated that it had been a controversial choice and that certain jury members "did abstain very passionately". It continued to receive various accolades, including six Genie Awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, including awards for Cronenberg as director and screenwriter; the film was also nominated in two further categories, including Best Picture.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film's initial release was met with intense controversy and opened to highly divergent reactions from critics; some praised the film for its daring premise and originality, others aimed criticism for having such a strange premise filled with graphic violence. It has since developed a cult following among Cronenberg fans.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Film producer James Ballard and his detached wife Catherine are in an open marriage. The couple engage in various trysts but, between them, have unenthusiastic sex. Their arousal is heightened by discussing the intimate details of their extramarital sex. She recounts sex that day with a stranger in a prop plane hangar. She was, however, left unsatisfied. When James replies he did not achieve satisfaction during his sexual encounter with one of his coworkers, Catherine replies, "maybe the next one".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: While driving home from work late one night, James' car collides head-on with another, killing its male passenger. While trapped in the fused wreckage, Dr. Helen Remington, the driver and the dead passenger's wife, exposes a breast to James when she pulls off the shoulder harness of her seat belt.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: While recovering, James meets Helen again, as well as a man named Dr. Robert Vaughan, who takes a keen interest in the brace holding James's shattered leg together and photographs it. While leaving the hospital, Helen and James begin an affair, one primarily fueled by their shared experience of the car crash. Attempting to understand why they are so aroused by their car wreck, they go to witness one of Vaughan's cult meetings/performance pieces, during which he thoroughly re-creates the car crash that killed James Dean with authentic cars and stunt drivers. When Department of Transport officials break up the event, James flees with Helen and Vaughan.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: James soon becomes one of Vaughan's followers who fetishize car crashes, obsessively watching car safety test videos, photographing traffic collisions, and recounting the deaths of famous people in road accidents. Catherine, whom Vaughan has followed in his car on several occasions, begins to fantasize about him and James having sex. Although Vaughan initially claims that he is interested in the "reshaping of the human body by modern technology", his actual project is living out the philosophy that the car crash is a "benevolent psychopathology that beckons towards us".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: James drives Vaughan's Lincoln convertible around the city while Vaughan picks up and has sex with a prostitute in the back seat. A short time later, James invites Catherine on one of his and Vaughan's drives. On an interstate, they come across a car wreck involving Colin Seagrave, a member of the group, who had been planning to authentically recreate the car accident that killed Jayne Mansfield with Vaughan. Amongst the wreckage, the three see Colin's bloodied corpse, wearing a dress and a blonde wig to accurately resemble Mansfield. Vaughan photographs the wreck as they pass by. Afterward, when police search Vaughan's convertible regarding a pedestrian hit-and-run, James drives it through a car wash while Vaughan and Catherine have sex in the back seat.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: James subsequently has another dalliance with Gabrielle, another of the group members whose legs are clad in restrictive steel braces and who has a vulva-like scar on the back of one of her thighs, an injury suffered in a crash. Later, Vaughan invites James to visit a tattooist who tattoos car emblems on Vaughan's body. Afterward, James and Vaughan, both highly aroused, have anal sex in Vaughan's car.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Vaughan and James go for a drive in separate cars, aggressively pursuing each other. On an overpass, Vaughan intentionally crashes his car, landing on a passenger bus below, killing himself. After Vaughan's death, Gabrielle and Helen visit a junkyard, and affectionally embrace while laying in the wreck of Vaughan's car.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Later, James and Catherine perform a similar stunt, with James pursuing her on a freeway at a high speed. Catherine unbuckles her seatbelt as she sees James approaching, and he rams into the back of her car, forcing it to topple down into a grass median. James exits his car and approaches Catherine's, which has flipped upside down. Catherine lays partly under the car, apparently superficially injured. When James asks if she is okay, she tells him she is not hurt. As the couple kiss and begin to have sex near the wrecked vehicle, James whispers to her, "maybe the next one", implying that the only possible result of their extreme fetish is death.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film was an international co-production between the British company Recorded Picture Company, and Canadian companies Alliance Communications Corporation, The Movie Network, and Telefilm Canada.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film was controversial, as was the book, because of its vivid depictions of graphic sexual acts instigated by violence.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: At the Cannes Film Festival, a screening provoked boos and angry bolts by upset viewers. In a 2020 interview, Cronenberg stated that he believed Francis Ford Coppola, the jury president at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, was so vehemently opposed to "Crash" that other jury members in favor of the film banded together to present Cronenberg with a rare Special Jury Prize. So great was Coppola's distaste for the film that, according to Cronenberg, Coppola refused to personally present the award to the director.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The controversial subject matter prompted "The Daily Mail" and "The Evening Standard" to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to ban "Crash" in the United Kingdom. In response to this outcry, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) inquired with a Queen's Counsel and a psychologist, none of whom found any justification to ban it, and 11 disabled people, who saw no offense with its portrayal of the physically challenged. Seeing no evidence for a ban, "Crash" was passed by the BBFC uncut with an 18 rating in March 1997.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: A theater manager in Oslo, Norway, banned the film at her location. She denied it was related to a traffic accident that left her husband paralysed.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Media mogul Ted Turner, whose company oversaw U.S. distributor Fine Line Features, refused to release the film in the United States, going so far as to pull it from an October 1996 release date intended to coincide with the Canadian rollout. Cronenberg would later confirm that a Fine Line executive shared the rumor that Turner's distaste for the movie was the reason for its delay. He said Turner was morally offended and concerned about "copycat incidents". The film eventually received a U.S. release in Spring 1997.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: AMC Entertainment Inc., the second-largest U.S. theater chain at the time, said it was posting security guards outside about 30 screens showing the movie to ensure minors did not get inside. At AMC's Century City location in Los Angeles, two security guards were present, one inside the auditorium and one outside.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film was still banned by Westminster Council, meaning it could not be shown in any cinema in the West End, even though they had earlier given special permission for the film's premiere, and it was easily seen in nearby Camden. In the United States, the film was released in both NC-17 and R versions. In Australia, a cut version rated R18+ was given a limited release; it was later released uncut on VHS in early 1997, and then on DVD in 2003. The American NC-17 version was advertised with the tagline "The most controversial film in years".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: An academic study of the controversy and audience responses to it, written by Martin Barker, Jane Arthurs and Ramaswami Harindranath, was published by Wallflower Press in 2001, entitled "The Crash Controversy: Censorship Campaigns and Film Reception".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average score of . The consensus reads: "Despite the surprisingly distant, clinical direction, "Crash's" explicit premise and sex is classic Cronenberg territory." On Metacritic, the film's score is listed as 50 out of 100, as determined by 23 critics, signifying "mixed or average reviews".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: "Crash" is about characters entranced by a sexual fetish that, in fact, no one has. Cronenberg has made a movie that is pornographic in form, but not in result ... ["Crash" is] like a porno movie made by a computer: It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original—a dissection of the mechanics of pornography. I admired it, although I cannot say I "liked" it.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: In 2000, a poll done by "The Village Voice" of film critics listed "Crash" as the 35th Best Film of the 1990s. A similar poll done by "Cahiers du cinéma" placed it 8th. In 2005 the staff of "Total Film" listed it at #21 on their list of the all-time greatest films. "Slant Magazine" selected it as one of their "100 Essential Films".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: On "At the Movies with Roger Ebert", director Martin Scorsese ranked "Crash" as the eighth best film of the decade.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: BBC film critic Mark Kermode has described "Crash" as "pretty much perfect" and praised Howard Shore's score, while admitting that it's a "hard film to like" and describing the cast's performances as "glacial".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: In 2002 Parveen Adams, an academic who specializes in art/film/performance and psychoanalysis, argues that the flat texture of the movie, achieved through various cinematic devices, prevent the viewer from identifying with the characters in the way one might with a more mainstream movie. Instead of vicariously enjoying the sex and injury, the viewer finds himself a disimpassioned voyeur. Adams additionally notes that the scars borne by the characters are old and bloodless—in other words, the wounds lack vitality. The wound is "not traumatizing" but, rather, "a condition of our psychical and social life".


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: In a 1996 interview with the "Vancouver Sun", Cronenberg said Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci told him "the film was a religious masterpiece."


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: Of the adaptation, author J. G. Ballard reportedly said, "The movie is actually better than the book. It goes further than the book, and is much more powerful and dynamic. It's terrific."


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: The film was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. In the end, it won the Special Jury Prize. Cannes jury president Francis Ford Coppola noted that "certain (jury) members did abstain very passionately" from endorsing Cronenberg's film, but added that it was important to give "Crash" an award, "even though in mining some truth of the human condition it offended (certain viewers)". However, other accounts have suggested it was Coppola himself who didn't like the film, with producer Jeremy Thomas later saying, "It touched a nerve with him." In a 2020 interview for the film's 4K restoration, Cronenberg said Coppola was the main dissent on the support for the film on the Cannes jury, adding that "he wouldn't hand me the award" and got someone else to do it.


title: Crash (1996 film)

text: At the 1997 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film was filed under the Founders Award, which lamented the year's biggest studio disgraces, and stated, "How Oscar winner Holly Hunter and the usually reliable James Spader and Rosanna Arquette got suckered into this mess is a mystery."


title: Valkyrae

text: Rachell Hofstetter (born January 8, 1992), better known as Valkyrae, is an American Internet personality. She has been YouTube's most-watched female streamer since 2020, and appeared on "Forbes"' 30 Under 30 list in 2022. She was named "Gaming Creator of the Year" by "Adweek", and has won a Game Award and a Streamy Award.


title: Valkyrae

text: Hofstetter is a co-owner of 100 Thieves, an esports and an apparel company, and has been a content creator for the brand since 2018. Hofstetter is an advocate for women in online gaming, sometimes playing games on all-female teams.


title: Valkyrae

text: After graduating from community college, Hofstetter worked various jobs, including a job at GameStop. In 2014, while working, she began sharing her gaming hobby on Instagram, gaining a significant following. She was encouraged by various Instagram followers, friends, and Twitch streamers to start streaming on Twitch, beginning in 2015. After gathering a following, Hofstetter began posting gaming videos on YouTube.


title: Valkyrae

text: In 2018, she became the first female gamer and content creator for 100 Thieves, a competitive American esports team. On January 13, 2020, Hofstetter left Twitch for an exclusive streaming contract on YouTube. While initially struggling to maintain an average viewer count of 5,000 towards the beginning of 2020, her YouTube channel experienced a significant boost when she started playing the online multiplayer social deduction game "Among Us" and began collaborating with popular streamers including Disguised Toast, Sykkuno, Pokimane, Jacksepticeye, Cr1TiKaL, Corpse Husband, xChocoBars, and Fuslie.


title: Valkyrae

text: Hofstetter became the fastest growing female streamer of the year and surpassed Pokimane as the most-viewed female streamer of 2020. Towards the end of 2020, Hofstetter's stream regularly peaked at concurrent viewer counts exceeding 100,000, typically during "Among Us" sessions.


title: Valkyrae

text: On April 7, 2021, Hofstetter was announced as a co-owner of 100 Thieves alongside fellow 100 Thieves content creator, CouRageJD. They join Scooter Braun, Dan Gilbert, the rapper Drake, and founder Matthew 'Nadeshot' Haag. As co-owners, Valkyrae and CouRage will receive equity in the company, which Forbes magazine recently valued at $190 million. In March 2021, Hofstetter and content creator Natsumiii released a cover version of the song "Last Cup of Coffee" by LilyPichu. Later that month, she portrayed Corpse Husband in the music video for the song "Daywalker!" by Machine Gun Kelly featuring Corpse Husband. Hofstetter additionally made cameo appearances in music videos for Bella Poarch's songs "Build a Bitch" and "Inferno" later that year.


title: Valkyrae

text: Hofstetter, alongside Sykkuno and Corpse Husband, participated in a fundraiser for Feeding America hosted by Jimmy Fallon as a part of a segment for "The Tonight Show" in April. The segment included them playing "Among Us" with members of the American hip hop band The Roots, Tariq Trotter, Kirk Douglas, and Questlove, as well as cast members of the critically acclaimed American TV series "Stranger Things", Gaten Matarazzo and Noah Schnapp.


title: Valkyrae

text: On October 19, 2021, Hofstetter announced the launch of her skincare brand RFLCT. The brand, primarily geared towards gamers and those who put in heavy screen time, claimed that users are susceptible to skin damage caused by prolonged exposure to blue light, and that their products protect against it. RFLCT received backlash due to insufficient evidence supporting the claim; according to Kathleen Suozzi, the director of the aesthetic dermatology program at Yale University, unless someone was already prone to melasma or hyperpigmentation, they were unlikely to suffer any consequence of sitting in front of a screen for long periods of time.


title: Valkyrae

text: Hofstetter addressed RFLCT's criticisms in October 2021, stating that “all of the hate, doubt, concerns, and criticisms are all warranted and valid" and that she was "very upset and confused” with the website, stating that updates were being made to the website. She later revealed that she had previously been given access to research conducted by RFLCT supporting the products and that the research would be publicly available at product launch, however, she was informed post-launch that the research could not be released to the public. Hofstetter then expressed a desire to part ways with RFLCT, but was contractually bound. On October 30, 2021, RFLCT ceased operation of its website and online store. A statement on the website read “While we believe in the formulations created, after further reflection, have decided to move forward on new paths, effectively terminating the RFLCT brand.”


title: Valkyrae

text: Hofstetter is of part Filipino and German descent and was raised in Moses Lake, Washington. She has two brothers and one younger sister. Her father died of cancer in 2017. She graduated with an associate in arts from a community college in Washington.


title: Bon Iver

text: Vernon released Bon Iver's debut album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," independently in July 2007. The majority of the album was recorded while Vernon spent three months isolated in a cabin in western Wisconsin. In 2012, the band won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for their eponymous album "Bon Iver". They released their third album "22, A Million" to critical acclaim in 2016. Their latest album, "I, I", was released in 2019. The album was nominated at the 2020 Grammy Awards for Album of the Year.


title: Bon Iver

text: The name "Bon Iver" derives from the French phrase "bon hiver" (; "good winter"), taken from a greeting on "Northern Exposure".


title: Bon Iver

text: After the breakup of his band DeYarmond Edison, the ending of a relationship, and a bout with mononucleosis hepatitis, Vernon left Raleigh, North Carolina and moved back to Wisconsin. He spent the oncoming winter months at his father's cabin in Dunn County, Wisconsin. According to Vernon, it was during this time that the "Bon Iver" moniker first entered his mind; while bedridden with mononucleosis, he began watching the 1990s TV series "Northern Exposure" on DVD. One episode depicts a group of citizens in Alaska, where the show is set, emerging from their homes into the first snowfall of the winter and wishing one another "bon hiver". This was initially transcribed by Vernon as "boniverre"; however, when he learned of its proper French spelling, he elected not to use it, deciding "hiver" reminded him too much of "liver", the site of his illness at the time.


title: Bon Iver

text: Vernon did not intend to write or record any music during the time but rather to recuperate from the events of the previous year. Eventually, however, a record began to evolve during this cathartic time of isolation. He had recently finished helping the band The Rosebuds do some recording and had with him some basic recording gear when he made his move to the cabin in late 2006. Vernon played all the instruments during recording and each song was heavily edited with a large number of overdubs. Vernon wrote the lyrics for the album by recording a word-less melody and listening to the recording over and over while writing words according to the sound of the syllables of the melody. In an interview, Vernon said, "Words like 'decision' and 'intention' aren't words that float in my head because I just went." Vernon explains, "I left North Carolina and went up there because I didn't know where else to go and I knew that I wanted to be alone and I knew that I wanted to be where it was cold." In another interview, Vernon describes what he used to record the album: "I had a very light set-up, a basic small recording set-up: a Shure SM57 and an old Silvertone guitar. I had my brother drop off his old drums... some other small things—things I would make or find lying around."


title: Bon Iver

text: The record was almost not released and was originally intended as a group of demos to be sent out to labels and potentially rerecorded. But after getting very encouraging reactions from a number of his friends, Vernon decided to release the songs himself in their present state. According to his manager Kyle Frenette, an initial run of 500 CDs were pressed. The original CD release show took place at the House of Rock in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Justin played an earlier "all-ages" show and an evening 21+ show to release the original pressing of the album in its card stock CD case. Of the 500 copies issued, 17 were sent to press, mainly blogs. The first significant attention the album received was from My Old Kentucky Blog in June 2007, after which point "it snowballed," according to manager Frenette. Another further breakthrough came when, in October 2007, the album received a very positive review from influential indie internet publication "Pitchfork". That exposure in turn led to a performance the same month at the industry showcase festival CMJ Music Marathon. The appearance attracted much label interest and Frenette later told HitQuarters that they subsequently spoke to various record companies, both independent and major. Out of all of them they decided to sign with the indie Jagjaguwar because their ideals most resembled their own. The signing was confirmed on October 29, 2007.


title: Bon Iver

text: "For Emma, Forever Ago" was given an official release by Jagjaguwar. Vernon has said that he will continue to make albums without engineers and producers because he is capable of doing it all himself.


title: Bon Iver

text: Since being released by Jagjaguwar on February 19, 2008, "For Emma, Forever Ago" has garnered critical acclaim. The album was released in the UK and Europe by iconic indie label 4AD on May 12, 2008. When released in the UK, "For Emma, Forever Ago" received 5/5 and "Album of the Month" reviews in both "Mojo" and "Uncut" magazines. It was the seventh highest rated album of 2008 on review aggregator site Metacritic, with accolades from publications including "The Village Voice", "The Hartford Courant" and "The A.V. Club". Pitchfork Media gave the album 29th place in its "The Top 200 Albums of 2000s" list, while Stereogum placed the album at 11 on its "Best Album of the '00s" list.


title: Bon Iver

text: The digital download track "Skinny Love" was selected to be iTunes (UK) single of the week and was available for free during that time, as well as being featured as the track of the day on National Public Radio. Bon Iver was ranked number 8 on Last.fm's most-listened-to new music of 2008. Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" was ranked number 29 in "Rolling Stone"s list of the Top 50 Albums of 2008, and was also ranked number 92 on their list of the 100 Best Albums of the 2000s. In an interview, Vernon said: "I'm really humbled by everything and am keeping things in perspective." On May 19, 2008, "Blindsided" and "Flume" were featured in The CW series "One Tree Hill". On October 6, 2008, "Skinny Love" was featured in the NBC series "Chuck" (season 2, episode 3). 'Blindsided' also featured in 'Stairway To Heaven', the 12th episode of the 5th season of ABC's medical drama "Grey's Anatomy".


title: Bon Iver

text: On December 11, 2008, Bon Iver performed "Skinny Love" on the "Late Show with David Letterman". On January 26, 2009, "Skinny Love" was announced at No. 21 by the Australian national radio station Triple J in the annual Hottest 100 countdown of the previous year's best songs. In July 2009, "Skinny Love" was announced at No. 92 in Triple J's Hottest 100 of All Time countdown. Additionally, the track "Flume" has been used by the BBC to advertise their Jimmy McGovern-penned drama series "The Street"; the track "Blood Bank" (off the EP of the same name) was used in a 2009 episode of the NBC series "Chuck" (season 2, episode 18) and the track "Creature Fear" was used in another "Chuck" episode (season 2, episode 21); "Skinny Love" was featured in another episode of "Chuck" (season 2, episode 3), as well as in the ABC drama "Grey's Anatomy"; "The Wolves (Act I and II)" was used in the first season of "United States of Tara", the film "The Place Beyond the Pines" as well as in the final scenes of the film "Rust and Bone"; "Re:Stacks" was featured in the Fox drama "House", as was "Flume" on May 16, 2011; "Re:Stacks" was also used for the closing sequence of the "Silent Witness" episode Death Has No Dominion, and "Woods" was used in the eighth episode of "Skins"' third series and appeared on the series 3 soundtrack.


title: Bon Iver

text: In 2008, Bon Iver designed a T-shirt for the Yellow Bird Project, with all profits benefiting the Interval House women's shelter in Toronto, Ontario.


title: Bon Iver

text: In October 2009, Bon Iver first appeared on the cover of the publication "The Fader", in its 64th issue. Also in 2009, Bon Iver, along with St. Vincent, contributed the song "Roslyn" to the "" . Bon Iver also contributed "Brackett, WI" to the AIDS benefit album "Dark Was the Night" produced by the Red Hot Organization.


title: Bon Iver

text: In 2010, Bon Iver collaborated with Kanye West on the track "Lost in the World", which begins with a sample of the Bon Iver track "Woods". Vernon also contributed vocals to the West tracks "Monster" and "Dark Fantasy", both featured on West's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy". Then, in March 2011, Justin Vernon performed at SXSW with GOOD Music. This collaboration publicized him to a wider audience.


title: Bon Iver

text: "Bon Iver" was released on June 17, 2011. On March 23, 2011, Justin Vernon told "Rolling Stone" that a follow-up of "For Emma, Forever Ago" would be released in December 2011. The album is composed of 10 songs and takes a new musical direction: "I brought in a lot of people to change my voice—not my singing voice, but my role as the author of this band, this project," says Vernon, who hired well-known players like bass saxophonist Colin Stetson and pedal-steel guitarist Greg Leisz. "I built the record myself, but I allowed those people to come in and change the scene." The second album is described as an "ambitious musical departure" from the first. Prior to the album's release, Vernon said that each song on the new album represents a place. The song "Perth" was described as a "Civil War-sounding heavy metal song," the song "Minnesota, WI" was described as featuring "finger-picked guitars, double bass drums and distorted bass saxophone," and the closing song "Beth/Rest" would be "horn heavy."


title: Bon Iver

text: The album was recorded in a remodeled veterinarian clinic in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, which was bought by Vernon and his brother in 2008. It was converted into April Base Studios, built mainly over the defunct swimming pool attached to the clinic. Vernon's reason for recording in the location was that "[it's] been a wonderful freedom, working in a place we built. It's also only three miles from the house I grew up in, and just ten minutes from the bar where my parents met."


title: Bon Iver

text: On April 20, Bon Iver announced details of the release through the official Jagjaguwar and 4AD websites. The artwork for the album was also released, painted by the American artist Gregory Euclide. Gregory also released two YouTube videos entitled the "Making of Bon Iver Album Art". Over one month before the album release date, the album was accidentally made available for purchase on the iTunes Music Store on May 23. Apple removed the item from the store, but not before a handful of users were able to purchase and download it. There was no comment from Apple, the artist, or his label. However, the lyrics to the album were promptly uploaded to their record site.


title: Bon Iver

text: In an interview on 89.3 The Current, main man Justin Vernon was questioned about current plans for the band and expressed their desire to take a break:


title: Bon Iver

text: During the last performance of their 2012 tour in Dublin's The O2, Vernon announced that it was their last performance as a band, "... at least for a while..." At the time, these two events provoked speculation about whether this was a definite end to the band or simply a hiatus. A representative for Bon Iver's label, Jagjaguwar, issued the statement, "They are just going off cycle after two very busy years on this record."


title: Bon Iver

text: Josh Jackson reviewed "Bon Iver" for "Paste", saying, "It retains the beautiful melancholy of "For Emma", but in nearly every way, it's just more. More layered, more diverse, more interesting. He brings in collaborators to do what they do best, but never at the expense of his sound and vision. It treads into new sonic directions without getting lost." He gave the album a score of nine out of ten. In an unfavorable review, Tim Sendra of AllMusic wrote, "[Vernon's] style comes off more like sub-Enya with a beard than a true studio wizard... "For Emma, Pt. 2" would have been far more satisfying than this overblown debacle."


title: Bon Iver

text: In late August 2011, critically acclaimed English post-dubstep musician and singer-songwriter James Blake uploaded a track called "Fall Creek Boys Choir" to his YouTube channel. The track was a collaboration with Bon Iver. It was released as the first single from Blake's EP "Enough Thunder" and was also included on the deluxe edition of his self-titled debut album.


title: Bon Iver

text: On November 30, 2011, the band earned four nominations for the 54th Grammy Awards: Best New Artist, Best Alternative Music Album for their album "Bon Iver", and both Song of the Year and Record of the Year for "Holocene". On December 15, 2011, "Pitchfork" awarded "Bon Iver" the number one album of 2011. On February 12, 2012, Bon Iver won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Bon Iver also won the Grammy for Best Alternative Album for "Bon Iver", beating out Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, Foster the People and My Morning Jacket. On February 15, a five-song studio session was released on YouTube, featuring Justin Vernon and Bon Iver drummer Sean Carey performing piano renditions of the tracks. The recording took place at AIR Studio-owned Lyndurst Hall in London, England.


title: Bon Iver

text: On November 12, 2012, the band announced its intent to take a break from performing after the last event of its 2012 tour in Dublin. Their label asserted that the band had not broken up.


title: Bon Iver

text: On June 30, 2014, the band released a new song titled "Heavenly Father", which was featured on the soundtrack of Zach Braff's film "Wish I Was Here". Bon Iver's song "Woods" was featured in the Bluecoats 2015 program "Kinetic Noise", which was awarded a bronze medal at the Drum Corps International World Championships. On July 18, 2015, the band played their first show in almost three years at the Eaux Claires Music Festival in Eau Claire where they debuted two new songs, "666 ʇ" and "89". Originally, both were slated to be on their next album, but only "666 ʇ" made it to the finished record. Unreleased track "89" has been played occasionally since, soon becoming a fan favorite. On November 18, 2015, the band announced a tour of Asia starting early 2016.


title: Bon Iver

text: On July 22, 2016, a 22-second live stream was broadcast on the band's official Facebook page, accompanied by the caption '#22days'. A short clip of previously unreleased music could be heard in the video, accompanied by an updated profile and cover photo. On August 17, 2016, the band announced that their next album's title would be "22, A Million". They also provided a track list of 10 songs and released lyric videos for two songs: "22 (OVER S∞∞N)" and "10 dEATh bREasT". On August 29, 2016, the band released their lyric video for "33 "GOD"", the third single from the album.


title: Bon Iver

text: "22, A Million" was released on September 30, 2016. It was noted by many as a large stylistic shift for the band. One aspect of this shift included a drastic change in instrumentation; on "22, A Million" and subsequent releases, Bon Iver often collaborated with a group of saxophonists known as Sad Sax of Shit. In "Pitchfork"'s review of the album, the publication likened it to Radiohead's "Kid A", saying, "Bon Iver's first album in five years takes an unexpected turn toward the strange and experimental. But behind the arranged glitches and processed voices are deeply felt songs about uncertainty."


title: Bon Iver

text: In mid 2018, Bon Iver partnered with TU Dance for "Come Through", a series of shows featuring a group of contemporary dancers and during which several new songs were premiered. In late 2018, during an Instagram Live session, frontman Justin Vernon revealed a folder named "BI LP4", containing 13 new songs. He also revealed a snippet of the song "We Maddie Parry" (later shortened to "We").


title: Bon Iver

text: The band has been honored with a star on the outside mural of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue, recognizing performers that have played sold-out shows or have otherwise demonstrated a major contribution to the culture at the iconic venue. Receiving a star "might be the most prestigious public honor an artist can receive in Minneapolis," according to journalist Steve Marsh.


title: Bon Iver

text: Bon Iver recorded their fourth album in Texas during February and March 2019. On June 2, 2019, Bon Iver debuted two new songs from the upcoming album at All Points East, a more polished version of the previously played "Hey, Ma" and the new song "U (Man Like)" (which was on the setlist Vernon showed in December and which features guest vocals from American singer-songwriter Moses Sumney, Bruce Hornsby, Elsa Jensen, Jenn Wasner, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus). At the end of the same concert, Bon Iver advertised the website iCOMMAi, featuring similar cryptic messages as their recent lyric videos. The next day, both songs were released as singles alongside a list of fall tour dates. On July 2, the band released a teaser called "Sincerity is Forever in Season", voiced by Michael Perry and relating every album by the band to a season, with the then-upcoming fourth album being autumn.


title: Bon Iver

text: A week later, on July 11, the band announced that their forthcoming album, "I, I" (stylized as "i,i"), would be released on August 30, 2019. They also released the songs "Jelmore" and "Faith" as the third and fourth singles for the album, respectively. On July 31, the band released a documentary short called "Bon Iver: Autumn", featuring Vernon and bandmates discussing the "I, I" album and the upcoming "Autumn" tour. On August 7, Bon Iver held free worldwide listening parties to preview the new album at over 60 locations around the world. On August 8, starting at 6:00 am EST, the band began to release the previously unreleased album tracks one at a time, every hour on the hour, until 11:00 am EST. The album as a whole was then released on several streaming services, 22 days before it was slated to be officially released. In September 2019, dates for Asian and European tours in 2020 were released.


title: Bon Iver

text: On January 21, 2020, the band announced a reissue of their first EP "Blood Bank", which contains new artwork by the usual collaborator Eric Timothy Carlson as well as both original songs and live versions of each one of them. It was released on March 27. On April 4, 2020, Justin Vernon premiered a new Bon Iver song, "Things Behind Things Behind Things" in "Where We Go From Here", a special event from Bernie Sanders. On April 17, Bon Iver released a brand new song called "PDLIF" (Please Don't Live In Fear), which 100% of the proceeds will go to Direct Relief, a company providing resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Bon Iver

text: On July 23, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift announced that Bon Iver would feature on "Exile" (stylized in all lowercase), the second single from her eighth studio album, "Folklore". The song became Bon Iver's first top-ten hit on the "Billboard" Hot 100. On August 5, Bon Iver released "AUATC" (Ate Up All Their Cake) featuring Elsa Jensen, Jenny Lewis, Bruce Springsteen, and Jenn Wasner. The song was accompanied by a press release critiquing capitalism. Swift then announced "Evermore", a surprise follow-up album to "Folklore" on December 10, 2020, which also features Bon Iver on the title track. The band recorded the song "Second Nature" for the 2021 film "Don't Look Up".


title: Bon Iver

text: In live performances, Justin Vernon is joined live by Sean Carey (drums, vocals, piano), Michael Noyce (vocals, baritone guitar, guitar, violin) and Matthew McCaughan (bass, drums, vocals). Noyce was Vernon's guitar student during high school. Vernon uses various keyboard instruments during live performances including synthesisers such as a Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 6 and a Teenage Engineering OP-1, while during studio recordings his instruments have included a Steinway & Sons Model D Concert Grand Piano.


title: Bon Iver

text: Carey approached Vernon during one of the first Bon Iver shows, telling him he could play and sing all the songs. Thereafter, the two played a number of them together. McCaughan and Vernon met while on tour with indie rock band The Rosebuds in May 2007.


title: Bon Iver

text: Because of the extensive use of vocal harmony on the songs of "For Emma, Forever Ago", Vernon was concerned that there would not be enough voices to duplicate the sound of the songs on the album in a live setting. To compensate for this problem in early performances, Vernon passed out lyrics for some songs to the audience to sing along to. In an interview with "Pitchfork", Vernon described this dilemma. "I don't want to be the guy with an acoustic guitar singing songs, because that's boring for the most part. The song actually needs 80–500 people singing or whatever the vibe is of that room, it needs that fight."


title: Bon Iver

text: Bon Iver performed at Lollapalooza 2009. Bon Iver has also performed at Austin City Limits Music Festival, Glastonbury, Coachella, Øyafestivalen, Way Out West, Bonnaroo, Sasquatch! and All Points East among others.


title: Bon Iver

text: After the release of Bon Iver's second album, the live performances underwent a great deal of change. With older performances consisting of Vernon playing guitar, while Noyce, Carey, and McCaughan performed on varied instruments, the concerts following "Bon Iver" involved a much larger, full band. The new lineup consisted of the original four musicians, and included Rob Moose on violin and guitar (Antony and the Johnsons, The National), Mike Lewis on bass (Andrew Bird, Happy Apple), and a horn section including Reginald Pace, Colin Stetson (Tom Waits, Arcade Fire) and C.J. Camerieri (Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens) as well. On February 2, 2012 Sasquatch! announced Bon Iver as a headliner for their 2012 festival.


title: Bon Iver

text: Bon Iver appeared as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live" on February 4, 2012, where they performed their songs "Holocene" and "Beth/Rest."


title: Bon Iver

text: During Bon Iver's Asia tour in late February to early March 2016—the first tour since 2012—the live band still consisted of Vernon, Carey, McCaughan and Lewis, in addition to frequent Vernon collaborator Andrew Fitzpatrick (All Tiny Creatures, Volcano Choir) on guitar, synths and vocals; and sisters Emily, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, also known as the folk vocal trio The Staves, whose album "If I Was" was produced by Vernon.


title: Bon Iver

text: Bon Iver: Autumn is a 12-minute film directed by Andrew Swant, documenting the preparation for Bon Iver's 2019 North American tour to support their fourth album, "I, I". The film focuses on Justin Vernon discussing the production of the upcoming live shows, the desire to maintain an intimate feeling despite the fact that they will be playing in larger, arena-sized venues. It previews the motion-tracking technology used in the light show, and the immersive three-dimensional sound design planning.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Kung Fu Hustle () is a 2004 Cantonese-language action-comedy film directed, produced, co-written by, and starring Stephen Chow. The film tells the story of a murderous neighbourhood gang, a poor village with unlikely heroes, and an aspiring gangster's fierce journey to find his true self. Eva Huang, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Danny Chan Kwok-kwan and Leung Siu-lung co-starred in prominent roles. The martial arts choreography is supervised by Yuen Woo-ping.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" was a co-production between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese companies, filmed in Shanghai. After the commercial success of "Shaolin Soccer", its production company, Star Overseas, began to develop the films with Columbia Pictures Asia in 2002. It features a number of retired actors famous for 1970s Hong Kong action cinema and has been compared to contemporary and influential wuxia films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero". The cartoon special effects in the film accompanied by traditional Chinese music, is often cited as its most striking feature.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The film was released on 23 December 2004 in China and on 25 January 2005 in the United States. The film received positive reviews and grossed US$17 million in North America and US$84 million in other regions. It was tenth on the list of highest-grossing foreign-language films in the United States as well as the highest-grossing foreign-language film in the country in 2005. "Kung Fu Hustle" won numerous awards, including six Hong Kong Film Awards and five Golden Horse Awards. The film was re-released in 3D in October 2014 across Asia and America, marking the tenth anniversary of the film.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In 1940s Shanghai, petty crooks Sing and Bone aspire to join the notorious Axe Gang under the leadership of the cold-blooded killer Brother Sum. The pair visit a rundown slum known as Pig Sty Alley to extort the residents by pretending to be Axe Gang members. Sing throws a firecracker that he claims will signal the rest of the Axe Gang, but his bluff backfires when the firecracker explodes next to a real Axe Gang underboss. Sing blames the residents for throwing the firecracker and the boss attacks them, but he is struck and killed by an unseen assailant. Gang reinforcements arrive but they are all quickly dealt with by three of the slum's tenants: Coolie, Tailor, and Donut, who reveal they are actually kung fu masters. However, fearing the Axe Gang's retaliation, the slum's Landlady evicts the trio.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Brother Sum captures Sing and Bone, intending to kill them for posing as gang members. However, Sing uses his exceptional lock-picking skills to free himself and Bone before they are killed by thrown axes. The impressed Brother Sum allows them to join the gang on the condition that they kill someone. Sing laments being a failure in life. He recalls his childhood to Bone when he was tricked by a vagrant into buying a martial arts pamphlet with his meager savings because he was duped into thinking he was a natural-born kung fu master. After practising the pamphlet's Buddhist Palm technique many times, Sing attempted to save a mute girl named Fong from bullies but was instead beaten and humiliated. Sing becomes adamant that heroes never win and resolves to be a villain.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Sing and Bone return to Pig Sty Alley to kill the Landlady. However, their plan backfires as Sing is repeatedly stabbed by his and Bone's missed knife throws. He retreats to a traffic pulpit where his body rapidly heals from his deadly injuries. The pain causes him to strike the sides of the metal pulpit, covering the surface with hand-shaped impressions. Meanwhile Brother Sum hires two Harpists that use a magical guzheng to kill their victims with sound. The assassins arrive at Pig Sty Alley just as the trio of kung fu masters are leaving. The Harpists kill Coolie and defeat Donut and Tailor with their magical instrument; however, they are defeated afterwards by the Landlady and her husband the Landlord, who are revealed to be kung fu masters as well. The Landlady then warns Brother Sum, who watched the fight with his adviser, to stay away from Pig Sty Alley.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: A frustrated Sing attempts to rob an ice cream vendor but discovers that she is actually Fong. When she recognises him and offers him a lollipop, he smashes it and leaves in shame; he also rebuffs Bone. Brother Sum offers Sing immediate gang membership if he uses his lock-picking skills to free the Beast, a legendary kung fu assassin from a Shanghai mental asylum. Sing brings the Beast back to the Axe Gang's headquarters.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Brother Sum is sceptical of the Beast's skills due to his flippant attitude and sloppy appearance. However, the Beast proves his kung fu prowess by stopping a bullet midair with his fingers. When the Beast detects the kung fu presence of the Landlady and Landlord, he destroys the casino next door to confront the couple. A fight breaks out between the three and culminates in all of them being immobilised in an inter-joint lock. Brother Sum orders Sing to attack the Landlady and Landlord to help the Beast, but Sing has a change of heart and attacks the Beast instead. Infuriated, the Beast smashes Sing's head into the ground, but he is saved by the Landlady and Landlord. The trio flee and Brother Sum berates the Beast for letting them escape; the Beast kills Brother Sum in response.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Back at Pig Sty Alley, the Landlady and Landlord treat Sing and are surprised by his quick recovery from his fatal injuries. Sing then treats the couple's wounds in return before confronting the Axe Gang. The Landlady deduces that the Beast's beating of Sing has realigned Sing's "qi", metamorphosing him into a natural kung fu master. The new Sing effortlessly dispatches the Axe Gang before fighting the Beast, who initially appears to have the upper hand due to his "toad style". However, when Sing is sent flying into the sky by the Beast, he has a vision of Buddha in the clouds and completes his transformation. Sing uses the Buddhist Palm technique to defeat the Beast. Awestruck by Sing's power and prowess, the Beast tearfully bows to Sing and concedes defeat.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Sing and Bone open a candy store with Fong's lollipop as their logo. Fong visits Sing at his store, and the pair embrace. Meanwhile the same mysterious vagrant who sold Sing the martial arts pamphlet speaks to another child just outside the store, but this time he is selling multiple pamphlets teaching several different styles.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The climate of the film industry and the expectation of a 21st-century action film were different throughout the history of Chinese cinema. However, this difference provides one of the reasons why Kung Fu Hustle was so well received.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Directors and their contemporaries changed the martial arts cinema together to gain more universal appeal. The work has built martial arts as a viable mode of behavioural expression in the movie, and also displayed how martial arts could be transformed in the cinema industry to reflect both "contemporary local issues and the increasingly important reality of globalization." Unlike Ang Lee's "wuxia" film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Stephen Chow chose to use the perspective of a lowly gangster to break into Wuxia and Jianghu. Kung Fu does not succeed because it is so localised. Quite the contrary, Kung Fu Hustle embodies a complex transnationalism.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: While martial arts began a new wave in Chinese cinema, Stephen Chow and other directors were responsible for the creation of another subset of martial arts cinema, which included the vampire genre. Stephen Chow combined elements such as undead, Taoism, kung fu, as well as comedy into his movies, which helped create a comedy-horror feel that was distinct to Hong Kong. The beginning of martial arts movies has paved the future for both local and international directors. They started to learn and adopt martial arts to fulfill and satisfy their own demands, later the trend became a transnational market.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Different from traditional Chinese wuxia cinema, Chow's new kung fu movies help with reflecting the extent to force the of globalisation within the entertainment industry, which later influenced the local construction of self-identity.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" is a co-production of the Beijing Film Studio and Hong Kong's Star Overseas. After the success of his 2001 film, "Shaolin Soccer", Chow was approached in 2002 by Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, offering to collaborate with him on a project. Chow accepted the offer, and the project eventually became "Kung Fu Hustle". "Kung Fu Hustle" was produced with a budget of US$20 million.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Chow was inspired to create the film by the martial arts films he watched as a child and by his childhood ambition to become a martial artist. A senior Hollywood executive said Chow was "forced to grind through four successive scripts" and "found it very laborious".


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Chow's first priority was to design the main location of the film, "Pigsty Alley". Later in an interview Chow remarked that he had created the location from his childhood, basing the design on the crowded apartment complexes of Hong Kong where he had lived. The 1973 Shaw Brothers Studio film, "The House of 72 Tenants", was another inspiration for Pigsty Alley. Designing the Alley began in January 2003 and took four months to complete. Many of the props and furniture in the apartments were antiques from all over China.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" features several prolific Hong Kong action cinema actors from the 1970s. Yuen Wah, a former student of the China Drama Academy Peking Opera School who appeared in over a hundred Hong Kong films and was a stunt double for Bruce Lee, played the Landlord of Pigsty Alley. Wah considered starring in "Kung Fu Hustle" to be the peak of his career. In spite of the film's success, he worried that nowadays fewer people practice martial arts.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Auditions for the role of the Landlady began in March 2003. Yuen Qiu, who did not audition, was spotted during her friend's screen test smoking a cigarette with a sarcastic expression on her face, which won her the part. Qiu, a student of Yu Jim-yuen, "sifu" of the China Drama Academy, had appeared in the 1974 James Bond film "The Man with the Golden Gun" at the age of 18. After a number of other small roles, she retired from films in the 1980s. "Kung Fu Hustle" was her first role in nineteen years. Qiu, in order to fulfill Chow's vision for the role, gained weight for the role by eating midnight snacks every day.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Bruce Leung, who played the Beast, was Stephen Chow's childhood martial arts hero. Leung Siu Lung was a famous action film director and actor in the 1970s and 1980s, known as the "Third Dragon" after Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. After becoming unpopular in the Taiwanese film market in the late 1980s following a visit to China, he switched to a career in business. "Kung Fu Hustle" was his return to the film industry after a fifteen-year hiatus. He regarded Chow as a flexible director with high standards, and was particularly impressed by the first scene involving the Beast, which had to be reshot 28 times.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In addition to famous martial artists, "Kung Fu Hustle" features legends of Chinese cinema. Two famous Chinese directors appear in the film: Zhang Yibai, who plays Inspector Chan at the beginning of the film, and Feng Xiaogang, who plays the boss of the Crocodile Gang.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In casting Sing's love interest Fong, Chow stated that he wanted an innocent looking girl for the role. Television actress Eva Huang, in her film debut, was chosen from over 8,000 women. When asked about his decision in casting her, Chow said that he "just had a feeling about her" and that he enjoyed working with new actors. She chose to have no dialogue in the film so that she could stand out only with her body gestures.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Filming took place in Shanghai from June 2003 to November 2003. Two-thirds of the time was spent shooting the fight sequences. Those scenes were initially choreographed by Sammo Hung, who quit after two months due to illness, tough outdoor conditions, interest in another project and arguments with the production crew. Hung was replaced by Yuen Woo-ping, an action choreographer with experience ranging from 1960s Hong Kong action cinema to more recent films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Matrix". Yuen promptly accepted the offer. Yuen drew on seemingly outdated wuxia fighting styles like the Deadly Melody and Buddhist Palm. He remarked that despite the comedic nature of the film, the shooting process was a serious matter due to the tight schedule.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Most of the special effects in the film, created by Hong Kong computer graphics company Centro Digital Pictures Limited, which had previously worked on films such as "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kill Bill", included a combination of computer-generated imagery and wire work. Centro Digital performed extensive tests on CGI scenes before filming started, and treatment of the preliminary shots began immediately afterwards. The CGI crew edited out wire effects and applied special effects in high resolution. Legendary martial arts mentioned in wuxia novels were depicted and exaggerated through CGI, but actual people were used for the final fight between Chow's character and hundreds of axe-wielding gangsters. After a final calibration of colour, data of the processed scenes was sent to the US for the production of the final version. A group of six people followed the production crew throughout the shooting.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The majority of the film's original score was composed by Raymond Wong and performed by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. The score imitates traditional Chinese music used in 1940s swordplay films. One of Wong's works, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained", provides a stark contrast between the villainous Axe Gang and the peaceful neighbourhood of Pigsty Alley, depicted by a Chinese folk song, "Fisherman's Song of the East China Sea". Along with Wong's compositions and various traditional Chinese songs, classical compositions are featured in the score, including excerpts from "Zigeunerweisen" by Pablo de Sarasate and "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian. The song, "Zhiyao Weini Huo Yitian" (; "Only Want to Live One Day for You"), is sung in the background by Eva Huang at the end of the film. Written by Liu Chia-chang in the 1970s, it tells of a girl's memories of a loved one, and her desire to live for him again. "Kung Fu Hustle" was nominated for Best Original Film Score at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Asian and American versions of the soundtrack were released. The Asian version of the soundtrack was released on 17 December 2004 by Sony Music Entertainment and has 33 tracks. The American version of the soundtrack was released on 29 March 2005 by Varèse Sarabande and has 19 tracks, with 14 tracks missing compared to the Asian release.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The soundtrack for the trailer was mastered at Epiphany Music and Recording, Inc. in Santa Rosa, California.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" makes references to a wide range of films, animated cartoons, wuxia novels, anime and other sources. The housing arrangement of the Pigsty Alley is similar to that of a 1973 Hong Kong film, "The House of 72 Tenants". It is set in a Shanghai Shantytown taking Hong Kong viewers back to their days of hardship but also making the audience in mainland China interested in, as Ho pointed out, "Chow appropriates Hong Kong's past to address China's current anxieties over rapid modernization and secures the former colony's bond with its semi-reunited motherland-in both emotional and film business terms". There are two references to Chow's previous film, "Shaolin Soccer": When Sing arrives at Pigsty Alley, he plays skilfully with a soccer ball, then says, "You're still playing football?". The second reference is the scene in which a clerk beats Sing up on a bus. The clerk also appeared in "Shaolin Soccer" as the leader of an opposing team who used hidden weapons to beat up the Shaolin soccer team. When Sing challenges a boy in the Pigsty Alley, Sing calls him "The Karate Kid", a reference to the 1984 film of the same name. During the altercation between Sing and the hairdresser, the hairdresser states, "Even if you kill me, there will be thousands more of me!". This is a reference to a famous quote made by Lu Haodong, a Chinese revolutionary in the late Qing dynasty. The scene in which Sing is chased by the Landlady as he flees from the Alley is a homage to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, characters in the "Looney Tunes" cartoons, even including the pursuer's (the Landlady's) ill fate. During the opening scene in which the leader of the Crocodile Gang is killed by Brother Sum of the Axe Gang, in the background a poster for the 1939 film "Le Jour Se Lève" is visible. In the scene in which Sing robs the ice cream vendor, a poster for the 1935 film "Top Hat" is in the background. As Sing arrives at the door to the Beast's cell in the mental asylum, he hallucinates a large wave of blood rushing from the cell door, similar to a scene in "The Shining". The Landlady says at one point, "Tomorrow is another day", which is a line from the 1936 novel "Gone with the Wind" and its 1939 film adaptation.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: A major element of the plot is based on the wuxia film series "Palm of Ru Lai" (), released in 1964. Sing studied the fighting style used in "Palm of Ru Lai" ("Buddhist Palm style"), from a young age and used it at the end of "Kung Fu Hustle". In reality, the Buddhist Palm fighting style does not leave palm-shaped craters and holes on impact. Instead, the user delivers powerful punches using his palm. The Beast's name in Chinese, "Huoyun Xieshen" (; Evil Deity of the Fiery Cloud), and the fight with the Landlady and her husband are also references to the "Palm of Ru Lai", in which a mortally wounded master strikes the patterns of his art's final techniques into a bell so that his apprentice can learn from it. "Kung Fu Hustle" also contains direct references to characters from Louis Cha's wuxia novels. For example, the landlord and landlady refer to themselves as Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü, the names of characters in Cha's "The Return of the Condor Heroes", when they met the Beast.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: References to gangster films are also present. Many fight scenes and superhuman power displayed by Kung Fu Masters in the film are reminiscent of Dragon Ball Z and similar anime. The boss of the Axe Gang, Brother Sum () is named after Hon Sam / Hon Sum (), the triad boss played by Eric Tsang in "Infernal Affairs". The Harpists imitate "The Blues Brothers", wearing similar hats and sunglasses at all times. When they are flattered by the Axe Gang advisor, one of them answers, "Strictly speaking we're just musicians", similar to a line by Elwood Blues.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: When Donut dies, he says, "In great power lies great responsibility", a reference to 2002's "Spider-Man", said by Uncle Ben before his death. Additionally, in that scene, the Landlady says, "Like Donut said, everyone has his reasons", a reference to Jean Renoir's 1939 film "The Rules of the Game". Afterwards, with his dying breath, Donut gets up, grabs the Landlord by the shirt and utters in English, "What are you prepared to do?", a nod to Sean Connery's character Jim Malone in Brian De Palma's 1987 film "The Untouchables."


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The dialogue that the Beast says while negotiating with the Axe Gang for killing the Landlady and Landlord—"...then young friend, I will make an offer you cannot refuse", is a reference of the dialogue from the movie "The Godfather". Also, the Landlady's comment to Brother Sum—"We brought a gift you cannot refuse" is an obvious parody of the same, to which Sum replies (in the dubbed version of the film), "Ha! With the Beast on our side, we shall see for whom the bell tolls", a reference to the 1943 film.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The final fight between Sing (who has been reborn into "the one", which pays homage to Bruce Lee by wearing his costume in "Enter the Dragon" and using his fighting style) and the hundreds of gangsters imitates the fight between Neo and hundreds of Agent Smiths in "The Matrix Reloaded". The scene in which the Beast prompts an Axe member to punch him harder is reminiscent of a similar scene in "Raging Bull", with Robert De Niro's character prompting Joe Pesci's character.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The last scene, in which the beggar tries to sell martial arts manuals, refers directly to the greatest skills in Louis Cha's "Condor Trilogy" ("Nine Yang Manual", "Yiyang Finger", and "Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms"), "Thousand Hand Divine Fist", and "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer" ("Nine Swords of Dugu"). The scene in which the landlady confronts Brother Sum in the back of his car is a homage to Bruce Lee in "Way of the Dragon", where she cracks her knuckles and gives a quick upper nod to the mafia boss, telling him to back off.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" premiered at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. It was later released across East Asia including China, Hong Kong and Malaysia in December 2004. The film was first shown in the US at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, and then opened in a general release on 22 April 2005 after being shown in Los Angeles and New York for two weeks.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The North American DVD release was on 8 August 2005. A Blu-ray version of the DVD was released on 12 December 2006 by Sony Pictures. A UMD version of the film was released for the PlayStation Portable. The United States DVD releases were censored, cutting a number of scenes that featured lots of blood or human excrement. A later release, called "The Kick-Axe Edition", restored these scenes.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In the United Kingdom the standard DVD was released 24 October 2005, the same day a special edition was released with collector's items, which included playing cards, a keyring, a sweat band, and an inflatable axe. On 8 April 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a Blu-ray version.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The Portuguese title of the film is "Kungfusão", which sounds like Kung Fu and "Confusão" (confusion). In the same way as "Kungfusão", the Italian and Spanish titles were "Kung-fusion" and "Kung-fusión", puns of "confusion". In France, the film is known as "Crazy Kung Fu", and the Hungarian title is "A Pofonok Földje", meaning "The Land of Punches".


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In Korea a Limited Collector's Edition DVD was released which included a leather wallet, Stephen Chow's Palm Figure with his signature, a photo album and Special Kung Fu's Booklet with a certificate of authenticity.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 90% approval rating based on 182 reviews and an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: ""Kung Fu Hustle" blends special effects, martial arts, and the Looney Toons to hilarious effect." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 78 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Hong Kong director and film critic Gabriel Wong praised the film for its black comedy, special effects and nostalgia, citing the return of many retired kung fu actors from the 1970s. Film critic Roger Ebert's description of the film ("like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny") was printed on the promotion posters for the film in the US. Other critics described it as a comedic version of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Positive reviews generally gave credit to the elements of mo lei tau comedy present in the film. A number of reviewers viewed it as a computer-enhanced Looney Tunes punch-up. In a 2010 interview, actor Bill Murray called "Kung Fu Hustle" "the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy". In 2021, American filmmaker James Gunn called it "the greatest film ever made".


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The combination of the necessary cynicism and sentential nostalgia which makes the audience laugh implies that a world of human complexity is beneath the interesting deceptive surface.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Much of the criticism for the film was directed at its lack of character development and a coherent plot. "Las Vegas Weekly", for instance, criticised the film for not having enough of a central protagonist and character depth. Criticism was also directed towards the film's cartoonish and childish humour. However, it was considered reasonable, as the "Kung Fu Hustle" production team chose to make the film's characters largely one-dimensional. In the movie, the directors "attempt(ed) to appeal to a transnational audience, affirms distinctly Western notions of Chinese that many earlier Kung Fu films set out to subvert." The "Kung Fu Hustle" team attempt to appeal to a more progressive generation throughout the history of Chinese cinema. Earlier in the kung fu film industry, it usually involved complex characters, and also tried to explore and expose constructs ranging from gender to race as well as to nation. One-dimension is the key feature of "Kung Fu Hustle", as it is rooted in a filmic genre that connected with Hong Kong identity, but also represented the Western imagination of China's past and Kung Fu heroism.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: "Kung Fu Hustle" opened in Hong Kong on 23 December 2004, and earned HK$4,990,000 on its opening day. It stayed at the top of the box office for the rest of 2004 and for much of early 2005, eventually grossing HK$61.27 million. Its box office tally made it the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history, until it was beaten by "You Are the Apple of My Eye" in 2011. The phenomenal box office this work generated as well as the collective pleasure its local audience experienced potentially saved the Hong Kong film industry during a politically unstable time in the territory.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: Sony Pictures Classics opened "Kung Fu Hustle" in limited theatrical release in New York City and Los Angeles on 8 April 2005 before being widely released across North America on 22 April. In its first week of limited release in seven cinemas, it grossed US$269,225 (US$38,461 per screen). When it was expanded to a wide release in 2,503 cinemas, the largest number of cinemas ever for a foreign language film, it made a modest US$6,749,572 (US$2,696 per screen), eventually grossing a total of US$17,108,591 in 129 days. In total, "Kung Fu Hustle" had a worldwide gross of US$101,104,669. While not a blockbuster, "Kung Fu Hustle" managed to become the highest-grossing foreign-language film in North America in 2005 and went on to generate more than US$30,000,000 in the United States home video market.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: The film was nominated for sixteen Hong Kong Film Awards, out of which winning Best Picture, Best Action Choreography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Effects, Best Supporting Actor and Best Visual Effects. Five more awards were later picked up at the Golden Horse Awards including an award for Best Director for Stephen Chow. In the United States "Kung Fu Hustle" was well received by various film critic associations winning awards for Best Foreign Language Film from Boston-, Chicago-, Las Vegas- and Phoenix-based critics. it was later nominated for six Satellite Awards and one MTV Movie Award for best fight scene. In the United Kingdom at 59th British Academy Film Awards the film was nominated for a BAFTA.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In 2011, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival listed "Kung Fu Hustle" at number 48 in their list of "100 Greatest Chinese-Language Films". The majority of the voters originated from Taiwan, and included film scholars, festival programmers, film directors, actors and producers. In 2014, "Time Out" polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films. "Kung Fu Hustle" was listed at 50th place on this list.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In 2005, Chow announced that there would be a sequel to "Kung Fu Hustle", although he had not settled on a female lead. "There will be a lot of new characters in the movie. We'll need a lot of new actors. It's possible that we'll look for people abroad besides casting locals". In January 2013, during an interview, Chow admitted that plans for making "Kung Fu Hustle 2" have been put on hold. "I was indeed in the midst of making the movie, but it is currently put on hold in view of other incoming projects". Production of "Kung Fu Hustle 2" was delayed while Chow filmed the science fiction adventure film "CJ7". As a result, "Kung Fu Hustle 2" was slated for a 2014 release. By 2017, Chow had already completed "The Mermaid" and "". Due to his focus on behind-the-scenes production and the fact that he has not made an appearance since "CJ7", it was suspected that he had stopped acting. However, Chow clarified that he still wants to act, but has not found a role suited for him. "Kung Fu Hustle 2" remains incomplete. In February 2019, during a promo interview for "The New King of Comedy", Stephen confirmed that the sequel is in the works. He will direct the movie and possibly cameo in the film, but the story will not be a direct sequel to the first one. Chow explains the sequel will be a spiritual successor to the first one, but set in modern times.


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In 2004 a promotional flash game was released by Sony Pictures Entertainment on their Japanese website. The game was created by Japanese game developer "Point Zero" and plays as a point-and-click beat 'em up. A side-scrolling game designed for mobile phones was later released in 2006 by developer "Tracebit".


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: In 2007 Sony Online Entertainment announced that a massively multiplayer online 2D side-scrolling fighter game based on the film was under development for the Chinese market. Two years later a preview of the game was featured at E3 where it received mixed reviews from critics with many comparing it to similar MMO games such as "Guild Wars" and "Phantasy Star Online".


title: Kung Fu Hustle

text: A North American release for PC and PS3 was planned for late 2009, but never came to fruition. The game was only available in Asia for the PC.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Paulina Porizkova (born Pavlína Pořízková, ; 9 April 1965) is a Swedish model. Born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Sweden, Porizkova became the first Central European woman to appear on the cover of the "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue in 1984.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova was born on 9 April 1965 near Prostějov, then in Czechoslovakia, to anti-Soviet dissident parents, Anna Pořízková and Jiří Pořízka. She was left in the care of her maternal grandmother after her parents fled to Sweden to escape the Warsaw Pact invasion. Czechoslovak authorities would not allow her parents to reclaim her, and the ensuing battle was widely publicized in the Swedish press, making her a "cause célèbre".


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: When Porizkova was seven, her pregnant mother returned to Czechoslovakia by a fake passport in an attempt to rescue her. After the attempt failed, her mother was briefly detained by the national police and then placed under house arrest with her family. In 1973, international political pressure led by Olof Palme caused the communist government to allow the Pořízek family to be reunited. Porizkova's parents divorced after her father had an affair. She and her father, who refused to pay child support for his children, have been estranged since her youth. Her mother, a midwife, remarried at least twice and, as of 2010, was reported to be serving in the Peace Corps in Uganda.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova shared the photo that got the attention of modeling scout John Casablancas. She was 13. One of her friends, who wanted to be a makeup artist, painted Porizkova's face, along with other friends, and sent the photographs to modeling agencies in Paris in the hopes of getting hired. "Soon after, a modeling agent called inviting me to Copenhagen to meet the famed model scout John Casablancas. ... He took one look at me and asked: ‘Want to go to Paris?’ As if I'd say no! The rest, as they say, is history."


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova rose to become a top model in Paris during the early 1980s, and her fame spread to the United States when she posed in swimwear for "Sports Illustrated". In 1984, at 18 years old, she became the first woman from Central Europe to be on the cover of the "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue. She appeared again on the cover in 1985. She was the second woman (after Christie Brinkley) to be featured on the swimsuit issue's front cover in consecutive years (1984 and 1985). Her first appearance as a model in the magazine was in 1983. She appeared on the cover and inside "New York" in July, 1985. "Harper's Bazaar" named her one of its ten most beautiful women in 1992 and American "Photo" magazine in its first issue declared her to be the model of the 1980s. Porizkova appeared on the covers of numerous magazines around the world during the 1980s and 1990s, including "Vogue", "Elle", "Harper's Bazaar", "Self", "Cosmopolitan", and "Glamour".


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: She has been featured in advertising campaigns for Chanel, Versace, Hermes, Christian Dior, Oscar De La Renta, Mikimoto, Perry Ellis, Laura Biagiotti, Anne Klein, Ellen Tracy, Barneys New York, Ann Taylor, Guerlain, and Revlon and appeared on the runway for Calvin Klein.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: In 1988, Porizkova won what was then the highest-paying modeling contract: a $6,000,000 contract with Estée Lauder, replacing Willow Bay. The black-and-white television and print advertising campaign won praise from critics. The Estée Lauder makeover transformed Porizkova's public image from a swimsuit model to that of European sophisticate and she remained the company's face until 1995. She soon landed another multimillion-dollar contract, with Escada.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova was part of the panel of judges on "America's Next Top Model" ("ANTM"), starting on Cycle 10, replacing fashion icon Twiggy.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova continued to conduct regular weekly evaluations of "ANTM" participants on the show until she announced during a 12 May 2009, appearance on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" that she had been fired from the show. Although Porizkova maintained she was told by producers that she had an "ego problem," especially when she "consistently complained" about Tyra Banks' reported lateness to the set, "ANTM" executive producer Ken Mok and Banks released a statement claiming Porizkova's firing was due to "the current state of the economy," forcing "ANTM" to "make major budget cuts…unfortunately, Paulina was a casualty of these cuts." When questioned by ABC News journalist Cynthia McFadden about the firing of Porizkova as well as former "ANTM" colleague, Janice Dickinson, both of whom had complained Banks was "difficult," Banks refused to address the issue.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova was a participant on "Dancing with the Stars", in spring 2007 but was voted off on the first results show which aired on 27 March 2007.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: In 2009 and 2010, she played Clarissa on about five episodes of the CBS Daytime soap opera "As the World Turns". Porizkova appeared in the fourth episode of "Celebrity Ghost Stories"' second season.


title: Paulina Porizkova

text: Porizkova's film debut was in the 1983 modeling mockumentary, "Portfolio". She appeared in the 1987 film "Anna". In 1989, she co-starred with Tom Selleck in the film "Her Alibi"; she was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her appearance.