title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The Independent Review Board (IRB) is a three-member panel established to investigate and take appropriate action with respect to "any allegations of corruption," "any allegations of domination or control or influence" of any part of the Union by organized crime, and any failure to cooperate fully with the IRB.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In 1991, Ron Carey won a surprising victory in the first direct election for General President in the union's history, defeating two "old guard" candidates, R.V. Durham and Walter Shea. Carey's slate, supported by TDU, also won nearly all of the seats on the International Executive Board.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Carey acquired a fair amount of influence within the AFL–CIO, which had readmitted the Teamsters in 1985. Carey was close with the new leadership elected in 1995, particularly Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers of America, who became Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL–CIO under John Sweeney. Carey had also swung the Teamsters support behind the Democratic Party, a change from past administrations that had supported the Republican Party. The new administration set out to break from the past in other ways, making energetic efforts to head off a vote to oust the union as representative of Northwest Airlines' flight attendants, negotiating a breakthrough agreement covering carhaulers, and supporting local strikes, such as the one against Diamond Walnut, to restore the union's strength.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The Carey administration did not, on the other hand, have much power in the lower reaches of the Teamster hierarchy: all of the large regional conferences were run by "old guard" officers, as were most of the locals. Disagreements between those two camps led the old guard to campaign against the Carey administration's proposed dues increase. The Carey administration retaliated by dissolving the regional conferences, calling them expensive redundancies and fiefdoms for old guard union officers, and rearranging the boundaries of some joint councils that had fought against the dues increase.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The opposition responded by uniting around a single candidate, James P. Hoffa, son of James R. Hoffa, to run against Carey in 1996. Hoffa ran a strong campaign, trading on the mystique still attached to his late father's name and promising to restore those days of glory. Carey appeared, however, to have won a close election.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Shortly afterward in 1997, the union initiated a large and successful strike against UPS. The parcel services department by that time had become the largest division in the union.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Carey was removed from the union's leadership by the IRB shortly thereafter, when evidence that individuals in his office had arranged for transfer of several thousand dollars to an outside contractor, which then arranged for another entity to make an equivalent contribution to the Carey campaign. Carey was indicted for lying to investigators about his campaign funding but was acquitted of all charges in a 2001 trial.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In the 1998 election to succeed Carey, James P. Hoffa was elected handily. He became president of the Teamsters on March 19, 1999, and took the union in a more moderate direction, tempering the union's support for Democrats and attempting to come to terms with powerful Republicans in Congress.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The union has merged in recent years with a number of unions from other industries, including the Graphic Communications International Union, a printing industry union, and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, both from the railway industry.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: On July 25, 2005, the Teamsters disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO and became a founding member of the new national trade union center, the Change to Win Federation.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In 2009, UPS, many employees of which are members of the Teamsters, lobbied to have language added to the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009 (H.R. 915) to change how UPS and FedEx compete with one another. In response, FedEx launched a large, online advertising campaign aimed at UPS and the Teamsters, called 'Stop the Brown Bailout'.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Prior to the 1970s, no long-lived caucuses existed within the Teamsters union. Challengers for office ran on their personal appeal and individual power base, rather than on caucus or "party" platforms and such challenges were infrequent. The Teamster leadership was well-established and somewhat self-perpetuating, and challengers only rarely achieved victories at the local and (even less frequently) regional levels. This changed in the 1970s. A national wildcat strike challenged President Frank Fitzsimmons' control over the union, but failed. After the strike, a reform movement known as "Teamsters United Rank and File" (TURF) formed to continue to challenge against the union's national leadership. But TURF collapsed after a few years due to internal dissent. In 1975, two new caucuses formed: Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC) and UPSurge. Both groups pushed the national leadership for a vastly improved contracts at UPS and the freight lines.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In 1976 a new formal caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), formed when TDC and UPSurge merged. The new caucus' goal was to make internal Teamster governance more transparent and democratic, which included giving rank-and-file more of a say in the terms and approval of contracts.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In the 1980s, TDU occasionally won elections for positions on local councils, but it was not until 1983—when the TDU forced President Jackie Presser to withdraw and make changes to a concession-laden National Master Freight Agreement—that TDU had a national impact. TDU publicized the very centralized and not very transparent national union decision-making process, criticized what it said was lack of member input into these decisions, and published contract, salary, membership, and other data critical of the national union leadership. These criticisms led to another success for TDU, with many TDU proposals finding their way into the 1988 court decree in which the federal government took over of the Teamsters. Although the TDU has never won the presidency of the national union as of mid-2013, it strongly supported Ron Carey for the presidency in 1991. Carey, in turn, adopted many of TDU's reform proposals as part of his platform. Carey ran with nearly a full slate (which included a candidate for secretary-treasurer and 13 vice presidencies). R.V. Durham, leader of the Teamsters in North Carolina, was considered the "establishment" candidate and front-runner in the campaign (he had the backing of a majority of the union's executive board). A second candidate in the race, Walter Shea, was a veteran union staffer from Washington, D.C. Carey won with 48.5 percent of the vote to Durham's 33.2 percent and Shea's 18.3 percent. (Turnout was low, only about 32 percent of the union's total membership.) Carey's election, sociologist Charlotte Ryan says, was another success for TDU (even though Carey was not a TDU candidate).


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Carey won re-election in 1996 in a corrupt election, defeating James P. Hoffa (son of the former union president). Prior to entering the race, Hoffa formed a caucus of his own, the "Hoffa Unity Slate", to counter the grassroots organizing of TDU and Carey. Carey was later ousted as union president by U.S. government officials. A re-run election in 1998 saw Hoffa and the Unity Slate easily defeat TDU candidate Tom Leedham 54.5 percent to 39.3 percent (with 28 percent turnout).


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: Hoffa was re-elected over Leedham (again running on the TDU platform) in 2001, 64.8 percent to 35.2 percent. Leedham challenged Hoffa and the Hoffa Unity Slate a third time in 2006, losing 65 percent to 35 percent (with 25 percent turnout). Hoffa faced TDU candidate Sandy Pope, a local union president, in 2011. Also running, with a full slate of officer and vice presidential candidates, was former Hoffa supporter and former national vice president Fred Gegare. Hoffa again easily won re-election, earning 60 percent of the vote to Gregare's 23 percent and Pope's 17 percent. The Hoffa Unity Slate also won all five regional vice presidencies, although the slate's support declined across the board. Hoffa won reelection once more in 2016, this time against Teamsters United candidate Fred Zuckerman, but by a much narrower margin of 52 to 48 percent. The 2016 election was also the first time Hoffa-allied candidates lost regional vice presidencies to the Teamsters United reform slate.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: In the 2021 election, Hoffa did not run for re-election. The Teamsters United slate, aligned with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, ran against the Teamsters Power Slate, endorsed by Hoffa. The Teamsters United slate, led by Sean O'Brien, won the election. O'Brien and his slate were sworn into office on March 22, 2022, at Teamsters headquarters in Washington, D.C. On the day his administration was installed, O'Brien fired more than 80 employees at the headquarters. He did not offer any severance or extension of benefits to the terminated staff. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters currently faces charges with the National Labor Relations Board in connection to the terminations. As of November 10, 2022, the union was required to pay eligible terminated employees more than $175,000 as part of a settlement with the District of Columbia Attorney General's Office for violating D.C. Code 32-1303.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The Teamsters Union is one of the largest labor unions in the world, as well as the 11th largest campaign contributor in the United States. While they supported Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush for president in the 1980s, they have begun leaning largely toward the Democrats in recent years; they have donated 92% of their $24,418,589 in contributions since 1990 to the Democratic Party. Though the union opposed former President George W. Bush's agenda to open US highways to Mexican truckers, it did previously support Bush's platform for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.


title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

text: The Teamsters Union also makes an annual contribution to Friends of Sinn Féin—the US fundraising arm of Irish republican party Sinn Féin.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements. The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism, although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art, often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848. With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The Realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.


title: Realism (arts)

text: In 19th-century Europe, "Naturalism" or the "Naturalist school" was somewhat artificially erected as a term representing a breakaway sub-movement of realism, that attempted (not wholly successfully) to distinguish itself from its parent by its avoidance of politics and social issues, and liked to proclaim a quasi-scientific basis, playing on the sense of "naturalist" as a student of natural history, as the biological sciences were then generally known.


title: Realism (arts)

text: There have been various movements invoking realism in the other arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism, and Italian neorealist cinema.


title: Realism (arts)

text: When used as an adjective, "realistic" (usually related to visual appearance) distinguishes itself from "realist" art that concerns subject matter. Similarly, the term "illusionistic" might be used when referring to the accurate rendering of visual appearances in a composition. In painting, naturalism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes and objects. It is also called mimesis or illusionism and becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and other artists in the 15th century. In the 19th-century, Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet were not especially noted for fully precise and careful depiction of visual appearances; in Courbet's time that was more often a characteristic of academic painting, which very often depicted with great skill and care scenes that were contrived and artificial, or imagined historical scenes. It is the choice and treatment of subject matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting, rather than the careful attention to visual appearances.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Realism or naturalism as a style meaning the honest, unidealizing depiction of the subject, can be used in depicting any type of subject, without any commitment to treating the typical or everyday. Despite the general idealism of classical art, this too had classical precedents, which came in useful when defending such treatments in the Renaissance and Baroque. Demetrius of Alopece was a 4th-century BCE sculptor whose work (all now lost) was said to prefer realism over ideal beauty, and during the Ancient Roman Republic even politicians preferred a truthful depiction in portraits, though the early emperors favoured Greek idealism. Goya's portraits of the Spanish royal family represent a sort of peak in the honest and downright unflattering portrayal of important persons.


title: Realism (arts)

text: A recurring trend in Christian art was "realism" that emphasized the humanity of religious figures, above all Christ and his physical sufferings in his Passion. Following trends in devotional literature, this developed in the Late Middle Ages, where some painted wooden sculptures in particular strayed into the grotesque in portraying Christ covered in wounds and blood, with the intention of stimulating the viewer to meditate on the suffering that Christ had undergone on his behalf. These were especially found in Germany and Central Europe. After abating in the Renaissance, similar works re-appeared in the Baroque, especially in Spanish sculpture.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Renaissance theorists opened a debate, which was to last several centuries, as to the correct balance between drawing art from the observation of nature and from idealized forms, typically those found in classical models, or the work of other artists generally. All admitted the importance of the natural, but many believed it should be idealized to various degrees to include only the beautiful. Leonardo da Vinci was one who championed the pure study of nature, and wished to depict the whole range of individual varieties of forms in the human figure and other things. Leon Battista Alberti was an early idealizer, stressing the typical, with others such as Michelangelo supporting selection of the most beautiful – he refused to make portraits for that reason.


title: Realism (arts)

text: In the 17th century the debate continued, in Italy usually centred on the contrast between the relative "classical-idealism" of the Carracci and the "naturalist" style of the Caravaggisti, or followers of Caravaggio, who painted religious scenes as though set in the back streets of contemporary Italian cities, and used "naturalist" as a self-description. Bellori, writing some decades after Caravaggio's early death, and no supporter of his style, refers to "Those who glory in the name of naturalists" ("naturalisti").


title: Realism (arts)

text: During the 19th-century, naturalism developed as a broadly defined movement in European art, though it lacked the political underpinnings that motivated realist artist. The originator of the term was the French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary, who in 1863 announced that: "The naturalist school declares that art is the expression of life under all phases and on all levels, and that its sole aim is to reproduce nature by carrying it to its maximum power and intensity: it is truth balanced with science". Émile Zola adopted the term with a similar scientific emphasis for his aims in the novel. Much Naturalist painting covered a similar range of subject matter as that of Impressionism, but using tighter, more traditional brushwork styles, and in landscapes often with more gloomy weather.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The term "continued to be used indiscriminately for various kinds of realism" for several decades, often as a catch-all term for art that was outside Impressionism and later movements of Modernism and also was not academic art. The later periods of the French Barbizon School and the Düsseldorf school of painting, with its students from many countries, and in 20th-century American Regionalism are movements which are often also described as "Naturalist", although the term is rarely used of British painting. Some recent art historians have deepened the confusion by claiming either Courbet or the Impressionists for the label.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The development of increasingly accurate representation of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance, and of detailed effects of light and colour. The Art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals, and Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization that nevertheless allowed very effective depictions to be produced very widely and consistently. Ancient Greek art is commonly recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy, and has remained an influential model ever since. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts, and the surviving corpus of derivative works (mostly Graeco-Roman works in mosaic) it is clear that illusionism was highly valued in painting. Pliny the Elder's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, but indicates the aspiration of Greek painting.


title: Realism (arts)

text: As well as accuracy in shape, light and colour, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones, and representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism; statues of Greek gods and heroes attempt to represent with accuracy idealized and beautiful forms, though other works, such as heads of the famously ugly Socrates, were allowed to fall below these ideal standards of beauty. Roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects, called verism.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change already well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of the elite. In the West classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods, and were helped, first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, and around the 1470s in Italy, by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed very subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using very small brushes and several layers of paint and glaze. Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in the early 15th century and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The accurate depiction of landscape in painting had also been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting, and was then brought to a very high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting, with very subtle techniques for depicting a range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, by 1600 European portraiture could give a very good likeness in both painting and sculpture, though the subjects were often idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings, and still life elements in other works, played a considerable role in developing illusionistic painting, though in the Netherlandish tradition of flower painting they long lacked "realism", in that flowers from all seasons were typically used, either from the habit of assembling compositions from individual drawings, or as a deliberate convention; the large displays of bouquets in vases, though close to modern displays of cut flowers that they have influenced, were entirely atypical of 17th-century habits, where flowers were displayed one at a time. Intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a long history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions, or shown at a smaller scale. This was partly because art was expensive, and usually commissioned for specific religious, political or personal reasons, that allowed only a relatively small amount of space or effort to be devoted to such scenes. Drolleries in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts sometimes contain small scenes of everyday life, and the development of perspective created large background areas in many scenes set outdoors that could be made more interesting by including small figures going about their everyday lives. Medieval and Early Renaissance art by convention usually showed non-sacred figures in contemporary dress, so no adjustment was needed for this even in religious or historical scenes set in ancient times.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Early Netherlandish painting brought the painting of portraits as low down the social scale as the prosperous merchants of Flanders, and in some of these, notably the "Arnolfini Portrait" by Jan van Eyck (1434), and more often in religious scenes such as the Merode Altarpiece, by Robert Campin and his workshop (circa 1427), include very detailed depictions of middle-class interiors full of lovingly depicted objects. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance and symbolism that undercut any commitment to realism for its own sake. Cycles of the Labours of the Months in late medieval art, of which many examples survive from books of hours, concentrate on peasants labouring on different tasks through the seasons, often in a rich landscape background, and were significant both in developing landscape art and the depiction of everyday working-class people.


title: Realism (arts)

text: In the 16th century there was a fashion for the depiction in large paintings of scenes of people working, especially in food markets and kitchens: in many the food is given as much prominence as the workers. Artists included Pieter Aertsen and his nephew Joachim Beuckelaer in the Netherlands, working in an essentially Mannerist style, and in Italy the young Annibale Carracci in the 1580s, using a very down to earth unpolished style, with Bartolomeo Passerotti somewhere between the two. Pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life. Such scenes acted as a prelude for the popularity of scenes of work in genre painting in the 17th century, which appeared all over Europe, with Dutch Golden Age painting sprouting several different subgenres of such scenes, the Bamboccianti (though mostly from the Low Countries) in Italy, and in Spain the genre of bodegones, and the introduction of unidealized peasants into history paintings by Jusepe de Ribera and Velázquez. The Le Nain brothers in France and many Flemish artists including Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers the Elder and Younger painted peasants, but rarely townsfolk. In the 18th century small paintings of working people working remained popular, mostly drawing on the Dutch tradition, and especially featuring women.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Much art depicting ordinary people, especially in the form of prints, was comic and moralistic, but the mere poverty of the subjects seems relatively rarely to have been part of the moral message. From the mid-19th century onwards this changed, and the difficulties of life for the poor were emphasized. Despite this trend coinciding with large-scale migration from the countryside to cities in most of Europe, painters still tended to paint poor rural people, largely leaving illustrators such as Gustave Doré to show the horrors of city slums. Crowded city street scenes were popular with the Impressionists and related painters, especially ones showing Paris.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Medieval manuscript illuminators were often asked to illustrate technology, but after the Renaissance such images continued in book illustration and prints, but with the exception of marine painting largely disappeared in fine art until the early Industrial Revolution, scenes from which were painted by a few painters such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philip James de Loutherbourg. Such subjects probably failed to sell very well, and there is a noticeable absence of industry, other than a few railway scenes, in painting until the later 19th century, when works began to be commissioned, typically by industrialists or for institutions in industrial cities, often on a large scale, and sometimes given a quasi-heroic treatment.


title: Realism (arts)

text: American realism, a movement of the early 20th century, is one of many modern movements to use realism in this sense.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as a reaction to Romanticism and History painting. In favor of depictions of 'real' life, the Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works. Its chief exponents were Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. According to Ross Finocchio, formerly of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life, coinciding with the contemporaneous naturalist literature of Émile Zola, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The French Realist movement had equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. In particular the Peredvizhniki or "Wanderers" group in Russia who formed in the 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as Ilya Repin, Vasily Perov, and Ivan Shishkin, and had a great influence on Russian art. In Britain artists such as Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes had great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality", Realism as a literary movement is based on "objective reality." It focuses on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. According to Kornelije Kvas, "the realistic figuration and re-figuration of reality form logical constructs that are similar to our usual notion of reality, without violating the principle of three types of laws – those of natural sciences, psychological and social ones". It may be regarded as the general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules." As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of human kind's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs, and thus can be known (or knowable) to the artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality' faithfully. As Ian Watt states, modern realism "begins from the position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses" and as such "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke, and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century."


title: Realism (arts)

text: While the preceding Romantic era was also a reaction against the values of the Industrial Revolution, realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this reason it is also commonly derogatorily referred as "traditional" "bourgeois realism". Some writers of Victorian literature produced works of realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of "bourgeois realism" prompted in their turn the revolt later labeled as modernism; starting around 1900, the driving motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and world view, which was countered with an antirationalist, antirealist and antibourgeois program.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Theatrical realism is said to have first emerged in European drama in the 19th century as an offshoot of the Industrial Revolution and the age of science. Some also specifically cited the invention of photography as the basis of the realist theater while others view that the association between realism and drama is far older as demonstrated by the principles of dramatic forms such as the presentation of the physical world that closely matches reality.


title: Realism (arts)

text: The achievement of realism in the theatre was to direct attention to the social and psychological problems of ordinary life. In its dramas, people emerge as victims of forces larger than themselves, as individuals confronted with a rapidly accelerating world. These pioneering playwrights were unafraid to present their characters as ordinary, impotent, and unable to arrive at answers to their predicaments. This type of art represents what we see with our human eyes. Anton Chekov, for instance, used camera works to reproduce an uninflected slice of life, exposing the rhetorical and suasive character of realistic theatricality. Scholars such as Thomas Postlewait noted that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were numerous joinings of melodramatic and realistic forms and functions, which could be demonstrated in the way melodramatic elements existed in realistic forms and vice versa.


title: Realism (arts)

text: In the United States, realism in drama preceded fictional realism by about two decades as theater historians identified the first impetus toward realism during the late 1870s and early 1880s. Its development is also attributed to William Dean Howells and Henry James who served as the spokesmen for realism as well as articulator of its aesthetic principles.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Italian Neorealism was a cinematic movement incorporating elements of realism that developed in post-WWII Italy. Notable Neorealists included Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Roberto Rossellini. Realist films generally focus on social issues. There are two types of realism in film: seamless realism and aesthetic realism. Seamless realism tries to use narrative structures and film techniques to create a "reality effect" to maintain its authenticity. Aesthetic realism, which was first called for by French filmmakers in the 1930s and promoted by Andre Bazin in the 1950s, acknowledges that a "film cannot be fixed to mean what it shows", as there are multiple realisms; as such, these filmmakers use location shooting, natural light and non-professional actors to ensure the viewer can make up her/his own choice based on the film, rather than being manipulated into a "preferred reading". Siegfried Kracauer is also notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Aestheticly realist filmmakers use long shots, deep focus and eye-level 90 degree shots to reduce manipulation of what the viewer sees. Italian neorealism filmmakers from after WWII took the existing realist film approaches from France and Italy that emerged in the 1960s and used them to create a politically oriented cinema. French filmmakers made some politically oriented realist films in the 1960s, such as the cinéma vérité and documentary films of Jean Rouch while in the 1950s and 1960s, British, French and German new waves of filmmaking produced "slice-of-life" films (e.g., kitchen sink dramas in the UK).


title: Realism (arts)

text: Verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and Henrik Ibsen into opera. This new style presented true-to-life drama that featured gritty and flawed lower-class protagonists while some described it as a heightened portrayal of a realistic event. Although an account considered Giuseppe Verdi's "Luisa Miller" and "La Traviata" as the first stirrings of the verismo, some claimed that it began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana", peaked in the early 1900s. It was followed by Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which dealt with the themes of infidelity, revenge, and violence.


title: Realism (arts)

text: Verismo also reached Britain where pioneers included the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Specifically, their play "Iolanthe" is considered a realistic representation of the nobility although it included fantastical elements.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Use Your Illusion I is the third studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released on September 17, 1991, the same day as its counterpart "Use Your Illusion II". Both albums were released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour. The album debuted at No. 2 on the "Billboard" charts, selling 685,000 copies in its first week, behind "Use Your Illusion II"s first-week sales of 770,000. "Use Your Illusion I" has sold 5,502,000 units in the United States as of 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Each of the "Use Your Illusion" albums have been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA. It was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992. This is their first album to feature former The Cult drummer Matt Sorum, who replaced Steven Adler following Adler's departure in 1990 (although he was featured again on "Civil War", which appeared on its counterpart album), as well as keyboardist Dizzy Reed. This is their first album to be recorded as a six-piece band.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: The "Use Your Illusion" albums represent a turning point in the sound of Guns N' Roses. Although the band did not abandon the aggressive hard-rock sound it had become known for with 1987's "Appetite for Destruction", "Use Your Illusion I" demonstrated a more diverse sound, incorporating elements of blues, classical music, heavy metal, punk rock, and classic rock and roll. This is exemplified by the use of piano on several tracks by singer Axl Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, as well as on "Use Your Illusion II". "Use Your Illusion I" contains two of the three songs, "November Rain" and "Don't Cry", whose videos are considered a trilogy. The third song, "Estranged", is on "Use Your Illusion II".


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Another factor in the different sound compared to the band's earlier work is the addition of former The Cult drummer Matt Sorum, who replaced Steven Adler. Adler was fired from the group due to heroin addiction. Guitarist Izzy Stradlin said: "Adler's sense of swing was the push and pull that give the songs their feel. When that was gone, it was just... unbelievable, weird. Nothing worked. I would have preferred to continue with Steve, but we'd had two years off and we couldn't wait any longer."


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: A number of songs on the album were written in the band's early days and can be found on a popular bootleg album of early demo tapes known as "The Rumbo Tapes". "Back Off Bitch", "Bad Obsession", "Don't Cry" (referred to by Rose during the ensuing tour as 'the first song we ever wrote together'), "November Rain" and "The Garden" are considered part of this group. There is also a cover of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Live and Let Die".


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Besides the stylistic differences, another new aspect in "Use Your Illusion I" was longer songs. "November Rain", an epic ballad, is nearly nine minutes long, and "Coma" is more than 10 minutes. Another change was the presence of tracks sung by other members of the band (even though certain songs from "Appetite for Destruction" and "G N' R Lies" featured other members on duet vocals): lead vocals on "Dust N' Bones", "You Ain't the First" and "Double Talkin' Jive" are performed by rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin. In addition, "14 Years" and "So Fine" from "Use Your Illusion II" were sung by Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan, respectively.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: The band had some difficulty achieving the final sound, especially during the mixing stages of both albums. According to a 1991 "Rolling Stone" cover story, after mixing 21 tracks with engineer/producer Bob Clearmountain, the band decided to scrap the mixes and start from scratch with engineer Bill Price of Sex Pistols fame. "If Axl liked the mix, Slash didn't", Price recalled, "and if Slash liked it, Axl didn't… They still hadn't finished the record when their massive 18-month world tour started, so the last half-dozen songs were recorded in random studios across America on days off between gigs."


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Slash has stated that a great deal of the material for the album was written on acoustic guitars in a couple of nights at his house (the Walnut House), after several months of non-productivity.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Right Next Door to Hell" is a product of discord between Axl and his West Hollywood high-rise neighbor, Gabriella Kantor. Kantor had Rose arrested and sued Rose, claiming he hit her with a wine bottle. He denied the charges and labeled her a "fanatical fan". The condo was eventually given away in MTV's "Evict Axl" contest. Timo Caltia (real name Timo Kaltio), who participated in the writing of this song, is a Finnish guitarist, songwriter and guitar tech who once worked with Hanoi Rocks. He'd played a chorus riff of the song at his home while Stradlin was visiting.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Live and Let Die" was released as the second single from the "Use Your Illusion I" album and the fourth out of all the "Use Your Illusion" singles. A music video was made in November 1991 featuring the band playing live on stage and showing old pictures. The video was also made shortly before Stradlin's departure and it was the last video where he appears. It charted at number 20 on the Mainstream rock chart. The song was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance during the 1993 Grammy Awards.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Don't Cry" is a power ballad and two versions were released simultaneously on different albums. The version with the original lyrics is featured on "Use Your Illusion I", while the version with alternate lyrics is the 13th track on "Use Your Illusion II". Only the vocal tracks differ, and even then only in the verses; however, in those verses, not only are the words entirely different, but the meter and melody are also slightly different. There is also a third version, officially released only on the single for the song, which was recorded during the "Appetite for Destruction" sessions in 1986. Rose has stated that the song was written about a girl named Monique Lewis (the face tattooed on his right bicep). She was romantically involved with both Rose and Stradlin at different times.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Bad Obsession" is about tackling drug abuse and addiction, which had haunted the band since before they had become famous. Michael Monroe, lead singer of the Finnish hard rock band Hanoi Rocks and a big influence on Guns N' Roses, plays the harmonica and tenor saxophone on the studio version. A live version from the Tokyo Dome was featured on the "Use Your Illusion I" DVD as song number six and Rose takes a dig at Stradlin by saying "This a song that we wrote about one year before "Mr. Brownstone" with the help of our friend West Arkeen and some guy that just, I don't know, his name just escapes me", referencing Stradlin.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Back Off Bitch" was written before the band's 1987 debut album, "Appetite for Destruction". The song was also played during Guns N' Roses concerts before the release of "Appetite for Destruction". "Back Off Bitch" was written partially about Rose's girlfriend, Gina Siler, who moved with him to Los Angeles in 1982, and eventually kicked him out in 1983, due to his anger issues. It was also demoed several times by the band during this period.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: At the end of "Double Talkin' Jive" Slash performs an extended flamenco-style guitar solo. Live performances of this song were stretched from its original three-minute length to more than eight minutes long. The opening line of the song "Found a head and an arm in a garbage can" refers to body parts that were actually discovered by the police in a dumpster in the vicinity of the studio. It is rumored that the body parts found were of porn actor/director/writer Billy London aka William Arnold Newton.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "November Rain" is an epic ballad written by lead singer Axl Rose and released as a single in June 1992. It features a sweeping orchestral backing and is one of Guns N' Roses' longest songs. It was the longest song in history to enter the top 10 of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, until it was surpassed by "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift, which reached number one in 2021. Guns N' Roses performed this song with Elton John on piano at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Garden of Eden" was written while the band was rehearsing for an extended period of time in Chicago. There is a music video of the song, filmed in one static take (shot through a fish eye lens) which features a close-up of Rose singing into a ribbon microphone with the band playing behind him, whilst keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Teddy Andreadis (who played the harmonica for the band during the "Use Your Illusion" Tour) are seen dancing in the far background. There are two versions of the video, both made in 1992. One version has strips of paper flying through the air, and is mostly found on music video sites like Yahoo! Music. The other version has lyrics onscreen, complete with a "follow-the-bouncing-ball", but with no paper flying around. This is the version that is on the Guns N' Roses music video compilation "Welcome to the Videos".


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Dead Horse" starts with an acoustic section, which features a guitar riff written by Rose. The electric guitars soon come in for the heavier section which dominates the song. After the final climactic chorus, the opening section is reprised before ending with an audio effect of the song being fast-forwarded.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: "Coma" was written by Rose and Slash about their drug overdoses. It is Guns N' Roses longest song to date. It features hospital sound effects and a real defibrillator.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Both albums' covers are the work of Estonian-American artist Mark Kostabi. They consist of detail from Raphael's painting "The School of Athens". The highlighted figure, unlike many of those in the painting, has not been identified with any specific philosopher. The only difference in the artwork between the albums is the color scheme used for each album. "Use Your Illusion I" uses yellow and red. The original painting was titled by Paul Kostabi as "Use Your Illusion" and also became the title of both albums. Both "Use Your Illusion" albums' liner notes include the message "Fuck You, St. Louis!" amongst the thank you notes, a reference to the Riverport Riot near there at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in July 1991 during the Use Your Illusion Tour.


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Released at midnight on September 17, 1991, the "Use Your Illusion" albums were among the most anticipated in rock history. Predictions in the industry were of sales reaching the likes of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", this despite the fact that major stores K-Mart and Walmart refused to stock the albums due to the profanity present. Estimates suggested that over 500,000 copies of the two albums were sold in just 2 hours. Both albums ultimately underperformed expectations domestically but were still commercially successful, with "Use Your Illusion I" selling 5,502,000 and both being certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA. "Use Your Illusion I" debuted below "Use Your Illusion II" mainly due to the fact that the second album contained the main lead single of the two albums "You Could Be Mine".


title: Use Your Illusion I

text: Reception to "Use Your Illusion I" was mainly positive, and it is regarded as the heavier-sounding album of the two due in part to the influence of Izzy Stradlin. Critics praised the highlights of the album such as "November Rain" and "Coma", the closing track, but criticized the amount of filler on the album. Asked if the wait was worth it, David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" said "yes". "Rolling Stone" listed the album at number 41 in their list "100 Best Albums of the 90s".


title: Central bank

text: A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union,


title: Central bank

text: and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base. Most central banks also have supervisory and regulatory powers to ensure the stability of member institutions, to prevent bank runs, and to discourage reckless or fraudulent behavior by member banks.


title: Central bank

text: Central banks in most developed nations are institutionally independent from political interference. Still, limited control by the executive and legislative bodies exists.


title: Central bank

text: At the most basic level, monetary policy involves establishing what form of currency the country may have, whether a fiat currency, gold-backed currency (disallowed for countries in the International Monetary Fund), currency board or a currency union. When a country has its own national currency, this involves the issue of some form of standardized currency, which is essentially a form of promissory note: "money" under certain circumstances. Historically, this was often a promise to exchange the money for precious metals in some fixed amount. Now, when many currencies are fiat money, the "promise to pay" consists of the promise to accept that currency to pay for taxes.


title: Central bank

text: A central bank may use another country's currency either directly in a currency union, or indirectly on a currency board. In the latter case, exemplified by the Bulgarian National Bank, Hong Kong and Latvia (until 2014), the local currency is backed at a fixed rate by the central bank's holdings of a foreign currency.


title: Central bank

text: Similar to commercial banks, central banks hold assets (government bonds, foreign exchange, gold, and other financial assets) and incur liabilities (currency outstanding). Central banks create money by issuing banknotes and loaning them to the government in exchange for interest-bearing assets such as government bonds. When central banks decide to increase the money supply by an amount which is greater than the amount their national governments decide to borrow, the central banks may purchase private bonds or assets denominated in foreign currencies.


title: Central bank

text: The European Central Bank remits its interest income to the central banks of the member countries of the European Union. The US Federal Reserve remits most of its profits to the U.S. Treasury. This income, derived from the power to issue currency, is referred to as seigniorage, and usually belongs to the national government. The state-sanctioned power to create currency is called the Right of Issuance. Throughout history, there have been disagreements over this power, since whoever controls the creation of currency controls the seigniorage income.


title: Central bank

text: The expression "monetary policy" may also refer more narrowly to the interest-rate targets and other active measures undertaken by the monetary authority.


title: Central bank

text: The primary role of central banks is usually to maintain price stability, as defined as a specific level of inflation. Inflation is defined either as the devaluation of a currency or equivalently the rise of prices relative to a currency. Most central banks currently have an inflation target close to 2%.


title: Central bank

text: Since inflation lowers real wages, Keynesians view inflation as the solution to involuntary unemployment. However, "unanticipated" inflation leads to lender losses as the real interest rate will be lower than expected. Thus, Keynesian monetary policy aims for a steady rate of inflation. A publication from the Austrian School, "The Case Against the Fed", argues that the efforts of the central banks to control inflation have been counterproductive.


title: Central bank

text: Central banks as monetary authorities in representative states are intertwined through globalized financial markets. As a regulator of one of the most widespread currencies in the global economy, Federal Reserve (FED) plays a huge role in the international monetary market. Being the main supplier and rate adjusted for USD, FED implements a certain set of requirements to regulate inflation and unemployment in the US, willingly or unwillingly influencing the actions of Central Bank of Armenia (CBA). Armenia is a small country with a relatively weak economy and bears the consequences of FED policies the most.


title: Central bank

text: Frictional unemployment is the time period between jobs when a worker is searching for, or transitioning from one job to another. Unemployment beyond frictional unemployment is classified as unintended unemployment.


title: Central bank

text: For example, structural unemployment is a form of unemployment resulting from a mismatch between demand in the labour market and the skills and locations of the workers seeking employment. Macroeconomic policy generally aims to reduce unintended unemployment.


title: Central bank

text: Keynes labeled any jobs that would be created by a rise in wage-goods (i.e., a decrease in real-wages) as involuntary unemployment:


title: Central bank

text: Economic growth can be enhanced by investment in capital, such as more or better machinery. A low interest rate implies that firms can borrow money to invest in their capital stock and pay less interest for it. Lowering the interest is therefore considered to encourage economic growth and is often used to alleviate times of low economic growth. On the other hand, raising the interest rate is often used in times of high economic growth as a contra-cyclical device to keep the economy from overheating and avoid market bubbles.


title: Central bank

text: Further goals of monetary policy are stability of interest rates, of the financial market, and of the foreign exchange market.


title: Central bank

text: Goals frequently cannot be separated from each other and often conflict. Costs must therefore be carefully weighed before policy implementation.


title: Central bank

text: In the aftermath of the Paris agreement on climate change, a debate is now underway on whether central banks should also pursue environmental goals as part of their activities. In 2017, eight central banks formed the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) to evaluate the way in which central banks can use their regulatory and monetary policy tools to support climate change mitigation. Today more than 70 central banks are part of the NGFS.


title: Central bank

text: In January 2020, the European Central Bank has announced it will consider climate considerations when reviewing its monetary policy framework.


title: Central bank

text: Proponents of "green monetary policy" are proposing that central banks include climate-related criteria in their collateral eligibility frameworks, when conducting asset purchases and also in their refinancing operations. But critics such as Jens Weidmann are arguing it is not central banks' role to conduct climate policy. China is among the most advanced central banks when it comes to green monetary policy. It has given green bonds preferential status to lower their yield and uses window policy to direct green lending.


title: Central bank

text: The primary tools available to central banks are open market operations (including repurchase agreements), reserve requirements, interest rate policy (through control of the discount rate), and control of the money supply.


title: Central bank

text: A central bank affects the monetary base through open market operations, if its country has a well developed market for its government bonds. This entails managing the quantity of money in circulation through the buying and selling of various financial instruments, such as treasury bills, repurchase agreements or "repos", company bonds, or foreign currencies, in exchange for money on deposit at the central bank. Those deposits are convertible to currency, so all of these purchases or sales result in more or less base currency entering or leaving market circulation. For example, if the central bank wishes to decrease interest rates (executing expansionary monetary policy), it purchases government debt, thereby increasing the amount of cash in circulation or crediting banks' reserve accounts. Commercial banks then have more money to lend, so they reduce lending rates, making loans less expensive. Cheaper credit card interest rates increase consumer spending. Additionally, when business loans are more affordable, companies can expand to keep up with consumer demand. They ultimately hire more workers, whose incomes increase, which in its turn also increases the demand. This method is usually enough to stimulate demand and drive economic growth to a healthy rate. Usually, the short-term goal of open market operations is to achieve a specific short-term interest rate target. In other instances, monetary policy might instead entail the targeting of a specific exchange rate relative to some foreign currency or else relative to gold. For example, in the case of the United States the Federal Reserve targets the federal funds rate, the rate at which member banks lend to one another overnight; however, the monetary policy of China (since 2014) is to target the exchange rate between the Chinese renminbi and a basket of foreign currencies.


title: Central bank

text: If the open market operations do not lead to the desired effects, a second tool can be used: the central bank can increase or decrease the interest rate it charges on discounts or overdrafts (loans from the central bank to commercial banks, see discount window). If the interest rate on such transactions is sufficiently low, commercial banks can borrow from the central bank to meet reserve requirements and use the additional liquidity to expand their balance sheets, increasing the credit available to the economy.


title: Central bank

text: A third alternative is to change the reserve requirements. The reserve requirement refers to the proportion of total liabilities that banks must keep on hand overnight, either in its vaults or at the central bank. Banks only maintain a small portion of their assets as cash available for immediate withdrawal; the rest is invested in illiquid assets like mortgages and loans. Lowering the reserve requirement frees up funds for banks to increase loans or buy other profitable assets. This is expansionary because it creates credit. However, even though this tool immediately increases liquidity, central banks rarely change the reserve requirement because doing so frequently adds uncertainty to banks' planning. The use of open market operations is therefore preferred.


title: Central bank

text: Other forms of monetary policy, particularly used when interest rates are at or near 0% and there are concerns about deflation or deflation is occurring, are referred to as unconventional monetary policy. These include credit easing, quantitative easing, forward guidance, and signalling. In credit easing, a central bank purchases private sector assets to improve liquidity and improve access to credit. Signaling can be used to lower market expectations for lower interest rates in the future. For example, during the credit crisis of 2008, the US Federal Reserve indicated rates would be low for an "extended period", and the Bank of Canada made a "conditional commitment" to keep rates at the lower bound of 25 basis points (0.25%) until the end of the second quarter of 2010.


title: Central bank

text: Some have envisaged the use of what Milton Friedman once called "helicopter money" whereby the central bank would make direct transfers to citizens in order to lift inflation up to the central bank's intended target. Such policy option could be particularly effective at the zero lower bound.


title: Central bank

text: In some countries a central bank, through its subsidiaries, controls and monitors the banking sector. In other countries banking supervision is carried out by a government department such as the UK Treasury, or by an independent government agency, for example, UK's Financial Conduct Authority. It examines the banks' balance sheets and behaviour and policies toward consumers. Apart from refinancing, it also provides banks with services such as transfer of funds, bank notes and coins or foreign currency. Thus it is often described as the "bank of banks".


title: Central bank

text: Many countries will monitor and control the banking sector through several different agencies and for different purposes. The Bank regulation in the United States for example is highly fragmented with 3 federal agencies, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, or Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and numerous others on the state and the private level. There is usually significant cooperation between the agencies. For example, money center banks, deposit-taking institutions, and other types of financial institutions may be subject to different (and occasionally overlapping) regulation. Some types of banking regulation may be delegated to other levels of government, such as state or provincial governments.


title: Central bank

text: Any cartel of banks is particularly closely watched and controlled. Most countries control bank mergers and are wary of concentration in this industry due to the danger of groupthink and runaway lending bubbles based on a single point of failure, the credit culture of the few large banks.


title: Central bank

text: Numerous governments have opted to make central banks independent. The economic logic behind central bank independence is that when governments delegate monetary policy to an independent central bank (with an anti-inflationary purpose) and away from elected politicians, monetary policy will not reflect the interests of the politicians. When governments control monetary policy, politicians may be tempted to boost economic activity in advance of an election to the detriment of the long-term health of the economy and the country. As a consequence, financial markets may not consider future commitments to low inflation to be credible when monetary policy is in the hands of elected officials, which increases the risk of capital flight. An alternative to central bank independence is to have fixed exchange rate regimes.


title: Central bank

text: Governments generally have some degree of influence over even "independent" central banks; the aim of independence is primarily to prevent short-term interference. In 1951, the Deutsche Bundesbank became the first central bank to be given full independence, leading this form of central bank to be referred to as the "Bundesbank model", as opposed, for instance, to the New Zealand model, which has a goal (i.e. inflation target) set by the government.


title: Central bank

text: Central bank independence is usually guaranteed by legislation and the institutional framework governing the bank's relationship with elected officials, particularly the minister of finance. Central bank legislation will enshrine specific procedures for selecting and appointing the head of the central bank. Often the minister of finance will appoint the governor in consultation with the central bank's board and its incumbent governor. In addition, the legislation will specify banks governor's term of appointment. The most independent central banks enjoy a fixed non-renewable term for the governor in order to eliminate pressure on the governor to please the government in the hope of being re-appointed for a second term. Generally, independent central banks enjoy both goal and instrument independence.


title: Central bank

text: Despite their independence, central banks are usually accountable at some level to government officials, either to the finance ministry or to parliament. For example, the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve are nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate, publishes verbatim transcripts, and balance sheets are audited by the Government Accountability Office.


title: Central bank

text: In the 1990s there was a trend towards increasing the independence of central banks as a way of improving long-term economic performance. While a large volume of economic research has been done to define the relationship between central bank independence and economic performance, the results are ambiguous.


title: Central bank

text: The literature on central bank independence has defined a cumulative and complementary number of aspects:


title: Central bank

text: There is very strong consensus among economists that an independent central bank can run a more credible monetary policy, making market expectations more responsive to signals from the central bank. Both the Bank of England (1997) and the European Central Bank have been made independent and follow a set of published inflation targets so that markets know what to expect. Even the People's Bank of China has been accorded great latitude, though in China the official role of the bank remains that of a national bank rather than a central bank, underlined by the official refusal to "unpeg" the yuan or to revalue it "under pressure". The fact that the Communist Party is not elected also relieves the pressure to please people, increasing its independence.


title: Central bank

text: International organizations such as the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) strongly support central bank independence. This results, in part, from a belief in the intrinsic merits of increased independence. The support for independence from the international organizations also derives partly from the connection between increased independence for the central bank and increased transparency in the policy-making process. The IMF's Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) review self-assessment, for example, includes a number of questions about central bank independence in the transparency section. An independent central bank will score higher in the review than one that is not independent.


title: Central bank

text: Central bank independence indices allow a quantitative analysis of central bank independence for individual countries over time. One central bank independence index is the Garriga CBI.


title: Central bank

text: The use of money as a unit of account predates history. Government control of money is documented in the ancient Egyptian economy (2750–2150 BCE). The Egyptians measured the value of goods with a central unit called "shat". Like many other currencies, the shat was linked to gold. The value of a shat in terms of goods was defined by government administrations. Other cultures in Asia Minor later materialized their currencies in the form of gold and silver coins.


title: Central bank

text: In the medieval and the early modern period a network of professional banks was established in Southern and Central Europe. The institutes built a new tier in the financial economy. The monetary system was still controlled by government institutions, mainly through the coinage prerogative. Banks, however, could use book money to create deposits for their customers. Thus, they had the possibility to issue, lend and transfer money autonomously without direct governmental control.


title: Central bank

text: In order to consolidate the monetary system, a network of public exchange banks was established at the beginning of the 17th century in main European trade centres. The Amsterdam Wisselbank was founded as a first institute in 1609. Further exchange banks were located in Hamburg, Venice and Nuremberg. The institutes offered a public infrastructure for cashless international payments. They aimed to increase the efficiency of international trade and to safeguard monetary stability. The exchange banks thus fulfilled comparable functions to modern central banks. The institutes even issued their own (book) currency, called "Mark Banco".


title: Central bank

text: The Bank of Amsterdam established in 1609 is considered to be the precursor to modern central banks. The central bank of Sweden ("Sveriges Riksbank" or simply "Riksbanken") was founded in Stockholm from the remains of the failed bank Stockholms Banco in 1664 and answered to the parliament ("Riksdag of the Estates"). One role of the Swedish central bank was lending money to the government.


title: Central bank

text: The establishment of the Bank of England, the model on which most modern central banks have been based, was devised by Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, in 1694, following a proposal by the banker William Paterson three years earlier, which had not been acted upon. In the Kingdom of England in the 1690s, public funds were in short supply, and the credit of William III's government was so low in London that it was impossible for it to borrow the £1,200,000 (at 8 percent) needed to finance the ongoing Nine Years' War with France. In order to induce subscription to the loan, Montagu proposed that the subscribers were to be incorporated as "The Governor and Company of the Bank of England" with long-term banking privileges including the issue of notes. The lenders would give the government cash (bullion) and also issue notes against the government bonds, which could be lent again. A royal charter was granted on 27 July through the passage of the Tonnage Act 1694. The bank was given exclusive possession of the government's balances, and was the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue banknotes. The £1.2 million was raised in 12 days; half of this was used to rebuild the navy.


title: Central bank

text: Although this establishment of the Bank of England marks the origin of central banking, it did not have the functions of a modern central bank, namely, to regulate the value of the national currency, to finance the government, to be the sole authorized distributor of banknotes, and to function as a 'lender of last resort' to banks suffering a liquidity crisis. These modern central banking functions evolved slowly through the 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Central bank

text: Although the bank was originally a private institution, by the end of the 18th century it was increasingly being regarded as a public authority with civic responsibility toward the upkeep of a healthy financial system. The currency crisis of 1797, caused by panicked depositors withdrawing from the bank led to the government suspending convertibility of notes into specie payment. The bank was soon accused by the bullionists of causing the exchange rate to fall from over issuing banknotes, a charge which the bank denied. Nevertheless, it was clear that the bank was being treated as an organ of the state.


title: Central bank

text: Henry Thornton, a merchant banker and monetary theorist has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the real bills doctrine, he was a defender of the bullionist position and a significant figure in monetary theory. Thornton's process of monetary expansion anticipated the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the "cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form". As a response to the 1797 currency crisis, Thornton wrote in 1802 "An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain", in which he argued that the increase in paper credit did not cause the crisis. The book also gives a detailed account of the British monetary system as well as a detailed examination of the ways in which the Bank of England should act to counteract fluctuations in the value of the pound.


title: Central bank

text: Until the mid-nineteenth century, commercial banks were able to issue their own banknotes, and notes issued by provincial banking companies were commonly in circulation. Many consider the origins of the central bank to lie with the passage of the Bank Charter Act 1844. Under the 1844 Act, bullionism was institutionalized in Britain, creating a ratio between the gold reserves held by the Bank of England and the notes that the bank could issue. The Act also placed strict curbs on the issuance of notes by the country banks.


title: Central bank

text: The bank accepted the role of 'lender of last resort' in the 1870s after criticism of its lacklustre response to the Overend-Gurney crisis. The journalist Walter Bagehot wrote on the subject in "", in which he advocated for the bank to officially become a lender of last resort during a credit crunch, sometimes referred to as "Bagehot's dictum". Paul Tucker phrased the dictum in 2009 as follows:


title: Central bank

text: Central banks were established in many European countries during the 19th century. Napoleon created the Banque de France in 1800, in an attempt to improve the financing of his wars.


title: Central bank

text: On the continent of Europe, the Bank of France remained the most important central bank throughout the 19th century. The Bank of Finland was founded in 1812, soon after Finland had been taken over from Sweden by Russia to become its grand duchy. A central banking role was played by a small group of powerful family banking houses, typified by the House of Rothschild, with branches in major cities across Europe, as well as the Hottinguer family in Switzerland and the Oppenheim family in Germany.


title: Central bank

text: Although central banks today are generally associated with fiat money, the 19th and early 20th centuries central banks in most of Europe and Japan developed under the international gold standard. Free banking or currency boards were common at this time. Problems with collapses of banks during downturns, however, led to wider support for central banks in those nations which did not as yet possess them, most notably in Australia.


title: Central bank

text: Australia established its first central bank in 1920, Peru in 1922, Colombia in 1923, Mexico and Chile in 1925 and Canada, India and New Zealand in the aftermath of the Great Depression in 1934. By 1935, the only significant independent nation that did not possess a central bank was Brazil, which subsequently developed a precursor thereto in 1945 and the present Central Bank of Brazil twenty years later. After gaining independence, African and Asian countries also established central banks or monetary unions. The Reserve Bank of India, which had been established during British colonial rule as a private company, was nationalized in 1949 following India's independence. The Central Bank of Armenia was founded on April 27, 1993 and the National Bank of Armenia was renamed into the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia. It was under the governorship of Isahak Isahakyan who was governing the State Bank since 1986.


title: Central bank

text: The People's Bank of China evolved its role as a central bank starting in about 1979 with the introduction of market reforms, which accelerated in 1989 when the country adopted a generally capitalist approach to its export economy. Evolving further partly in response to the European Central Bank, the People's Bank of China had by 2000 become a modern central bank. The most recent bank model was introduced together with the euro, and involves coordination of the European national banks, which continue to manage their respective economies separately in all respects other than currency exchange and base interest rates.


title: Central bank

text: Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury in the 1790s strongly promoted the banking system, and over heavy opposition from Jeffersonian Republicans, set up the First Bank of the United States. Jeffersonians allowed it to lapse, but the overwhelming financial difficulties of funding the War of 1812 without a central bank changed their minds. The Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) under Nicholas Biddle functioned as a central bank, regulating the rapidly growing banking system. The role of a central bank was ended in the Bank War of the 1830s by President Andrew Jackson when he shut down the Second Bank as being too powerful and elitist.


title: Central bank

text: In 1913 the United States created the Federal Reserve System through the passing of The Federal Reserve Act.


title: Central bank

text: After the financial crisis of 2007–2008 central banks led change, but as of 2015 their ability to boost economic growth has stalled. Central banks debate whether they should experiment with new measures like negative interest rates or direct financing of government, "lean even more on politicians to do more". Andy Haldane from the Bank of England said "central bankers may need to accept that their good old days – of adjusting interest rates to boost employment or contain inflation – may be gone for good". The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan whose economies are in or close to deflation, continue quantitative easing – buying securities to encourage more lending.


title: Central bank

text: Since 2017, prospect of implementing Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has been in discussion. As of the end of 2018, at least 15 central banks were considering to implementing CBDC. Since 2014, the People's Bank of China has been working on a project for digital currency to make its own digital currency and electronic payment systems.


title: Central bank

text: There is no standard terminology for the name of a central bank, but many countries use the "Bank of [Country]" form—for example: Bank of Canada, Bank of Mexico, Bank of Thailand. The United Kingdom does not follow this form as its central bank is the Bank of England (which, despite its name, is the central bank of the United Kingdom as a whole). The name's lack of representation of the entire United Kingdom ('Bank of Britain', for example) can be owed to the fact that its establishment occurred when the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were separate entities (at least in name), and therefore pre-dates the merger of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, the Kingdom of Ireland's absorption into the Union and the formation of the present day United Kingdom.


title: Central bank

text: The word "Reserve" is also often included, such as the Reserve Bank of India, Reserve Bank of Australia, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the South African Reserve Bank, and Federal Reserve System (the U.S. central bank). Other central banks are known as monetary authorities such as the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Maldives Monetary Authority and Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. There is an instance where native language was used to name the central bank: in the Philippines the Filipino name Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is used even in English.


title: Central bank

text: Some are styled "national" banks, such as the Swiss National Bank, National Bank of Poland and National Bank of Ukraine, although the term national bank is also used for private commercial banks in some countries such as National Bank of Pakistan. In other cases, central banks may incorporate the word "Central" (for example, European Central Bank, Central Bank of Ireland, Central Bank of Brazil, Central Bank of Paraguay). In some countries, particularly in formerly Communist ones, the term national bank may be used to indicate both the monetary authority and the leading banking entity, such as the Soviet Union's Gosbank (state bank). In rare cases, central banks are styled "state" banks such as the State Bank of Pakistan and State Bank of Vietnam.


title: Central bank

text: Many countries have state-owned banks or other quasi-government entities that have entirely separate functions, such as financing imports and exports. In other countries, the term national bank may be used to indicate that the central bank's goals are broader than monetary stability, such as full employment, industrial development, or other goals. Some commercial banks have names suggestive of central banks, even if they are not: examples are the State Bank of India and Central Bank of India, National Bank of Greece, Banco do Brasil, Bank of China, Bank of Cyprus, or Bank of Ireland, as well as Deutsche Bank.


title: Central bank

text: Collectively, central banks purchase less than 500 tonnes of gold each year, on average (out of an annual global production of 2,500-3,000 tonnes). In 2018, central banks collectively hold over 33,000 metric tons of the gold, about a fifth of all the gold ever mined, according to Bloomberg News.


title: Central bank

text: In 2016, 75% of the world's central-bank assets were controlled by four centers in China, the United States, Japan and the eurozone. The central banks of Brazil, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., India and Russia, each account for an average of 2.5 percent. The remaining 107 central banks hold less than 13 percent. According to data compiled by Bloomberg News, the top 10 largest central banks owned $21.4 trillion in assets, a 10 percent increase from 2015.


title: The Mysterious Benedict Society (TV series)

text: The Mysterious Benedict Society is an American mystery adventure television series based on the children's books by Trenton Lee Stewart. The series stars Tony Hale as Mr. Benedict, who gathers four children to stop a global emergency. Hale also portrays Benedict's twin brother, Mr. Curtain, who is the founder of the school the children infiltrate. The first season premiered on Disney+ on June 25, 2021, and consisted of eight episodes. In September 2021, the series was renewed for a second season. The second season premiered with two episodes on October 26, 2022, after their linear premiere on Disney Channel the day before.


text: During a global crisis called "The Emergency", Mr. Benedict, a talented and smart individual, recruits four kids for a dangerous mission to infiltrate the Learning Institute for Veritas and Enlightenment (L.I.V.E) on Nomansan Island. The Institute is a school run by Dr. L.D. Curtain, who is sending messages that infiltrate one's subconscious using children, which allows him to slip ideas and thoughts into people's minds. Mr. Benedict sends the four kids he has recruited into the Institute to stop this nefariousness and to save the world from Dr. Curtain's machinations.


text: It was announced in September 2019 that a series order for an adaptation of the Trenton Lee Stewart fantasy book series of the same name was close to completion at Hulu. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi wrote the pilot episode with James Bobin set to direct. Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer were set as showrunners for the series. In November 2020, the series was moved to Disney+. In February 2021, it was announced that the series would consist of eight episodes and premiere on June 25, 2021. In July 2021, Hay and Manfredi said that, should the series be renewed for future seasons, they would incorporate and combine elements from the book series instead of each season being straight adaptations. On September 28, 2021, Disney+ renewed the series for a second season.


text: Tony Hale was cast in February 2020 to portray twin brothers Mr. Benedict and Mr. Curtain. Kristen Schaal, MaameYaa Boafo, Ryan Hurst, Gia Sandhu, Mystic Inscho, Seth Carr, Emmy DeOliveira, and Marta Kessler were added as series regulars, playing Number Two, Rhonda, Milligan, Ms. Perumal, Reynie Muldoon, George 'Sticky' Washington, Kate Wetherall, and Constance Contraire, respectively, in April. Upon learning that he had gotten the role, Inscho said that he was "thrilled" and felt that the casting "made all of the hard work and efforts [he] put in worth it."


text: About playing both Benedict and Curtain and differentiating the characters, Hale noted that reading the books showed him "just how affable Mr. Benedict is — he comes from a place of compassion and love. And then Curtain, you hear more of their backstory as the show goes, but he's got a tremendous amount of pain and trauma — he's also very misunderstood." He described Benedict as an "erratic and befuddled" person with terrible posture, which was fun for Hale to portray. He also enjoyed working with Trenton Lee Stewart, saying, "Working with a writer like that, and just how many twists and turns he puts in the series, that is just candy for an actor. It's just so fun to work with." On playing Curtain, Hale elaborated, "It would have been easy to play the idea of an evil twin. But I wanted to find parts of him with which I resonated: his humanity, mainly. He probably feels misunderstood and this comes from his own pain." Hale also added that the character would not be the same if it were not for the hair, costume, and makeup put in to his overall getup. He finds parts of the characters that are like himself in order to play the role properly.


text: Inscho noted in an interview that the themes he hoped viewers would take away from watching the series would be those of family and friendship, while Carr hoped they would take away the message that "the impossible is possible". Regarding his character, Carr said what he admires most is George's empathy, saying, "I feel like his empathy plays a big part in him caring for others when others didn't really care for him. So, I feel like, in a way, he's kind of like a lone wolf until he found his buddies." In another interview, DeOliveira said that the character of Kate Wetherall is "really fun, she is stubborn, adventurous, brave, and independent" and complemented her "willingness to just go for it, she doesn't always think everything through, but she is not afraid to just jump in." Speaking to her character's story arc in the series and commenting on whether the viewers might see more of her character in content to come, actor Gia Sandhu noted that Ms. Perumal "surprises herself in how much she realises she cares for Reynard. She depends on him a lot more than she expects in the beginning."


text: Filming was initially set to begin in mid 2020 in British Columbia, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It officially began filming on August 26, with scenes shot at Gastown, Vancouver in November. Filming concluded on January 19, 2021. Filming for the second season will be relocating to California with the state's film and TV tax credits program.


text: Folks VFX provide the visual effects for the series. Philippe Thibault serves as visual effects supervisor. He described working on the series as "making eight little movies". Thibault read the original books, and "stressed the importance of respecting the origin of this beautiful story." The CG team, led by Gabriel Beauvais. They created their own tools within Houdini, and worked to incorporate real locations and buildings with the computer generated buildings without it being noticeable.


text: Theodore Shapiro and Joseph Shirley compose the series' music. The soundtrack of "The Mysterious Benedict Society" includes multiple classic rock songs. Screenwriter Phil Hay noted that they "had this idea together that this is a type of music that we love that has a real specific place. That sort of '70s AM power pop, we sort of realized in a strange collision of all the stuff in this, visually and storywise, that this world, that's what people listen to in our mind. That's the kind of music people love."


text: Disney released a trailer for the series on May 20, 2021, as well as promotional art and teaser images.


text: The series debuted on June 25, 2021, with a two episode premiere. It consisted of 8 episodes, and ran until August 6, 2021. The second season will premiere on October 26, 2022, with two episodes.


text: The series will make its linear premiere on Disney Channel on October 25, 2022, airing the second season before Disney+. Further airings every Tuesday starting November 1, 2022.


text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 86% based on 22 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads, ""The Mysterious Benedict Society" has a slow windup, but its delightful supporting cast and sparky tone make for winning family entertainment." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


text: Daniel D'Addario of "Variety" gave the show a positive review and stated, "Within the growing set of shows about kids asked to save the world, "The Mysterious Benedict Society" stands out, and might itself save a rainy weekend for curious kids sometime this summer." Joel Keller of "Decider" gave the show a positive review and stated that it was "smart without being overly precious, but is just weird enough to keep kids' attention." Petrana Radulovic of "Polygon" gave the show a positive review and stated that it "has all the components a great kid classic needs." Josh Bell of "CBR" gave the show a positive review and stated, "The characters are distinctive and appealing enough to keep "The Mysterious Benedict Society" engaging even in its slower early stages." James Croot of "Stuff.co.nz" gave the show a positive review and stated that it was "brightly coloured, bold and bravura in its execution."


text: Ashley Moulton of "Common Sense Media" gave the show five out of five and an '8+' age rating, stating "Everything about it is superb -- its acting, storytelling, and wonderfully immersive dystopian world." Kristen Lopez of "IndieWire" gave the show a 'B+' and stated, "Manfredi and Hay aren't afraid to create a series that both praises the intelligence of children while also admitting that being a kid is weird and confusing." Joseph Stanichar of "Paste" gave the show 7.5 out of 10 and stated, "Even though the children's performances fell a bit short, I hope that they'll grow on me throughout the series. For now, the promise of Hale's dual roles and seeing how future scenes will be presented is more than enough to convince me to keep watching." Nick Spacek of "Starburst" gave the show 4 out of 5 and stated, "Rather than being something for children with a few jokes the grown-ups will appreciate, it has the same youthful joie de vivre as a film like Moonrise Kingdom, but with the vivacity and energy of Spy Kids." Joanne Soh of "The New Paper" gave the show 4 out of 5 and stated, "Hale may be brilliant as the narcoleptic genius, but the child actors are the real heroes, especially the scene-stealing Kessler." Brad Newsome of "The" "Sydney Morning Herald" gave the show 3.5 out of 5 and stated, "Based on the novel by Trenton Lee Stewart, and with a quirky tone set by producer-director James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords), it should captivate its intended audience." Lucy Mangan of "The Guardian" gave the show 3 out of 5 and stated, "What could have offered children a chance to understand the historically unprecedented aspects of the internet age they live in, made the young fish conscious of the water they swim in, is left simply as a romp."


text: Nick Allen of "RogerEbert.com" gave the show a negative review and stated, "The first two episodes have a start-and-stop energy, with more tests leading to more tests, and it gets more and more tedious." Dan Fienberg of "The" "Hollywood Reporter" gave the show a negative review and stated, "There could be potential here, but not enough to build real enthusiasm."


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Bolt is a 2008 American computer animated comedy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 48th Disney animated feature film, it was directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard (in their feature directorial debuts) and produced by Clark Spencer, from a screenplay written by Williams and Dan Fogelman. The film stars the voices of John Travolta, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Miley Cyrus, Malcolm McDowell, Diedrich Bader, Nick Swardson, and Greg Germann. This was also one of the final film roles for James Lipton before his death on March 2, 2020, the other being "Igor", which was released the same year as "Bolt".


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: The film's plot centers on a dog named Bolt, who has spent his entire life on the set of a television series, firmly believes that he has super powers. When his beloved owner Penny is "kidnapped" on the show, Bolt runs away from the set to rescue her, eventually teaming up with sarcastic alley cat Mittens and "Bolt" super-fan Rhino the hamster on a cross-country journey back home.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: "Bolt" premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 17, 2008, and was released in the United States on November 21. Despite a relatively marginal box-office performance, the film received a strong positive critical reception. It is also regarded for helping to instigate a , setting the studio on a new creative direction that led to other critically acclaimed features such as "Tangled" (2010) and "Frozen" (2013).


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: The film was nominated for a series of awards, such as the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: A White Swiss Shepherd puppy named Bolt is adopted by a 7-year-old girl named Penny. Five years later, Bolt and a 12-year-old Penny star in a hit television series called "Bolt", in which Bolt uses various superpowers to help Penny foil the plans of the villain, Dr. Calico, who has kidnapped Penny's father. To gain a more realistic performance, the show's producers have deceived Bolt his entire life, arranging the filming in such a way that Bolt believes everything in the show is real, including his invulnerability, super-strength, and percussive sonic "Superbark". Penny disapproves, as this means Bolt can never leave the set and come home with her as a normal dog. After a cliffhanger episode causes Bolt to believe Penny has been kidnapped, he escapes from his on-set trailer in Hollywood, but knocks himself unconscious in a box of packing peanuts, which is then shipped to New York City.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Upon arrival in New York, Bolt is shocked to discover that his "superpowers" are useless. He encounters Mittens, a cynical feral cat who bullies pigeons out of their food. Believing that Mittens is an "agent" of Calico, Bolt ties her to his collar with a leash, and forces her to guide him back to Penny. Mittens is convinced her captor is a lunatic, but the two start their journey westward by truck. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, a less-experienced Bolt look-alike is brought in so filming can resume. Penny is genuinely distraught over Bolt’s disappearance, but reluctantly agrees to halt the search so production can continue.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Feeling hungry for the first time in his life, Bolt accepts Mittens' advice and behaves like a cute and needy stray, securing food for them both at an RV park. They are joined by Rhino, a fearless hamster and huge "Bolt" fanatic. This causes Mittens to realize Bolt is from a TV show, but she is unable to convince him of the truth. In frustration, Bolt repeatedly attempts to "superbark" Mittens; the noise draws the attention of the local Animal control service, and Bolt and Mittens are both captured and taken to a shelter.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Bolt, freed from the patrol van by Rhino, finally realizes and accepts that he is just a normal dog. However, he regains his confidence after Rhino (oblivious to this revelation) exhorts him to heroism. They rescue Mittens from the shelter; as they continue west, Bolt and Mittens form a close friendship, in which she teaches Bolt how to be an ordinary dog and enjoy typical dog activities. Mittens makes plans for the three of them to stay in Las Vegas, but Bolt is still drawn to find Penny. Mittens, who was abandoned by her own humans, asserts that Penny is just an actor and that no human truly "loves" their pet. Bolt refuses to believe her, and continues on alone to Hollywood. Rhino scolds Mittens, saying friends should never abandon each other, and the two set off after him.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: When Bolt reaches the studio, he finds Penny embracing his look-alike during a rehearsal, and leaves feeling heartbroken. However, Mittens catches up to him and tells him that she overheard Penny and her mother after the rehearsal, both genuinely distressed about the loss of the real Bolt. At the same time, the Bolt look-alike panics during the show's filming and accidentally knocks over some lit torches, setting the stage on fire with Penny trapped inside. Bolt arrives, and the two reunite inside the burning studio, but are unable to escape before Penny begins to suffocate from the smoke. Penny begs Bolt to go, but Bolt refuses to leave her. Bolt repeatedly barks into the building's air vent, alerting the firefighters to their location.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Bolt and Penny are rescued, but Penny and her mother quit when their overeager agent proposes they exploit the incident for publicity purposes. The show continues with a replacement "Bolt" and "Penny" and a bizarre new storyline involving alien abduction. Penny adopts Mittens and Rhino, and she and her family move to a rural home to enjoy a simpler lifestyle together.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: In November 2002, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the directors of "Lilo & Stitch" (2002), had signed a multi-picture deal with Walt Disney Pictures. It was also reported Sanders was working on an untitled computer-animated film. Nearly a year later, in November 2003, the project had been titled "American Dog". The plot centered on Henry, a famous canine star, who one day finds himself stranded in the Nevada desert with a testy, one-eyed cat and an oversized, radioactive rabbit who are themselves searching for new homes, all the while believing he is still on television. In August 2005, the project's conceptual artwork and synopsis were then showcased publicly at the annual SIGGRAPH conference. By November 2005, "American Dog" had been slated for a summer 2008 release.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: Following the corporate acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull had been respectively appointed as Chief Creative Officer and President of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar. In the fall of 2006, Lasseter, along with other directors from Pixar and Disney, attended two screenings of the film and gave Sanders suggestive notes on how to improve the story. Catmull stated "somewhere along the way, the plot had also come to include a radioactive, cookie-selling Girl Scout zombie serial killer. I'm all for quirky ideas, but this one had metastasized." In December 2006, Sanders was removed from the project, and by early 2007, he had joined DreamWorks Animation. According to Lasseter, Sanders was replaced because he had resisted the changes that he and the other directors had suggested. Lasseter was quoted as saying "Chris Sanders is extremely talented, but he couldn't take it to the place it had to be." Earlier that same month, Disney had laid off about 160 employees within its animation division.


title: Bolt (2008 film)

text: In February 2007, Lasseter had confirmed Chris Williams and Byron Howard were the film's new directors. As directors, Williams focused on the story reels and layout while Howard tackled character design and animation. The radioactive rabbit and eyepatch-wearing cat characters were removed from the story while the dog Henry (now renamed Bolt) was redesigned into a White Shepherd with a lightning bolt-shaped patch that runs down the left side of his body. Furthermore, Lasseter ordered the American Southwest setting to be removed given his then-recent film "Cars" (2006) had a similar terrain. Following the story overhaul, the animation team was told to complete the animation in 18 months instead of the usual four years that is normally required to produce a computer-animated feature. On June 8, 2007, Disney announced that the film, now under its current name, would be released on November 21, 2008 in Disney Digital 3-D.