title: Team America: World Police

text: Before production began, "Team America" was championed at Paramount Pictures by Scott Rudin, who had been the executive producer for Parker and Stone's previous film, "". After the "hassle" of producing the "South Park" film, Parker and Stone had vowed never to create another movie. Other studio executives were initially unenthusiastic about the project: the studio was in favor of the film's lack of political correctness, but were confused by the use of puppets. The executives explained that they could not make profit from an R-rated puppet feature, and Parker countered that similar things had been said about the "South Park" film, an R-rated animated musical which had become a box-office hit. Tom Freston, who was co-president of Viacom, Paramount's parent company, also supported the film, feeling that Paramount should make more lower-budget films that appeal to children and young adults after the studio's failures with adult-oriented films such as "The Stepford Wives". According to Parker and Stone, executives were finally won over after they saw the dailies from the film's production.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Parker, Stone, and longtime writing partner Pam Brady spent nearly two years perfecting the "Team America" script. For influences, they studied scores of popular action and disaster films, such as "Alien", "Top Gun", and "S.W.A.T." The duo watched "Pearl Harbor" to get the nuances of the puppets just right when they were staring at each other, and also used Ben Affleck as a model. To help shape the film's archetypal heroes (from the true believer to the reluctant hero to the guy who sells out his friends for greater glory), they read the books of Joseph Campbell. "On one level, it's a big send-up," Brady said. "But on another, it's about foreign policy". The first draft of the script was turned in well before the Iraq War. The film takes aim at various celebrities, many of whom came out in opposition to the Iraq War in 2003. Brady explained that the film's treatment of celebrities was derived from her annoyance at the screen time given to celebrities in the beginning of the Iraq War, in lieu of foreign policy experts.


title: Team America: World Police

text: The film's central concept was easier to conceive than to execute. "Team America" was produced using a crew of about 200 people, which sometimes required four people at a time to manipulate a marionette. The duo were forced to constantly rewrite the film during production due to the limited nature of the puppets. The 270 puppet characters were created by the Chiodo Brothers, who previously designed puppets for films such as "Elf" and "Dinosaur". The costumers of the crew were responsible for making sure the over 1,000 costumes remained in cohesive order and were realistic.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Production began on May 23, 2004. The project was interrupted multiple times early on in production. As soon as filming began, Parker and Stone labored to find the right comic tone; the original script for the film contained many more jokes. After shooting the very first scene, the two realized the jokes were not working, and that the humor instead came from the marionettes. "Puppets doing jokes is not funny," Stone found. "But when you see puppets doing melodrama, spitting up blood and talking about how they were raped as children, that's funny." Filming was done by three units shooting different parts at the same time. Occasionally, the producers had up to five cameras set up to capture the scene. The film was mainly based on the 1982 cult classic action film "Megaforce", of which Parker and Stone had been fans. Many ideas had been copied such as the flying motorcycle sequence.


title: Team America: World Police

text: The film was painstakingly made realistic, which led to various shots being re-done throughout the process due to Parker and Stone's obsession with detail and craftsmanship. For example, a tiny Uzi cost $1,000 to construct, and Kim Jong-il's eyeglasses were made with hand-ground prescription lenses. Although the filmmakers hired three dozen marionette operators, simple performances from the marionettes were nearly impossible; a simple shot such as a character drinking might take a half-day to complete successfully. Parker and Stone agreed during production of "Team America" that it was "the hardest thing [they'd] ever done."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Rather than rely on computer-generated special effects added in post-production, the filmmakers vied to capture every stunt live on film. Parker likened each shot to a complicated math problem. The late September 2004 deadline for the film's completion took a toll on both filmmakers, as did various difficulties in working with puppets, with Stone, who described the film as "the worst time of [my] life," resorting to coffee to work 20-hour days, and sleeping pills to go to bed. The film was barely completed in time for its October 15 release date. At a press junket in Los Angeles on October 5, journalists were only shown a 20-minute reel of highlights because there was no finished print. Many of the film's producers had not seen the entire film with the sound mix until the premiere.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Even before the scene's submission to the Motion Picture Association of America, Parker planned to "have fun" pushing the limits by throwing in the graphic sex scene. The duo knew the racy film would be met with some opposition, but were outraged when the film came back with their harshest rating, NC-17. The original cut's minute-and-a-half sex scene with Gary and Lisa was cut down to 50 seconds. The original scene also featured the two puppets urinating and defecating on one another, which was based on what children do humorously with dolls such as Barbie and Ken. At least nine edits of the puppet love scene were shown to the MPAA before the board accepted that it had been toned down enough to qualify for an R rating. Parker contrasted the MPAA's reluctance for the sex scene to their acceptance of the violence: "Meanwhile, we're taking other puppets and, you know, blowing their heads off, they're covered with blood and stuff, and the MPAA didn't have a word to say about that." In addition to the sex scene, the MPAA also objected to the scene in which the Hans Blix puppet is eaten by sharks. Stone and Parker had faced a similar conflict with their previous film "" in 1999.


title: Team America: World Police

text: The film's score was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams. The soundtrack also contains "Magic Carpet Ride" performed by Steppenwolf, "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" performed by Tomoyasu Hotei, "Forbidden Bitter-Melon Dance" performed by Jeff Faustman, "Bu Dünyada Aşkından Ölmek" performed by Kubat, and songs by Trey Parker including "Everyone Has AIDS", "Freedom Isn't Free", "America, Fuck Yeah", "America, Fuck Yeah (Bummer Remix)", "Derka Derk (Terrorist Theme)", "Only a Woman", "I'm So Ronery", "The End of an Act", "Montage" , "You Are Worthless Alec Baldwin" and "North Korean Melody".


title: Team America: World Police

text: Famous people depicted as puppets, and lampooned, in the film include Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Tony Blair, Queen Elizabeth II, Sultan Qaboos, Fidel Castro, Peter Jennings and Hans Blix. Almost all of them are killed in gory and violent ways.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Reactions from those parodied were mixed; Baldwin found the project "so funny", and expressed interest in lending his voice to his character. In a 2008 video interview with "Time", Baldwin related how his daughter's classmates would recite Kim Jong-il's line to him, " Sean Penn, who is portrayed making outlandish claims about how happy and utopian Iraq was before Team America showed up, sent Parker and Stone an angry letter inviting them to tour Iraq with him, ending with the words "fuck you".


title: Team America: World Police

text: Both George Clooney and Matt Damon are said to be friends with Stone and Parker, and Clooney has stated that he would have been insulted had he not been included in the film. Damon is portrayed as a simpleton who can only say his own name. When asked about the film in 2016, Damon stated that he was confused by the portrayal, given that he was already known as both "a screenwriter and an actor":


title: Team America: World Police

text: Stone and Parker had earlier stated in an interview that they were inspired to give the Damon character that personality only after seeing the puppet that was made for him, which "looked kind of mentally deficient".


title: Team America: World Police

text: Kim Jong-il, a noted film buff, never commented publicly about his depiction in "Team America: World Police", although shortly after its release North Korea asked the Czech Republic to ban the film; the country refused, saying that North Koreans had been rebuffed in their effort to undermine the Czech Republic's post-Communist-era freedom. The filmmakers acknowledged this in a DVD extra and jokingly suggested he sings "I'm So Ronery". Michael Moore is depicted as a fat, hot dog-eating glutton who partakes in suicide bombing and is referred to as a "giant socialist weasel" by I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. Stone explained the reason for this portrayal in an MSNBC interview: A deleted scene also shows Meryl Streep and Ben Affleck (who is portrayed with a real-life hand replacing his head).


title: Team America: World Police

text: The world premiere of "Team America: World Police" took place on October 11, 2004 in Hollywood, California. The United States premiere was on October 14, 2004 at the Denver Film Festival. Paramount Pictures released the film in the United States on October 15, 2004.


title: Team America: World Police

text: The film was released on DVD and VHS in the United States on May 17, 2005 by Paramount Home Entertainment, available in both R-rated and unrated versions. The film was released on Blu-ray Disc on August 1, 2017 in the United States.


title: Team America: World Police

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "Team America: World Police" has a 77% approval rating based on 198 reviews and an average score of 7.00/10. The site's consensus states, ""Team America" will either offend you or leave you in stitches. It'll probably do both." On Metacritic the film has a score of 64 out of 100 based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a "B" grade on an A+-to-F scale.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the film calling it "A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Team America: World Police is to political commentary what lap dancing is to ballet. There is no room for subtlety. Aiming a rude, foul-mouthed political satire everywhere -- left, right and center -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone blow up a good deal of the world, not to mention the egos of many Hollywood personalities."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Brian Lowry of Variety was positive about the satire, saying the film "goes the extra mile to piss off everybody — which includes gleefully destroying renowned Hollywood liberals, literally and figuratively" but less positive about other aspects of the film: "All told, the clever visual bits and hilarious songs don't entirely compensate for the many flat or beyond-over-the-top spells." Lowry praised the songs saying they "deliver the movie's biggest highlights" and he also praised the production design calling it a " true technical achievement, recreating a dizzying array of sets and costumes at one-third scale and clearly having plenty of fun doing so — down to using housecats as stand-ins for terrifying panthers."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Richard Corliss of Time also highlighted the production "The real kick, however, is in the grandeur and detail of the production design, by Jim Dultz and David Rockwell."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Kim Newman of Empire magazine called it "a patchy comedy that's stronger as a genre-mocker than a political satire."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 1 out of 4 stars and wrote: "I wasn't offended by the movie's content so much as by its nihilism", and was critical of the film's "sneer at both sides" approach, comparing it to "a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible."


title: Team America: World Police

text: Contemporary and retrospective comment on the film has observed that it takes aim at militarism in the United States, and Hollywood liberals' response. David Edelstein, in a review for "Slate", wrote "the movie is a stink bomb lobbed at American arrogance and overweening militarism." In "The Village Voice", Michael Atkinson wrote "Madly Rorschachian, TAWP appears to rub its shitty boots on U.S. militarism as well as Hollywood liberals".


title: Team America: World Police

text: "National Review Online" has named the film #24 in its list of "The Best Conservative Movies". Brian C. Anderson wrote, "the film's utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture." Political and social commentator Andrew Sullivan considers the film brilliant in its skewering of both the left and right's approach on terrorism. Sullivan (a fan of Stone and Parker's other work, as well) popularized the term ""South Park" Republican" to describe himself and other like-minded fiscal conservatives/social libertarians. Parker himself is a registered Libertarian. Before the film's release, it was criticized by Matt Drudge and conservative group Move America Forward for mocking the War on Terror.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Before "Team America" was released, statements were released by a "senior Bush administration official" condemning the film. Upon receiving the news, the duo called and found it was instead a "junior staffer," causing Stone to quip "What is it – junior or senior? What are we talking about here? Who knows? It might have been the janitor." The two eventually decided it was free publicity, with which they were fine. Some media outlets interpreted the film's release on October 15 to be in theaters before the November elections. Parker said the release date had nothing to do with the elections, and the date was pushed back as far as possible due to production delays, but they had to return to South Park by October 20.


title: Team America: World Police

text: "Thunderbirds" creator Gerry Anderson was supposed to have met Parker before production, but they cancelled the meeting, acknowledging he would not like the film's expletives. Anderson saw the completed film and felt "there are good, fun parts [in the film] but the language wasn't to my liking."


title: Team America: World Police

text: "Team America" earned $12,120,358 in its opening U.S. weekend, ranking number three behind "Shark Tale" and "Friday Night Lights". The film eventually grossed a total of $50,946,640, with $32,886,074 in U.S. domestic receipts and $18,160,566 in international proceeds.


title: Team America: World Police

text: In an interview with Matt Stone following the film's release, Anwar Brett of the BBC asked the following question. "For all the targets you choose to take pot-shots at," he asked, "George W. Bush isn't one of them. How come?" Matt Stone replied, "If you want to see Bush-bashing in America you only have to walk about 10 feet to find it. Trey and I are always attracted to what other people aren't doing. Frankly that wasn't the movie we wanted to make." In another interview, Parker and Stone further clarified the end of the film which seems to try to justify the role of the United States as the "World Police."


title: Team America: World Police

text: In a worldwide survey of comedians by "The Guardian", the film was ranked seventh on a list of the fifty funniest films. In 2010, "The Guardian" listed the film as the 4th greatest comedy film of all time.


title: Team America: World Police

text: Director Quentin Tarantino counted "Team America: World Police" in his list of top 20 films released since 1992, when his career as a filmmaker began, and director Edgar Wright named it as one of his 1,000 favorite films.


title: Team America: World Police

text: The film's soundtrack was released on October 19, 2004, and on CD on January 10, 2005, by Atlantic Records.


title: Team America: World Police

text: In the aftermath of the December 2014 terrorism threats by Guardians of Peace on showings of the film "The Interview", which resulted in Sony Pictures pulling the film from release, several theatres, including Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, protested the loss by scheduling free showings of "Team America: World Police". However, Paramount pulled distribution of "Team America" from theaters, including those in Cleveland, Atlanta, and New Orleans. This action was seen by President Barack Obama as an attack on freedom of speech by Hollywood studios, and others as an act of pure cowardice. Snippets of the film mocking Kim Jong-il were reportedly set to be included, alongside copies of "The Interview", in helium-filled balloons launched by North Korean defectors into their home country in an effort to inspire education on the Western world's views on it.


title: Ley line

text: Ley lines () are straight alignments drawn between various historic structures and prominent landmarks. The idea was developed in early 20th-century Europe, with ley line believers arguing that these alignments were recognised by ancient societies that deliberately erected structures along them. Since the 1960s, members of the Earth Mysteries movement and other esoteric traditions have commonly believed that such ley lines demarcate "earth energies" and serve as guides for alien spacecraft. Archaeologists and scientists regard ley lines as an example of pseudoarchaeology and pseudoscience.


title: Ley line

text: The idea of "leys" as straight tracks across the landscape was put forward by the English antiquarian Alfred Watkins in the 1920s, particularly in his book "The Old Straight Track". He argued that straight lines could be drawn between various historic structures and that these represented trade routes created by ancient British societies. Although he gained a small following, Watkins' ideas were never accepted by the British archaeological establishment, a fact that frustrated him. His critics noted that his ideas relied on drawing lines between sites established at different periods of the past. They also argued that in prehistory, as in the present, it was impractical to travel in a straight line across hilly or mountainous areas of Britain, rendering his leys unlikely as trade routes. Independently of Watkins' ideas, a similar notion—that of ('holy lines')—was raised in 1920s Germany.


title: Ley line

text: During the 1960s, Watkins' ideas were revived in altered form by British proponents of the countercultural Earth Mysteries movement. In 1961, Tony Wedd put forward the belief that leys were established by prehistoric communities to guide alien spacecraft. This view was promoted to a wider audience in the books of John Michell, particularly his 1969 work "The View Over Atlantis". Michell's publications were accompanied by the launch of the "Ley Hunter" magazine and the appearance of a ley hunter community keen to identify ley lines across the British landscape. Ley hunters often combined their search for ley lines with other esoteric practices like dowsing and numerology and with a belief in a forthcoming Age of Aquarius that would transform human society. Although often hostile to archaeologists, some ley hunters attempted to ascertain scientific evidence for their belief in earth energies at prehistoric sites, evidence they could not obtain. Following sustained archaeological criticism, the ley hunter community dissipated in the 1990s, with several of its key proponents abandoning the idea and moving into the study of landscape archaeology and folkloristics. Belief in ley lines nevertheless remains common among some esoteric religious groups, such as forms of modern Paganism, in both Europe and North America.


title: Ley line

text: Archaeologists note that there is no evidence that ley lines were a recognised phenomenon among ancient European societies and that attempts to draw them typically rely on linking together structures that were built in different historical periods. Archaeologists and statisticians have demonstrated that a random distribution of a sufficient number of points on a plane will inevitably create alignments of random points purely by chance. Skeptics have also stressed that the esoteric idea of earth energies running through ley lines has not been scientifically verified, remaining an article of faith for its believers.


title: Ley line

text: The idea that ancient sacred sites might have been constructed in alignment with one another was proposed in 1846 by the Reverend Edward Duke, who observed that some prehistoric monuments and medieval churches aligned with each other.


title: Ley line

text: In 1909, the idea was advanced in Germany. There, Wilhelm Teudt had argued for the presence of linear alignments connecting various sites but suggested that they had a religious and astronomical function.


title: Ley line

text: In Germany, the idea was referred to as ('holy lines'), an idea adopted by some proponents of Nazism.


title: Ley line

text: The idea of "leys" as paths traversing the British landscape was developed by Alfred Watkins, a wealthy businessman and antiquarian who lived in Hereford. According to his account, he was driving across the hills near Blackwardine, Herefordshire, when he looked across the landscape and observed the way that several features lined up together. He subsequently began drawing lines across his Ordnance Survey maps, developing the view that ancient British people had tended to travel in straight lines, using "mark points" along the landscape to guide them.


title: Ley line

text: He put forward his idea of ley lines in the 1922 book "Early British Trackways" and then again, in greater depth, in the 1925 book "The Old Straight Track". He proposed the existence of a network of completely straight roads that cut through a range of prehistoric, Roman, and medieval structures. In his view, these straight tracks were ancient trade routes. Watkins had drawn upon earlier research; he cited the work of the English astronomer Norman Lockyer, who had argued that ancient alignments might be oriented to sunrise and sunset at solstices.


title: Ley line

text: His work referred to G.H. Piper's paper presented to the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club in 1882, which noted that: "A line drawn from the Skirrid-fawr mountain northwards to Arthur's Stone would pass over the camp and southernmost point of Hatterall Hill, Oldcastle, Longtown Castle, and Urishay and Snodhill castles."


title: Ley line

text: Watkins referred to these lines as "leys" although had reservations about doing so. The term "ley" derived from the Old English term for a cleared space, with Watkins adopting it for his lines because he found it to be part of the place-names of various settlements that were along the lines he traced. He also observed the recurrence of "cole" and "dod" in English place-names, thus suggesting that the individuals who established these lines were referred to as a "coleman" or "dodman". He proposed that the Long Man of Wilmington chalk geoglyph in Sussex was a depiction of such an individual with their measuring equipment.


title: Ley line

text: His ideas were rejected by most experts on British prehistory at the time, including both the small number of recognised archaeological scholars and local enthusiasts. His critics noted that the straight lines he proposed would have been highly impractical means of crossing hilly or mountainous terrain, and that many of the sites he selected as evidence for the leys were of disparate historical origins. Some of Watkins' other ideas, such as his belief that widespread forest clearance took place in prehistory rather than later, would nevertheless later be recognised by archaeologists. Part of archaeologists' objections was their belief that prehistoric Britons would not have been sophisticated enough to produce such accurate measurements across the landscape. British archaeologists were then overwhelmingly committed to ideas of cultural diffusionism, and thus unwelcoming to ideas about ley lines being an independent British development.


title: Ley line

text: In 1926, advocates of Watkins' beliefs established the Straight Track Club. To assist this growing body of enthusiasts who were looking for their own ley lines in the landscape, in 1927, Watkins published "The Ley Hunter's Manual".


title: Ley line

text: Proponents of Watkins' ideas sent in letters to the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then editor of the "Antiquity" journal. Crawford filed these letters under a section of his archive titled "Crankeries" and was annoyed that educated people believed such ideas when they were demonstrably incorrect. He refused to publish an advert for "The Old Straight Track" in "Antiquity", at which Watkins became very bitter towards him.


title: Ley line

text: Watkins' last book, "Archaic Tracks Around Cambridge", was published in 1932. Watkins died on 7 April 1935. The Club survived him, although it became largely inactive at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and formally disbanded in 1948. The archaeoastronomer Clive Ruggles noted that after the 1920s, "ley lines soon faded into obscurity". The historian Ronald Hutton similarly noted that there had been a "virtual demise" in the idea by the 1950s, in part due to "a natural weariness with a spent enthusiasm".


title: Ley line

text: From the 1940s through to the 1960s, the archaeological establishment blossomed in Britain due to the formation of various university courses on the subject. This helped to professionalise the discipline, and meant that it was no longer an amateur-dominated field of research. It was in the latter decade of this period that a belief in ley lines was taken up by members of the counterculture, where—in the words of the archaeologist Matthew Johnson—they were attributed with "sacred significance or mystical power". Ruggles noted that in this period, ley lines came to be conceived as "lines of power, the paths of some form of spiritual force or energy accessible to our ancient ancestors but now lost to narrow-minded twentieth-century scientific thought".


title: Ley line

text: In his 1961 book "Skyways and Landmarks", Tony Wedd published his idea that Watkins' leys were both real and served as ancient markers to guide alien spacecraft that were visiting Earth. He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French ufologist Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. Wedd suggested that either spacecraft were following the prehistoric landmarks for guidance or that both the leys and the spacecraft were following a "magnetic current" flowing across the Earth.


title: Ley line

text: Wedd's ideas were taken up by the writer John Michell, who promoted them to a wider audience in his 1967 book "The Flying Saucer Vision". In this book, Michell promoted the ancient astronaut belief that extraterrestrials had assisted humanity during prehistory, when humans had worshipped these entities as gods, but that the aliens left when humanity became too materialistic and technology-focused. He also argued that humanity's materialism was driving it to self-destruction, but that this could be prevented by re-activating the ancient centres which would facilitate renewed contact with the aliens.


title: Ley line

text: Michell repeated his beliefs in his 1969 book "The View Over Atlantis". Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". Here he interpreted ley lines by reference to the Chinese concept of energy lines. He proposed that an advanced ancient society that had once covered much of the world had established ley lines across the landscape to harness this energy. Translating the term as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains. Hutton later noted that Michell's ideas "embodied a fervent religious feeling, which though not Christian was heavily influenced by Christian models", adopting an "evangelical and apocalyptic tone" that announced the coming of an Age of Aquarius in which ancient wisdom would be restored. Michell invented various claims about archaeological evidence to suit his purpose. He viewed archaeologists as antagonists, seeing them as the personification of the modern materialism he was railing against.


title: Ley line

text: In the mid-1970s, Michell then published a detailed case study of the West Penwith district of Cornwall, laying out what he believed to be the ley lines in the area. He presented this as a challenge to archaeologists, urging them to examine his ideas in detail and stating that he would donate a large sum of money to charity if they could disprove them. Hutton noted that it represented "the finest piece of surveying work" then undertaken by a pseudo-archaeologists in Britain; however, Michell had included natural rock outcrops as well as medieval crosses in his list of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments.


title: Ley line

text: In 1962, a group of ufologists established the Ley Hunter's Club. Michell's publication was followed by an upsurge in ley hunting as enthusiasts travelled around the British landscape seeking to identify what they believed to be ley lines connecting various historic structures. Parish churches were particularly favoured by the ley hunters, who often worked on the assumption that such churches had almost always been built atop pre-Christian sacred sites. The 1970s and 1980s also saw the increase in publications on the topic of ley lines. One ley lines enthusiast, Philip Heselton, established the "Ley Hunter" magazine, which launched in 1965. It was later edited by Paul Screeton, who also wrote the book "Quicksilver Heritage", in which he argued that the Neolithic period had seen an idyllic society devoted to spirituality but that this was brought to an end through the introduction of metal technologies in the Bronze Age. He argued that this golden age could nevertheless be restored. Another key book produced among the ley hunting community was "Mysterious Britain", written by Janet and Colin Bord.


title: Ley line

text: Part of the popularity of ley hunting was that individuals without any form of professional training in archaeology could take part and feel that they could rediscover "the magical landscapes of the past". Ley hunting welcomed those who had "a strong interest in the past but feel excluded from the narrow confines of orthodox academia". The ley hunting movement often blended their activities with other esoteric practices, such as numerology and dowsing. The movement had a diverse base, consisting of individuals from different classes and of different political opinions: it contained adherents of both radical left and radical right ideologies. Ley hunters often differed on how they understood the ley lines; some believed that leys only marked a pre-existing energy current, whereas others thought that the leys helped to control and direct this energy. They were nevertheless generally in agreement that the ley lines were laid out between 5000 BCE and 2600 BCE, after the introduction of agriculture but before the introduction of metal in Britain. For many ley hunters, this Neolithic period was seen as a golden age in which Britons lived in harmony with the natural environment.


title: Ley line

text: Attitudes to the archaeological establishment varied among ley hunters, with some of the latter wanting to convert archaeologists to their beliefs and others believing that that was an impossible task. Ley hunters nevertheless often took an interest in the work of archaeo-astronomers like Alexander Thom and Euan Mackie, being attracted to their arguments about the existence of sophisticated astronomer-priests in British prehistory. In suggesting that prehistoric Britons were far more advanced in mathematics and astronomy than archaeologists had previously accepted, Thom's work was seen as giving additional credibility to the beliefs of ley hunters. Thom lent the idea of leys some support; in 1971 he stated the view that Neolithic British engineers would have been capable of surveying a straight line between two points that were otherwise not visible from each other.


title: Ley line

text: Paul Devereux succeeded Screeton as the editor of the "Ley Hunter". He was more concerned than many other ley hunters with finding objective evidence for the idea that unusual forms of energy could be measured at places where prehistoric communities had erected structures. He was one of the founding members of the Dragon Project, launched in London in 1977 with the purpose of conducting radioactivity and ultrasonic tests at prehistoric sites, particularly the stone circles created in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The Dragon Project continued its research throughout the 1980s, finding that certain prehistoric sites did show higher or lower than average rates of radiation but that others did not and that there was no consistent pattern. Professional archaeologists, whose view of the ley hunters was largely negative, took little interest in such research.


title: Ley line

text: It was only in the 1980s that professional archaeologists in Britain began to engage with the ley hunting movement. In 1983, "Ley Lines in Question", a book written by the archaeologists Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, was published. In this work, Williamson and Bellamy considered and tackled the evidence that ley lines proponents had amassed in support of their beliefs. As part of their book, they examined the example of the West Penwith district that Michell had set out as a challenge to archaeologists during the previous decade. They highlighted that the British landscape was so highly covered in historic monuments that it was statistically unlikely that any straight line could be drawn across the landscape without passing through several such sites. They also demonstrated that ley hunters had often said that certain markers were Neolithic, and thus roughly contemporary with each other, when often they were of widely different dates, such as being Iron Age or medieval. The overall message of Williamson and Bellamy's book was that the idea of leys, as it was being presented by Earth Mysteries proponents, had no basis in empirical reality. Looking back on the book's reception in 2000, Williamson noted that "archaeologists weren't particularly interested, and ley-line people were hostile".


title: Ley line

text: Williamson and Bellamy's book brought two different responses from the ley hunter community. Some maintained that even if the presence of earth energies running through ley lines could not be demonstrated with empirical evidence and rational argumentation, this did not matter; for them, a belief in ley lines was an act of faith, and in their view archaeologists were too narrow-minded to comprehend this reality. The other approach was to further engage archaeologists by seeking out new data and arguments to bolster their beliefs in ley lines. Hutton noted that this pulled along "a potential fissure between rationalism and mysticism which had always been inherent in the movement".


title: Ley line

text: In 1989, a book that Devereux had co-written with Nigel Pennick, "Lines on the Landscape", was published. It laid aside ideas of leys representing channels for earth energy, noting that this was beyond the realm of scientific verification, and instead focused on trying to build a case for ley lines that archaeologists could engage with. In particular, it drew attention to ethnographically recorded beliefs in the importance of lines running through the landscape in various communities around the world, proposing these as ethnographic comparisons for what might have occurred in prehistoric Britain. Hutton called the book "an important development", for it was "by far the most well-researched, intelligently written and beautifully produced work yet published on leys". Devereux pursued this approach in a series of further books.


title: Ley line

text: Reflecting his move towards archaeology, in 1991, Devereux published an article on sightlines from the prehistoric site of Silbury Hill, Wiltshire in "Antiquity", a respected journal of British archaeology. By the 1990s, British archaeology had become more open to ideas about language and cognition, topics that Earth Mysteries enthusiasts had long been interested in. A prominent example of this was the work of Christopher Tilley, who devised the idea of phenomenology, or using human senses to experience a landscape as a means of trying to ascertain how past societies would have done the same.


title: Ley line

text: The "Ley Hunter" magazine ceased publication in 1999. Its last editor, Danny Sullivan, stated that the idea of leys was "dead". Hutton suggested that some of the enthusiasm formerly directed toward leys was instead directed toward archaeo-astronomy. He also noted that the ley hunting community had "functioned as an indispensable training ground for a small but important group of non-academic scholars who have made a genuine contribution to the study of folklore and mythology." Pennick for instance went on to write a range of short books and pamphlets on European folklore. Another prominent ley hunter, Bob Trubshaw, also wrote several books on these subjects and served as a publisher for others. Jeremy Harte, editor of "Wessex Earth Mysteries", subsequently produced several books on folklore; his book on British fairy lore later won the Folklore Society's annual prize.


title: Ley line

text: In 2005, Ruggles noted that "for the most part, ley lines represent an unhappy episode now consigned to history". However, belief in ley lines persists among various esoteric groups, having become an "enduring feature of some brands of esotericism". As Hutton observed, a belief in "ancient earth energies have passed so far into the religious experience of the 'New Age' counter-culture of Europe and America that it is unlikely that any tests of evidence would bring about an end to belief in them." During the 1970s and 1980s, a belief in ley lines fed into the modern Pagan community. Research that took place in 2014 for instance found that various modern Druids and other Pagans believed that there were ley lines focusing on the Early Neolithic site of Coldrum Long Barrow in Kent, southeast England.


title: Ley line

text: In the U.S. city of Seattle, a dowsing organisation called the Geo Group plotted what they believed were the ley lines across the city. They stated that their "project made Seattle the first city on Earth to balance and tune its ley-line system". The Seattle Arts Commission contributed $5,000 to the project, bringing criticisms from members of the public who regarded it as a waste of money.


title: Ley line

text: Ley lines have been characterised as a form of pseudoscience. On "The Skeptic's Dictionary", the American philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll noted that none of the statements about magnetic forces underpinning putative ley lines have been scientifically verified.


title: Ley line

text: Williamson and Bellamy characterised ley lines as "one of the biggest red herrings in the history of popular thought". One criticism of Watkins' ley line theory states that given the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain and other parts of Europe, finding straight lines that "connect" sites is trivial and ascribable to coincidence. Johnson stated that "ley lines do not exist". He cited Williamson and Bellamy's work in demonstrating this, noting that their research showed how "the density of archaeological sites in the British landscape is so great that a line drawn through virtually anywhere will 'clip' a number of sites".


title: Ley line

text: A study by David George Kendall used the techniques of shape analysis to examine the triangles formed by standing stones to deduce if these were often arranged in straight lines. The shape of a triangle can be represented as a point on the sphere, and the distribution of all shapes can be thought of as a distribution over the sphere. The sample distribution from the standing stones was compared with the theoretical distribution to show that the occurrence of straight lines was no more than average.


title: Ley line

text: The archaeologist Richard Atkinson once demonstrated this by taking the positions of telephone booths and pointing out the existence of "telephone box leys". This, he argued, showed that the mere existence of such lines in a set of points does not prove that the lines are deliberate artefacts, especially since it is known that telephone boxes were not laid out in any such manner or with any such intention.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Born in Germany, Astor emigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Seeing the expansion of population to the west, he entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Seeing a decline in demand due to changing European tastes, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate. Astor was highly wealthy and became a prominent patron of the arts. In proportion to GDP, he was one of the richest people in modern history.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Johann Jakob Astor was born in 1763 in Walldorf, a town near Heidelberg in the Electoral Palatinate, which is in the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg. He was the youngest son of Johann Jacob Astor and Maria Magdalena vom Berg. His three older brothers were George, Henry, and Melchior. In his childhood, Johann worked in his father's butcher shop and as a dairy salesman. In 1779, at the age of 16, he moved to London to join his brother George in working for an uncle's piano and flute manufacturer, Astor & Broadwood. While there, he learned English and anglicized his name to John Jacob Astor.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: In November of 1783, just after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Astor boarded a ship for the United States, arriving in Baltimore around March of the following year. There, he rented a room from Sarah Cox Todd, a widow, and began a flirtation with his landlady's daughter, also named Sarah Cox Todd. The young couple married in 1785. His intent had been to join his brother Henry, who had established a butcher shop in New York City.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: However, a chance meeting with a fur trader on his voyage had inspired him to join the North American fur trade as well. After working at his brother's shop for a time, Astor began to purchase raw hides from Native Americans, prepare them himself, and resell them in London and elsewhere at great profit. He opened his own fur goods shop in New York in the late 1780s and also served as the New York agent of his uncle's musical instrument business. After gold was discovered, Astor looked for business throughout the United States.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor took advantage of the 1794 Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. In London, Astor at once made a contract with the North West Company, which from Montreal rivaled the trade interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, then based in London.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor imported furs from Montreal to New York and shipped them to Europe. By 1800, he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars (the equivalent of six million dollars in 2020) and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. His agents worked throughout the western areas and were ruthless in competition. In 1800, following the example of the "Empress of China", the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded furs, teas, and sandalwood with Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: The U.S. Embargo Act in 1807, however, disrupted Astor's import/export business because it closed off trade with Canada. With the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Great Lakes areas and Columbia River region. His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810–12 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers on the Oregon, Mormon, and California trails used to later pass through the Rocky Mountains.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor's fur trading ventures were disrupted during the War of 1812, when the British captured his trading posts. In 1816, he joined the opium-smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Ottoman-produced opium, and shipped the contraband to Canton onboard the packet ship "Macedonian". Astor later left the Chinese opium trade and sold opium solely in Britain.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor's business rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign fur traders from U.S. territories. The American Fur Company came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes, absorbing competitors in a monopoly. John Jacob Astor had a townhouse at 233 Broadway in Manhattan and a country estate, Hellgate, in Northern New York City.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: In 1822, Astor established the Robert Stuart House on Mackinac Island in Michigan as headquarters for the reorganized American Fur Company, making the island a metropolis of the fur trade. Washington Irving described this at length, based on contemporary documents, diaries, etc., in his travelogue "Astoria". Astor's commercial connections extended over the entire globe, and his ships were found in every sea. He and Sarah moved to a townhouse on Prince Street in Manhattan, New York.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor began buying land in New York City in 1799 and acquired sizable holdings along the waterfront. After the start of the 19th century, flush with China trade profits, he became more systematic, ambitious, and calculating by investing in New York real estate. In 1803, he bought a 70-acre farm on which he built the Astor Mansion at Hellgate. The property ran west of Broadway to the Hudson River between 42nd and 46th streets. That same year, and the following year, he bought considerable holdings from the disgraced Aaron Burr.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: In the 1830s, Astor foresaw that the next big boom would be the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world's greatest cities. Astor sold his interests in the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate. Astor correctly predicted the city's rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, and he purchased more and more land beyond the then-existing city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, but leased it to others for rent and their use. After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon in his studies, artwork, and travels, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: On September 19, 1785, Astor married Sarah Cox Todd (April 9, 1762 – August 3, 1842). Her parents were Scottish immigrants Adam Todd and Sarah Cox. Although she brought him a dowry of only $300, she possessed a frugal mind and a business judgment that he declared better than that of most merchants. She assisted him in the practical details of his business, and managed Astor's affairs when he was away from New York.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor belonged to the Freemasons, a fraternal order, and served as Master of Holland Lodge #8, New York City in 1788. Later he served as Grand Treasurer for the Grand Lodge of New York. He was president of the German Society of the City of New York from 1837 to 1841.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States, leaving an estate estimated to be worth at least $20 million, or 0.9% of estimated US GDP at the time, which is equivalent to $ million in 2020). By comparison, the fortune of Jeff Bezos was worth approximately $200 billion in 2020, similar to Astor at approximately 0.9% of US GDP.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: In his will, Astor bequeathed $400,000 to build the Astor Library for the New York public, which was later consolidated with other libraries to form the New York Public Library. He also left $50,000 for a poorhouse and orphanage in his German hometown of Walldorf. The "Astorhaus" is now operated as a museum honoring Astor. It is a renowned and popular fest hall for marriages. Astor donated gifts totaling $20,000 to the German Society of the City of New York, during his term as president, from 1837 until 1841.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his second son William, because his eldest son, John Jr., was sickly and mentally unstable. Astor left enough money to care for John Jr. for the rest of his life. William continued building the family fortune, and was an ancestor of John Jacob Astor III, John Jacob Astor IV and John Jacob Astor VI.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: Astor is buried in Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan. Many members of his family had joined its congregation, but Astor remained a member of the local German Reformed congregation to his death. In the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of men who made the earliest fortunes in New York.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library Main Branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library from his own collection. Next, they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males). Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them "Patience" and "Fortitude" during the Great Depression.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: The one-block Astor Place street in Manhattan, New York City, was named after Astor, soon after his death.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: The coastal town of Astoria, Oregon, is named after Astor, as well as an elementary school named in his honor. The background to the founding of this town is described in Washington Irving’s "Astoria," a book whose writing was financed by Astor.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: The historic Astor Street in Green Bay, Wisconsin is named after Astor. In 1835, John Jacob Astor founded the Town of Astor in Wisconsin. After the Town of Astor was united with the Town of Navarino to form the Borough of Green Bay, one neighborhood was named after him.


title: John Jacob Astor

text: In 1908, when the association football club FC Astoria Walldorf was formed in Astor's birthplace in Germany, the group added "Astoria" to its name in his, and the family's, honor.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: Amancio Ortega Gaona (; born 28 March 1936) is a Spanish billionaire businessman. He is the founder and former chairman of Inditex fashion group, best known for its chain of Zara and Bershka clothing and accessories shops. As of November 2022, Ortega had a net worth of $62.9 billion, making him the third-wealthiest person in Europe after Bernard Arnault and Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, and the 18th-wealthiest in the world. For a brief period of time in 2015, he was the richest man in the world, surpassing Bill Gates when his net worth peaked to $80 billion as Zara's parent company, Inditex's, stock peaked.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: The youngest of four children, Ortega was born in Busdongo de Arbas, León, Spain, to Antonio Ortega Rodríguez and Josefa Gaona Hernández from the province of Valladolid, and spent his childhood in Tolosa, Gipuzkoa.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: He left school and moved to A Coruña at the age of 14, due to the job of his father, a railway worker. Shortly after, he found a job as a shop hand for a local shirtmaker called Gala, which still sits on the same corner in downtown A Coruña, and learned to make clothes by hand.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: In 2009, Zara was part of the Inditex group (Industrias de Diseño Textil Sociedad Anónima), of which Ortega owned 59.29%, and aside from over 6,000 stores included the brands Zara, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Zara Home, Kiddy's Class, Tempe, Stradivarius, Pull and Bear, Bershka and has more than 92,000 employees.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: His public appearance in 2000, as part of the warm-up prior to his company's initial public offering on the stock market in 2001, made headlines in the Spanish financial press. However, he has only ever granted interviews to three journalists.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: In 2011, Ortega announced his imminent retirement from Inditex, parent company of the Zara chain, stating that he would ask Inditex vice-president and CEO Pablo Isla to take his place as head. In 2012 Ortega donated about €20 million to Caritas Internationalis, a Roman Catholic relief organisation.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: He purchased the Torre Picasso skyscraper in Madrid. He also purchased the Epic Residences and Hotel in Miami, Florida.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: In July 2017, for its second edition of the AEF awards, the Spanish Association of Foundations awarded Amancio Ortega in the 2017 Philanthropic Initiative category. He also donated 300 million euros to fight cancer across Spain, which were invested in the purchase of 440 machines to detect the disease. As a result of this, the number of Spanish public hospitals equipped with stereotactic radiotherapy machines has risen from 20 to 70. However, these decisions were not unanimously welcomed and were criticized by some political parties like Podemos. Recently, news indicate that he has bought the Troy Block complex, known to the public as one of the buildings where Amazon Seattle has its headquarters.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: It was revealed in July 2020 that Ortega's property holdings, through his investment company Pontegadea, were worth $17.2 billion. Ortega is the executive chairman of Pontegadea, and real estate assets in his portfolio include Manhattan’s Haughwout Building and Southeast Financial Center. In 2019, the company completed a $72.5 million deal for a downtown Chicago hotel, which followed purchases of a building in Washington’s central business district and two Seattle office buildings.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: Ortega is very private about his personal life, and as of 2012 he has only given three interviews to journalists. Ortega is very reclusive and keeps a very low profile. Until 1999, no photograph of Ortega had ever been published.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: He likes to dress simply, refuses to wear a tie, and typically prefers to wear a simple uniform of a blue blazer, white shirt, and gray trousers, none of which are Zara products.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: He married Rosalía Mera Goyenechea in 1966, they had two children, Marcos and Sandra Ortega Mera, the couple divorced in 1986. Mera died in August 2013 at the age of 69. He married his second wife Flora Pérez Marcote in 2001, with whom he had a daughter, Marta Ortega Pérez, in 1984 . As of 2017, despite owning a huge real estate portfolio he mostly lives with his wife in his apartment in A Coruña, Spain.


title: Amancio Ortega

text: He is mostly spotted being driven around in a black Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W221) and a black Mercedes-Benz GL-Class (X166). He owns two yachts "Drizzle" and "Valoria B" as well as Gulfstream G650 and Bombardier Global Express private jets.


title: Shrew

text: Shrews (family Soricidae) are small mole-like mammals classified in the order Eulipotyphla. True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to different families or orders.


title: Shrew

text: Although its external appearance is generally that of a long-nosed mouse, a shrew is not a rodent, as mice are. It is, in fact, a much closer relative of hedgehogs and moles; shrews are related to rodents only in that both belong to the Boreoeutheria magnorder. Shrews have sharp, spike-like teeth, whereas rodents have gnawing front incisor teeth.


title: Shrew

text: Shrews are distributed almost worldwide; among the major tropical and temperate land masses, only New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand have no native shrews; in South America shrews appeared only relatively recently, as a result of the Great American Interchange, and are present only in the northern Andes. The shrew family has 385 known species, making it the fourth-most species-diverse mammal family. The only mammal families with more species are the muroid rodent families (Muridae and Cricetidae) and the bat family Vespertilionidae. The shrew family also probably has the largest population of any mammal family: there are an estimated 100 billion shrews in the world, with an average of a few shrews per hectare of forest.


title: Shrew

text: All shrews are tiny, most no larger than a mouse. The largest species is the Asian house shrew ("Suncus murinus") of tropical Asia, which is about long and weighs around The Etruscan shrew ("Suncus etruscus"), at about and , is the smallest known living terrestrial mammal.


title: Shrew

text: In general, shrews are terrestrial creatures that forage for seeds, insects, nuts, worms, and a variety of other foods in leaf litter and dense vegetation, but some specialise in climbing trees, living underground, living under snow, or even hunting in water. They have small eyes and generally poor vision, but have excellent senses of hearing and smell. They are very active animals, with voracious appetites. Shrews have unusually high metabolic rates, above that expected in comparable small mammals. For this reason, they need to eat almost constantly like moles. Shrews in captivity can eat to 2 times their own body weight in food daily.


title: Shrew

text: They do not hibernate, but are capable of entering torpor. In winter, many species undergo morphological changes that drastically reduce their body weight. Shrews can lose between 30% and 50% of their body weight, shrinking the size of bones, skull, and internal organs.


title: Shrew

text: Whereas rodents have gnawing incisors that grow throughout life, the teeth of shrews wear down throughout life, a problem made more extreme because they lose their milk teeth before birth, so have only one set of teeth throughout their lifetimes. In some species, exposed areas of the teeth are dark red due to the presence of iron in the tooth enamel. The iron reinforces the surfaces that are exposed to the most stress, which helps prolong the life of the teeth. This adaptation is not found in species with lower metabolism, which don't have to eat as much and therefore don't wear down the enamel to the same degree. The only other mammals’ teeth with pigmented enamel are the incisors of rodents. Apart from the first pair of incisors, which are long and sharp, and the chewing molars at the back of the mouth, the teeth of shrews are small and peg-like, and may be reduced in number. The dental formula of shrews is:


title: Shrew

text: Shrews are fiercely territorial, driving off rivals, and coming together only to mate. Many species dig burrows for catching food and hiding from predators, although this is not universal.


title: Shrew

text: Female shrews can have up to 10 litters a year; in the tropics, they breed all year round; in temperate zones, they cease breeding only in the winter. Shrews have gestation periods of 17–32 days. The female often becomes pregnant within a day or so of giving birth, and lactates during her pregnancy, weaning one litter as the next is born. Shrews live 12 to 30 months.


title: Shrew

text: Shrews are unusual among mammals in a number of respects. Unlike most mammals, some species of shrews are venomous. Shrew venom is not conducted into the wound by fangs, but by grooves in the teeth. The venom contains various compounds, and the contents of the venom glands of the American short-tailed shrew are sufficient to kill 200 mice by intravenous injection. One chemical extracted from shrew venom may be potentially useful in the treatment of high blood pressure, while another compound may be useful in the treatment of some neuromuscular diseases and migraines. The saliva of the northern short-tailed shrew ("Blarina brevicauda") contains soricidin, a peptide which has been studied for use in treating ovarian cancer. Also, along with the bats and toothed whales, some species of shrews use echolocation. Unlike most other mammals, shrews lack zygomatic bones (also called the jugals), so have incomplete zygomatic arches.


title: Shrew

text: The only terrestrial mammals known to echolocate are two genera ("Sorex" and "Blarina") of shrews, the tenrecs of Madagascar, bats, and the solenodons. These include the Eurasian or common shrew ("Sorex araneus") and the American vagrant shrew ("Sorex vagrans") and northern short-tailed shrew ("Blarina brevicauda"). These shrews emit series of ultrasonic squeaks. By nature the shrew sounds, unlike those of bats, are low-amplitude, broadband, multiharmonic, and frequency modulated. They contain no "echolocation clicks" with reverberations and would seem to be used for simple, close-range spatial orientation. In contrast to bats, shrews use echolocation only to investigate their habitats rather than additionally to pinpoint food.


title: Shrew

text: Except for large and thus strongly reflecting objects, such as a big stone or tree trunk, they probably are not able to disentangle echo scenes, but rather derive information on habitat type from the overall call reverberations. This might be comparable to human hearing whether one calls into a beech forest or into a reverberant wine cellar.


title: Shrew

text: The 385 shrew species are placed in 26 genera, which are grouped into three living subfamilies: Crocidurinae (white-toothed shrews), Myosoricinae (African shrews), and Soricinae (red-toothed shrews). In addition, the family contains the extinct subfamilies Limnoecinae, Crocidosoricinae, Allosoricinae, and Heterosoricinae (although Heterosoricinae is also commonly considered a separate family).


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: Inheritance is a 2020 American thriller film directed by Vaughn Stein from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy. The film stars Lily Collins, Simon Pegg, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford and Patrick Warburton. "Inheritance" was released on May 22, 2020, by Vertical Entertainment. It received generally negative reviews from critics.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: In 2008, Archer Monroe, the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful political family in New York City, dies. His estate is divided among his family: Catherine, his wife; William, his younger son, a politician running for reelection; and Lauren, his elder daughter, the Manhattan district attorney. Family attorney Harold Thewlis privately shows Lauren her father's posthumous video message he left her. In the video, he says he has a secret to tell her that she must take to her grave. He directs her to a secret underground bunker on the family's property. There she finds a captive man who identifies himself as Morgan Warner, who says he has been held prisoner for 30 years.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: Morgan claims he was Archer's friend and business partner until one night, while driving drunk, they killed a pedestrian. At Archer's insistence, they covered up the crime before Archer took Morgan prisoner to prevent his exposing the homicide. In the intervening years, Archer treated Morgan like a confessor and admitted many secrets. As proof, Morgan directs Lauren to where the pedestrian's body is buried. Lauren also follows Morgan's clues and finds Archer's longtime mistress, with whom he had a son, as well as evidence that Archer paid bribes to aid his children being elected to public office. Lauren is eventually convinced to free Morgan, and, believing he was wronged, directs Harold to set up an offshore bank account and charter a private jet so Morgan can disappear.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: While Morgan was asleep, Lauren took a sample of his fingerprints and sent them for identification. The fingerprints are matched and the file sent to the Monroe house. Catherine sees the file and is terrified by photos of Morgan, whom she identifies as "Carson", claiming he is an "evil man". Lauren discovers Morgan's flight never left and Harold has been murdered. By the time Lauren returns to the Monroe house, Morgan has abducted Catherine and taken her to the bunker. Carson subdues Lauren and reveals that thirty years ago, he drugged and raped Catherine. Archer was taking Carson somewhere to kill him when they hit the pedestrian; furthermore, Carson was responsible for Archer's death, using the poison Archer had intended to use on him. Lauren fights back and, during their struggle, Carson claims he is Lauren's biological father before Catherine seizes his gun and shoots him dead. Together, Lauren and Catherine pour gasoline throughout the bunker and set it afire, destroying all evidence of Carson's captivity.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: In November 2018, it was announced Simon Pegg and Kate Mara had joined the cast of the film, with Vaughn Stein directing from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy. Richard B. Lewis, David Wulf, Dan Reardon and Santosh Govindaraju will produce the film, under their Southpaw Entertainment, WulfPak Productions and Convergent Media banners, respectively. From January to March 2019, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford and Patrick Warburton joined the cast of the film, while Lily Collins joined to replace Mara. In April 2019, Marque Richardson joined the cast of the film.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: It was scheduled to have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 20, 2020. However, the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vertical Entertainment and DirecTV Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film and set it for a May 22, 2020 release.


title: Inheritance (2020 film)

text: "Inheritance" holds approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average of . The site's critics consensus reads: "A would-be thriller that waits far too long to embrace the daffy potential of its bizarre premise, this "Inheritance" should be steadfastly refused." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 31 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The 3M22 Zircon also spelled as 3M22 Tsirkon (, NATO reporting name: SS-N-33) is a scramjet powered maneuvering anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile produced by Russia.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The missile represents a further development of the Hypersonic Experimental Flying Vehicle (HELA) developed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: In April 2017, it was reported Zircon had reached a speed of during a flight test. Zircon was again test-fired on 3 June 2017, almost a year earlier than had been announced by Russian officials. In November 2017, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev stated that the missile was already in service. Another flight test reportedly occurred on 10 December 2018, during which the missile demonstrated that it could attain a speed of Mach 8.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 20 February 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the missile can accelerate up to Mach 9 and destroy both sea and land targets within . By the year's end, on 24 December 2019, Putin stated that "Zircon"'s land-based version was in development.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: According to the commander in chief of the Russian Navy Nikolai Yevmenov, as of January 2020, "Zircon" was still in testing phase and despite the overall positive evaluation of the test program, still suffered from the "childhood diseases" (Russian idiom meaning "teething problems"). Modernized frigates are expected to be the first platform to receive the hypersonic missile, and the tests are to be continued in parallel with the Navy's armament with the Kalibr cruise missile. Yevmenov further stated "Zircon" is expected to enter service "in the coming years". In early January 2020, "Zircon" was first test-launched from the frigate in the Barents Sea, and successfully hit a ground target in the Northern Urals, exceeding the distance of 500 km.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 7 October 2020, the Russian Chief of General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, stated a "Zircon" was launched from "Admiral Gorshkov" in the White Sea and successfully hit a sea target in the Barents Sea away, reportedly reaching a speed of "more than Mach 8" and altitude of .


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 26 November 2020, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the successful test of a missile launched from "Admiral Gorshkov" in the White Sea, hitting a naval target 450 km away in the Barents Sea.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 11 December 2020, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the successful test of a missile launched from "Admiral Gorshkov" in the White Sea, hitting a ground target 350 km away in the Arkhangelsk Region.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 19 July 2021, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the successful test of a missile launched from "Admiral Gorshkov" in the White Sea, hitting a ground target 350 km away on the coast of the Barents Sea. The flight speed reached nearly Mach 7.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The flight tests of the missile from a coastal mount and a surface ship carrier were reportedly completed as of late September 2021 with over 10 launches performed.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 4 October 2021, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the successful test of a missile launched from a nuclear submarine for the first time from a surfaced position. The Defense Ministry, which tested firing the Zircon missile from a warship in July, said that the nuclear submarine "Severodvinsk" fired the missile while deployed in the Barents Sea and had hit its chosen target.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: Low-quality video footage released by the ministry showed the missile shooting upwards from a submarine, its glare lighting up the night sky and illuminating the water's surface. A second submerged launch from a depth of 40 m was reported later the same day. The next day it was reported that the missile's trials from the submarine have been completed.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: A Zircon hypersonic missile test-launched from the Northern Fleet's frigate "Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Gorshkov" struck a naval target in the White Sea with a direct hit, Russia's Defense Ministry reported on 18 November 2021.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The crew of the Northern Fleet frigate "Admiral Gorshkov", as part of the completion of the cycle of tests of hypersonic missile weapons, fired another Zircon missile at a sea target on November 29 and another one at a coastal target on December 16. The Tsirkon hypersonic system was salvo-launched on December 24, 2021, and again launched on February 19, 2022. On 28 May 2022 Russian Ministry of Defense released a video and news of a new test-launch where a Zircon missile hit a sea target at a distance of in the White Sea. The program of state trials was reportedly completed with that launch.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 18 July 2022, it was reported that Zircon would be adopted by the Russian Navy by the end of 2022.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: On 31 July 2022, speaking in St Petersburg on Russia's Naval Day, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Black Sea Fleet would be equipped with Zircon anti-ship hypersonic cruise missiles "in the coming months".


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: Two contracts have been signed for the production of the missile - one in the summer of 2021 and one in the fall of 2022.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: Zircon is believed to be a maneuvering, winged hypersonic cruise missile with a lift-generating center body. A booster stage with solid-fuel engines accelerates it to supersonic speeds, after which a scramjet motor with liquid-fuel () (JP-10 jet fuel) in the second stage accelerates it to hypersonic speeds.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The missile's range is estimated to be at low level, and up to in a semi-ballistic trajectory; average range is around . According to Russian media (2017), the longest possible range is and for this purpose a new fuel was created. Some internet sources even claim the range of missile can reach 1,000 - 2,000 km, depending on the type of target.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: The high speed of the Zircon likely gives it better target-penetration characteristics than lighter subsonic cruise-missiles, such as Tomahawk. Being twice as heavy and almost eleven times as fast as Tomahawk, the Zircon has more than 242 times the on-cruise kinetic energy of a Tomahawk missile (≈9 gigajoules, or equal to 2,150 kg TNT explosive energy). Its Mach 9 speed means that it cannot be intercepted by existing missile defence systems and its precision makes it lethal to large targets such as aircraft carriers.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: Zircon can travel at a speed of . This has led to concerns that it could penetrate existing naval defense systems. Because it flies at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere, the air pressure in front of it forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems (plasma stealth). However, this also blinds any radar or IR seeker on the missile. With plasma stealth, hypersonic-speed and sea skimming technique, intercepting a flying Zircon is extremely difficult, if at all feasible at the current level of technology. The final section of the trajectory will be overcome in a minimum time (under 10 seconds), the enemy will not have time to carry out all the necessary procedures. Zircon exchanges information in flight and can be controlled by commands if necessary.


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: Zircon will be first deployed with the "Admiral Nakhimov" after 2021. The ship's P-700 Granit anti-ship missiles is being replaced with the 3S14 universal VLS cells capable of carrying the Oniks, Kalibr and Zircon anti-ship cruise missiles; the vessel is to be equipped with 72 such missiles. The other active Kirov-class ship, "Pyotr Velikiy", will undergo a similar procedure. After completion of their refit, the ships could carry 40–80 anti-ship cruise missiles of different types. Other platforms include s and s (fitted with UKSK VLS cells during their construction), s, modernised s, and modernised s (Project 949AM).


title: 3M22 Zircon

text: There are certain design similarities between Zircon and BrahMos-II, which have been noted by experts. Some experts have also postulated that the BrahMos-II might be an export version of the Zircon missile.


title: Heather Menzies

text: Heather Menzies Urich (December 3, 1949 – December 24, 2017) was a Canadian–American model and actress, known for her roles as Louisa von Trapp in the 1965 film "The Sound of Music" and Jessica 6 in the TV series "Logan's Run".


title: Heather Menzies

text: Heather Margaret Brotherston Menzies was born in Toronto on December 3, 1949, to Scottish parents who had emigrated to Canada after the war. Her father was a struggling artist. By Menzies' 14th birthday, she had lived in Vancouver, Miami, London, and Southern California. She had a younger sister, Sheila, and an older brother, Neil, who died in 2019.


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies was a graduate of John Burroughs High School in Burbank, California, in 1967, and she studied at Falcon Studio's University of the Arts.


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies' first appearance on-screen was in 1964, when she appeared in the TV series "The Farmer's Daughter". She was cast in "The Sound of Music" as Louisa, the third-oldest of the von Trapp children, at age 14, with no prior acting experience. Menzies sang "So Long, Farewell" and the "Lonely Goatherd" in the film.


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies went on to appear in a number of television series such as "Alias Smith and Jones", "T. J. Hooker", "Dragnet", "Room 222", "Bonanza", "Marcus Welby, M.D." and "The Bob Newhart Show". She starred as Jessica 6 in the short-lived TV series "Logan's Run". In addition, Menzies appeared in "Hawaii", "How Sweet It Is!", "Hail, Hero!", "Piranha", and "Endangered Species".


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies was featured in "Playboy" magazine during 1973 in a pictorial titled "Tender Trapp", in reference to her "The Sound of Music" role. She was later cast in four television films: "The Keegans", "James Dean", "Tail Gunner Joe", and "Captain America".


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies married John Cluett in 1969 and divorced him in 1973. She married Robert Urich in 1975. Urich and Menzies first met in 1974 while filming a commercial in which they "got married." They adopted 3 children. After Urich's death in 2002, Menzies established the Robert Urich Foundation and spent most of her time in her last years devoted to the organization, which raises money for cancer research and support for cancer patients.


title: Heather Menzies

text: Menzies-Urich was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in November 2017. She died on December 24, 2017.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Rushmore is a 1998 American comedy film directed by Wes Anderson about an eccentric teenager named Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman in his film debut), his friendship with rich industrialist Herman Blume (Bill Murray), and their shared affection for elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). The film was co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. The soundtrack features several songs by bands associated with the British Invasion of the 1960s. Filming began in November 1997 around Houston, Texas, and lasted 50 days, until late January 1998.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: While the box office results were modest, the film had a positive reception among film critics. The film helped launch the careers of Wes Anderson and Schwartzman while establishing a "second career" for Murray as a respected actor in independent cinema. At the 1999 Independent Spirit Awards, Anderson won the Best Director award and Murray won Best Supporting Male award. Murray also earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Starting from "Rushmore", Murray became one of Anderson's most frequent collaborators, appearing in his eight subsequent films. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Although eccentric, 15-year-old scholarship student Max Fischer participates extensively in extracurricular activities at the prestigious Rushmore Academy in Houston, he struggles academically. Max's middle-class background, which contradicts the wealthy and privileged lives of most Rushmore students, feeds his determination to make his name known. Headmaster Nelson Guggenheim places him on "sudden death academic probation", warning him that if he fails one more class, he will be expelled. At a school assembly, Max meets Herman Blume, a disillusioned parent and local industrialist who despises his twin sons Ronny and Donny, both students at Rushmore. Herman befriends Max and takes him under his wing.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Upon reading an intriguing written message left in a book he read in the library, Max tracks down the book's previous borrower, Rosemary Cross, a widowed first-grade teacher at Rushmore, and soon becomes obsessed with her. Attempting to woo her, he successfully petitions to have the Latin curriculum kept at Rushmore, and later confesses his love for her; she rejects his affection due to their age difference. Rosemary and others, including Max's younger friend Dirk Calloway, are impressed by Max's tenacity, while other students, including the brash and aggressive Magnus Buchan, resent Max's ability to manipulate authority, seemingly on a whim, to the point where the entire school body is affected. Max then attempts to court Rosemary by building an aquarium on the school's baseball field, noting her interest in marine life due to the fish tanks in her classroom and the library book by Jacques Cousteau they had both read, but is stopped by Guggenheim at the ground-breaking ceremony and subsequently expelled from Rushmore for having never sought the school's approval for the project.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Afterwards, Max enrolls at Grover Cleveland High School, a local public school. Classmate Margaret Yang shows interest in him, but he ignores her. Eventually, Max begins to settle in and participate in extracurricular activities again, with Rosemary and Blume supporting him. Blume encourages him to give up pursuing Rosemary but eventually becomes attracted to her himself and they begin to see each other behind Max's back.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Eventually, Dirk discovers the relationship between Rosemary and Blume and informs him as payback for a rumor Max started about his mother. Max confronts Blume, declaring their friendship over, and they soon begin scrapping. Max informs Blume's wife of her husband's affair, forcing him to move into a hotel. Then he puts bees in Blume's room, leading to his running over Max's bicycle with his car. Max is eventually arrested for cutting the brake lines on Blume's car. He later attempts to get revenge on Rosemary by taking damaging photos of her and Blume together but learns from Guggenheim that she had already resigned.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Max eventually gives up, meeting Blume at the grave of his mother Eloise, who died of cancer when Max was seven years old. He explains that revenge no longer matters because even if he wins, Rosemary would still love Blume. Max becomes reclusive and begins to skip school to work at his father Bert's barbershop. One day, Dirk stops by the shop to apologize, bringing him a Christmas present. He then reveals to Max that Guggenheim suffered a stroke, and suggests he visit him at the hospital, knowing Blume will also be there. Max and a washed-up Blume meet and are courteous. Blume tells him that Rosemary broke up with him because she's still in love with her dead husband Edward Appleby, a former Rushmore student, whose death the previous year directly influenced her decision to teach there. Max eventually returns to school and begins to improve his grades.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Taking his final shot at Rosemary, Max pretends to be injured in a car accident, but she sees through his ruse and rebuffs him again. He then decides to help Blume and Rosemary reconcile, first by inviting her to another aquarium groundbreaking ceremony, but she does not show up. Max then invites both of them to attend his Vietnam War-themed play at Grover Cleveland. The performance touches Blume, himself a Vietnam veteran, and he and Rosemary later appear to reconcile. At the after-play party, Max reveals to Blume and Rosemary that he and Margaret are dating. Max and Rosemary then share a dance together.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: With "Rushmore", Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson wanted to create their own "slightly heightened reality, like a Roald Dahl children's book". Like Max Fischer, Wilson was expelled from his preparatory school, St. Mark's School of Texas, in the tenth grade, while Anderson shared Max's ambition and lack of academic motivation, and also had a crush on an older woman. Anderson and Wilson began writing the screenplay for "Rushmore" years before they made "Bottle Rocket". They knew that they wanted to make a film set in an elite preparatory school, much like St. Mark's, which Owen had attended along with his two brothers, Andrew and Luke (Luke being the sole graduate), and St. John's School in Houston, Texas which Anderson had attended. The film featured M. B. Lamar High School. According to the director, "One of the things that was most appealing to us was the initial idea of a 15-year-old kid and a 50-year-old man becoming friends and equals". "Rushmore" was originally going to be made for New Line Cinema but when they could not agree on a budget, Anderson, Wilson and producer Barry Mendel held an auction for the film rights in mid-1997 and struck a deal with Joe Roth, then-chair of Walt Disney Studios. He offered them a $10million budget. The film was distributed by Touchstone Pictures, and produced by Barry Mendel and Paul Schiff for American Empirical Pictures.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Anderson and Wilson wrote the role of Mr. Blume with Bill Murray in mind but doubted they could get the script to him. Murray's agent was a fan of Anderson's first film, "Bottle Rocket", and urged the actor to read the script for "Rushmore". Murray liked it so much that he agreed to work for scale, which Anderson estimated to be around $9,000. The actor was drawn to Anderson and Wilson's "precise" writing and felt that a lot of the film was about "the struggle to retain civility and kindness in the face of extraordinary pain. And I've felt a lot of that in my life". Anderson created detailed storyboards for each scene but was open to Murray's knack for improvisation.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Cast directors considered 1,800 teenagers from the United States, Canada, and Britain for the role of Max Fischer before finding Jason Schwartzman. Macaulay Culkin was considered for the role. In October 1997, approximately a month before principal photography was to begin, a casting director for the film met the seventeen-year-old actor at a party thanks to Schwartzman's cousin, film-maker Sofia Coppola. He came to his audition wearing a preparatory-school blazer and a self-made Rushmore patch. Anderson almost did not make the film when he could not find an actor to play Max but felt that Schwartzman "could retain audience loyalty despite doing all the crummy things Max had to do". Anderson originally pictured Max, physically, as Mick Jagger at age 15, to be played by an actor like Noah Taylor in the Australian film "Flirting" - "a pale, skinny kid". When Anderson met Schwartzman, he reminded Anderson much more of Dustin Hoffman and decided to go that way with the character. Anderson and the actor spent weeks together talking about the character, working on hand gestures and body language.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Seymour Cassel stars as Bert Fischer, Max's dad. Brian Cox stars as Dr. Nelson Guggenheim, the school's headmaster. Mason Gamble plays Dirk Calloway, Max's friend. Sara Tanaka plays Margaret Yang, the girl who has a crush on Max. Alexis Bledel is an extra as a Grover Cleveland High School student.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Filming began in November 1997 and lasted for 50 days, until late January 1998. On the first day of principal photography, Anderson delivered his directions to Murray in a whisper so that he would not be embarrassed if the actor shot him down. However, the actor publicly deferred to Anderson, hauled equipment, and when Disney denied the director a $75,000 shot of Max and Mr. Blume riding in a helicopter, Murray gave Anderson a blank check to cover the cost, although ultimately the scene was never shot.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: At one point, Anderson toyed with the idea of shooting the private school scenes in England and the public school scenes in Detroit in order to "get the most extreme variation possible," according to the director. Instead, the film was shot in and around Houston, Texas where Anderson grew up. His high school alma mater, St. John's School, was used for the picturesque setting of Rushmore Academy. Lamar High School in Houston was used to depict Grover Cleveland High School, the public school. In real life, the two schools are across the street from each other. Richard Connelly of the "Houston Press" said that the Lamar building "was ghetto'd up to look like a dilapidated inner-city school." Many scenes were also filmed at North Shore High School. The film's widescreen, slightly theatrical look was influenced by Roman Polanski's "Chinatown". Anderson also cites "The Graduate" and "Harold and Maude" as cinematic influences on "Rushmore".


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Initially, the character of Margaret Yang was supposed to have a wooden finger, having been blown off in a science experiment. The idea was abandoned, but later on used in Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums", where Margot has a wooden finger.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: "Rushmore" uses the unique style of cinematography that Wes Anderson has become well known for. The film has a singular sense of colour, focusing mainly on blues, greens, and reds in order to create a heightened reality. The montage sequence near the beginning of the film is strongly influenced by the rapid transitions used by French New Wave film-makers. The shot of Max in the go-cart also resembles a photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue. Disney executives almost cancelled the montage sequence as they did not believe that these short singular shots were necessary due to the film's restrictive budget and time frame. Therefore, the sequence was shot quickly whenever the crew were at a suitable location.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Anderson confirmed that the protagonist Max is a semi-autobiographical version of himself, including his tendency to write school plays, except that Max is not shy. Anderson has come to be known as an auteur for this distinct style and frequent collaborations with the same actors and production members. Devin Orgeron claims that Anderson's auteurship is interesting in his consistent "cinematic and extracinematic confrontation with the very question of auteurship". In Anderson's films, and especially "Rushmore," the protagonist is a "flawed but ultimately redeemable" auteur. However, in both the protagonists' and Anderson's ties to their communities, an idea of ""collective" auteurship" is proffered.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Mark Olsen writes that Anderson observes his characters chasing "their miniaturist renditions of the American Dream" and that "they embody both sides of William Carlos Williams' famous edict that the pure products of America go crazy".


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Deborah J. Thomas argues that "Rushmore" has a certain level of deliberate artifice. She observes a tension between irony and affect, and the clash "between these aesthetic modes destabilises normative assumptions and expectations in relation to character engagement." For her Anderson uses a "series of strategies in relation to framing, camera angles, shot scales, sound and performance that are designed to unsettle the audience's experience of proximity to, and hence intimacy with, the characters".


title: Rushmore (film)

text: In the film, Anderson frequently employs the visual device of a stage, or stage curtains, to present the action. Rachel Joseph speculates that there is a link between these "screened stages" and the theme of mourning, for this "framed theatricality ... parallels the grieving process of reenacting and repeating the traumatic". She also draws a connection between this style of presentation and the "cinema of attractions" that Tom Gunning theorised.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Wes Anderson originally intended for the film's soundtrack to be entirely made up of songs by The Kinks, feeling the music suited Max's loud and angry nature, and because Max was initially envisioned to be a British exchange student. However, while Anderson listened to a compilation of other British Invasion songs on the set, the soundtrack gradually evolved until only one song by the Kinks remained in the film ("Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl"). According to Anderson, "Max always wears a blazer and the British Invasion sounds like music made by guys in blazers, but still rock 'n' roll". In his review for "Entertainment Weekly", Rob Brunner gave the soundtrack record an "A−" rating and wrote, "this collection won't make much sense if you haven't seen the movie. But for anyone who left the theater singing along to the Faces' "Ooh La La", it's an essential soundtrack". Anderson also pays homage to the Charles Schulz/Bill Melendez Peanuts television specials, playing "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" from the famous "Charlie Brown Christmas" in one of the film's scenes.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: "Rushmore" had its world premiere at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival on September 17, and also screened at the 25th Telluride Film Festival where it was one of the few studio films to be screened and be well received by both critics and audiences. The film was also screened at the 1998 New York Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival where it was a hit with critics. The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles for one week in December in order to be eligible for the Academy Awards.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: "Rushmore" opened for a week at single theaters in New York City and Los Angeles on December 11, 1998. In one weekend, it earned a combined , selling out 18 of 31 showings. The film opened in wide release on February 5, 1999. It expanded from 103 to 830 theaters by March 5, 1999, grossing $2.45million in its first week. Its domestic total gross was $17,105,219 and its international box office $1,975,216.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 105 reviews and an average rating of 8.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This cult favorite is a quirky coming of age story, with fine, off-kilter performances from Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: In his review for the "Daily News", film critic Dave Kehr praised "Rushmore" as "a magnificent work" and picked it as the best movie of the year. "USA Today" gave the film three out of four stars and wrote that Bill Murray was "at his off-kilter best". Todd McCarthy, in his review for "Variety", admired the film's deep-focus widescreen compositions, and felt that it gave the story "exceptional vividness". In his review for "Time", Richard Schickel praised "Rushmore" as a "delightfully droll comedy", but felt it indulges in itself a little too much. He observed the film brought up "many dark and weighty emotional objects", and tried to conclude them in a "satisfying way".


title: Rushmore (film)

text: In her review for "The New York Times", Janet Maslin wrote that Anderson is smart enough to avoid turning sentimental, observing how Max "starts off on top of the Rushmore world and experiences a wonderfully welcome comeuppance". In his review for "The Independent", Anthony Quinn thought "Rushmore" was different than all the many "high-school flicks every week", describing it as a "adolescent tragi-comedy, neurotic-romantic triangle" and a "study in loss and loneliness". He praised Schwartzman for playing a character who has not emotionally matured yet, and thought Murray gave an "emotional turnaround" performance. In her review for "The Washington Post", Rita Kempley praised Schwartzman's performance for winning "sympathy and a great deal of affection for Max, never mind that he could grow into Sidney Blumenthal". "Entertainment Weekly" gave "Rushmore" an "A" rating and opined that Anderson used the 1960s British Invasion hits to "further define Max's adolescent dislocation". Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his review for the "Chicago Reader", wrote that Anderson and Wilson do not "share the class snobbery" in much of Salinger's work, but still thought that they "harbor a protective gallantry toward their characters" which is, at the same time, the film's greatest strength and weakness.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: In "Time Out New York", Andrew Johnston called it one of the year's finest films and thought it reminds him of "Harold and Maude", but also added that the "complexity of Max and the audacity of the film's set pieces place it in a league of its own." Film critic David Ansen ranked "Rushmore" the 10th best film of 1998.


title: Rushmore (film)

text: Some critics did not review the film as positively. In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan criticized Max's overtly "snooty" personality as "too off-putting to tolerate" which could potentially discourage audiences when identifying with the film. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four citing an issue with the film's shift in tone in the final act, stating "the air goes out of the movie" in regards to "stage-setting and character development". He further wrote that the film is torn between being structured like a comedy and having "undertones of darker themes", remarking that he wished the film had "allowed the plot to lead them into those shadows".