title: There's Something About Mary

text: In 1985, 16-year-old Providence, Rhode Island high school student Ted Stroehmann is about to go on a prom date with his dream girl Mary Jensen when he gets his scrotum stuck in his zipper. He is hospitalized after managing to painfully unzip it, which causes him to miss their date. Ted subsequently loses contact with her.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Thirteen years later in 1998, Ted is a sports agent and still in love with Mary. On the advice of his best friend Dom Woganowski, Ted hires private investigator Pat Healy to track her down. Healy discovers that she is an orthopedic surgeon living in Miami with her intellectually disabled brother Warren. After observing her for a few days, Healy also becomes fixated on her. He returns to Providence and lies to Ted about Mary, telling him she is overweight and has four kids by three different men. Healy quits his job and returns to Miami to pursue her. He resorts to lying, manipulation, and stalking to win Mary over.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Healy and Mary spend several weeks dating before her British architect friend Tucker exposes Healy as a fraud. Tucker tells her that Healy is a suspected serial murderer. Healy discovers Tucker actually is an American pizza delivery boy named Norm Phipps who also is infatuated with Mary. Years earlier, Norm intentionally injured himself in order to become her patient and get close to her. He pretends to still be disabled to stay close, and drive away potential suitors.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Meanwhile, Ted finds out that Healy was lying about Mary and drives to Florida to see her. During the drive, Ted picks up a hitchhiker who leaves a dead body in Ted's car. Ted is mistakenly arrested for the murder and bailed out by Dom after the police catch the real killer. Ted finds Mary and they begin dating, leading Healy and Norm to team up to drive Ted away.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Things go well until an anonymous letter reveals that Ted hired Healy to find her, causing Mary to get upset and dump Ted. Enraged, Ted then confronts Healy and Norm, who deny sending the letter, and Ted leaves in frustration. Things get worse when Dom, Mary's ex-boyfriend "Woogie", shows up in her apartment and admits to writing the letter. Mary previously had a restraining order against Dom after he became obsessed with her, which started again when Ted found her despite being married with kids.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Norm and Healy, listening outside, intervene and save Mary from Dom. Ted then arrives along with Mary's other ex-boyfriend, Brett Favre, whom Norm erroneously claimed made an ableist comment about Warren to get rid of him. Ted declares Favre should be with her, as he was the only one not to resort to deception to win over Mary. After reuniting Favre with Mary and leaving the other men defeated, Ted leaves in tears but Mary chases him down outside. She confesses that she loves Ted and wants to be with him, and they kiss.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: "There's Something About Mary" was directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who had previously made "Dumb and Dumber" in 1994 and "Kingpin" in 1996. According to Bobby, the scene where Ted accidentally gets his scrotum stuck in his pants fly was inspired by a real incident, when their sister was listening to some records with some eighth grade students in the basement of their house: "One of the kids went up [to the bathroom] and he zipped himself up. He was in there for a long time. My dad, who was a doctor, actually had to go in and say, 'Hey, kid. You alright?'" Most of the film was shot in Miami, Florida. The Big Pink Restaurant is where Healy meets with Sully and the Miami-Dade Cultural Center was the location for the architecture exhibit Mary and Healy attended together. The hair gel scene was filmed at the Cardozo Hotel, while Churchill's Pub was used as a strip club for a scene with Healy. The makeup effects were the handiwork of makeup effects designer Tony Gardner.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Besides Ben Stiller, actors Owen Wilson and Jon Stewart were considered potential candidates for the role of Ted Stroehmann. Bill Murray was considered for the role of Pat Healy, but the Farrelly brothers thought he was too old for it. Vince Vaughn and Cuba Gooding Jr. were also considered for the role of Pat Healy. Because the Farrelly brothers were fans of the New England Patriots, they originally wanted to cast quarterback Drew Bledsoe as Mary's football-playing boyfriend, but he could not do it due to a mosh incident he had in a club. The Farrelly brothers later offered the role to Steve Young, but he turned it down due to the film's coarse nature. Ultimately, the role was given to Brett Favre. Chris Farley was considered for the role of Mary’s brother Warren, however his health was in a rapid decline due to his drug addictions and he was forced to turn down the role. He died in December 1997 in the middle of the film's production.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Upon its release, "There's Something About Mary" ranked in fourth place behind "Armageddon", "Lethal Weapon 4" and "The Mask of Zorro", collecting $13.7 million during its opening weekend, combined with $17.8 million from its first five days. During Labor Day record, the film reached the number one spot, making $10.9 million and beating "Blade". "There's Something About Mary" was 1998's third-highest-grossing film in North America as well as the fourth highest-grossing film of the year globally. The film made $369million worldwide on a budget of $23million, with $176million coming from the U.S. and Canada. It was released in the United Kingdom on September 25, 1998, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: The film received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 83% based on 84 reviews, and an average rating of 7.06/10, with the consensus: ""There's Something About Mary" proves that unrelentingly, unabashedly puerile humor doesn't necessarily come at the expense of a film's heart." Metacritic gives the film a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 29 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars, stating "What a blessed relief is laughter. It flies in the face of manners, values, political correctness and decorum. It exposes us for what we are, the only animal with a sense of humor."


title: There's Something About Mary

text: Gene Siskel ranked the film number 9 on his 10 Best films of 1998 (the final "best of" list he did before passing away).


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal) she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci is one of the world's best-known gymnasts and is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe. In 2000 she was named one of the Athletes of the 20th Century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. She has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania before its revolution in December that year. She later worked with and married American Olympic gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner, who set up his own school. In 2001 she became a naturalized United States citizen and has dual citizenship, having maintained her Romanian citizenship.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. She was born to Gheorghe (1936–2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother. Her parents separated in the 1970s and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital. She and her brother, Adrian, were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church. In a 2011 interview Nadia's mother said that she enrolled her daughter into gymnastics classes because as a child she was so full of energy and active that she was difficult to manage. After years of top-level athletic competition Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which qualified her to coach gymnastics.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called "Flacăra" ("The Flame"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age 6, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard. Károlyi was looking for gymnasts he could train from a young age. When recess ended, the girls quickly went inside and Károlyi went around the classrooms trying to find them; he eventually spotted Comăneci. (The other girl, Viorica Dumitru, developed in a different direction and became one of Romania's top ballerinas.)


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: By 1968, when she was seven, Comăneci started training with Károlyi. She was one of the first students at the gymnastics school established in Onești by Béla and his wife, Márta. As a resident of the town, Comăneci was able to live at home for many years; most of the other students boarded at the school.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: In 1970 Comăneci began competing as a member of her home town team and, at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals. In 1971 she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title and contributing to the team gold. For the next few years she competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy and Poland. At the age of 11, in 1973, she won the all-around gold, as well as the vault and uneven bars titles, at the Junior Friendship Tournament (Druzhba), an important international meet for junior gymnasts.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci's first major international success came at the age of 13, when she nearly swept the board at the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway. She won the all-around and gold medals in every event but the floor exercise, in which she was placed second. She continued to enjoy success that year, winning the all-around at the ‘Champions All’ competition and coming first in the all-around, vault, beam and bars at the Romanian National Championships. In the pre-Olympic test event in Montreal Comăneci won the all-around and the balance beam golds as well as silvers in the vault, floor and bars. Accomplished Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim won the golds in those events and was one of Comăneci's greatest rivals for the next five years.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: In March 1976, Comăneci competed in the inaugural edition of the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. She received rare scores of 10, which signified a perfect routine without any deductions, for her vault in the preliminary stage and for her floor exercise routine in the final of the all-around competition, which she won. During this competition, Comăneci met American gymnast Bart Conner for the first time. While he remembered this meeting, Comăneci noted in her memoirs that she had to be reminded of it later in life. She was 14 and Conner was celebrating his 18th birthday. They both won a silver cup and were photographed together. A few months later, they participated in the 1976 Summer Olympics that Comăneci dominated, while Conner was a marginal figure. Conner later said, "Nobody knew me, and [Comăneci] certainly didn't pay attention to me."


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: On July 18, 1976, Comăneci made history at the Montreal Olympics. During the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars. Omega SA, the official Olympics scoreboard manufacturer, had been led to believe that competitors could not receive a perfect ten, and had not programmed the scoreboard to display this score. Comăneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as "1.00," the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had received a 10.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: During the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comăneci earned six additional "10s". She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. She also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around. Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect ten, in her case for her performance on the vault. Comăneci took over the media spotlight from gymnast Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci's achievements are pictured in the entrance area of Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, where she is shown presenting her perfect beam exercise.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record as the youngest ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion at age 14. The sport has since raised its age-eligibility requirements so that gymnasts must be at least 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics in order to compete. When Comăneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had only to be 14 by the first day of the competition. Unless the age of eligibility is lowered, Comăneci's record cannot be broken.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: She was ranked as the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1976 and the Associated Press's 1976 "Female Athlete of the Year". Back home in Romania, Comăneci was awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal for her success, and she was named a Hero of Socialist Labor. She was the youngest Romanian to receive such recognition during the administration of Nicolae Ceaușescu.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: "Nadia's Theme" refers to an instrumental piece that became linked to Comăneci shortly after the 1976 Olympics. It was part of the musical score of the 1971 film "Bless the Beasts and Children" and originally titled "Cotton's Dream". It was also used as the title theme music for the American soap opera "The Young and the Restless".


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Robert Riger used it in association with slow-motion montages of Comăneci on the television program "ABC's Wide World Of Sports". The song became a top-10 single in the fall of 1976, and composers Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin Jr. renamed it as "Nadia's Theme" in Comăneci's honor. Comăneci never performed to "Nadia's Theme", however. Her floor exercise music was a medley of the songs "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" and "Jump in the Line," arranged for piano.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci successfully defended her European all-around title at the championship competition in 1977. When questions were raised at the competition about the scoring, Ceaușescu ordered the Romanian gymnasts to return home. The team followed orders amid controversy and walked out of the competition during the event finals.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Following the 1977 Europeans, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation removed Comăneci from her longtime coaches, the Károlyis, and sent her to Bucharest on August 23 to train at the sports complex. She did not find this change positive and was struggling with bodily changes as she grew older. Her gymnastics skills suffered, and she was unhappy to the point of losing the desire to live. After surviving a suicide attempt, Comăneci competed in the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg "seven inches taller and a stone and a half [21 pounds] heavier" than she was in the 1976 Olympics. A fall from the uneven bars resulted in a fourth-place finish in the all-around behind Soviets Elena Mukhina, Nellie Kim, and Natalia Shaposhnikova. Comăneci did win the world title on beam, and a silver on vault.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: After the 1978 "Worlds", Comăneci was permitted to return to Deva and the Károlyis' school. In 1979, Comăneci won her third consecutive European all-around title, becoming the first gymnast, male or female, to achieve this feat. At the World Championships in Fort Worth that December, Comăneci led the field after the compulsory competition. She was hospitalized before the optional portion of the team competition for blood poisoning, which had resulted from a cut in her wrist from her metal grip buckle. Against doctors' orders, she left the hospital and competed on the beam, where she scored a 9.95. Her performance helped give the Romanians their first team gold medal. After her performance, Comăneci spent several days recovering in All Saints Hospital. She had to undergo a minor surgical procedure for the infected hand, which had developed an abscess.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci was chosen to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would boycott the Olympics (several other countries also participated in the boycott, though their reasons varied). According to Comăneci, the Romanian government "touted the 1980 Olympic games as the first all-Communist Games." However, she also noted in her memoir, "in Moscow, we walked into the mouth of a lion's den; it was the Russians' home turf." She won two gold medals, one for the balance beam and one for the floor exercise (in which she tied with Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim, against whom she had also competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics and other events). She also won two silver medals, one for the team all-around and one for individual all-around. Controversies arose concerning the scoring in the all-around and floor exercise competitions. As of the 2020 Summer Games, she is the only gymnast to defend her Olympic gold medal in the balance beam apparatus.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Her coach, Bela Károlyi, protested that she was scored unfairly. His protests were captured on television. According to Comăneci's memoir, the Romanian government was upset about Károlyi's public behavior, feeling that he had humiliated them. Life became very difficult for Károlyi from that point on.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: In 1981, the Gymnastics Federation contacted Comăneci and informed her that she would be part of an official tour of the United States named "Nadia '81" and her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi would lead the group. During this tour, Comăneci's team shared a bus trip with American gymnasts; it was the third time she had encountered Bart Conner. They had earlier met in 1976. She later remembered thinking, "Conner was cute. He bounced around the bus talking to everyone—he was incredibly friendly and fun."


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi defected on the last day of the tour, along with the Romanian team choreographer Géza Pozsár. Prior to defecting, Károlyi hinted a few times to Comăneci that he might attempt to do so and indirectly asked if she wanted to join him. At that time, she had no interest in defecting, and said she wanted to go home to Romania. After the defection of the Károlyis, life changed drastically for Comăneci in Romania, as she could not have predicted. Officials feared that she would also defect. Feeling she was a national asset, they strictly monitored her actions, refusing to allow her to travel outside the country.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: The government did allow Comăneci to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as part of the Romanian delegation. Although a number of Communist nations boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in a tit-for-tat against the U.S.-led boycott of the Olympics in Moscow four years before, Romania chose to participate. Comăneci later wrote in her memoir that many believed Romania went to the Olympics because an agreement had been made with the United States not to accept defectors. But Comăneci did not participate in the Games as a member of the Romanian team; she served as an observer. She was able to see Károlyi's new protégé, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton, who dominated the Olympics. The Romanian delegation did not allow her to talk with Károlyi and closely watched her the entire time.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: The Romanian government continued to restrict Comăneci from leaving Romania, aside from a few select trips to Moscow and Cuba. She had started thinking about retiring a few years earlier, but her official retirement ceremony took place in Bucharest in 1984. It was attended by the chairman of the International Olympic Committee.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Life took on a new bleakness. I was cut off from making the small amount of extra money that had really made a difference in my family's life. It was also insulting that a normal person in Romania had the chance to travel, whereas I could not…. when my gymnastics career was over, there was no longer any need to keep me happy. I was to do as I was instructed, just as I'd done my entire life…. If Bela hadn't defected, I would still have been watched, but his defection brought a spotlight on my life, and it was blinding. I started to feel like a prisoner.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: On the night of November 27, 1989, a few weeks before the Romanian Revolution, Comăneci defected with a group of other Romanians, crossing the Hungary–Romania border around Cenad. They were guided by Constantin Panait, a Romanian who later became an American citizen after defecting. Their journey was mostly on foot and at night. They traveled through Hungary and Austria and finally were able to take a plane to the United States.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci moved to Oklahoma in 1991 to help her friend Bart Conner, another Olympic gold medalist, with his gymnastics school. She lived with the family of Paul Ziert and eventually hired him as her manager. Comăneci and Conner initially were just friends. They were together for four years before they became engaged.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: For every year since 1994, the Nadia Comăneci International Invitational has welcomed gymnasts ranging from USAG level 4 to level 10. The competition has also hosted international elite competition in the mid-2010s, with Rebeca Andrade being a notable attendee in 2013 among others.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: She returned to Romania for their 1996 wedding, which was held in Bucharest. This was after the fall of the Communist regime and the establishment of a capitalist Romania; the government welcomed her as a national hero. The wedding was televised live throughout Romania, and the couple's reception was held in the former presidential palace.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: On May 18, 1997, Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner guest-starred on the Season 3 finale of "Touched by an Angel" where they performed a brief floor exercise within a montage scene.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci became a naturalized US citizen in 2001, while retaining her Romanian citizenship. In 2006, the couple's son Dylan was born.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: She was the featured speaker at the 50th annual Independence Day Naturalization Ceremony on July 4, 2012, at Monticello, the first athlete invited to speak in the history of the ceremony. In October 2017, an area in the Olympic Park in Montreal was renamed "Place Nadia Comaneci" in her honor.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci is a well-known figure in the world of gymnastics; she serves as the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, the honorary president of the Romanian Olympic Committee, the sports ambassador of Romania, and as a member of the International Gymnastics Federation Foundation. She and Conner own the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy, the Perfect 10 Production Company, and several sports equipment shops, and are the editors of "International Gymnast Magazine".


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: She is also still involved with the Olympic Games. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, one of her perfect-10 Montreal uneven bars routines was featured in a commercial for Adidas. In addition, both Comăneci and her husband Bart Conner provided television commentary for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. A few years later, on July 21, 2012, Comăneci, along with former basketball star John Amaechi, carried the Olympic torch to the roof of the O2 Arena as part of the torch relay for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Comăneci appeared in a TIDE advertisement called "The Evolution of Power" with Simone Biles and three-time Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes. She also offered daily analysis of the 2016 games (along with other Olympic champions such as Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Conner), for the late-night show "É Campeão," broadcast on Brazil's SporTV.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: In addition, Comăneci is highly involved in fundraising for a number of charities. She personally funded the construction and operation of the Nadia Comăneci Children's Clinic in Bucharest that provides low-cost and free medical and social support to Romanian children. In 2003, the Romanian government appointed her as an honorary consul general of Romania to the United States to deal with bilateral relations between the two nations. In addition, both Comăneci and Conner are involved with the Special Olympics.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: To raise money for charity, Comăneci participated in Donald Trump's reality show, . Comăneci was a member of "The Empresario" team (all women), which lost to "The Hydra" team (all men) in the second episode. Trump responded to this loss by firing Comăneci, thwarting her plan for raising money. Comăneci later commented on her participation in the show, saying she "had great fun. I only did it because it was all for charity."


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci was known for her clean technique, innovative and difficult original skills, and her stoic, cool demeanor in competition. On the balance beam, she was the first gymnast to successfully perform an aerial cartwheel-back handspring series. She is also credited as being the first gymnast to perform a double-twist dismount. Her skills on the floor exercise included a tucked double back salto and a double twist.


title: Nadia Comăneci

text: Comăneci has two eponymous uneven bars skills listed in the Code of Points, the Comăneci salto and the Comăneci dismount.


title: Moirai

text: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai (, also spelled Moirae or Mœræ; , "lots, destinies, apportioners"), often known in English as the Fates (), were the personifications of fate; their Roman equivalent was the Parcae (euphemistically the "sparing ones"), and there are other equivalents in cultures that descend from the Proto-Indo-European culture. Their number became fixed at three: Clotho ("spinner"), Lachesis ("allotter") and Atropos ("the unturnable", a metaphor for death).


title: Moirai

text: However, according to the often cited Latin verse "Clotho colum retinet, Lachesis net, et Atropos occat", their roles and functions were also seen differently:


title: Moirai

text: Clotho, the youngest of the sisters, presided over the moment in which we are born, and held a distaff in her hand; Lachesis spun out all the events and actions of our life; and Atropos, the eldest of the three, cut the thread of human life with a pair of scissors.


title: Moirai

text: The role of the Moirai was to ensure that every being, mortal and divine, lived out their destiny as it was assigned to them by the laws of the universe. For mortals, this destiny spanned their entire lives, and was represented as a thread spun from a spindle. Generally, they were considered to be above even the gods in their role as enforcers of fate, although in some representations Zeus, the chief of the gods, is able to command them.


title: Moirai

text: In the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa are related to the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. In the "Theogony" of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods. Later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Plato's "Republic" the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke (necessity).


title: Moirai

text: The concept of a universal principle of natural order and balance has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures such as the Vedic Ṛta, the Avestan Asha (Arta) and the Egyptian Maat.


title: Moirai

text: The ancient Greek word moira () means a portion or lot of the whole, and is related to "meros", "part, lot" and "moros", "fate, doom", Latin "meritum", "reward", English "merit", derived from the PIE root "*(s)mer", "to allot, assign".


title: Moirai

text: "Moira" may mean portion or share in the distribution of booty (, , "equal booty"), portion in life, lot, destiny, (, , "the immortals fixed the destiny"), death (, , "destiny of death"), portion of the distributed land. The word is also used for something which is mete and right (, , "according to fate, in order, rightly").


title: Moirai

text: In the "Republic" of Plato, the three Moirai sing in unison with the music of the Seirenes. Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be. Pindar in his "Hymn to the Fates", holds them in high honour. He calls them to send their sisters, the Hours Eunomia ("lawfulness"), Dike ("right"), and Eirene ("peace"), to stop the internal civil strife.


title: Moirai

text: The figure who came to be known as Atropos had her origins in the pre-Greek Mycenaean religion as a daemon or spirit called Aisa. Much of the Mycenaean religion survived into classical Greece, but it is not known to what extent classical religious belief is Mycenaean, nor how much is a product of the Greek Dark Ages or later. Moses I. Finley detected only few authentic Mycenaean beliefs in the 8th-century Homeric world. One such belief was the attribution of unexpected events to spirits or daemons, who appeared in special occurrences. Martin P. Nilsson associated these daemons to a hypothetical Pre-Greek religion. Another important Mycenaean philosophy stressed the subjugation of all events or actions to destiny and the acceptance of the inevitability of the natural order of things; today this is known as fatalism.


title: Moirai

text: The concept of "moira" referred to one's fair allotment or portion, originally one's portion of loot from battle, which was distributed according to strict traditions. The idea eventually began to be applied to one's fair allotment in life. Obtaining more than one's fair portion (ὑπὲρ μοῖραν "over the portion") of loot, or of life in general was possible, but would result in severe consequences because this was considered a violation in the natural order of things. For example, in a passage in the "Iliad", Apollo tries three times to stop Patroclus from sacking Troy, warning him that it would be "over his portion".


title: Moirai

text: In particular, the most important parts of the natural order were birth and death. Eventually, the concept of one's destined portion in life began to be personified as a spirit or daemon, referred to as "Aisa" or "Moira", who would determine the appropriate time for one's death at the moment of their birth. In this sense, "Moira" is a power that governs even the gods. In another passage of the "Iliad", Zeus knows that his cherished son Sarpedon will be killed by Patroclus, but Zeus cannot prevent his fate. In a later scene known as the "kerostasia", Zeus appears as the arbiter of destiny, using a pair of scales to weigh Hector's destiny and determining that he is fated to die.


title: Moirai

text: The elevation of Moira to a goddess who determines the course of events appears in the newer parts of the epos. In the "Odyssey", she is accompanied by the "Spinners", the personifications of Fate, who do not yet have separate names.


title: Moirai

text: In his writing, the poet Hesiod introduces a moral purpose to the Moirai which is absent in the Homeric poems. In his conception, the Moirai punish not only men but also gods for their sins.


title: Moirai

text: The three Moirai are daughters of the primeval goddess Nyx ("night"), and sisters of Keres ("the black fates"), Thanatos ("death") and Nemesis ("retribution"). Later they are daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis ("the Institutor"), who was the embodiment of divine order and law. and sisters of Eunomia ("lawfulness, order"), Dike ("justice"), and Eirene ("peace").


title: Moirai

text: In the cosmogony of Alcman (7th century BC), first came Thetis ("disposer, creation"), and then simultaneously Poros ("path") and Tekmor ("end post, ordinance"). Poros is related with the beginning of all things, and Tekmor is related with the end of all things.


title: Moirai

text: Later in the Orphic cosmogony, first came Thesis, whose ineffable nature is unexpressed. Ananke ("necessity") is the primeval goddess of inevitability who is entwined with the time-god Chronos, at the very beginning of time. They represented the cosmic forces of Fate and Time, and they were called sometimes to control the fates of the gods. The three Moirai are daughters of Ananke.


title: Moirai

text: The Moirai were supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to determine the course of its life, as in the story of Meleager and the firebrand taken from the hearth and preserved by his mother to extend his life. Bruce Karl Braswell from readings in the lexicon of Hesychius, associates the appearance of the Moirai at the family "hearth" on the "seventh" day with the ancient Greek custom of waiting seven days after birth to decide whether to accept the infant into the Gens and to give it a name, cemented with a ritual at the hearth. At Sparta the temple to the Moirai stood near the communal hearth of the "polis", as Pausanias observed.


title: Moirai

text: As goddesses of birth who even prophesied the fate of the newly born, Eileithyia, the ancient Minoan goddess of childbirth and divine midwifery, was their companion. Pausanias mentions an ancient role of Eileythia as "the clever spinner", relating her with destiny too. Their appearance indicate the Greek desire for health which was connected with the Greek cult of the body that was essentially a religious activity.


title: Moirai

text: The Erinyes, a group of chthonic goddesses of vengeance, served as tools of the Moirai, inflicting punishment for evil deeds, particularly upon those who sought to avoid their rightful destiny. At times, the Moirai were conflated with the Erinyes, as well as the death-goddesses the Keres.


title: Moirai

text: In earlier times they were represented as only a few—perhaps only one—individual goddess. Homer's "Iliad" (xxiv.209) speaks generally of the Moira, who spins the thread of life for men at their birth; she is "Moira Krataia" "powerful Moira" (xvi.334) or there are several Moirai (xxiv.49). In the "Odyssey" (vii.197) there is a reference to the "Klôthes", or Spinners. At Delphi, only the Fates of Birth and Death were revered. In Athens, Aphrodite, who had an earlier, pre-Olympic existence, was called "Aphrodite Urania" the "eldest of the Fates" according to Pausanias (x.24.4).


title: Moirai

text: Some Greek mythographers went so far as to claim that the Moirai were the daughters of Zeus—paired with Themis ("fundament"), as Hesiod had it in one passage. In the older myths they are daughters of primeval beings like Nyx ("night") in Theogony, or Ananke in Orphic cosmogony. Whether or not providing a father even for the Moirai was a symptom of how far Greek mythographers were willing to go, in order to modify the old myths to suit the patrilineal Olympic order, the claim of a paternity was certainly not acceptable to Aeschylus, Herodotus, or Plato.


title: Moirai

text: Despite their forbidding reputation, the Moirai could be placated as goddesses. Brides in Athens offered them locks of hair, and women swore by them. They may have originated as birth goddesses and only later acquired their reputation as the agents of destiny.


title: Moirai

text: According to the mythographer Apollodorus, in the Gigantomachy, the war between the Giants and Olympians, the Moirai killed the Giants Agrios and Thoon with their bronze clubs.


title: Moirai

text: In the Homeric poems Moira is represented as a singular entity whose actions are not governed by the gods. Only Zeus, the chief of the gods, is close to her, and in some cases acts in a similar role. Using a weighing scale Zeus weighs Hector's "lot of death" against that of Achilleus. Hector's lot weighs down, and he dies according to Fate. Zeus appears as the guider of destiny, who gives everyone the right portion. A similar scenario is depicted on a Mycenaean vase, where Zeus holds a scale in front of two warriors, indicating that he is measuring their destiny before the battle. The belief was that if they die in battle, this was to be accepted as their correct destiny.


title: Moirai

text: In "Theogony", the three "Moirai" are daughters of the primeval goddess, Nyx ("Night"), representing a power acting over the gods. Later they are daughters of Zeus who gives them the greatest honour, and Themis, the ancient goddess of law and divine order.


title: Moirai

text: Even the gods feared the Moirai or Fates, which according to Herodotus a god could not escape. The Pythian priestess at Delphi once admitted that Zeus was also subject to their power, though no recorded classical writing clarifies to what exact extent the lives of immortals were affected by the whims of the Fates. It is to be expected that the relationship of Zeus and the Moirai was not immutable over the centuries. In either case in antiquity we can see a feeling towards a notion of an order to which even the gods have to conform. Simonides names this power Ananke (necessity) (the mother of the "Moirai" in Orphic cosmogony) and says that even the gods don't fight against it. Aeschylus combines Fate and necessity in a scheme, and claims that even Zeus cannot alter which is ordained.


title: Moirai

text: A supposed epithet "Zeus Moiragetes", meaning "Zeus Leader of the Moirai" was inferred by Pausanias from an inscription he saw in the 2nd century AD at Olympia: "As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription "to the Bringer of Fate." This is plainly a surname of Zeus, who knows the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them, and all that is not destined for them." At the Temple of Zeus at Megara, Pausanias inferred from the relief sculptures he saw "Above the head of Zeus are the Horai and Moirai, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed by Moira." Pausanias' inferred assertion is unsupported in cult practice, though he noted a sanctuary of the Moirai there at Olympia (5.15.4), and also at Corinth (2.4.7) and Sparta (3.11.8), and adjoining the sanctuary of Themis outside a city gate of Thebes.


title: Moirai

text: The fates had at least three known temples, in Ancient Corinth, Sparta and Thebes. At least the temple of Corinth contained statues of them:


title: Moirai

text: Aside from actual temples, there was also altars to the Moirai. Among them was notably the altar in Olympia near the altar of Zeus Moiragetes, a connection to Zeus which was also repeated in the images of the Moirai in the temple of Despoine in Arkadia as well as in Delphi, where they were depicted with Zeus Moiragetes (Guide of Fate) as well as with Apollon Moiragetes (Guide of Fate). On Korkyra, the shrine of Apollo, which according to legend was founded by Medea was also a place where offerings were made to the Moirai and the nymphs. The worship of the Moirai are described by Pausanias for their altar near Sicyon:


title: Moirai

text: In Roman mythology the three Moirai are the Parcae or Fata, plural of "fatum" meaning prophetic declaration, oracle, or destiny. The English words fate (native "wyrd") and fairy ("magic, enchantment"), are both derived from "fata", "fatum".


title: Moirai

text: In Norse mythology the Norns are a trio of female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men, twining the thread of life. They set up the laws and decided on the lives of the children of men. Their names were Urðr, related with Old English "wyrd", modern "weird" ("fate, destiny, luck"), Verðandi, and Skuld, and it has often been inferred that they ruled over the past, present and future respectively, based on the sequence and partly the etymology of the names, of which the first two (literally 'Fate' and 'Becoming') are derived from the past and present stems of the verb "verða", "to be", respectively, and the name of the third one means "debt" or "guilt", originally "that which must happen". In younger legendary sagas, the Norns appear to have been synonymous with witches ("völvas"), and they arrive at the birth of the hero to shape his destiny.


title: Moirai

text: Many other cultures included trios of goddesses associated with fate or destiny. The Celtic Matres and Matrones, female deities almost always depicted in groups of three, have been proposed as connected to the Norns. In Lithuanian and other Baltic mythologies, the goddess Laima is the personification of destiny, and her most important duty was to prophecy how the life of a newborn will take place. With her sisters Kārta and Dēkla, she is part of a trinity of fate deities similar to the Moirai. In Hurrian mythology the three goddesses of fate, the "Hutena", was believed to dispense good and evil, life and death to humans.


title: Moirai

text: In Dante's "Divine Comedy", the Fates are mentioned in both "Inferno" (XXXIII.126) and "Purgatorio" (XXI.25-27, XXV.79-81) by their Greek names and their traditional role in measuring out and determining the length of human life is assumed by the narrator.


title: Moirai

text: In Shakespeare's "Macbeth", the Weird sisters (or Three Witches), are prophetesses, who are deeply entrenched in both worlds of reality and supernatural. Their creation was influenced by British folklore, witchcraft, and the legends of the Norns and the Moirai. Hecate, the chthonic Greek goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and three-way crossroads, appears as the master of the "Three witches". In ancient Greek religion, Hecate as goddess of childbirth is identified with Artemis, who was the leader (ηγεμόνη: "hegemone" ) of the nymphs.


title: Moirai

text: The notion of a universal principle of natural order has been compared to similar ideas in other cultures, such as aša (Asha) in Avestan religion, Rta in Vedic religion, and Maat in ancient Egyptian religion.


title: Moirai

text: In the Avestan religion and Zoroastrianism, aša, is commonly summarized in accord with its contextual implications of "truth", "right(eousness)", "order". Aša and its Vedic equivalent, Rta, are both derived from a PIE root meaning "properly joined, right, true". The word is the proper name of the divinity Asha, the personification of "Truth" and "Righteousness". "Aša" corresponds to an objective, material reality which embraces all of existence. This cosmic force is imbued also with morality, as verbal Truth, and Righteousness, action conforming with the moral order. In the literature of the Mandaeans, an angelic being (Abatur) has the responsibility of weighing the souls of the deceased to determine their worthiness, using a set of scales.


title: Moirai

text: In the Vedic religion, Rta is an ontological principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe. The term is now interpreted abstractly as "cosmic order", or simply as "truth", although it was never abstract at the time. It seems that this idea originally arose in the Indo-Aryan period, from a consideration (so denoted to indicate the original meaning of communing with the star beings) of the qualities of nature which either remain constant or which occur on a regular basis.


title: Moirai

text: The individuals fulfill their true natures when they follow the path set for them by the ordinances of "Rta", acting according to the Dharma, which is related to social and moral spheres. The god of the waters Varuna was probably originally conceived as the personalized aspect of the otherwise impersonal "Ṛta". The gods are never portrayed as having command over "Ṛta", but instead they remain subject to it like all created beings.


title: Moirai

text: In Egyptian religion, maat was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. The word is the proper name of the divinity Maat, who was the goddess of harmony, justice, and truth represented as a young woman. It was considered that she set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation. Maat was the norm and basic values that formed the backdrop for the application of justice that had to be carried out in the spirit of truth and fairness.


title: Moirai

text: In Egyptian mythology, Maat dealt with the weighing of souls that took place in the underworld. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) of the departed would reach the paradise of afterlife successfully. In the famous scene of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead", Anubis, using a scale, weighs the sins of a man's heart against the feather of truth, which represents maat. If man's heart weighs down, then he is devoured by a monster.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles is an American brand of stackable potato-based crisps. Originally sold by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1968 and marketed as "Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips", the brand was sold in 2012 to the current owner, Kellogg's.


title: Pringles

text: As of 2011, Pringles were sold in more than 140 countries. In 2012, Pringles were the fourth most popular snack brand after Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos (all manufactured by Frito-Lay), with 2.2% market share globally.


title: Pringles

text: In 1956, Procter & Gamble assigned a task to chemist Fredric J. Baur (1918-2008): to develop a new kind of potato chips to address consumer complaints about broken, greasy, and stale chips, as well as air in the bags. Baur spent 2 years developing saddle-shaped chips from fried dough, and selected a tubular can as the chips' container. The saddle-shape of Pringles chips is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. However, Baur could not figure out how to make the chips palatable, and was pulled off the task to work on another brand.


title: Pringles

text: In the mid-1960s another P&G researcher, Alexander Liepa of Montgomery, Ohio, restarted Baur's work and succeeded in improving the taste. Although Baur designed the shape of the Pringles chip, Liepa's name is on the patent. Gene Wolfe, a mechanical engineer and author known for science fiction and fantasy novels, helped develop the machine that cooks them.


title: Pringles

text: P&G began selling Pringles in Indiana in 1968. By 1975, they were available across most of the US, and by 1991 were distributed internationally.


title: Pringles

text: There are several theories behind the origin of the product's name. One theory refers to Mark Pringle, who filed a US Patent 2,286,644 titled "Method and Apparatus for Processing Potatoes" on March 5, 1937. Pringle's work was cited by P&G in filing their own patent for improving the taste of dehydrated processed potatoes. Another theory suggests that two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Finneytown (north of Cincinnati, Ohio), and the name paired well with "potato chips". Another theory says that P&G chose the Pringles name from a Cincinnati telephone book. Another source says that the name Pringles was "chosen out of a hat" to promote a family name appeal.


title: Pringles

text: The product was originally known as Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips, but other snack manufacturers objected, saying Pringles failed to meet the definition of a potato "chip" since they were made from a potato-based dough rather than being sliced from potatoes like "real" potato chips. The US Food and Drug Administration weighed in on the matter, and in 1975 they ruled Pringles could only use the word "chip" in their product name within the phrase: "potato chips made from dried potatoes". Faced with such a lengthy and unpalatable appellation, Pringles eventually renamed their product potato "crisps", instead of chips.


title: Pringles

text: In July 2008, in the London High Court, P&G lawyers successfully argued that Pringles were not crisps even though labelled "Potato Crisps" on the container (in Britain what are known as "chips" in the US are known as "crisps") as the potato content was only 42% and their shape, P&G stated, "is not found in nature". This ruling, against a United Kingdom value added tax (VAT) and Duties Tribunal decision to the contrary, exempted Pringles from the then 17.5% VAT for potato crisps and potato-derived snacks. In May 2009, the Court of Appeal reversed the earlier decision. A spokesman for P&G stated it had been paying the VAT proactively and owed no back taxes.


title: Pringles

text: In April 2011, P&G agreed to the US$2.35 billion sale of the brand to Diamond Foods of California, a deal which would have more than tripled the size of Diamond's snack business. However, the deal fell through in February 2012 after a year-long delay due to issues over Diamond's accounts. On May 31, 2012, Kellogg's officially acquired Pringles for $2.695 billion as part of a plan to grow its international snacks business. The acquisition of Pringles makes Kellogg the second-largest snack company in the world.


title: Pringles

text: As of 2015, there are 5 Pringles factories worldwide: in Jackson, Tennessee; Mechelen, Belgium; Johor, Malaysia; Kutno, Poland; and Fujian, China.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles have about 42% potato content, the remainder being wheat starch and flours (potato, corn, and rice) combined with vegetable oils, an emulsifier, salt, and seasoning. Other ingredients can include sweeteners such as maltodextrin and dextrose, monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, sodium caseinate, modified food starch, monoglyceride and diglyceride, autolyzed yeast extract, natural and artificial flavorings, malted barley flour, wheat bran, dried black beans, sour cream, cheddar cheese, etc.; Pringles varieties vary in their ingredients.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles also produces several "tortilla" and "multi-grain" varieties which have some of their base starch ingredients replaced with corn flour, rice, wheat bran, black beans, and barley flour. At one point in the early 1990s, "Corn Pringles" were available; the canister was black and had cartoon images of corn. The chips were made of corn and resembled a corn chip in flavor and texture. Rice Pringles were also available in the UK although they have since been discontinued.


title: Pringles

text: One serving of about 16 Pringles (Original flavor) contains 150 calories, 2.5 g of saturated fat, 150 mg of sodium, 110 mg of potassium, and 1 g of protein.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles are available in several flavors. Until the 1980s, only the original flavor was available in the US. Standard flavors in the US include original, salt and vinegar, sour cream and onion, cheddar cheese, ranch dressing, barbecue, hot and spicy, and loaded baked potato. Some flavors are distributed only to limited market areas; for example, prawn cocktail, wasabi, and curry flavors have been available in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.


title: Pringles

text: Occasionally, P&G has produced limited edition runs. Seasonal flavors, past and present, include ketchup, zesty lime and chili, chili cheese dog, "pizzalicious", paprika, Texas BBQ sauce, buffalo wing, and cajun. A "low-fat" variety was also sold. Examples of limited edition flavors include jalapeño, honey mustard, cheesy fries, onion blossom, mozzarella cheese stick, screamin' dill pickle, and Mexican-layered dip. In 2012, they brought out seasonal flavors of "peppermint white chocolate", cinnamon sugar, and "pumpkin pie spice". Other examples of limited runs only in certain parts of the world include mozzarella stick with marinara in North America and jalapeño in Latin America, also soft-shelled crab, grilled shrimp, seaweed, "blueberry and hazelnut", and "lemon and sesame" in Asia in early 2010s. The grilled shrimp chips are pink in color, while seaweed is colored green.


title: Pringles

text: Two limited-market flavors, cheeseburger and "Taco Night", were recalled in March 2010 as a safety precaution after "Salmonella" was found in a Basic Food Flavors plant which produced the flavor-enhancing hydrolyzed vegetable protein used in those flavors.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles is advertised in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland with the slogan "Once you pop, the fun don't stop" along with the original slogan "Once you pop, you can't stop!"


title: Pringles

text: The original Pringles television commercials were written, produced and directed by Thomas Scott Cadden (composer of the original Mr. Clean jingle) in 1968, while working at Tatham-Laird and Kudner Advertising Agency in Chicago.


title: Pringles

text: Throughout its history, Pringles used its print and television advertising campaigns to compare their products to conventional potato chips. In its early years, they were marketed as "Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips" and had a small silver pop-top to open the can. Unlike the current advertising, they only mentioned that, with their pop-top cans (which have been replaced with foil tops since the late 1980s), their chips remain fresh and unbroken, the can holds as many chips as a typical large bag, and their curvy shape allows them to be stackable; thus inspiring the slogan, "Other potato chips just don't stack up."


title: Pringles

text: By the 1980s, the company launched the "Pringle Jingle", whose lyrics were "Once you taste the flavor ("It's a deep-fried taste!"), then you get the fever ("With a crispy crunch!"), then you've got the fever for the flavor of a Pringle!"


title: Pringles

text: Beginning in the late 1990s and continuing today, Pringles advertising has returned to comparing their product to bagged chips, which they view as greasy and broken. In a typical ad, a group of people are enjoying Pringles, while a lone person is eating a bag of generic potato chips (the bags themselves resemble either Lay's or Ruffles, depending on the Pringles variety marketed in the ad). They dump out some broken potato chips into their hand, only to find they are greasy, and end up wiping the grease on their clothing.


title: Pringles

text: The Pringles logo is a stylized cartoon caricature of the head of a male figure (officially known as "Julius Pringles" or abbreviated as "Mr. P") designed by Louis R. Dixon, with a large mustache and parted bangs (until 2001, the character had eyebrows and his bow tie framed the product name; in 1998, the bangs and lips were removed from the logo, and his head was widened a little). In 2020, the character was again revised with a minimalistic approach.


title: Pringles

text: The mascot's name originated with a Wikipedia hoax; in 2006, an editor inserted the then-hoax 'Julius' into the Pringles Wikipedia article, which was subsequently picked up by other news outlets. Prior to this the mascot was officially known only as "Mr. P", no first name. By 2013, the name had spread and Kellogg formally acknowledged Julius Pringles.


title: Pringles

text: Pringles, as a product brand, is especially known for its packaging, a tubular paperboard can with a foil-lined interior (until the 1980s, the cans also contained a removable ruffled paper liner which held the chips in place) and a resealable plastic lid, which was invented by Fredric J. Baur, an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. Baur's children honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave.


title: Pringles

text: The can has been criticized for being difficult to recycle due to the multiple materials used in its construction.


title: Pringles

text: In 2013, Lucasfilm and Pringles jointly commissioned crowdsourcing video studio Tongal for a commercial, with a total of $75,000 in prize money distributed to seven finalists.


title: Pringles

text: In January 2021, a Pringles campaign took the character Frank out of the Raw Fury video game "West of Dead" in a live Twitch stream. Leahviathan, a gaming influencer, was playing the game and Frank reached through the screen, entered the real world and interacted with players.


title: Pringles

text: The aerodynamics of Pringles chips (as well as other consumer products) have been optimized for food processing using supercomputers. Kellogg's has used this fact in a 2022 Pringles advertisement campaign.


title: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 film)

text: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (also known as Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas or simply The Grinch) is a 2000 American Christmas fantasy comedy film directed by Ron Howard, who also produced with Brian Grazer, from a screenplay written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. The film was based on Dr. Seuss' 1957 children's book of the same name. This was the first Dr. Seuss book to be adapted into a full-length feature film (and the first of only two live-action Dr. Seuss films, followed by "The Cat in the Hat" in 2003), after the 1966 animated TV special of the same name as the second adaptation of the book. Narrated by Anthony Hopkins, the film stars Jim Carrey as the eponymous character, with Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin and Molly Shannon in supporting roles.


text: Produced by Imagine Entertainment, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was released by Universal Pictures in the United States on November 17, 2000. The film earned mixed reviews from critics, who praised Jim Carrey's performance, but criticized its darker theme and somewhat scary moments, as well as deviating from the source material too drastically. It spent four weeks as the #1 film in the United States. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" grossed $345 million worldwide, making it the sixth-highest grossing film of 2000 and originally becoming the second highest-grossing holiday film of all-time behind "Home Alone" (1990), until both films were surpassed in 2018 by the third film adaptation of the story. It won the Academy Award for Best Makeup as well as getting nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.


text: Every Who down in Whoville really likes Christmas. However, the Whos fear the Grinch, a misanthropic green creature who lives in a cave on nearby Mount Crumpit, north of Whoville, because of his mean-spiritedness, especially during the holiday season. Six-year-old Cindy Lou Who believes that everyone is focusing more on gifts and festivities rather than personal relationships. She encounters the Grinch at the post office (while he plays with the mail by switching everything around as well as throwing unpleasant jury duty notices into random mailboxes), where he saves her life after getting stuck in the mail shaft. Cindy starts researching the Grinch and later discovers more of his past.


text: The Grinch arrived in Whoville as a baby and was adopted by two women. In school, the then-timid Grinch had a crush on Martha May Whovier, a girl in his class who secretly reciprocated his feelings. Classmate Augustus MayWho, however, started bullying him, jealous that Martha favored the Grinch over him. That Christmas, he made an angel as a gift for Martha, but accidentally cut his face while trying to shave due to MayWho claiming he had a beard. When MayWho, their other classmates and their teacher saw his cut face the next day, they (with the exception of Martha) laughed at him, causing him to lose his temper, declare his hatred for Christmas, and flee to Mount Crumpit, where he has resided since.


text: Cindy nominates the Grinch as the town's "Holiday Cheermeister", outraging MayWho, now mayor. Cindy climbs to Mount Crumpit to invite the Grinch to the celebration, and he eventually accepts, realizing he could potentially encounter Martha, now the Lou Whos’ neighbor, there and finally upset MayWho. As Cheermeister, the Grinch participates in several events and begins enjoying himself until MayWho presents him with an electric razor, reminding him of his childhood humiliation. MayWho then publicly proposes to Martha, giving her a gaudy engagement ring and a new car. Enraged, the Grinch berates both the Whos' materialism and love for Christmas. He shaves MayWho's head, burns down the tree with a makeshift flamethrower (the Whos, however, have a spare tree) and goes on a rampage before returning home.


text: Disgusted with the Whos' Christmas, the Grinch vows to crush their spirit by stealing all of their presents, decorations and food while they are asleep. He disguises himself as Santa Claus and his pet dog Max as a reindeer, then descends into Whoville on a hi-tech sleigh. The first house he enters is Cindy's, and when she catches him stealing their tree, he lies to her to facilitate his escape. The Grinch continues stealing all of the gifts, decorations and food and stuffing them all in a large sack, before climbing back atop Mount Crumpit to destroy it all by pushing the sack off the side. Upon awakening on Christmas morning, the Whos horrifyingly discover the theft and MayWho blames Cindy for enabling the Grinch to ruin the town's spirit. However, her cheerful father, town postmaster Lou Lou Who, defends her by informing MayWho and the others that Cindy has been trying to tell them that Christmas mainly involves time with family and friends, not just gifts and fancy decorations. The Whos agree with Lou and start singing Whoville's Christmas carol.


text: Before the Grinch can push the sack off the top of Mount Crumpit, he hears the Whos singing and realizes that he has failed to prevent Christmas, but then figures out the true meaning of Christmas, causing his heart to grow three sizes, and breaks down in tears. The sleigh full of gifts then begins to slide over the edge of the cliff along with Cindy, who had come to spend Christmas with him. The Grinch gets the strength to lift the loaded sleigh and carry Cindy to safety, and they ride down the mountain to return everything. The Grinch apologizes for his pranks and the burglary before surrendering himself to the police, who accept his apology and deny MayWho's request to arrest and pepper spray him after seeing his cruel nature. Martha even rejects MayWho's proposal and returns his engagement ring to him, declaring her love for the Grinch. Afterwards, the reformed Grinch joins in the Whos' celebration feast and carves the roast beast himself in his cave.


text: Before his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss had refused offers to sell the film rights to his books. After his death, however, his widow Audrey Geisel agreed to several merchandising deals, including clothing lines, accessories and CDs. In July 1998, Geisel's agents announced via letter she would auction the film rights of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". In order to pitch their ideas to Geisel, the suitors ultimately had to be willing to pay $5 million for the material and hand over 4 percent of the box-office gross, 50 percent of the merchandising revenue and music-related material, and 70 percent of the income from book tie-ins. The letter also stated that "any actor submitted for the Grinch must be of comparable stature to Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman." Additionally, it was stipulated that the estate would not consider a director or writer who had not earned at least $1 million on a previous picture.


text: 20th Century Fox pitched its version with director Tom Shadyac and producers Dave Phillips and John Davis in attendance, in which Nicholson was in mind to play the Grinch. Additionally, the Farrelly brothers and John Hughes pitched their own separate versions. Universal Pictures held its pitch presentation with Brian Grazer and Gary Ross in attendance, but Geisel refused each offer. Grazer then enlisted his producing partner Ron Howard to help with the negotiations. At the time, Howard was developing a film adaptation of "The Sea-Wolf", and, despite being an avid fan of the animated special, did not express interest in "Grinch" but Grazer talked Howard into traveling to Geisel's residence for the pitch meeting. While studying the book, Howard became interested in the character Cindy Lou Who and pitched a film in which she would have a larger role as well as a materialistic representation of the Whos and an expanded backstory of the Grinch.


text: On September 16, 1998, it was announced that Howard would direct and co-produce a live-action adaptation of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" with Jim Carrey attached to star. It was also reported that Universal Pictures, who had acquired the distribution rights, paid $9 million for the film rights for an adaptation of "Grinch" and "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" to Geisel. Before Howard signed on, Tim Burton was considered to direct but he turned it down due to a scheduling conflict with "Sleepy Hollow". Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (of both "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Doc Hollywood" fame) wrote the final screenplay following eight drafts, but Geisel also had veto power over the script. She objected to several jokes and sexual innuendos in the screenplay, including one about a family who did not have a Christmas tree or presents jokingly called the "Who-steins" and the placement of a stuffed trophy of the Cat in the Hat on the Grinch's wall. Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (who were also writers on the television series "Seinfeld") did an uncredited rewrite of the script.


text: The film was shot between September 1999 and January 2000. Geisel visited the set in October 1999. The majority of the Whoville set was constructed on the Universal Studios Backlot behind the Bates Motel set from "Psycho". Rick Baker was hired to design and create the film's prosthetic makeup for Carrey and the rest of the cast. It took a number of tests, and ultimately Carrey admiring a photo of Baker in his first test makeup, for the decision to use Baker's original makeup design. The Grinch suit was covered in yak hair, dyed green and sewed onto a spandex suit. The application of the makeup took up to 2 and a half hours, after which a frustrated Carrey kicked a hole in the wall of his trailer. Carrey's makeup artist Kazu Hiro recounted, "On set, [Carrey] was really mean to everybody and at the beginning of the production they couldn't finish. After two weeks we only could finish three days' worth of shooting schedule, because suddenly he would just disappear and when he came back, everything was ripped apart. We couldn't shoot anything." Kazu Hiro left production until Baker and Howard had a discussion with Carrey on how important Kazu Hiro was to the production. Carrey agreed to keep his anger in check and Kazu Hiro returned to his role. Meanwhile, Josh Ryan Evans, who played the 8-year old Grinch, wore the same style of makeup and bodysuit that Carrey wore. In total, Carrey spent 92 days in the Grinch makeup and became adept at remaining calm while sitting in the make-up chair. Most of the appliances the actors wore were noses that connected to an upper lip along with a few dentures, ears and wigs.


text: The soundtrack for the album was released on November 7, 2000. It features a collection of music performed by several artists, including Busta Rhymes, Faith Hill, Eels, Smash Mouth, and NSYNC.


text: An expanded edition of the soundtrack featuring more cues from Horner's score was released on November 1, 2022 on La-La Land Records.


text: "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was released by Universal Pictures in the United States on November 17, 2000.


text: It premiered on television on ABC on November 25, 2004 and aired for a few years. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" currently annually airs on Freeform's (formerly ABC Family) 25 Days of Christmas. The American television airings include deleted footage which was not included on the original, theatrical, and VHS/DVD releases such as Cindy's dad maxing out his credit card buying Christmas gifts, Cindy asking her dad who the Grinch was before heading off to school, Lou visiting Cindy staying after school after mentioning the Grinch, a few extended scenes of the post office, the Grinch in his cave and Cindy inviting the Grinch to the Christmas party, Martha May and Betty Lou competing in the Christmas Lights Contest, the Grinch trying out different outfits to wear at the Christmas party, the Grinch drinking eggnog, the Whos passing out gifts to each other, and Cindy's family getting ready for Christmas morning at night. It also airs on NBC during Christmas night after the animated television special except 2022 due to a NFL game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals. It aired on FX to promote the television broadcast premiere of the 2018 animated film in 2020.


text: In the summer of 2000, a trailer for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" premiered in theaters. It was hooked up to screenings of "", in which Paramount Pictures agreed to screen the trailer if Universal included a trailer to a Paramount film in front of "". The next trailer debuted on October 6, 2000 with the release of "Meet the Parents". Meanwhile, Toys "R" Us began promoting the film, transforming their locations into Whobilation Headquarters with the most aggressive visual merchandising display in the company's history. Shoppers would be wowed from the moment they entered the store by the unbelievable displays and visual elements featuring the Grinch. The Herald Square location in New York City featured floor-to-ceiling themed window graphics of the film's main characters. Moreover, the entrances featured 3D film characters at numerous stores. Wendy's would even begin selling kids meal toys at their restaurants. Other promotional partners included Kellogg's, Nabisco, Hershey's, Visa, Coca-Cola and United States Postal Service.


text: To coincide with the release of the film, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal's Islands of Adventure began hosting a holiday event called Grinchmas.


text: The film was released on VHS and DVD on November 20, 2001. Within its first week of release, the film sold a combined total of 8.5 million home video units, selling 3 million DVD copies and 4 million VHS copies, making it the bestselling holiday home video title at the time. It would go on to join "", "Shrek" and "The Mummy Returns" as one of the only four films to sell more than 2 million DVD copies during their opening weeks. Overall, it was ranked as the second-highest opening week home video sales for any live-action film, after "Titanic". In December 2001, "Variety" reported that it was the second biggest selling home video release of 2001, selling 16.9 million copies and earning $296 million in sales revenue. A Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released on October 13, 2009, then later given a separate Blu-ray release on October 13, 2015. It was also remastered in 4K and released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 17, 2017.


text: "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" grossed $260 million domestically and $85.1 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $345.1 million, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2000.


text: In the United States, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" opened at number-one on its opening day, making $15.6 million, with a weekend gross of $55.1 million, for an average of $17,615 from 3,127 theaters. Upon its opening, the film had the sixth-highest three-day opening weekend of any film, behind "Toy Story 2", "X-Men", "", "" and "". Moreover, the film surpassed "Batman Forever" to have the largest opening weekend for a Jim Carrey film. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" even had the biggest opening weekend for a Ron Howard film, smashing the previous record held by "Ransom". It was the first non-Disney film to win the Thanksgiving weekend box office since "Mrs. Doubtfire" in 1993. The film held the record for the highest opening weekend for a Christmas-themed film for 18 years until the 2018 film version of "The Grinch" surpassed it with $67.6 million. In its second weekend, the film grossed $52.1 million, dropping only 5.1%, setting a new record for highest-grossing second weekend for any film at the time, beating "The Phantom Menace". The film stayed at the top of the box office for four weekends until it was overtaken by "What Women Want" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" in mid-December. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" continued to draw in holiday crowds while defeating another family-oriented film, "The Emperor's New Groove". By this point, it surpassed "Mission: Impossible 2" to become the top-grossing film of the year. The film closed on March 1, 2001, with a final domestic gross of $260,044,825. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 48.1 million tickets in North America.


text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" holds an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Jim Carrey shines as the Grinch. Unfortunately, it's not enough to save this movie. You'd be better off watching the TV cartoon." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


text: Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, referring to it as "a dank, eerie, weird movie about a sour creature" and said, "There should be ... a jollier production design and a brighter look overall ... It's just not much fun." Ebert observed that Carrey "works as hard as an actor has ever worked in a movie, to small avail". Nevertheless, he decided that "adults may appreciate Carrey's remarkable performance in an intellectual sort of way and give him points for what was obviously a supreme effort".


text: Paul Clinton of CNN declared that Carrey "was born to play this role" and noted that "Carrey carries nearly every scene. In fact, if he's not in the scene, there is no scene." Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" began his review of the film analyzing the Grinch's "mischievously divided, now-I'm-calm/ now-I'm-a-raving-sarcastic-PSYCH-o! personality" and summed up Carrey's Grinch as "a slobby, self-loathing elitist ruled by the secret fear that he's always being left out of things." Gleiberman expressed surprise at "how affecting Carrey makes the Grinch's ultimate big-hearted turnaround, as Carrey the actor sneaks up on Carrey the wild-man dervish. In whichever mode, he carreys the movie."


text: Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said, "Nobody could play the Grinch better than Jim Carrey, whose rubbery antics and maniacal sense of mischief are so well suited to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Dr. Seuss himself might have turned to Carrey as a model for the classic curmudgeon had the actor been around in 1957." However, he wondered why Carrey "made himself sound like Sean Connery" and warned that the character's intensity may frighten small children. James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote that Carrey's "off-the-wall performance is reminiscent of what he accomplished in "The Mask", except that here he never allows the special effects to upstage him. Carrey's Grinch is a combination of Seuss' creation and Carrey's personality, with a voice that sounds far more like a weird amalgamation of Sean Connery and Jim Backus (Bond meets Magoo!) than it does Karloff." He concluded that Carrey "brings animation to the live action, and, surrounded by glittering, fantastical sets and computer-spun special effects, Carrey enables Ron Howard's version of the classic story to come across as more of a welcome endeavor than a pointless re-tread."


text: Some reviews were more polarized. Stephanie Zacharek of "Salon" in a generally negative review of the film, wrote that "Carrey pulls off an admirable impersonation of an animated figure ... It's fine as mimicry goes – but mimicry isn't the best playground for comic genius. Shouldn't we be asking more of a man who's very likely the most gifted comic actor of his generation?" She concluded that in spite of "a few terrific ad-libs ... his jokes come off as nothing more than a desperate effort to inject some offbeat humor into an otherwise numbingly unhip, nonsensical and just plain dull story".


text: Todd McCarthy of "Variety" wrote, "Carrey tries out all sorts of intonations, vocal pitches and delivery styles, his tough guy posturing reminding at times of Cagney and his sibilant S's recalling Bogart. His antic gesturing and face-making hit the mark at times, but at other moments seem arbitrary and scattershot. Furthermore, his free-flowing tirades, full of catch-all allusions and references, are pitched for adult appreciation and look destined to sail right over the heads of pre-teens."


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: Enemy at the Gates ("Stalingrad" in France and "L'Ennemi aux portes" in Canada) is a 2001 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book "", which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943. The screenplay was written by Annaud and Alain Godard. The film's main character is a fictionalized version of Vasily Zaitsev, a sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. It includes a snipers' duel between Zaitsev and a "Wehrmacht" sniper school director, Major Erwin König.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The cast includes Jude Law as Zaitsev, Rachel Weisz as Tania Chernova, and Ed Harris as König, with Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Marshall Thomson, and Matthias Habich in supporting roles.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: Vasily Zaitsev is a soldier in the Red Army and is sent to the front line of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Forced into a suicidal charge without a rifle, he hides while a tank shell incapacitates a car. The occupant, Commissar Danilov, hides among numerous bodies, coincidentally next to Vasily, who uses his exceptional marksmanship to kill the German soldiers nearby.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: Nikita Khrushchev demands ideas from his subordinates on morale. Danilov, now a senior lieutenant, suggests that the people need "an example to follow" and recommends Zaitsev for the job. Soon after, Danilov begins publishing heroic tales of Vasily's exploits in the army's newspaper. Vasily is transferred to the sniper division and becomes friends with Danilov. Both also become romantically interested in Tania Chernova, a private in the local militia. In fear for her safety, Danilov has her transferred away to an intelligence unit, ostensibly to make use of her German skills in translating radio intercepts.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: With the Soviet snipers taking an increasing toll on the German forces, German Major Erwin König is deployed to kill Vasily and crush Soviet morale. When the Red Army command learns of König's mission, they dispatch König's former student Koulikov to help Vasily kill him. König, however, outmaneuvers Koulikov and kills him, shaking Vasily's spirits. Khrushchev pressures Danilov to bring the sniper standoff to a conclusion. Sasha, a young Soviet boy, volunteers to act as a double agent by passing König false information about Vasily's whereabouts. Vasily sets a trap for König and manages to wound him with help of Tania, who has come to rescue Vasily. During a second attempt, Vasily falls asleep, and his sniper log is stolen by a looting German soldier. The German command takes the log as evidence of Vasily's death and plans to send König home, but König does not believe that Vasily is dead.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The German general takes König's dog tags to prevent Soviet propaganda from profiting if König is killed. König gives the general a War Merit Cross that was posthumously awarded to König's son, who was a lieutenant in the 116th Infantry Division and killed in the early days of the battle. König tells Sasha where he will be next, suspecting that the boy will tell Vasily. Tania and Vasily have meanwhile fallen in love. That night, Tania secretly goes to the Soviet barracks and makes love with Vasily. The jealous Danilov disparages Vasily in a letter to his superiors.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: König spots Tania and Vasily waiting for him at his next ambush spot, confirming his suspicions about Sasha. He then kills the boy and hangs his body to bait Vasily. Vasily vows to kill König and sends Tania and Danilov to evacuate Sasha's mother. Tania is wounded by shrapnel en route to the boats. Thinking she is dead, Danilov regrets his jealousy of Vasily and expresses disenchantment over his previous ardour for communism. Finding Vasily waiting to ambush König, Danilov intentionally exposes himself in order to provoke König into shooting him and revealing his position, sacrificing his life. Thinking that he has killed Vasily, König goes to inspect the body and is then in Vasily's sights. Accepting his fate, König turns to face Vasily, who shoots him squarely in the eye and takes his rifle. Two months later, after Stalingrad has been liberated and German forces have surrendered, Vasily finds Tania recovering in a field hospital.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The filming of "Enemy of the Gates" took place in Germany. The crossing of the Volga River was shot on the Altdöberner See, a man-made lake near the village of Pritzen, in the south of Brandenburg. A derelict factory in the village of Rüdersdorf was used to recreate the ruins of Stalingrad's tractor factory. The massive outdoor set of Stalingrad's Red Square was built at Krampnitz, near Potsdam. It was a former "Wehrmacht" riding school that had served as a Soviet barracks during the Cold War. Set construction began in October 1999 and took almost five months to complete. The scene at the end with the waving coats is a reference to Sergio Leone.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 53% approval rating from 139 critics with a weighted average score of 5.70/10. The website's consensus says: "Atmospheric and thrilling, "Enemy at the Gates" gets the look and feel of war right. However, the love story seems out of place." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, calculated an average score of 53 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: Military historian David R. Stone praised the cast and said the film is "a good thing for the study of the Eastern Front during World War II" but criticized its historical inaccuracies and presentation, concluding: "To end on a brighter note, "Enemy at the Gates" has at the very least boosted the number of my students who drop by the office to ask questions about Stalingrad. I only wish it had done a better job of giving them good answers." For the Society for Military History, historian Roger Reese wrote: "As a work of fictionalized history this movie serves a useful purpose beyond entertainment, that of bringing to the attention of movie-goers in the West the sacrifices Soviet soldiers made in defending their country and defeating Hitler and giving a face to those legions still largely anonymous to us."


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that it "is about two men placed in a situation where they have to try to use their intelligence and skills to kill each other. When Annaud focuses on that, the movie works with rare concentration. The additional plot stuff and the romance are kind of a shame." "New York"s Peter Ranier was less kind, declaring: "It's as if an obsessed film nut had decided to collect every bad war-film convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" admitted the film had faults but said that "any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life."


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The film received unenthusiastic reviews in Russia but had good box office in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Some Red Army Stalingrad veterans were so offended by inaccuracies in the film and how the Red Army was portrayed that on 7 May 2001, shortly after the film premiered in Russia, they expressed their displeasure in the State Duma, demanding a ban of the film but their request was not granted. The film was also received poorly in Germany. Critics stated that it simplified history and glorified war. At the Berlinale film festival, it was booed. Annaud stated afterwards that he would not present another film at Berlinale, calling it a "slaughterhouse" and said that his film received much better reception elsewhere.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: As a film inspired by real events, it was dramatized and the plot was fictional in several ways. It contained several inaccuracies, including about Vasily Zaitsev, developments of the war, graphic details, and maps depicting a modern map of Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states as independent countries, as well as Turkey being invaded by Nazi Germany. Zaitsev was a senior sergeant () in the 2nd Battalion, 1047th Rifle Regiment, 284th "Tomsk" Rifle Division, during the Battle of Stalingrad. The film uses events from William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book "" but is not a direct adaptation. Historian Antony Beevor said he believed Zaitsev's story to be fictional. There is no documentation about the duel between Zaytsev and Major Erwin König.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The film overdramatizes the role of blocking detachments in the Red Army. Although there was Order No. 227 () that became the rallying cry of "Not a step back!" (), machine gunners were not placed behind regular troops with orders to kill anyone who retreated, and they were used only for penal troops. As per Order No. 227, each detachment would have between three and five barrier squads per 200 personnel. At the same time, the film understates the role of women. While in the film there appears two women snipers, they never shoot at anyone when in fact Soviet women snipers have been credited with killing over ten thousand enemies in combat.


title: Enemy at the Gates

text: The film's first scene shows new Soviet troops, including Zaitsev, arriving at the Stalingrad front, where they are screamed at, threatened, and in general humiliated by their commanders. They are then transported and locked in crowded boxcars to stop them from deserting. According to military historian Boris Yulin, this was forbidden and is unrealistic to have really happened, as the soldiers would have been killed in case of a German air raid or shelling. According to historian Alexey Isaev, who has written several books about the Battle of Stalingrad, blocking detachments were mostly used in Stalingrad as "usual combat regiments", while the film emphasizes the message that "most Soviet soldiers needed a literal gun in the back in order to go into battle". As there were many cases of heroism, it is argued it was unlikely that Soviet soldiers were motivated only by fear. In regards to lack of weapons, which happened early in the war and changed by 1942, Isaev said: "There were no unarmed soldiers sent to the attack... What is shown in "Enemy at the Gates" is pure nonsense."


title: The Conversation

text: The Conversation is a 1974 American mystery thriller film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, and Robert Duvall. The film revolves around a surveillance expert and the moral dilemma he faces when his recordings reveal a potential murder. Coppola cited the Michelangelo Antonioni thriller "Blowup" (1966) as a key influence, but since the film was released to theaters just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned as president, he felt that audiences interpreted the film as being a reaction to the Watergate scandal.


title: The Conversation

text: "The Conversation" premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, the festival's highest prize, and was theatrically released on April 7, 1974 by Paramount Pictures to critical acclaim but box office disappointment, grossing $4.2 million on a $1.6 million budget. The film received three nominations at the 47th Academy Awards; Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound.


title: The Conversation

text: In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Conversation

text: Surveillance expert Harry Caul, who runs his own company in San Francisco, is obsessed with his own privacy. His apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door and burglar alarm, he uses pay phones to make calls and claims to have no home telephone, and his office is enclosed in a chain-link cage in a corner of a much larger warehouse. He has no friends, his girlfriend Amy knows little about him, and his sole hobby is playing along to jazz records on a tenor saxophone alone in his apartment.


title: The Conversation

text: Caul insists that he is not responsible for the content of the conversations he records or the use to which his clients put his surveillance activities. But he is wracked by guilt over a past wiretap job that was followed by the murders of three people. His sense of guilt is amplified by his devout Catholicism.


title: The Conversation

text: Caul, his colleague Stan, and some freelance associates have been tasked with bugging the conversation of a couple as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco. Against a cacophony of background noise, the couple discusses fears that they are being watched and mention a discreet meeting at a hotel room in a few days. The challenging task of recording this conversation is accomplished by having a number of surveillance operatives located in different positions around the square. After Caul has merged and filtered the different tapes, the final result is a sound recording in which the words themselves are clear, but the meaning is ambiguous.


title: The Conversation

text: When the client is not in his office, Caul refuses to leave the tape with his client's assistant, Martin Stett. The assistant warns him against getting involved, telling him that the tapes are "dangerous.” Feeling increasingly uneasy about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape, Caul repeatedly plays the tape, gradually refining the recording. Using a filter, he reveals a key phrase hidden under the sound of a street musician: "He'd "kill" us if he got the chance."


title: The Conversation

text: Caul avoids handing in the tape to the aide of the man who commissioned the surveillance. Afterward, he is increasingly pressured by the client's aide and realizes that he is followed, tricked, and bugged. The tape of the conversation is eventually stolen from him while his guard is down. He goes to the client ("the Director") to find he has received the tapes and learns that the woman in the recording is the client's wife, apparently having an affair with the other man in the tapes.


title: The Conversation

text: Caul books a hotel room next to one mentioned in the recording of the conversation. He uses equipment to overhear the client in a heated argument with his wife. When he goes to the balcony to curiously watch the events through the windows, he sees what he believes to be the wife being murdered and retreats in shock. He later breaks into the hotel room to find no sign of a murder scene save for the toilet, which overflows with bloody toilet paper.


title: The Conversation

text: Caul attempts to confront the client at his office in the Embarcadero Center, but the client is absent. While departing, Caul notices the wife, alive and unharmed, in a limousine. He learns that his client was killed in an "accident" and discovers the truth; the couple he heard in Union Square was talking about killing the woman's husband, and the murder Caul witnessed was actually that of his client and not the wife. The man in the recording actually said, "He'd kill "us" if he got the chance."


title: The Conversation

text: Caul gets a phone call from Stett, who plays a recording of Caul's saxophone playing from seconds earlier and tells him not to look any further into the matter, adding, "We'll be listening to you." Caul frantically searches for a listening device, tearing up his apartment, to no avail. He sits amid the wreckage playing his saxophone, the only thing in his apartment left intact.


title: The Conversation

text: Coppola has cited Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup" (1966) as a key influence on his conceptualization of the film's themes, such as surveillance versus participation, and perception versus reality. "Francis had seen [it] a year or two before, and had the idea to fuse the concept of "Blowup" with the world of audio surveillance."


title: The Conversation

text: On the DVD commentary, Coppola says he was shocked to learn that the film used the same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on political opponents prior to the Watergate scandal. Coppola has said this is the reason the film gained part of the recognition it has received, but that this is entirely coincidental. Not only was the script for "The Conversation" completed in the mid-1960s (before the Nixon Administration came to power), but the spying equipment used in the film also was discovered through research and the use of technical advisers, and not, as many believed, by revelatory newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in. Coppola also noted that filming of "The Conversation" had been completed several months before the most revelatory Watergate stories broke in the press. Since the film was released to theaters just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned as president, Coppola felt that audiences interpreted the film to be a reaction to both the Watergate scandal and its fall-out.


title: The Conversation

text: The original cinematographer of "The Conversation" was Haskell Wexler. Severe creative and personal differences with Coppola led to Wexler's firing shortly after production began, and Coppola replaced him with Bill Butler. Wexler's footage on "The Conversation" was completely reshot, except for the technically complex surveillance scene in Union Square. This was the first of two Oscar-nominated films where Wexler would be fired and replaced by Butler, the second being "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), where Wexler had similar problems with Miloš Forman.


title: The Conversation

text: Walter Murch served as the supervising editor and sound designer. Murch had more or less a free hand during the editing process, since Coppola was already working on "The Godfather Part II" at the time. Coppola noted in the DVD commentary that Hackman had a very difficult time adapting to the Harry Caul character because he was so much unlike himself. Coppola says that Hackman was at the time an outgoing and approachable person who preferred casual clothes, whereas Caul was meant to be a socially awkward loner who wore a rain coat and out-of-style glasses. Coppola said that Hackman's efforts to tap into the character made the actor moody and irritable on set, but otherwise Coppola got along well with his leading man. Coppola also notes on the commentary that Hackman considers this one of his favorite performances.


title: The Conversation

text: "The Conversation" features a piano score composed and performed by David Shire. The score was created before the film was shot. On some cues, Shire used "musique concrète" techniques, taking the taped sounds of the piano and distorting them in different ways to create alternative tonalities to round out the score. The score was released on CD by Intrada Records in 2001.


title: The Conversation

text: The character of Harry Caul was inspired by surveillance technology expert Martin Kaiser, who also served as a technical consultant on the film. According to Kaiser, the final scene of the film—in which Caul is convinced he is being eavesdropped in his apartment, cannot find the listening device, and consoles himself by playing his saxophone—was inspired by the passive covert listening devices created by Léon Theremin, such as the Great Seal bug. "He couldn't find out where [the bug] was because it was the instrument itself."


title: The Conversation

text: Coppola also based Caul on the protagonist of Herman Hesse's 1927 novel "Steppenwolf", Harry Haller, a "total cipher" who lives alone in a boarding house. Coppola also made Caul religious, originally intending the character to have a confession scene; Coppola has said that the practice of confession is "one of the earliest forms of the invasion of privacy--earliest forms of surveillance."


title: The Conversation

text: According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "This tense, paranoid thriller presents Francis Ford Coppola at his finest—and makes some remarkably advanced arguments about technology's role in society that still resonate today." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Conversation

text: Roger Ebert's contemporary review gave "The Conversation" four out of four stars and described Hackman's portrayal of Caul as "one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies". In 2001, Ebert added "The Conversation" to his "Great Movies" list, describing Hackman's performance as a "career peak" and writing that the film "comes from another time and place than today's thrillers, which are so often simple-minded".