title: Empress Matilda

text: Matilda helped to deal with several diplomatic crises. The first of these involved the Hand of St James, the relic which Matilda had brought back with her from Germany many years before. Frederick I, the Holy Roman Emperor, considered the hand to be part of the imperial regalia and requested that Henry return it to Germany. Matilda and Henry were equally insistent that it should remain at Reading Abbey, where it had become a popular attraction for visiting pilgrims. Frederick was bought off with an alternative set of expensive gifts from England, including a huge, luxurious tent, probably chosen by Matilda, which Frederick used for court events in Italy. She was also approached by Louis VII of France, in 1164, and helped to defuse a growing diplomatic row over the handling of Crusading funds.


title: Empress Matilda

text: In her old age Matilda paid increasing attention to Church affairs and her personal faith, although she remained involved in governing Normandy throughout her life. Matilda appears to have had particular fondness for her youngest son William. She opposed Henry's proposal in 1155 to invade Ireland and give the lands to William, however, possibly on the grounds that the project was impractical, and instead William received large grants of land in England. Matilda was more easy-going in her later life than in her youth, but the chronicler of Mont St Jacques, who met her during this period, still felt that she appeared to be "of the stock of tyrants".


title: Empress Matilda

text: Matilda died on 10 September 1167 in Rouen, and her remaining wealth was given to the Church. She was buried under the high altar at the abbey of Bec-Hellouin in a service led by Rotrou, the archbishop of Rouen. Her tomb's epitaph included the lines "Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring: here lies Matilda, the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry", which became a famous phrase among her contemporaries. This tomb was damaged in a fire in 1263 and later restored in 1282, before finally being destroyed by an English army in 1421. In 1684 the Congregation of St Maur identified some of her remaining bones and reburied them at Bec-Hellouin in a new coffin. Her remains were lost again after the destruction of Bec-Hellouin's church by Napoleon, but were found once more in 1846 and this time reburied at Rouen Cathedral, where they remain.


title: Empress Matilda

text: In the Holy Roman Empire, the young Matilda's court included knights, chaplains and ladies-in-waiting, although, unlike some queens of the period, she did not have her own personal chancellor to run her household, instead using the imperial chancellor. When acting as regent in Italy, she found the local rulers were prepared to accept a female ruler. Her Italian administration included the Italian chancellor, backed by experienced administrators. She was not called upon to make any major decisions, instead dealing with smaller matters and acting as the symbolic representative of her absent husband, meeting with and helping to negotiate with magnates and clergy.


title: Empress Matilda

text: The Anglo-Saxon queens of England had exercised considerable formal power, but this tradition had diminished under the Normans: at most their queens ruled temporarily as regents on their husbands' behalf when they were away travelling, rather than in their own right. On her return from Germany to Normandy and Anjou, Matilda styled herself as empress and the daughter of King Henry. As an , her status was elevated in medieval social and political thought above all men in England and France. On arrival in England, her charters' seal displayed the inscription . Matilda's enthroned portrait on her circular seal distinguished her from elite English contemporaries, both women – whose seals were usually oval with standing portraits – and men, whose seals were usually equestrian portraits. The seal did not depict her on horseback, however, as a male ruler would have been. During the civil war for England, her status was uncertain; these unique distinctions were intended to overawe her subjects. Matilda also remained , a status that emphasised her claim to the crown was hereditary and derived from her male kin, being the only legitimate offspring of King Henry and Queen Matilda. It further advertised her mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman descent and her claim as her royal father's sole heir in a century in which feudal tenancies were increasingly passed on by heredity and primogeniture.


title: Empress Matilda

text: In contrast with her rival Stephen and his wife Matilda of Boulogne — styled respectively and — Empress Matilda employed the title . Several interpretations of the title (), are possible. "Domina", is the feminine equivalent of the title "dominus", the meaning of which ranged from head of a household to an imperial title and translated as "master" or "lord". Whereas the carried the implication of a king's wife only, the was used of a woman exercising temporal powers in her own right, as had Æthelflæd of Mercia. Notably, Matilda's husband Geoffrey never adopted the equivalent "dominus Anglorum". Initially between 1139 and 1141 Matilda referred to herself as acting as a "feme sole", "a woman [acting] alone", highlighting her autonomy and independence from her spouse. Additionally, it was also conventional that newly elected kings use ' until their coronation as , the interval being counted as an interregnum. Since she was never crowned at Westminster, during the rest of the war she appears to have used this title rather than that of the queen of England, although some contemporaries referred to her by the royal title. In spring and summer 1141, as Matilda was "de facto" queen regnant, some royal charters including titles of lands granted to Glastonbury Abbey and Reading Abbey described her as , while another mentions and . While Marjorie Chibnall believed the Glastonbury and Reading Abbeys' instances of "regina Anglorum" are either errors for "domina Anglorum" or else inauthentic; David Crouch judged this unlikely to be a scribal error and pointed out that Stephen's supporters had used "rex Anglorum" before his formal coronation, that she was hailed as "regina et domina" at Winchester in March 1141, and that she "gloried in being called" the royal title. Nonetheless, the style ', now rendered as "Lady of the English", remained more common in documents. The chronicler William of Malmsebury calls her "domina" only.


title: Empress Matilda

text: Matilda presented herself as continuing the English tradition of centralised royal government, and attempted to maintain a government in England parallel to Stephen's, including a royal household and a chancellor. Matilda gathered revenues from the royal estates in the counties under her control, particularly in her core territories where the sheriffs were loyal to her cause. She appointed earls to rival those created by Stephen. She was unable to operate a system of royal law courts, however, and her administrative resources were extremely limited, although some of her clerks went on to become bishops in Normandy. Matilda issued two types of coins in her name during her time in England, which were used in the west of England and Wales. The first were initially minted in Oxford during her stay there, and the design was then adopted by her mints at Bristol, Cardiff and Wareham after her victory at the Battle of Lincoln. A second design was minted at Bristol and Cardiff during the 1140s.


title: Empress Matilda

text: On returning to Normandy for the last time in 1148, Matilda ceased to use the title Lady of the English, simply styling herself as empress again; she never adopted the title of Countess of Anjou. Matilda's household became smaller, and often merged with Henry's own court when the two were co-located in Rouen. She continued to play a special role in the government of the area around Argentan, where she held feudal rights from the grants made at the time of her second marriage.


title: Empress Matilda

text: It is unclear how strong Matilda's personal piety was, although contemporaries praised her lifelong preference to be buried at the monastic site of Bec rather than the grander but more worldly Rouen, and believed her to have substantial, underlying religious beliefs. Like other members of the Anglo-Norman nobility, she bestowed considerable patronage on the Church. Early on in her life, she preferred the well-established Benedictine monastery of Cluny alongside some of the newer Augustinian orders, such as the Victorines and Premonstratensians. As part of this patronage, she re-founded the abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Vœu near Cherbourg.


title: Empress Matilda

text: As time went by, Matilda directed more of her attention to the Cistercian order. This order was very fashionable in England and Normandy during the period, and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a figure of particular importance to Matilda. She had close links to the Cistercian Mortemer Abbey in Normandy, and drew on the house for a supply of monks when she supported the foundation of nearby La Valasse. She encouraged the Cistercians to build at Mortemer on a grand scale, with guest houses to accommodate a range of visitors of all ranks, and may have played a part in selecting the paintings for the monastic chapels.


title: Empress Matilda

text: Contemporary chroniclers in England, France, Germany and Italy documented many aspects of Matilda's life, although the only biography of her, apparently written by Arnulf of Lisieux, has been lost. The chroniclers took a range of perspectives on her. In Germany, the chroniclers praised Matilda extensively and her reputation as the "good Matilda" remained positive. During the years of the Anarchy, works such as the "Gesta Stephani" took a much more negative tone, praising Stephen and condemning Matilda. Once Henry II assumed the throne, the tone of the chroniclers towards Matilda became more positive. Legends spread in the years after Matilda's death, including the suggestion that her first husband, Henry, had not died but had in fact secretly become a hermit – making Matilda's second marriage illegitimate – and a tale that Matilda had an affair with Stephen, resulting in the conception of Henry II.


title: Empress Matilda

text: Tudor scholars were interested in Matilda's right of succession. According to 16th-century standards, Matilda had a clear right to the English throne, and academics therefore struggled to explain why Matilda had acquiesced to her son Henry's kingship at the end of the war, rather than ruling directly herself. By the 18th century, historians such as David Hume had a much better understanding of the irregular nature of 12th-century law and custom and this question became less relevant. By the 19th century, the archival sources on Matilda's life, including charters, foundation histories, and letters, were being uncovered and analysed. Historians Kate Norgate, Sir James Ramsay and J. H. Round used these to produce new, richer accounts of Matilda and the civil war; Ramsay's account, using the "Gesta Stephani", was not complimentary, while Norgate, drawing on French sources, was more neutral in tone. The German academic Oskar Rössler's 1897 biography drew heavily on German charters, not extensively used by Anglophone historians.


title: Empress Matilda

text: Matilda has attracted relatively little attention from modern English academics, being treated as a marginal figure in comparison to other contemporaries, particularly her rival Stephen, in contrast to the work carried out by German scholars on her time in the Empire. Popular, but not always accurate, biographies were written by the Earl of Onslow in 1939 and Nesta Pain in 1978, but the only major academic biography in English remains Marjorie Chibnall's 1991 work. Interpretations of Matilda's character have shifted over time, but there is, as Chibnall describes, a "general agreement that she was either proud or at least keenly conscious of the high status of an empress". Like both Henry I and Henry II, Matilda had a certain autocratic grandeur, which was combined with a firm moral belief in her cause; ultimately however she was limited by the political conventions of the 12th century. The treatment of Matilda by modern historians has been challenged by feminist scholars, including Fiona Tolhurst, who believe some traditional assumptions about her role and personality show gender bias. In this interpretation, Matilda has been unfairly criticised for showing qualities that have been considered praiseworthy when seen in her male contemporaries.


title: Empress Matilda

text: The civil war years of Matilda's life have been the subject of historical fiction. Matilda, Stephen and their supporters feature in Ellis Peters's historical detective series about Brother Cadfael, set between 1137 and 1145. Peters paints the Empress as proud and aloof, in contrast to Stephen, a tolerant man and a reasonable ruler. Matilda's martial reputation may also have contributed to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's decision to entitle his 1855 battle poem "Maud".


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at 9:30 a.m. on 31 October 1984 at her residence in Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. She was killed by her bodyguards Satwant Singh and Beant Singh in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, an Indian military action carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984 ordered by Indira Gandhi to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the Golden Temple of Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab. The collateral damage included the death of many pilgrims, as well as damage to the Akal Takht. The military action on the sacred temple was criticized both inside and outside India.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Operation Blue Star was a large Indian military operation carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984, ordered by Indira Gandhi to remove leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his militant Sikh followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib complex in Amritsar, Punjab. The Indian army suffered around 83 casualties with 700 injuries, and 450–500 Sikh rebels were killed during the operation. The handling of the operation, damage to the holy shrine, and loss of military and civilian life on both sides led to widespread criticism of the Indian government.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: The perceived threat to Gandhi's life increased after the operation. Accordingly, Sikhs were removed from her personal bodyguard detail by the Intelligence Bureau for fear of assassination. Gandhi thought that this would reinforce her anti-Sikh image among the public, however, and she ordered the Delhi Police to reinstate her Sikh bodyguards, including Beant Singh, who was reported to be her personal favorite.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: At about 9:20 a.m. Indian Standard Time, on 31 October 1984, Gandhi was on her way to be interviewed by British actor Peter Ustinov who was filming a documentary for Irish television. She was accompanied by Constable Narayan Singh, personal security officer Rameshwar Dayal and Gandhi's personal secretary, R. K. Dhawan. She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi towards the neighboring 1 Akbar Road office.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Gandhi passed a wicket gate guarded by Satwant and Beant Singh, and the two men opened fire. Beant fired three rounds into her abdomen from his .38 () revolver; then Satwant fired 30 rounds from his Sterling sub-machine gun after she had fallen to the ground. Both men then threw down their weapons and Beant said, "I have done what I had to do. You do what you want to do." In the next six minutes, Border Police officers Tarsem Singh Jamwal and Ram Saran captured and killed Beant, while Satwant was arrested by Gandhi's other bodyguards and an accomplice trying to escape; he was seriously wounded. Satwant Singh was hanged in 1989 with accomplice Kehar Singh.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Salma Sultan gave the first news of the assassination of Gandhi on Doordarshan's evening news on 31 October 1984, more than ten hours after she was killed. It is alleged by the Indian government that Gandhi's secretary R. K. Dhawan overruled intelligence and security officials who had ordered the removal of policemen as a security threat, including her assassins.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Beant was one of Gandhi's favorite guards, whom she had known for ten years. Because he was a Sikh, he had been taken off her staff after Operation Blue Star; however, Gandhi had made sure that he was reinstated. Satwant was 22 years old at the time of the assassination, and had been assigned to Gandhi's guard just five months previously.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Gandhi was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi at 9:30 a.m. Doctors operated on her. She was declared dead at 2:20 p.m. The postmortem examination was conducted by a team of doctors headed by Tirath Das Dogra, who stated that 30 bullets had struck Gandhi from a Sterling sub-machine gun and a revolver. The assailants had fired 33 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body, while seven remained inside. Dogra extracted bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered by ballistic examination. The bullets were matched to the weapons at CFSL Delhi.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: The Indian government ordered a national mourning from November 1 to November 12 with flags half-masted and canceled entertainment and cultural events and offices closed for several days. Pakistan declared three days of mourning and Bulgaria declared a day of national mourning.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Gandhi's body was taken in a gun carriage through Delhi roads on the morning of 1 November to Teen Murti Bhavan, where her father stayed and where she lay in state. She was cremated with full state honors on 3 November near Raj Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, at an area named Shakti Sthal. Her elder son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, lit the pyre.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: The Justice Thakkar Commission of Inquiry, headed by Justice Manharlal Pranlal Thakkar, set up to probe Gandhi's assassination, recommended a separate probe for the conspiracy angle behind the assassination. The Thakkar Report stated that the "needle of suspicion" pointed at R. K. Dhawan for complicity in the conspiracy.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: Satwant Singh and alleged conspirator Kehar Singh were sentenced to death. Both were executed on 6 January 1989.


title: Assassination of Indira Gandhi

text: A Punjabi movie titled "Kaum De Heere" ("Gems of the Community") highlighting the roles/lives of the two guards that assassinated Indira Gandhi was set to be released on 22 August 2014, but was banned by the Indian government for five years.


title: Sean Harris

text: Sean Harris (born 1965/1966) is an English actor and writer. He played Ian Curtis in "24 Hour Party People" (2002), Micheletto Corella in "The Borgias" (2011–2013), Fifield in "Prometheus" (2012), Solomon Lane in "" (2015) and "" (2018), Philip in "Possum" (2018) and William Gascoigne in "The King" (2019).


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris won a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his role in the miniseries "Southcliffe" (2013) and received three consecutive nominations for the BIFA Award for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris was born just outside Woodbridge, Suffolk, and grew up in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He attended Denes High School, now the Ormiston Denes Academy in Lowestoft, Suffolk. At 23, he moved to London to train at the Drama Centre London from 1989 to 1992.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris was a member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, where he performed in stage productions such as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet directed by Giles Havergal and as Carino in Don Juan directed by Robert David MacDonald. He also appeared as Lysander in a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", directed by Matthew Lloyd at the Haymarket Theatre (Leicester) and as Johnny in a Nottingham Playhouse production of Angels Rave On, directed by Jonathan Church.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris' television credits include serial killer Ian Brady, on ITV1's television mini-series, "" (2006), the 2007 television films hi "Wedding Belles," Channel 4's drama series "Cape Wrath" (Meadowlands in the United States) as Gordon Ormond and the BBC series "Ashes to Ashes" as Arthur Layton.


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2009, he played corrupt Detective Inspector Bob Craven in Channel 4's critically acclaimed "Red Riding" trilogy and as photographer Anton Blair in Dean Cavanagh's comedy series, "Svengali".


title: Sean Harris

text: In the BBC TV drama "Five Daughters" (2010), Harris portrayed Brian Tobin, co-founder of the drug treatment facility, The Iceni Project, based in Suffolk. In preparing to play Tobin, Harris followed the real Brian Tobin around during pre-production.


title: Sean Harris

text: From 2011 to 2013, Harris appeared as the assassin Micheletto in "The Borgias", a series created by Neil Jordan. In 2013, he starred as Stephen Morton in the Channel 4 drama "Southcliffe", for which Harris would win a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for Best Actor in 2014. He also played Joss Merlyn in the poorly received BBC adaptation of "Jamaica Inn", which became a subject of controversy and made national news over its mumbling cast and other sound problems.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris played the main cast role of Thomas the Disciple, and later Thomas the Apostle in the 1999 biblical, historical, drama television film version of Jesus. His notable roles include that of Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis in Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film "24 Hour Party People" and as Steven in the film short "True Love (Once Removed)", directed by Kevin Thomas. The film won Best Short Film at both the Palm Springs and Houston Film Festivals, was selected for the Clermont-Ferrand, London Raindance and Los Angeles Short Film festivals and also qualified for an Oscar nomination in 2004.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris also played Nick Sidney in the 2005 mockumentary "Brothers of the Head", directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. In 2007, he appeared in his first feature film lead role as Eddie in "Saxon", directed by Greg Loftin. In 2009, he played Stretch in "Harry Brown", directed by Daniel Barber.


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2010, Harris appeared in another film short, "Native Son", written and directed by Scottish director Scott Graham. It premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2014, Harris played Mick Santino in "Deliver Us From Evil" (2014), directed by Scott Derrickson and based upon the 2001 novel "Beware the Night" by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool. He was cast by Derrickson for the film, without an interview, based upon the director having seen the actor's performance in "Harry Brown". That same year, he appeared as Gene Womack in Guy Myhill's "The Goob". Myhill previously directed Harris in two film shorts, "Two Halftimes to Hell" (1997) and "The Fabulous Bilsons" (2001). Harris finished the year with his performances as Captain Sandy Browning in the critically acclaimed "'71", directed by Yann Demange, for which he earned a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and as Campbell in "Serena" (2014), directed by Susanne Bier.


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2015, Harris appeared as Solomon Lane in "," directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and as Macduff in Justin Kurzel's "Macbeth". His next project, "Trespass Against Us", was released in 2016.


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris filmed "Possum" in 2016, a film by Matthew Holness, in which he plays the main character. He reprised his role as Lane in the sequel "" (2018).


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2021, Harris portrayed Darren McGrady, the Royal Head Chef, in the film "Spencer", and a frail, aged King Arthur in the film "The Green Knight".


title: Sean Harris

text: Harris made a cameo appearance as a clown in a music video for the Norwich band the Black Sharks' debut album titled "Lose Control", directed by Myhill (evidently filmed at the same time as "The Fabulous Bilsons").


title: Sean Harris

text: In 2012, Harris appeared in London-based music group Barbarossa's video short, "Battles", directed by Montserrat Lombard. Harris and Lombard have been working on the screen play for a film short, "White" as well as a script for a feature-length film, "Imager". He will play the lead in the film short with Lombard directing once again.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Madeleine Marie Stowe Mora (born August 18, 1958) is an American actress. She appeared mostly on television before her role in the 1987 crime-comedy film "Stakeout". She went on to star in the films "Revenge" (1990), "Unlawful Entry" (1992), "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992), "Blink" (1993), "12 Monkeys" (1995), "The General's Daughter" (1999), and "We Were Soldiers" (2002). For her role in the 1993 independent film "Short Cuts", she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: From 2011 to 2015, Stowe starred as Victoria Grayson, the main antagonist of the ABC drama series "Revenge". For this role, she was nominated for the 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Stowe, the first of three children, was born at the Queen of Angels Hospital, in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Eagle Rock, a section of Los Angeles. Her father, Robert Stowe, was a civil engineer from Oregon, while her mother, Mireya (née Mora Steinvorth), came from a prominent family in Costa Rica. One of Stowe's maternal great-great-grandfathers, politician José Joaquín Mora Porras, was a younger brother of President Juan Rafael Mora Porras, who governed Costa Rica from 1849 to 1859. Another maternal great-great-grandfather, Bruno Carranza, was briefly President of that country in 1870 (he resigned three months after taking office); his wife, Stowe's great-great-grandmother Gerónima Montealegre, was the sister of President José María Montealegre Fernández, who governed Costa Rica from 1859 to 1863. One of Stowe's maternal great-grandfathers was a German immigrant to Costa Rica.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Stowe originally aspired to become a concert pianist, taking lessons between the ages of ten and eighteen. She later explained that playing the piano was a means to escape having to socialize with other children her age. Her Russian-born music teacher, Sergei Tarnowsky, had faith in Stowe, even teaching her from his deathbed. Following his death at the age of 92, she quit, later commenting, "I just felt it was time to not be by myself anymore."


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Not being especially interested in her college classes, she volunteered to do performances at the "Solaris", a Beverly Hills theater, where a movie agent saw her in a play and got her several offers of appearances in TV and films. In 1978, she made her debut in an episode in the police drama series "Baretta", followed by a string of TV work with guest appearances on "The Amazing Spider-Man", "Barnaby Jones" and "Little House on the Prairie". In 1978, she played a leading role as Mary in the television movie, "The Nativity" (1978). She starred in two NBC miniseries: "Beulah Land" (1980) and "The Gangster Chronicles" (1981), which starred Brian Benben, her future husband. She also starred in several television films, such as "Amazons" (1984) and "Blood & Orchids" (1986).


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 1987, Stowe appeared in her first breakthrough role in the feature film "Stakeout" with Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez. The film debuted at No.1 at the box office. In 1988, she played a leading role in Ciro Durán's film "Tropical Snow", with David Carradine. She co-starred with Mark Harmon in the comedy "Worth Winning", with Kevin Costner in the 1989 thriller "Revenge", and opposite Jack Nicholson in 1990 in "The Two Jakes". She played a leading role in the 1991 independent film "Closet Land".


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 1992, she appeared opposite Kurt Russell in the crime drama "Unlawful Entry". That same year, Stowe played Cora Munro in "The Last of the Mohicans", which also starred Daniel Day-Lewis. Her critically acclaimed performance in the film, which grossed more than $75 million worldwide, elevated Stowe from supporting player to an A-list movie star. The next year, director Robert Altman cast Stowe in the award-winning ensemble cast movie "Short Cuts", where she gave one of her most acclaimed screen performances as the wife of a compulsively lying and adulterous police officer played by Tim Robbins. She won the National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award and a Volpi Cup for Best Ensemble Cast for her performance in the movie. She also made a cameo appearance in "Stakeout" sequel "Another Stakeout". The following year, Stowe played a leading role as a blind musician in the thriller "Blink", in the neo-noir thriller "China Moon", and in the Western "Bad Girls". The year after that, she was a sympathetic psychiatrist in the financially successful and critically lauded science-fiction movie "12 Monkeys". Stowe received a Saturn Awards nomination for this performance.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 1994 Stowe was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World". In 1995, Stowe was chosen by "Empire" as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History".


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Stowe postponed her acting career in 1996 to concentrate on her family life. She settled for several years in a Texas ranch, with her daughter May and husband Brian Benben. In 1998, she came back with "The Proposition" and "Playing by Heart", and then "The General's Daughter", opposite John Travolta in 1999. In 2001, she starred in the science-fiction box office bomb "Impostor". In 2002, she played Julia Moore in the war film "We Were Soldiers" with Mel Gibson, and the box office flop action-comedy "Avenging Angelo" opposite Sylvester Stallone. In 2003, she starred in the thriller "Octane" as Senga Wilson, a single mother trying to save her teenage daughter (Mischa Barton) from a bizarre cult obsessed with blood and cars.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: Stowe's onscreen appearances became increasingly rare in the 2000s, as she focused on motherhood. She later stated in an interview : "I never thought, 'I'm retiring,' but I didn't feel that 'thing' revving in me. I was much more focused on May. It was frustrating at times, but now I see how she's turned out, I wouldn't have it any other way." She occasionally appeared in some TV productions, such as "Saving Milly", an adaptation of Morton Kondracke's book of the same name, of a woman diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Stowe starred in the not-picked-up Fox pilot "Southern Comfort" about a woman who takes over her mobster husband's business when he gets sent to prison. In 2007, she appeared in the recurring role of Dr. Samantha Kohl in Jeff Goldblum's detective drama "Raines" on NBC, a mid-season replacement. The series was canceled after two months. In 2009 she starred in the Lifetime movie, "The Christmas Hope".


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 2011, Stowe announced her return and began playing Victoria Grayson, the glamorous and powerful matriarch of the Grayson family, on ABC's television drama series "Revenge". It debuted on September 21, and was picked up for a full season by ABC on October 13. Stowe's portrayal of the character received critical praise, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for this role. In April 2012, she was listed at No. 5 in "People" magazine's annual Most Beautiful Woman list. The series ended in 2015 after four seasons and 89 episodes.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In May and June 2016, Stowe guest hosted primetime films on Turner Classic Movies, appearing in dozens of wraparounds on the channel. In 2019, she returned to acting starring as actress Margot Weston in the Netflix musical drama series, "Soundtrack". The series was canceled after one season.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 1982, Stowe married Brian Benben, whom she met on the set of the NBC miniseries "The Gangster Chronicles" the previous year. Now living in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, they have lived on a ranch west of Austin, near Fredericksburg, Texas. The couple have a daughter born in 1996.


title: Madeleine Stowe

text: In 2008, Stowe traveled to Haiti and helped found Artists for Peace and Justice. She is on the board of directors of the foundation.


title: Shawn Wayans

text: Shawn Mathis Wayans (born January 19, 1971) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. Along with his brother Marlon Wayans, he wrote and starred in The WB's sitcom "The Wayans Bros."(1995–1999) and in the comedy films "Don't Be a Menace" (1996), "Scary Movie" (2000), "Scary Movie 2" (2001), "White Chicks" (2004), "Little Man" (2006), and "Dance Flick" (2009). He made his debut on "In Living Color" (1990–1993).


title: Shawn Wayans

text: Wayans, the ninth of ten siblings, was born in New York City, New York, the son of Elvira Alethia (Green), a homemaker and social worker, and Howell Stouten Wayans, a supermarket manager. His family were once Jehovah's Witnesses. Wayans grew up in the Fulton Houses in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea and is a 1989 graduate of the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities.


title: Shawn Wayans

text: On Fox's "In Living Color", he began as DJ SW-1 and later became a featured performer, working with brothers Dwayne, Keenen (the show's creator), Damon, Marlon and sister Kim.


title: Shawn Wayans

text: Along with Marlon, Shawn Wayans created and starred in the sitcom "The Wayans Bros". (The WB, 1995–99) and co wrote, co executive produced and starred in the feature "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood" (1996), in which Keenen also acted. Wayans guest starred on episodes of "MacGyver" and "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" and provided the voice of Toof for the animated children's series "Waynehead" (based on brother Damon's real life childhood experiences).


title: Shawn Wayans

text: After a supporting stint in the gang drama "New Blood" (1999) Wayans' film fortunes increased dramatically when he co-starred with his brother Marlon in a hit film directed by their older brother Keenen: "Scary Movie" (1999–2000), a comic satire (which he also co wrote) on the then-recent trend of horror films like "Scream".


title: Shawn Wayans

text: Wayans played the apparently closeted Ray Wilkins, a role he reprised for the similarly popular 2001 sequel "Scary Movie 2". To date, Wayans has not had any involvement with subsequent sequels.


title: Shawn Wayans

text: He kept the familial team intact when he and Marlon starred in the Keenen-directed comedy "White Chicks" (2004), playing a pair of FBI agents forced to masquerade as spoiled white blonde heiresses. Shawn also received a share of story and screenplay credit on the film. Wayans teamed up with Marlon and Keenen once again for the 2006 comedy "Little Man", which Wayans acted in, co-wrote, and co-produced.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Maureen Denise McCormick (born August 5, 1956) is an American actress. She portrayed Marcia Brady on the ABC television sitcom "The Brady Bunch", which ran from 1969 to 1974, and reprised the role in several of the numerous "Brady Bunch" spin-offs and films, including "The Brady Kids", "The Brady Bunch Hour", "The Brady Brides" and "A Very Brady Christmas" (1988). McCormick has appeared in "The Amanda Show" as Moody's mom in the Moody's Point segment. McCormick also appeared in "The Idolmaker" (1980) as well as a wide range of other supporting film roles. In the 1980s and 1990s, she ventured into stage acting, appearing in a variety of different roles and productions such as Wendy Darling in "Peter Pan" and Betty Rizzo in "Grease".


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick also had a brief career as a recording artist, releasing four studio albums with the "Brady Bunch" cast as well as touring with them. Her only release as a solo artist to date is a country music album, "When You Get a Little Lonely" (1995).


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Despite professional success on "The Brady Bunch" and its spin-offs, McCormick struggled in her personal life in the years following the original series' end. Addictions to cocaine and quaaludes, as well as bouts of depression and bulimia, all contributed to McCormick losing her reputation for reliability as an actress. Since the 2000s, she has appeared on several reality television series such as VH1's "Celebrity Fit Club", CMT's "Gone Country" (which led to a short-lived spin-off series led by McCormick, "Outsiders Inn") and the Australian version of "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!", as well as guest spots on a wide range of television series. In 2008, McCormick published an autobiography, "Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice", which debuted at number four on "The New York Times" bestseller list.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick was born on August 5, 1956, in the Encino section of Los Angeles, California, to Irene (née Beckman) and Richard McCormick, a teacher. She has three older brothers: Michael, Dennis and Kevin. She is of Irish and German descent, and was raised in a Catholic family.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: At age six, she won the Baby Miss San Fernando Valley beauty pageant. In 1964, she first appeared on national U.S. television, in Mattel commercials for Barbie and Chatty Cathy dolls. Through the later 1960s McCormick appeared in two episodes of "Bewitched"—-in a Season One dream of Darrin's as one of his witch children named Little Endora, and then in a Season Two Halloween episode as Endora herself transformed into a little girl. She also played guest roles on "I Dream of Jeannie", "Honey West", "The Farmer's Daughter" and "My Three Sons". In 1970, she lent her voice to a redesigned Chatty Cathy doll. McCormick attended Taft High School in Woodland Hills.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick played the eldest daughter, Marcia, who had five siblings in "The Brady Bunch", an American television sitcom about a blended family that aired from late 1969 to early 1974 on ABC, on Friday nights. She had a perky and popular personality. After its cancellation, the series was later rebroadcast in syndication for decades, as children's programming, gathering long-lasting, cross-generational popularity that led to spinoffs and movies. McCormick had a sporadic romance with her "Brady Bunch" co-star Barry Williams during the original series' run.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick recorded four albums with the "Brady Bunch" cast and toured with them as well. In 1972, she released her first solo single with the songs "Truckin' Back to You" and "Teeny Weeny Bit (Too Long)". The following year, McCormick recorded an album with her "Brady Bunch" co-star Christopher Knight, a pop extended play titled "Chris Knight and Maureen McCormick", which carried both duets and solo tracks. McCormick's second solo single "Little Bird", backed with "Just a Singin' Alone", had mild chart success in the western United States (reaching Top 5 at KCPX in Salt Lake City). McCormick later performed "Little Bird" on "American Bandstand", where host Dick Clark encouraged her to follow a singing career. McCormick released another single in 1973, "Love's in the Roses", backed with "Harmonize".


title: Maureen McCormick

text: In 2015, archive footage of McCormick as Marcia was used for an American TV commercial advertising Snickers chocolate bars. The commercial, which debuted during Super Bowl XLIX, features action film star Danny Trejo as young Marcia who (in the context of being hungry) is not acting like herself. After eating a Snickers, Marcia appears as McCormick once again.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Following the cancellation of "The Brady Bunch", McCormick spent years addicted to cocaine and quaaludes, which impeded her career. McCormick later stated that she sometimes traded sex for drugs during her early 20s. She flubbed an audition with Steven Spielberg for a part in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), arriving for the audition under the influence of cocaine and having not slept for three days. She lost her reputation for reliability as an actress in Hollywood, and one producer threatened that she would never work as an actress again. She also dealt with bouts of depression and bulimia.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Despite her struggles with addiction and depression, McCormick did appear in guest roles on numerous television series throughout the 1970s and 1980s, such as "Happy Days", "Donny & Marie", "Love Boat", "Vega$", "The Streets of San Francisco" and "Fantasy Island", along with supporting roles in "The Idolmaker" and B movies such as "A Vacation in Hell" (1979) and "Skatetown, U.S.A." (1979). McCormick later claimed she failed to get a role as a prostitute or heroin dealer for the movie "Midnight Express" because she continued to be identified with her "Brady Bunch" role. She reprised her role as Marcia Brady on the short-lived series "The Brady Brides" in 1981, which was spun off from the movie "The Brady Girls Get Married" (1981). McCormick portrayed Wendy Darling in a touring stage production of "Peter Pan", beginning in 1983.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick married Michael Cummings on March 16, 1985. Shortly after getting married, McCormick went through a series of interventions, stints in rehab, and experimental therapies. She says that treatment with psychologist Eugene Landy set her back. She began to get sober after marrying, but she still suffered from depression and paranoia, and once threatened to jump from a balcony in front of her husband. She and her husband were at first wary of medication, but McCormick was treated with antidepressant medication such as Prozac beginning in the 1990s. McCormick also said that she was helped by her friendships with former "Brady Bunch" cast members.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: She continued to appear sporadically in films and television projects, having a minor role as a police officer in "Return to Horror High" (1987), and again reprising her Marcia Brady role for the television film "A Very Brady Christmas" (1988). McCormick gave birth to her daughter, Natalie Michelle, on May 19, 1989. When "The Bradys", a revival of "The Brady Bunch", was scheduled to begin production in 1990, McCormick was unavailable to return as Marcia due to her infant daughter, so Leah Ayres filled the role instead. In 1993, the television sitcom "Herman's Head" episode "When Hermy Met Maureen McCormick" heavily featured her, playing herself. In 1994, McCormick made her Broadway debut as Betty Rizzo in a production of "Grease".


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick released her debut studio album, "When You Get a Little Lonely", on April 4, 1995, as an audio CD and cassette. The album was later made available as a digital download. The album was released under Phantom Hill Records, a record label owned by her brother. McCormick promoted it with live performances in Palmdale, California, and CD signings. "When You Get a Little Lonely" received negative reviews from music critics, though McCormick's vocals did receive some praise. In a retrospective interview with "Entertainment Weekly", McCormick said that she was disappointed by the recording process for the album, and would have preferred to write at least one of her own songs.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: In 1997, she portrayed country singer Barbara Mandrell in the television biopic "Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story". In 2000, McCormick was the first actress to play Rebecca Crane on the soap opera "Passions", but she was not put on contract. In 2003, McCormick appeared as herself on an episode of the sitcom "Scrubs" with references being made to her Marcia Brady character.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: In April 2007, McCormick appeared on "Dr. Phil" to discuss a family dispute, accusing her brother Kevin of both elder abuse and alienating their father from his other children to gain control of his finances. The same year, McCormick joined the cast of the fifth season of VH1's reality show "Celebrity Fit Club", hoping to lose she had gained since her mother died of cancer and needing to move her disabled brother into an assisted living facility. McCormick lost and, in June of that year, was the individual winner of the series.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: McCormick released her autobiography, "Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice", on October 14, 2008. It debuted at number four on "The New York Times" bestseller list, where it stayed for three weeks. The book was published by HarperCollins and was acquired by Director of Creative Development Lisa Sharkey. While promoting the book, McCormick was a guest on many news and talk shows such as "Access Hollywood", "The Howard Stern Show", "Good Day L.A.", and "Paula's Party". "The Today Show" aired an interview with McCormick about the book rather than switch to a story about the 2008 recession. McCormick said that a film would likely be made about her autobiography.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Also in 2008, she joined the cast of the CMT reality show "Gone Country", where she competed for a recording contract. This led to a spin-off reality series called "Outsiders Inn", in which she opened a bed and breakfast in Newport, Tennessee. In 2008, McCormick became a spokesperson for Children International. In March 2009, McCormick appeared on Comedy Central's roast of Larry the Cable Guy.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: In 2015, McCormick appeared in the Australian version of "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!", where she lasted 42 days and was the last evictee before the finale.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: On August 30, 2016, McCormick was revealed as one of the celebrities who would compete on season 23 of "Dancing with the Stars". She was partnered with professional dancer Artem Chigvintsev. McCormick and Chigvintsev were eliminated on the seventh week of competition and finished in 8th place. She joined with the other surviving main cast members of "The Brady Bunch" in the 2019 television series "A Very Brady Renovation" on HGTV.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: In 2021, McCormick paired up with contractor/decorator Dan Vickery in HGTV's new series "Frozen in Time", a new home remodeling series.


title: Maureen McCormick

text: Kaley Cuoco portrayed Maureen McCormick in "Growing Up Brady" (2000). McCormick's character Marcia Brady has been portrayed by Christine Taylor in "The Brady Bunch Movie" (1995) and its sequel "A Very Brady Sequel" and by Autumn Reeser in the made for TV sequel "The Brady Bunch in the White House".


title: Roxie Roker

text: Roxie Albertha Roker (August 28, 1929 – December 2, 1995) was an American actress who portrayed Helen Willis on the CBS sitcom "The Jeffersons" (1975–1985), half of the first interracial couple to be shown on regular prime time television. Roker is the mother of rock musician Lenny Kravitz and paternal grandmother of actress Zoë Kravitz.


title: Roxie Roker

text: Roker was born in Miami, Florida. Her mother, Bessie Roker (née Mitchell), was from Georgia and worked as a domestic. Her father, Albert Roker, was a porter and a native of Andros, The Bahamas. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York.


title: Roxie Roker

text: She began her professional career with the Negro Ensemble Company and became a successful stage actress. She won an Obie Award in 1974 and was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of Mattie Williams in "The River Niger". She was a reporter on WNEW-TV in New York in the 1970s and hosted a public affairs show for the station known as "Inside Bed-Stuy", dealing with events in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Roker portrayed Helen Willis on "The Jeffersons", breaking social barriers by becoming one half of the first Caucasian-African-American married couple (along with actor Franklin Cover) as regular cast member on prime-time TV. She appeared in guest starring roles on many other United States television shows from the 1970s through the 1990s, including ""Stone in the River"" starring Hal Miller for NBC, "Punky Brewster", "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper", "A Different World", "Murder, She Wrote", "The Love Boat", "$weepstake$", "227", "Beat the Clock, Fantasy Island, and ABC Afterschool Specials." She had roles in the television miniseries "Roots" and in the movie "Claudine". Roker was also a children’s advocate who was cited by the city of Los Angeles for her community work.


title: Roxie Roker

text: Roker graduated from Howard University. She was married to television producer Sy Kravitz in 1962. Like her "Jeffersons" character Helen Willis, Roker had an interracial marriage to a white man. The couple had a son, singer-songwriter and actor Lenny Kravitz (born May 26, 1964), and divorced in 1985. Weather anchor Al Roker and Roxie Roker were second cousins once removed.


title: Tron

text: Tron (stylized as TRON) is a 1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in his attempt to escape; it also stars Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes. "Tron", along with "The Last Starfighter", has the distinction of being one of cinema's earliest films to use extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI).


title: Tron

text: The inspiration for "Tron" dates back to 1976, when Lisberger became intrigued with video games after seeing "Pong". He and producer Donald Kushner set up an animation studio to develop "Tron" with the intention of making it an animated film. To promote the studio itself, Lisberger and his team created a 30-second animation featuring the first appearance of the title character. Eventually, Lisberger decided to include live-action elements with both backlit and computer animation for the actual feature-length film. Various studios had rejected the storyboards for the film before Walt Disney Productions agreed to finance and distribute "Tron". There, backlit animation was finally combined with the computer animation and live action.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" was released on July 9, 1982. The film was a moderate success at the box office, and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its groundbreaking visuals and acting but criticized its storyline as being incoherent. "Tron" received nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Sound at the 55th Academy Awards, but was not nominated in the Best Visual Effects category. "Tron" spawned multiple video games (including an arcade tie-in released shortly after the film), and as it became a cult film, a multimedia franchise including comic books. A sequel titled "", directed by Joseph Kosinski, was released in 2010, with Bridges and Boxleitner reprising their roles and Lisberger acting as producer, which itself was followed by the animated series "", set between the two films.


title: Tron

text: Kevin Flynn is a leading software engineer, formerly employed by the computer corporation ENCOM, who now runs a video game arcade and attempts to hack into ENCOM's mainframe system. However, ENCOM's Master Control Program (MCP) halts his progress. Within ENCOM, programmer Alan Bradley and his girlfriend, engineer Lora Baines, discover that the MCP has closed off their access to projects. When Alan confronts the senior executive vice president, Ed Dillinger, Dillinger claims that the security measures are an effort to stop outside hacking attempts. However, when Dillinger privately questions the MCP through his computerized desk, he realizes the MCP has expanded into a powerful virtual intelligence and has become power-hungry, illegally appropriating personal, business, and government programs to increase its own capabilities. Dillinger rose to the top of ENCOM by stealing video games Flynn had created, presenting them to the company as his own. The MCP blackmails Dillinger with information about his plagiarizing Flynn's games if he does not comply with its directives.


title: Tron

text: Lora deduces that Flynn is the hacker, and she and Alan go to his arcade to warn him. Flynn reveals that he has been trying to locate evidence proving Dillinger's plagiarism, which launched Dillinger's rise in the company. Together, the three form a plan to break into ENCOM and unlock Alan's "Tron" program, a self-governing security measure designed to protect the system and counter the functions of the MCP. Once inside ENCOM, the three split up and Flynn comes into direct conflict with the MCP, communicating with his terminal. Before Flynn can get the information he needs to reveal Dillinger's acts, the MCP uses an experimental laser to digitize and upload Flynn into the ENCOM mainframe cyberspace, where programs are living entities appearing in the likeness of the human "Users" (programmers) who created them.


title: Tron

text: Flynn learns that the MCP and its second-in-command, Sark, rule and coerce programs to renounce their belief in the Users. The MCP forces programs that resist to play in deadly games and begins putting Flynn in duels. Flynn meets other captured programs, Ram and Tron, between matches. Partnered, the three escape into the mainframe during a light cycle match (an arcade game Flynn wrote the program for and is skilled at), but Flynn and Ram become separated from Tron by an MCP pursuit party. While attempting to help Ram, who was wounded in the pursuit, Flynn learns that he can manipulate portions of the mainframe by accessing his programmer knowledge. Ram recognizes Flynn as a User and encourages him to find Tron and free the system before "derezzing" (dying). Using his new ability, Flynn partially rebuilds a Recognizer vehicle (a construct taken from another one of Flynn's games) and later disguises himself as one of Sark's soldiers.


title: Tron

text: Tron enlists help from Yori, a sympathetic program, and at an I/O tower receives information from Alan necessary to destroy the MCP. Flynn rejoins them, and the three board a hijacked solar sailer to reach the MCP's core. However, Sark's command ship destroys the sailer, capturing Flynn and Yori and presumably killing Tron. Sark leaves the command ship and orders its deresolution, but Flynn keeps it intact by again manipulating the mainframe, while Sark reaches the MCP's core on a shuttle carrying captured programs. While the MCP attempts to absorb captive programs, Tron, who turns out to have survived, confronts Sark and critically injures him, prompting the MCP to give him all its functions. Realizing that his ability to manipulate the mainframe might give Tron an opening, Flynn leaps into the beam of the MCP, distracting it. Seeing the break in the MCP's shield, Tron attacks through the gap and destroys the MCP and Sark, ending the MCP's control over the mainframe and allowing the captured programs to communicate with users again.


title: Tron

text: Flynn reappears in the real world, rematerialized at his terminal. Tron's victory in the mainframe has released all lockouts on computer access, and a nearby printer produces the evidence that Dillinger had plagiarized Flynn's creations. The next morning, Dillinger enters his office to find the MCP deactivated and the proof of his theft publicized, but is nevertheless glad that the MCP is destroyed. Subsequently, Dillinger is terminated while Flynn is promoted to CEO of ENCOM, and is happily greeted by Alan and Lora as their new boss.


title: Tron

text: The inspiration for "Tron" occurred in 1976 when Steven Lisberger, then an animator of drawings with his own studio, looked at a sample reel from a computer firm called MAGI and saw "Pong" for the first time. He was immediately fascinated by video games and wanted to do a film incorporating them. According to Lisberger, "I realized that there were these techniques that would be very suitable for bringing video games and computer visuals to the screen. And that was the moment that the whole concept flashed across my mind". The film's concept of entering a parallel game world was also inspired by the classic tale "Alice in Wonderland".


title: Tron

text: Lisberger had already created an early version of the character 'Tron' for a 30 second long animation which was used to promote both Lisberger Studios and a series of various rock radio stations. This backlit cel animation depicted Tron as a character who glowed yellow; the same shade that Lisberger had originally intended for all the heroic characters developed for the feature-length "Tron". This was later changed to blue for the finished film (see Pre-production below). The prototype Tron was bearded and resembled the Cylon Centurions from the 1978 TV series "Battlestar Galactica". Also, Tron was armed with two "exploding discs", as Lisberger described them on the 2-Disc DVD edition (see Rinzler).


title: Tron

text: Lisberger elaborates: "Everybody was doing backlit animation in the 70s, you know. It was that disco look. And we thought, what if we had this character that was a neon line, and that was our Tron warrior – Tron for electronic. And what happened was, I saw "Pong", and I said, well, that's the arena for him. And at the same time I was interested in the early phases of computer generated animation, which I got into at MIT in Boston, and when I got into that I met a bunch of programmers who were into all that. And they really inspired me, by how much they believed in this new realm."


title: Tron

text: He was frustrated by the clique-like nature of computers and video games and wanted to create a film that would open this world up to everyone. Lisberger and his business partner Donald Kushner moved to the West Coast in 1977 and set up an animation studio to develop "Tron". They borrowed against the anticipated profits of their 90-minute animated television special "Animalympics" to develop storyboards for "Tron" with the notion of making an animated film. But after "Variety" mentioned the project briefly during its early phase, it caught the attention of computer scientist Alan Kay. He contacted Lisberger and convinced him to use him as an adviser on the movie, then persuaded him to use real CGI instead of just hand-animation.


title: Tron

text: Bonnie MacBird wrote the first drafts of Tron with extensive input from Lisberger, basing the original personality of Alan on Alan Kay. He gave her and Lisberger the same tour of Xerox PARC that famously inspired the Apple Macintosh, and their many conversations (and a class she took with Donald Knuth at Stanford) inspired her to include many computer science references. As a result of working together, Kay and MacBird became close and later married. She also created Tron as a character (rather than a visual demo) and Flynn. Originally, MacBird envisioned Flynn more comedically, suggesting the then 30-year-old Robin Williams for the role. Besides many story changes after the script went to Disney, including giving it "a more serious tone with quasi religious overtones", and removing most of the scientific elements, none of her dialogue remains in the final film, and there was a "rather bitter credits dispute."


title: Tron

text: The film was eventually conceived as an animated film bracketed with live-action sequences. The rest involved a combination of computer-generated visuals and back-lit animation. Lisberger planned to finance the movie independently by approaching several computer companies but had little success. However, one company, Information International Inc., was receptive. He met with Richard Taylor, a representative, and they began talking about using live-action photography with back-lit animation in such a way that it could be integrated with computer graphics. At this point, there was a script and the film was entirely storyboarded, with some computer animation tests completed. He had spent approximately $300,000 developing "Tron" and had also secured $4–5 million in private backing before reaching a standstill. Lisberger and Kushner took their storyboards and samples of computer-generated films to Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Columbia Pictures – all of which turned them down.


title: Tron

text: In 1980, they decided to take the idea to Walt Disney Productions, which was interested in producing more daring productions at the time. Tom Wilhite, Disney's vice president for creative development, watched Lisberger's test footage and convinced Ron Miller to give the movie a chance. However, Disney executives were uncertain about giving $10–12 million to a first-time producer and director using techniques which, in most cases, had never been attempted. The studio agreed to finance a test reel which involved a flying disc champion throwing a rough prototype of the discs used in the film. It was a chance to mix live-action footage with back-lit animation and computer-generated visuals. It impressed the executives at Disney and they agreed to back the film. MacBird and Lisberger's script was subsequently re-written and re-storyboarded with the studio's input. At the time, Disney rarely hired outsiders to make films for them, and Kushner found that he and his group were given a chilly reception because they "tackled the nerve center – the animation department. They saw us as the germ from outside. We tried to enlist several Disney animators, but none came. Disney is a closed group." As a result, they hired Wang Film Productions for the animation.


title: Tron

text: Because of the many special effects, Disney decided in 1981 to film "Tron" completely in 65-mm Super Panavision (except for the computer-generated layers, which were shot in VistaVision and both anamorphic 35mm and Super 35 which were used for some scenes in the "real" world and subsequently "blown up" to 65 mm). Three designers were brought in to create the look of the computer world. French comic book artist Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius) was the main set and costume designer for the film. Most of the vehicle designs (including Sark's aircraft carrier, the light cycles, the tank, and the solar sailer) were created by industrial designer Syd Mead. Peter Lloyd, a high-tech commercial artist, designed the environments. Nevertheless, these jobs often overlapped, leaving Giraud working on the solar sailer and Mead designing terrain, sets and the film's logo. The original 'Program' character design was inspired by Lisberger Studios' logo of a glowing bodybuilder hurling two discs.


title: Tron

text: To create the computer animation sequences of "Tron", Disney turned to the four leading computer graphics firms of the day: Information International, Inc. of Culver City, California, who owned the Super Foonly F-1 (the fastest PDP-10 ever made and the only one of its kind); MAGI of Elmsford, New York; Robert Abel and Associates of California; and Digital Effects of New York City. Bill Kovacs worked on the film while working for Robert Abel before going on to found Wavefront Technologies. The work was not a collaboration, resulting in very different styles used by the firms.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" was one of the first films to make extensive use of any form of computer animation, and it is celebrated as a milestone in the industry though only fifteen to twenty minutes of such animation were used, mostly scenes that show digital "terrain" or patterns, or include vehicles such as light-cycles, tanks and ships. Because the technology to combine computer animation and live action did not exist at the time, these sequences were interspersed with the filmed characters. One of the computers used had only 2 MB of memory and no more than 330 MB of storage. This put a limit on detail of background; and at a certain distance, they had a procedure of mixing in black to fade things out, a process called "depth cueing". The film's Computer Effects Supervisor Richard Taylor told them "When in doubt, black it out!", which became their motto. Originally the film was meant to use white backgrounds like in THX 1138 inside the Grid, but it would require such huge amounts of lights that it was decided to use black backgrounds instead.


title: Tron

text: The computers at the time could not do animation, so the frames had to be produced one by one. In some of the more complex sequences, like the Solar Sailer moving through metal canyons, each frame could take up to six hours to produce. There was no way to digitally print them on film, either; rather, a motion picture camera was placed in front of a computer screen to capture each individual frame.


title: Tron

text: Most of the scenes, backgrounds, and visual effects in the film were created using more traditional techniques and a unique process known as "backlit animation". In this process, live-action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white on an entirely black set, placed in an enlarger for blow-ups and transferred to large format Kodalith high-contrast film. These negatives were then used to make Kodalith sheets with a reverse (positive) image. Clear cels were laid over each sheet and all portions of the figure except the areas that were exposed for the later camera passes were manually blacked out. Next the Kodalith sheets and cel overlays were placed over a light box while a VistaVision camera mounted above it made separate passes and different color filters. A typical shot normally required 12 passes, but some sequences, like the interior of the electronic tank, could need as many as 50 passes. About 300 matte paintings were made for the film, each photographed onto a large piece of Ektachrome film before colors were added by gelatin filters in a similar procedure as in the Kodaliths. The mattes, rotoscopic and CGI were then combined and composed together to give them a "technological" appearance. With multiple layers of high-contrast, large format positives and negatives, this process required truckloads of sheet film and a workload even greater than that of a conventional cel-animated feature. The Kodalith was specially produced as large sheets by Kodak for the film and came in numbered boxes so that each batch of the film could be used in order of manufacture for a consistent image. However, this was not understood by the filmmakers and, as a result, glowing outlines and circuit traces occasionally flicker as the film speed varied between batches. After the reason was discovered, this was no longer a problem as the batches were used in order and "zinger" sounds were used during the flickering parts to represent the computer world malfunctioning as Lisberger described it. Lisberger later had these flickers and sounds digitally corrected for the 2011 restored Blu-ray release as they were not included in his original vision of the film. Due to its difficulty and cost, this process of back-lit animation was not repeated for another feature film.


title: Tron

text: Sound design and creation for the film was assigned to Frank Serafine, who was responsible for the sound design on "" in 1979.


title: Tron

text: At one point in the film, a small entity called "Bit" advises Flynn with only the words "yes" and "no" created by a Votrax speech synthesizer.


title: Tron

text: "BYTE" wrote: "Although this film is very much the personal expression of Steven Lisberger's vision, nevertheless [it] has certainly been a group effort". More than 569 people were involved in the post-production work, including 200 inkers and hand-painters, 85 of them from Taiwan's Cuckoo's Nest Studio. Unusually for an English-language production, in the end credits the Taiwanese personnel were listed with their names written in Chinese characters.


title: Tron

text: This film features parts of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the multi-storey ENCOM laser bay was the target area for the SHIVA solid-state multi-beamed laser. Also, the stairway that Alan, Lora, and Flynn use to reach Alan's office is the stairway in Building 451 near the entrance to the main machine room. The cubicle scenes were shot in another room of the lab. At the time, "Tron" was the only film to have scenes filmed inside this lab.


title: Tron

text: The original script called for "good" programs to be colored yellow and "evil" programs (those loyal to Sark and the MCP) to be colored blue. Partway into production, this coloring scheme was changed to blue for good and red for evil, but some scenes were produced using the original coloring scheme: Clu, who drives a tank, has yellow circuit lines, and all of Sark's tank commanders are blue (but appear green in some presentations). Also, the light-cycle sequence shows the heroes driving yellow (Flynn), orange (Tron), and red (Ram) cycles, while Sark's troops drive blue cycles; similarly, Clu's tank is red, while tanks driven by crews loyal to Sark are blue.


title: Tron

text: Because of all the personal information about citizens which exist inside computer networks, such as social security number and driver's license, the idea was that each real world person has a digital counterpart inside the Grid based on information about them, which is why it was decided to use some of the same actors in both worlds.


title: Tron

text: Budgeting the production was difficult by reason of breaking new ground in response to additional challenges, including an impending Directors Guild of America strike and a fixed release date. Disney predicted at least $400 million in domestic sales of merchandise, including an arcade game by Bally Midway and three Mattel Intellivision home video games.


title: Tron

text: The producers also added Easter eggs: during the scene where Tron and Ram escape from the Light Cycle arena into the system, Pac-Man can be seen behind Sark (with the corresponding sounds from the "Pac-Man" arcade game being heard in the background), while a "Hidden Mickey" outline (located at time 01:12:29 on the re-release Blu-ray) can be seen below the solar sailer during the protagonists' journey. The film set also included the arcade games "Space Invaders" (1978), "Asteroids" (1979) and "Pac-Man" (1980).


title: Tron

text: "Tron" was originally meant to be released during the Christmas season of 1982, but when chairman of the Disney board Card Walker found out the release date of Don Bluth's film "The Secret of NIMH" was in early July, he rushed it into a summer release to be able to compete with Bluth, and it ended up competing with films like "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "", "Blade Runner" and "Poltergeist".


title: Tron

text: The soundtrack for "Tron" was written by pioneer electronic musician Wendy Carlos, who is best known for her album "Switched-On Bach" and for the soundtracks to many films, including the Stanley Kubrick-directed films "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining". The music, which was the first collaboration between Carlos and her partner Annemarie Franklin, featured a mix of an analog Moog synthesizer and Crumar's GDS digital synthesizer (complex additive and phase modulation synthesis), along with non-electronic pieces performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (hired at the insistence of Disney, which was concerned that Carlos might not be able to complete her score on time). Two additional musical tracks ("1990's Theme" and "Only Solutions") were provided by the American band Journey after British band Supertramp pulled out of the project. An album featuring dialogue, music and sound effects from the film was also released on LP by Disneyland Records in 1982.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" was released on July 9, 1982, in 1,091 theaters in the United States and Canada grossing USD $4 million on its opening weekend. It went on to gross $33 million in the United States and Canada and $17 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of approximately $50 million, which was Disney's highest-grossing live action film for 5 years.


title: Tron

text: Despite the gross and merchandise sales, it was seen as a financial disappointment, and the studio wrote off some of its $17 million budget.


title: Tron

text: The film was well received by critics. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four out of four stars and described it as "a dazzling movie from Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish and fun". However, near the end of his review, he noted (in a positive tone), "This is an almost wholly technological movie. Although it's populated by actors who are engaging (Bridges, Cindy Morgan) or sinister (Warner), it's not really a movie about human nature. Like "Star Wars" or "The Empire Strikes Back" but much more so, this movie is a machine to dazzle and delight us". Ebert closed his first annual Overlooked Film Festival with a showing of "Tron". Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" also awarded four out of four stars, calling it "a trip, and a terrifically entertaining one at that...It's a dazzler that opens up our minds to our new tools, all in a traditional film narrative." Each gave the film two thumbs up. "Tron" was also featured in Siskel and Ebert's video pick of the week in 1993.


title: Tron

text: InfoWorld's Deborah Wise was impressed, writing that "it's hard to believe the characters acted out the scenes on a darkened soundstage... We see characters throwing illuminated Frisbees, driving 'lightcycles' on a video-game grid, playing a dangerous version of jai alai and zapping numerous fluorescent tanks in arcade-game-type mazes. It's exciting, it's fun, and it's just what video-game fans and anyone with a spirit of adventure will love—despite plot weaknesses."


title: Tron

text: On the other hand, "Variety" disliked the film and said in its review, ""Tron" is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Screenwriter-director Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game geeks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations". In her review for "The New York Times", Janet Maslin criticized the film's visual effects: "They're loud, bright and empty, and they're all this movie has to offer". The "Washington Post"'s Gary Arnold wrote, "Fascinating as they are as discrete sequences, the computer-animated episodes don't build dramatically. They remain a miscellaneous form of abstract spectacle". In his review for "The Globe and Mail", Jay Scott wrote, "It's got momentum and it's got marvels, but it's without heart; it's a visionary technological achievement without vision".


title: Tron

text: Colin Greenland reviewed the home video release of "Tron" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "three plucky young programmers descend into the micro-world to battle the Master Control Program with a sacred frisbee. Loses much of its excitement on the little screen."


title: Tron

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 72% rating based on the reviews of 67 critics, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's consensus states: "Though perhaps not as strong dramatically as it is technologically, TRON is an original and visually stunning piece of science fiction that represents a landmark work in the history of computer animation." Metacritic gave the film a score of 58 based on 13 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Tron

text: In the year it was released, the Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate "Tron" for a special-effects award because, as director Steven Lisberger puts it, "The Academy thought we cheated by using computers". The film did, however, earn Oscar nominations in the categories of Best Costume Design and Best Sound (Michael Minkler, Bob Minkler, Lee Minkler, and James LaRue).


title: Tron

text: In 1997, Ken Perlin of the Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his invention of Perlin noise for "Tron".


title: Tron

text: The film, considered groundbreaking, has inspired several individuals in numerous ways. John Lasseter, head of Pixar and Disney's animation group, described how the film helped him see the potential of computer-generated imagery in the production of animated films, stating "without "Tron", there would be no "Toy Story"."


title: Tron

text: The two members of the French house music group Daft Punk, who scored the , have held a joint, lifelong fascination with the film. Also, in Gorillaz' music video for the song "Feel Good Inc.", Russel, the fictional drummer of the band, can be seen wearing an Encom hat.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" developed into a cult film and was ranked as 13th in a 2010 list of the top 20 cult films published by "The Boston Globe".


title: Tron

text: The film heavily inspired the music video for Danish pop/dance group Infernal's 2006 hit single "From Paris to Berlin". The music video for Australian rock band Regurgitator's 1997 song "Everyday Formula" was also heavily inspired by the film and recreates several scenes.


title: Tron

text: A novelization of "Tron" was released in 1982, written by American science fiction novelist Brian Daley. It included eight pages of color photographs from the movie. In the same year, Disney Senior Staff Publicist Michael Bonifer authored a book entitled "The Art of Tron" which covered aspects of the pre-production and post-production aspects of "Tron". A nonfiction book about the making of the original film, "The Making of Tron: How Tron Changed Visual Effects and Disney Forever", was written by William Kallay and published in 2011.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" made its television debut as part of the Disney Channel's first day of programming, on April 18, 1983, at 7:00PM (ET).


title: Tron

text: "Tron" was originally released on VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, and CED Videodisc in 1983. As with most video releases from the 1980s, the film was cropped to the 4:3 pan and scan format. The film saw multiple re-releases throughout the 1990s, most notably an "Archive Collection" LaserDisc box set, which featured the first release of the film in its original widescreen 2.20:1 format. By 1993, "Tron" had grossed in video rentals.


title: Tron

text: "Tron" saw its first DVD release on December 12, 2000. This bare-bones release utilized the same non-anamorphic video transfer used in the Archive Collection LaserDisc set, and it did not include any of the LD's special features. On January 15, 2002, the film received a 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition release in the forms of a VHS and a special 2-Disc DVD set. This set featured a new THX mastered anamorphic video transfer and included all of the special features from the LD Archive Collection release, plus an all-new 90 minute "Making of Tron" documentary.


title: Tron

text: To tie in with the home video release of "Tron: Legacy", the movie was finally re-released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Special Edition DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray Disc on April 5, 2011, with the subtitle "The Original Classic" to distinguish it from its sequel. "Tron" was also featured in a 5-Disc Blu-ray Combo with the 3D copy of "Tron: Legacy". The film was re-released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on June 27, 2011.


title: Tron

text: Tron: Uprising takes place during the time period between the story lines of the two movies "Tron" (1982) and "" (2010). In the series, young program Beck becomes the leader of a revolution inside the computer world of the Grid, tasked with the mission of freeing his home and friends from the reign of Clu and his henchman, Gen. Tesler. To prepare for the challenge, Beck is trained by Tron – the greatest warrior The Grid has ever known – who mentors Beck as he grows beyond his youthful nature into a courageous and powerful leader. Destined to become the system's new protector, Beck adopts Tron's persona to battle the forces of evil.


title: Tron

text: On January 12, 2005, Disney announced it had hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to write a sequel to "Tron". In 2008, director Joseph Kosinski negotiated to develop and direct "TRON", described as "the next chapter" of the 1982 film and based on a preliminary teaser trailer shown at that year's San Diego Comic-Con, with Lisberger co-producing. Filming began in Vancouver, British Columbia in April 2009. During the 2009 Comic-Con, the title of the sequel was revealed to be changed to "". The second trailer (also with the "Tron: Legacy" logo) was released in 3D with "Alice In Wonderland". A third trailer premiered at Comic-Con 2010 on July 22. At Disney's D23 Expo on September 10–13, 2009, they also debuted teaser trailers for "Tron: Legacy" as well as having a light cycle and other props from the film there. The film was released on December 17, 2010, with Daft Punk composing the score.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon (born October 24, 1966) is an American actor known for his performances in the Western crime drama series "Longmire", the second season of "Fargo", and the second season of "Westworld". In 2022, he played the lead role in the AMC series "Dark Winds". He also features in the 2021 FX on Hulu series "Reservation Dogs," and the Marvel Cinematic Universe series "Hawkeye" (2021) and "Echo" (2023).


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon was born in Denver, Colorado, the son of a Hunkpapa Lakota mother and a father of Irish ancestry. He grew up near Browning, Montana, where his father worked at Glacier National Park for the National Park Service. He would often visit the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where his mother grew up, and often stayed with his maternal grandparents on weekends and for longer visits. His mother lived on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When his father was relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, for work, the family lived in the Joslyn Castle and Dundee neighborhoods. McClarnon has a fraternal twin brother.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon grew up in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Ohio and Montana, and has stated that his childhood was "rough."


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: In 1986, McClarnon graduated from Omaha Central High School. He credits his drama teacher, Peggy Stommes, as a big influence.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon got his start in a local production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the Chanticleer Theater in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He connected with John Jackson, a local Omaha casting director who later became known for his work with director Alexander Payne. McClarnon gained some local work and in the early 1990s, he moved to Los Angeles for his career.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: In the "Into the West" (2005) miniseries for TNT, McClarnon played Running Fox. He starred in the 2009 film "Not Forgotten" and comedy film "Repo Chick". In 2013, he was in the horror movie "Resolution". He had a recurring role as Bodaway Macawi in "Ringer". He also played Mike Parker in the first four episodes of the SundanceTV series "The Red Road".


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: From 2012 to 2017, McClarnon portrayed Mathias, the Chief of Indian Tribal Police of the Cheyenne reservation, in "Longmire", originally an A&E and later a Netflix television series.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon portrayed Hanzee Dent in the second season of the TV series "Fargo", where his performance received critical acclaim. He appeared in the TV series "Timeless" as Native American U.S. Marshal Grant Johnson in the episode "The Murder of Jesse James". McClarnon appeared as Toshaway in AMC Network's "The Son", for which he learned the Comanche language.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon appeared as Akecheta, the leader of the Ghost Nation, in HBO's "Westworld". Although usually credited as a recurring character, McClarnon was credited as a main cast member in "Kiksuya", the eighth episode of the second season, which focuses almost exclusively on his character's backstory. His performance in the episode received critical acclaim, with the critic's consensus on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes stating that McClarnon delivered a "heart-wrenching, formidable performance" that elevates the episode to "one of the best of the entire series".


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: McClarnon's first name is in honor of his maternal great-great-uncle, Frank "Frances" B. Zahn, who was an artist and Lakota elder of Standing Rock Indian Reservation. McClarnon's middle name, "Tokiya-ku", loosely translates to mean: "first one to come." He was given that name by his mother because he was the first delivered in a set of twins.


title: Zahn McClarnon

text: In late 2017, McClarnon fell at his home and suffered a brain injury, requiring hospitalization. The accident caused a brief shutdown of production for "Westworld".


title: Music genre

text: A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from "musical form" and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.


title: Music genre

text: Music can be divided into genres in varying ways, such as popular music and art music, or religious music and secular music. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often subjective and controversial, and some genres may overlap.


title: Music genre

text: In 1965, Douglass M. Green distinguishes between genre and form in his book "Form in Tonal Music". He lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. To further clarify the meaning of "genre", Green writes "Beethoven's Op. 61" and "Mendelssohn's Op. 64 ". He explains that both are identical in genre and are violin concertos that have different form. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, and the "Agnus Dei" from his Mass, K. 317, are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form."


title: Music genre

text: In 1982, Franco Fabbri proposed a definition of musical genre that is now considered to be normative: "musical genre is a set of musical events (real or possible) whose course is governed by a definite set of socially accepted rules", where a musical event be defined as "any type of activity performed around any type of event involving sound".


title: Music genre

text: A music genre or subgenre may be defined by the musical techniques, the cultural context, and the content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres. Timothy Laurie argues that, since the early 1980s, "genre has graduated from being a subset of popular music studies to being an almost ubiquitous framework for constituting and evaluating musical research objects".


title: Music genre

text: The term "genre" is generally defined similarly by many authors and musicologists, while the related term "style" has different interpretations and definitions. Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms "genre" and "style" as the same, saying that "genre" should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language". Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that "genre" and "style" are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres.


title: Music genre

text: A "subgenre" is a subordinate within a genre. In music terms, it is a subcategory of a musical genre that adopts its basic characteristics, but also has its own set of characteristics that clearly distinguish and set it apart within the genre. A subgenre is also often being referred to as a style of the genre. The proliferation of popular music in the 20th century has led to over 1,200 definable subgenres of music.


title: Music genre

text: A musical composition may be situated in the intersection of two or more genres, sharing characteristics of every parent genre and therefore belong to each genre of these at the same time, such subgenres are known as "fusion genres". Examples of fusion genres include jazz fusion, which is a fusion of jazz and rock music, and country rock which is a fusion of country music and rock music.


title: Music genre

text: The genealogy of musical genres expresses, often in the form of a written chart, how new genres have developed under the influence of older ones. New genres of music can arise through the development of new styles of music; in addition to simply creating a new categorization. Although it is conceivable to create a musical style with no relation to existing genres, new styles usually appear under the influence of pre-existing genres.


title: Music genre

text: Musicologists have sometimes classified music according to a trichotomous distinction such as Philip Tagg's "axiomatic triangle consisting of 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' musics". He explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria.


title: Music genre

text: Automatic methods of musical similarity detection, based on data mining and co-occurrence analysis, have been developed to classify music titles for electronic music distribution.


title: Music genre

text: Glenn McDonald, the employee of The Echo Nest, music intelligence and data platform, owned by Spotify, has created a categorical perception spectrum of genres and subgenres based on "an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 5,315 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify" called "Every Noise at Once."


title: Music genre

text: Alternatively, music can be assessed on the three dimensions of "arousal", "valence", and "depth". Arousal reflects physiological processes such as stimulation and relaxation (intense, forceful, abrasive, thrilling vs. gentle, calming, mellow), valence reflects emotion and mood processes (fun, happy, lively, enthusiastic, joyful vs. depressing, sad), and depth reflects cognitive processes (intelligent, sophisticated, inspiring, complex, poetic, deep, emotional, thoughtful vs. party music, danceable). These help explain why many people like similar songs from different traditionally segregated genres.


title: Music genre

text: Starting from the end of 1900s, Vincenzo Caporaletti has proposed a more comprehensive distinction of music genres based on the "formative medium" with which a music is created, that is the creative interface (cognitive milieu) employed by the artist. Following this framework, formative media may belong to two different matrixes: visual or audiotactile with regards to the role played in the creative process by the visual rationality or the bodily sensitivity and embodied cognition. The theory developed by Caporaletti, named Audiotactile Music Theory, categorises music in three different branches: 1) written music, like the so-called classical music, that is created using the visual matrix; 2) oral music (like folk music or ethnic music before the advent of sound recording technologies); 3) Audiotactile music, which are process of production and transmission is pivoted around sound recording technologies (for example jazz, pop, rock, rap and so on). These last two branches are created by means of the above-mentioned audiotactile matrix in which the formative medium is the Audiotactile Principle.


title: Music genre

text: Art music primarily includes classical traditions, including both contemporary and historical classical music forms. Art music exists in many parts of the world. It emphasizes formal styles that invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In Western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation rather than being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings, as popular and traditional music usually are. Historically, most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe, beginning well before the Renaissance and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period.


title: Music genre

text: The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is usually defined by the notated version rather than by a particular performance and is primarily associated with the composer rather than the performer (though composers may leave performers with some opportunity for interpretation or improvisation). This is so particularly in the case of western classical music. Art music may include certain forms of jazz, though some feel that jazz is primarily a form of popular music. The 1960s saw a wave of avant-garde experimentation in free jazz, represented by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry. Additionally, avant-garde rock artists such as Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and The Residents released art music albums.


title: Music genre

text: Popular music is any musical style accessible to the general public and disseminated by the mass media. Musicologist and popular music specialist Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of sociocultural and economical aspects:


title: Music genre

text: Popular music, unlike art music, is (1) conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners, (2) stored and distributed in non-written form, (3) only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and (4) in capitalist societies, subject to the laws of 'free' enterprise ... it should ideally sell as much as possible.


title: Music genre

text: Popular music is found on most commercial and public service radio stations, in most commercial music retailers and department stores, and movie and television soundtracks. It is noted on the " Billboard" charts and, in addition to singer-songwriters and composers, it involves music producers more than other genres do.


title: Music genre

text: The distinction between classical and popular music has sometimes been blurred in marginal areas such as minimalist music and light classics. Background music for films/movies often draws on both traditions. In this respect, music is like fiction, which likewise draws a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction that is not always precise.


title: Music genre

text: Country music, also known as country and western (or simply country) and hillbilly music, is a genre of popular music that originated in the southern United States in the early 1920s


title: Music genre

text: Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music (EDM).


title: Music genre

text: Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul, jazz, and rhythm and blues (R&B).


title: Music genre

text: Hip Hop music, also referred to as "hip hop" or "rap music", is a genre of music that was started in the United States, specifically the South Bronx in the New York City by African-American youth from the inner cities during the 1970s. It can be broadly defined as a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. Hip hop music derives from the hip hop culture itself, including four key elements: emceeing (MCing)/rapping, Disc jockeying (DJing) with turntablism, breakdancing and graffiti art.


title: Music genre

text: Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime.


title: Music genre

text: Pop is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles.


title: Music genre

text: The aggressiveness of the musical and performative style, based on structural simplicity and the vigorous rhythms of rock'n'roll style, reinforced the challenging and provocative character, within the universe of modern music.


title: Music genre

text: Reggae music, originating from the late 1960s Jamaica, is a genre of music that was originally used by Jamaicans to define themselves with their lifestyle and social aspects. The meaning behind reggae songs tend to be about love, faith or a higher power, and freedom. Reggae music is important to Jamaican culture as it has been used as inspiration for many third world liberation movements. Bob Marley, an artist primarily known for reggae music, was honored by Zimbabwe's 1980 Independence celebration due to his music giving inspirations to freedom fighters. The music genre of reggae is known to incorporate stylistic techniques from rhythm and blues, jazz, African, Caribbean, and other genres as well but what makes reggae unique are the vocals and lyrics. The vocals tend to be sung in Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English, and Iyaric dialects. The lyrics of reggae music usually tend to raise political awareness and on cultural perspectives.


title: Music genre

text: Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom.


title: Music genre

text: Heavy metal evolved in from hard rock, psychedelic rock, and blues rock in late 1960s and 1970s with notable acts such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motörhead. The popularity of heavy metal soared in the 1980s with bands such as Iron Maiden, Metallica and Guns 'n' Roses. It has a rougher style and heavier sound than other forms of rock music, with notable subgenres such as thrash metal, death metal and black metal.