title: Uncle Fester

text: In the original sitcom of the 1960s, Fester is said to be Morticia's maternal uncle (his name rhymes with Morticia's mother Hester's), but from the 1970s onward, he is Gomez's brother. In all adaptations, he is either uncle or great-uncle to Wednesday and Pugsley. He is known as "Tío Fétido" in Spain, "Tío Lucas" in Spanish-speaking countries, and "Fétide" in France. In Brazil, he has two names: "Tio Chico" (original series and cartoon) and "Tio Fester" (Broadway musical and movies).


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the 2022 Netflix series, Wednesday, Fester still possesses his electric powers and a great affection for his niece, but is portrayed as more rougue-ish and bloodthirsty, appearing at Nevermore Academy looking for a place to hide out from the law and saying he used to keep Gomez on his toes by dropping "from the ceiling, with a dagger clutched between my teeth".


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the 1960s television series, Fester (portrayed by Jackie Coogan) is an uncle to Morticia Addams. In one episode, he became perplexed when asked his last name, suggesting he has somehow forgotten it. In several episodes, Fester refers to the Addams lineage as if it were his own, possibly implying some degree of intertwined consanguinity in both their family lines, but the flashbacks in the episodes "Morticia's Romance, Parts 1 and 2," clearly establish him as Morticia's uncle, brother of her mother, Hester Frump, a.k.a. Granny Frump (portrayed by Margaret Hamilton), whose maiden name was similarly unrevealed. In various episodes, he was a partner in typical sitcom schemes with Gomez, Morticia, or Grandmama Addams, indicating no real preference for any family member over others.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Fester's known ancestry dates back to his Great-Grandfather Blob (not to be confused with Gomez's Cousin Blob, a two-headed ghost), who received the gift of a sacred ruby after he had pried it from the head of a Hindu (to whom it was giving a terrible headache). The ruby remained in the family until Fester unthinkingly used his slingshot to hurl it at a yowling stray cat. "Well, it was the only rock in the house!" he said in his defense.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Per the 1960s sitcom, little is known of Fester's childhood, save that his father (Morticia's maternal grandfather) was an excruciatingly strict man who severely disciplined him, paddling him even when he was good and paying him to stay out of public (Fester considered this to be experienced in "public relations"). He refused to allow Fester to even touch a battleaxe (a treasured toy among people with the Addams's macabre tastes) until he was eight. As an adult, Fester defended his father's strictness, pointing to his own character as proof of its effectiveness: "I didn't become what I am by accident! I had an upbringing like no other!" Sometime prior to Morticia's marriage to Gomez, Fester worked as a newspaper columnist, writing advice for the lovelorn, but left that job because people kept suing him.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Fester has also offered contradictory information about his educational background. In the sitcom's first episode, he notes that he never went to school ("And look how [well] I turned out!"), but he later claims to have failed recess three times. As an adult, Fester took correspondence courses in various subjects, and his educational endeavors occasionally formed an episode's main plot. It may be from one such course that he obtained his fraternity paddle, which he once threatened to use on Wednesday in imitation of his father's punishment style; however, like many an uncle, Fester proved to have more bark than bite in dealing with the children. When he suspects someone of maligning, cheating, or otherwise mistreating anyone in the family, Fester is ever ready with his blunderbuss "Genevieve", eager to "shoot 'em in the back!" However, he is far less eager in meeting a malefactor in a face-to-face duel; he was briefly enthusiastic about a pistol duel with an enemy until he asked, somewhat timidly, "Does he get one too?..."Loaded"?"


title: Uncle Fester

text: Another prized possession was his cannon, "Old Reliable", which he normally kept in his bedroom. Fester maintained a treehouse in the Addams yard and frequently retreated to his closet to think. After receiving the gift of a motorcycle in the episode "The Addams Family Meets a Beatnik", Fester often drove it through the living room, inevitably crashing in the conservatory (several episodes used identical recycled footage of this scenario). Fester also collects three-dollar bills.


title: Uncle Fester

text: The 1998 live-action series continues the tradition of having Fester (portrayed by Canadian actor Michael Roberds) as Gomez's biological brother, yet between this version and the 1960s series, this is the only visible difference. In furtherance on the original series running gag of Uncle Fester being able to store electricity, one episode has Uncle Fester nearly abducted by aliens so as to be used to power their spaceship; the Aliens leave Uncle Fester behind-but only after "cloning" him for their spaceship journey home.


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the Netflix show "Wednesday", Uncle Fester is played by Fred Armisen. He helped Wednesday on solving her mysteries of the town of Jericho and Nevermore Academy by revealing to Wednesday that the mystery monster she encountered was a Hyde. Because of his hobby with electricity, he can now project lightning from his own hands. It was also mentioned that Uncle Fester didn't attend Nevermore, but snuck in to visit Gomez on occasion. Wedneday had to use Eugene Otinger's bee house for Uncle Fester to hide out in after he robbed a bank and is advised by her not to eat any of Eugene's bees.


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the first animated series by Hanna-Barbera, Jackie Coogan reprised his role as Fester. He also voiced that same character on an episode of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies".


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the second animated series by Hanna-Barbera, Fester was voiced by Rip Taylor. In this series, Fester is perhaps the most loving of self-inflicted injury. He would allow other members (usually Lurch) to harm him any way they can, but his greatest fondness was blowing himself up. As a running gag, Fester would never believe Granny's predictions until she predicts something that causes him great harm (or in his case, great joy). Fester also is very fond of the Addamses' next-door neighbor, Norman Normanmayer, a boring person controlling an underwear empire who hates Fester (and the whole Addams family) for his strangeness (on an occasion, Fester comes on a visit through the sewer pipes). Fester seems quite oblivious of the fact that Norman hates him and, possibly due to the Addams family nature, thinks that all the angry and aggressive outbreaks are a sign of affection. This Fester also introduces himself, through his self-made comic books, as "Festerman", a gothic hero with a weakness to chimneys, who gives his flying cape to enemies upon request—so as to fall and would bring villains to their knees...simply by enjoying all the harm they would give him to the point of wearing them out. During this series, he is given a musical-type episode about the "Fester Way", his own, strange way of life.


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the 1991 film "The Addams Family", Fester (played by Christopher Lloyd) is the long-lost brother of Gomez Addams. He was believed to have been lost in the Bermuda Triangle for 25 years. A loan shark named Abigail Craven (portrayed by Elizabeth Wilson) conspires to steal the Addams fortune using her son Gordon, who displays an eerie resemblance to the missing Fester. On the night that the Addamses hold a séance to contact Fester's spirit, Gordon shows up at their door, posing as Fester. Although he is baffled and horrified by the Addamses at first, Gordon begins to take a liking to the family and their strange ways. In the end, he disobeys his mother and helps Gomez and his family get their house back. It is later discovered that Gordon "is" actually Fester; his disappearance left him suffering from amnesia, and Abigail found him and convinced him that he was her son. Fester eventually regains his memories after a lightning strike to the head, which also gives him the ability to conduct electricity. In Gomez's childhood home movies, Fester is shown to be hairless as a child (although, as Gordon, he first appears with brown, curly hair, and is later shown shaving his head).


title: Uncle Fester

text: Fester, again played by Lloyd, appears in the 1993 sequel "Addams Family Values". He becomes attracted to Debbie Jellinsky (portrayed by Joan Cusack), whom Gomez and Morticia have hired as a nanny to care for their children. Debbie marries Fester with the intent of killing him and inheriting his share of the Addams fortune, but he survives each attempt on his life. After she inadvertently electrocutes herself while trying to kill the entire family, Fester mourns her death. Some time later, Fester becomes attracted to Dementia (portrayed by Carol Hankins), a nanny whom Cousin Itt and his wife have hired to look after their child.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Fester again appears in the direct-to-video film "Addams Family Reunion", portrayed by Patrick Thomas. He is portrayed as a mad scientist reminiscent of old Grade-B horror films. He creates a dog named "Butcher" as a birthday present for Pugsley—a dog that mutates into a hair-devouring brute whenever someone says "good boy." In the end, Butcher attacks Cousin Itt—who is, understandably, quite nervous around him.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Fester is voiced by Nick Kroll in 2019 computer-animated adaptation of "The Addams Family" and its sequel where he is given a Gilbert Gottfried-esque voice.


title: Uncle Fester

text: In the musical, Uncle Fester was played by Kevin Chamberlin in the original broadway cast. Chamberlin received a Tony nomination for the role. He was later played by Brad Oscar, Blake Hammond, Russell Dykstra, and Shaun Rice. This incarnation of Fester serves as the musical's narrator and is in love with the moon. The subject of love is apparently his "specialty", and he is able to play the ukulele when he sings a love song to the moon. He also seems to communicate with the ancestors throughout the show more than the other characters.


title: Uncle Fester

text: Uncle Fester has appeared in several Addams Family video games as a playable character. He is the protagonist of "Fester's Quest", a NES game, and the main playable character in the "Addams Family Values" SNES game. He is also the main character in "Electrifying" arcade machine, where simulated "electrical shocks" are passed through the player as they hold on to two handles.


title: Bauxite

text: Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and haematite (FeO), the aluminium clay mineral kaolinite (AlSiO(OH)) and small amounts of anatase (TiO) and ilmenite (FeTiO or FeO.TiO).


title: Bauxite

text: In 1821, the French geologist Pierre Berthier discovered bauxite near the village of Les Baux in Provence, southern France.


title: Bauxite

text: Vadász (1951) distinguished lateritic bauxites (silicate bauxites) from karst bauxite ores (carbonate bauxites):


title: Bauxite

text: In the case of Jamaica, recent analysis of the soils showed elevated levels of cadmium, suggesting that the bauxite originates from Miocene volcanic ash deposits from episodes of significant volcanism in Central America.


title: Bauxite

text: Australia is the largest producer of bauxite, followed by Guinea and China. Increased aluminium recycling, which has the advantage of lowering the cost in electric power in producing aluminium, will considerably extend the world's bauxite reserves.


title: Bauxite

text: Bauxite is usually strip mined because it is almost always found near the surface of the terrain, with little or no overburden. , approximately 70% to 80% of the world's dry bauxite production is processed first into alumina and then into aluminium by electrolysis. Bauxite rocks are typically classified according to their intended commercial application: metallurgical, abrasive, cement, chemical, and refractory.


title: Bauxite

text: Bauxite ore is usually heated in a pressure vessel along with a sodium hydroxide solution at a temperature of . At these temperatures, the aluminium is dissolved as sodium aluminate (the Bayer process). The aluminium compounds in the bauxite may be present as gibbsite(Al(OH)), boehmite(AlOOH) or diaspore(AlOOH); the different forms of the aluminium component will dictate the extraction conditions. The undissolved waste, bauxite tailings, after the aluminium compounds are extracted contains iron oxides, silica, calcia, titania and some un-reacted alumina. After separation of the residue by filtering, pure gibbsite is precipitated when the liquid is cooled, and then seeded with fine-grained aluminium hydroxide. The gibbsite is usually converted into aluminium oxide, AlO, by heating in rotary kilns or fluid flash calciners to a temperature in excess of . This aluminium oxide is dissolved at a temperature of about in molten cryolite. Next, this molten substance can yield metallic aluminium by passing an electric current through it in the process of electrolysis, which is called the Hall–Héroult process, named after its American and French discoverers.


title: Bauxite

text: Prior to the invention of this process, and prior to the Deville process, aluminium ore was refined by heating ore along with elemental sodium or potassium in a vacuum. The method was complicated and consumed materials that were themselves expensive at that time. This made early elemental aluminium more expensive than gold.


title: Bauxite

text: As a bulk cargo, Bauxite is a Group A cargo that may liquefy if excessively moist. Liquefaction and the Free surface effect can cause the cargo to shift rapidly inside the hold and make the ship unstable, potentially sinking the ship. One vessel suspected to have been sunk in this way was the MS "Bulk Jupiter" in 2015. One method which can demonstrate this effect is the Can test, in which a sample of the material is placed in a cylindrical can and struck against a surface many times. If a moist slurry forms in the can, then there is a likelihood for the cargo to liquefy; although conversely, even if the sample remains dry it does not conclusively prove that it will remain that way, or that it is safe for loading.


title: Bauxite

text: During the processing of bauxite to alumina in the Bayer process, gallium accumulates in the sodium hydroxide liquor. From this it can be extracted by a variety of methods. The most recent is the use of ion-exchange resin. Achievable extraction efficiencies critically depend on the original concentration in the feed bauxite. At a typical feed concentration of 50 ppm, about 15 percent of the contained gallium is extractable. The remainder reports to the red mud and aluminium hydroxide streams.


title: Aghori

text: The Aghori (from Sanskrit ""; ) are a monastic order of ascetic Shaivite sadhus based in Uttar Pradesh, India. They are the only surviving sect derived from the "Kāpālika" tradition, a Tantric, non-Puranic form of Shaivism which originated in Medieval India between the 7th and 8th century CE. Similarly to their predecessors, Aghoris usually engage in post-mortem rituals, often dwell in charnel grounds, smear cremation ashes on their bodies, and use bones from human corpses for crafting "kapāla" (skull cups which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewellery.


title: Aghori

text: Their practices are sometimes considered contradictory to orthodox Hinduism. Many Aghori gurus command great reverence from rural populations and are widely referred to in medieval and modern works of Indian literature, as they are supposed to possess healing powers gained through their intensely eremitic rites and practices of renunciation and "tápasya".


title: Aghori

text: Aghoris are devotees of Shiva manifested as Bhairava, and monists who seek "moksha" from the cycle of reincarnation or saṃsāra. This freedom is a realization of the self's identity with the absolute. Because of this monistic doctrine, the Aghoris maintain that all opposites are ultimately illusory. The purpose of embracing pollution and degradation through various customs is the realization of non-duality (advaita) through transcending social taboos, attaining what is essentially an altered state of consciousness and perceiving the illusory nature of all conventional categories.


title: Aghori

text: Aghori rituals, which are performed precisely to oppose notions of purity commonplace in orthodox Hinduism, are typically macabre in nature. The practices of Aghoris vary and include living in cemeteries, smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, using human skulls for decoration and bowls, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and meditating on top of corpses. Although contrary to mainstream Hinduism, these practices exemplify the Aghori philosophy of criticizing commonplace social relations and fears through the use of culturally offensive acts. Furthermore, they demonstrate the Aghoris’ acceptance of death as a necessary and natural part of the human experience. The Aghori tradition is basically categorized under the shamanic marg of sadhana.


title: Aghori

text: Aghoris are not to be confused with Shivnetras, who are also ardent devotees of Shiva, but do not indulge in extreme, tamasic ritual practices. Although the Aghoris enjoy close ties with the Shivnetras, the two groups are quite distinct, Shivnetras engaging in sattvic worship.


title: Aghori

text: Aghoris base their beliefs on two principles common to broader Shaiva beliefs: that Shiva is perfect (having omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence) and that Shiva is responsible for everything that occurs: all conditions, causes and effects. Consequently, everything that exists must be perfect and to deny the perfection of anything would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as to deny the Supreme Being.


title: Aghori

text: Aghoris believe that every person's soul is Shiva, but is covered by "" "eight great nooses or bonds", including sensual pleasure, anger, greed, obsession, fear and hatred. The practices of the Aghoris are centered around the removal of these bonds. Sādhanā in cremation grounds is used in an attempt to destroy fear; sexual practices with certain riders and controls attempt to release one from sexual desire; being naked is used in an attempt to destroy shame. On release from all the eight bonds, the soul becomes "sadāśiva" and obtains "moksha".


title: Aghori

text: Although akin to the Kapalika ascetics of medieval Kashmir, as well as the Kalamukhas, with whom there may be a historical connection, the Aghoris trace their origin to Baba Keenaram, an ascetic who is said to have lived 150 years, dying during the second half of the 18th century. Dattatreya the avadhuta, to whom has been attributed the esteemed nondual medieval song, the "Avadhuta Gita", was a founding adi guru of the Aghor tradition according to Barrett (2008: p. 33):


title: Aghori

text: Aghoris also hold sacred the Hindu deity Dattatreya as a predecessor to the Aghori Tantric tradition. Dattatreya was believed to be an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva united in the same singular physical body. Dattatreya is revered in all schools of Tantra, which is the philosophy followed by the Aghora tradition, and he is often depicted in Hindu artwork and its holy scriptures of folk narratives, the Puranas, indulging in Aghori "left-hand" Tantric worship as his prime practice.


title: Aghori

text: An aghori believes in getting into total darkness by all means, and then getting into light or self realizing. Though this is a different approach from other Hindu sects, they believe it to be effective. They are infamously known for their rituals that include such as "shava samskara or shava sadhana" (ritual worship incorporating the use of a corpse as the altar) to invoke the mother goddess in her form as Smashan Tara (Tara of the Cremation Grounds).


title: Aghori

text: In Hindu iconography, Tara, like Kali, is one of the ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses) and once invoked can bless the Aghori with supernatural powers. The most popular of the ten Mahavidyas who are worshiped by Aghoris are Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, and Bhairavi. The male Hindu deities primarily worshiped by Aghoris for supernatural powers are manifestations of Shiva, including Mahākāla, Bhairava, Virabhadra, Avadhuta, and others.


title: Aghori

text: Barrett (2008: p. 161) discusses the "charnel ground sādhanā" of the Aghora in both its left and right-handed proclivities and identifies it as principally cutting through attachments and aversion and foregrounding primordiality; a view uncultured, undomesticated:


title: Aghori

text: In this sense, the Aghora sādhanā is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. When this sādhanā takes the form of charnel ground sādhanā, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life."


title: Aghori

text: Although Aghoris are prevalent in cremation grounds across India, Nepal, and even sparsely among similar cremation grounds in South East Asia, the secrecy of this religious sect fosters no aspiration to social recognition and notoriety among its practitioners.


title: Aghori

text: Hinglaj Mata is the Kuladevata (patron goddess) of the Aghori. The main Aghori pilgrimage centre is Kina Ram's hermitage or ashram in Ravindrapuri, Varanasi. The full name of this place is Baba Keenaram Sthal, Krim-Kund. Here, Kina Ram is buried in a tomb or samadhi which is a centre of pilgrimage for Aghoris and Aghori devotees. Present head (Abbot), since 1978, of Baba Keenaram Sthal is Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram.


title: Aghori

text: According to Devotees, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram is reincarnation of Baba Keenaram himself. Apart from this, any cremation ground would be a holy place for an Aghori ascetic. The cremation grounds near the Shakti Pithas, 51 holy centres for worship of the Hindu Mother Goddess scattered across South Asia and the Himalayan terrain, are key locations preferred for performing sadhana by the Aghoris. They are also known to meditate and perform sadhana in haunted houses.


title: Aghori

text: Aghori practice healing through purification as a pillar of their ritual. Their patients believe the Aghoris are able to transfer health to, and pollution away from patients as a form of "transformative healing.” However, according to Aghori belief, this pollution must be moved into another person. In some cases, Aghoris make the claim that human or animal sacrifice is necessary to successfully complete a healing. Some aghori scholarship calls this process the transfer of karma. Such practices are in decline and not commonly seen.


title: Aghori

text: The Aghor tradition, which originated as confined and reclusive, has transformed since Baba Bhagwan Ramji's reforms to Aghor Yoga practices. By changing practices that have traditionally been shunned by conventional norms, Aghor Yoga now has entered mainstream society. Today, Aghor Yoga focuses upon forming a balanced personal practice, placing importance on both sadhana (one's own spiritual practice) as well as seva (selfless service).


title: Aghori

text: Recognizing the need for change within his society, Baba Bhagwan Ramji renewed the socially conscious spirit of Baba Kinaram when he established a new ashram named Awadhut Bhagwan Ram Kusht Sewa Ashram (The Awadhut Bhagwan Ram Leprosy Service Ashram) at Parao, Varanasi. Baba Bhagwan Ramji dedicated Parao Ashram to helping the poor and the afflicted, and included a leprosy hospital within the ashram grounds. By shifting Aghor Yoga's focus to helping those who are suffering within society, Baba Bhagwan Ramji modernized the ancient Aghor tradition.


title: Aghori

text: In order to maintain the continuum of the Aghor tradition, Baba Bhagwan Ramji initiated one of his disciples, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram, to be the head of Krim Kund and of the Aghor lineage. The Krim Kund and Parao ashrams are situated on the opposite sides of the Ganges River in Varanasi, India.


title: Aghori

text: Baba Bhagwan Ramji also established Sri Sarveshwari Samooh Ashram, a secular social service organization that has worked throughout northern India. The Aghor lineage now includes many Ashrams in various locations in India and a number of centers and Ashrams in other countries.


title: Aghori

text: During his life, Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ramji also guided the reform of ancient Kina Ram Aghori practices.


title: Aghori

text: All of the ashrams started by Baba Bhagwan Ramji and his disciples around the world are continually dedicated to service. Contemporary Aghor practices focus especially on providing help and services to those who are downtrodden.


title: Aghori

text: Sri Sarveshwari Samooh Ashram remains invested in social issues, notably working to eliminate the dowry system, offering free leprosy treatment, and providing free schooling for impoverished children.


title: Aghori

text: The Sonoma Ashram in Sonoma, California, founded in 1990, is the current seat of Aghor Yoga in the United States. The mission of Sonoma Ashram is to foster spiritual growth in individuals.


title: Aghori

text: The Sonoma Ashram's sister ashram, Aghor Foundation, was established in 2001 on the bank of the Ganges River in the Varanasi, India and offers a safe home for orphaned and abandoned children. The Aghor Foundation also operates other social service projects, including the Anjali School, a tuition-free school for neighborhood children living in poverty and Vision Varanasi, a free eye clinic. Notably, The Aghor Foundation also runs Project Shakti, which offers vocational training for underprivileged women in Varanasi. The Aghor Foundation recently began to construct the Amrit Sagar Environmental Center, "a working model of the best environmental practices and a teaching center demonstrating… sustainable practices."


title: Designing Women

text: Designing Women is an American television sitcom created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason that aired on CBS from September 29, 1986, to May 24, 1993, producing seven seasons and 163 episodes. It was a joint production of Bloodworth/Thomason Mozark Productions in association with Columbia Pictures Television for CBS.


title: Designing Women

text: The series centers on the lives of four women and one man working together at an interior designing firm in 1980s Atlanta, Georgia, called Sugarbaker & Associates. It originally starred Dixie Carter as Julia Sugarbaker, president of the design firm; Delta Burke as Suzanne Sugarbaker, the design firm's silent partner and Julia's ex-beauty queen sister; Annie Potts as head designer Mary Jo Shively; and Jean Smart as office manager Charlene Frazier. In the third season, Meshach Taylor was given a starring role for his previously recurring character of delivery man and later partner Anthony Bouvier. Later in its run, the series gained notoriety for its well-publicized behind-the-scenes conflicts and cast changes. Julia Duffy and Jan Hooks replaced Burke and Smart for season six, but Duffy was not brought back for the seventh and final season, and she was replaced by Judith Ivey.


title: Designing Women

text: Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter) is an elegant, sophisticated, outspoken liberal who is the co-founder and president of Sugarbaker & Associates, an interior design firm located in her own home in Atlanta. She is partnered with her younger sister, Suzanne (Delta Burke), an attractive, selfish, self-centered former Miss Georgia World, who invested her money but does not have an official position within the business. Naïve but sweet-natured Charlene Frazier (Jean Smart), who worked as a secretary for Julia's late husband, Hayden, also invested half of her savings at Sugarbaker's and works as office manager. Charlene's next-door neighbor and recently divorced best friend, Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts), is the main interior designer of the firm and also a full partner.


title: Designing Women

text: Alongside the women, there is Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor), an ex-convict who is hired as the company's deliveryman and later becomes a full partner. By late 1986, Julia and Suzanne's mother, Perky (Louise Latham), comes for a visit with her outrageous best friend Bernice Clifton (Alice Ghostley). Perky does not stay long and moves to Japan, leaving Bernice in Atlanta, where she begins to spend time with the others.


title: Designing Women

text: Until 1991, these women spend much of their time debating about the everyday dramas around themes like being women in the business, the meaning of being southern, and many other subjects. These five years show four or five different characters and their singular personalities that were able to deal with many situations, each of them showing progress and changes about their way of acting, never losing their essence.


title: Designing Women

text: By 1991, Suzanne decides to join mother Perky and moves to Japan as well, and Charlene moves to England with her husband and daughter, and after that, Julia and Suzanne's obnoxious cousin Allison (Julia Duffy) buys Suzanne's share and rents her house with Anthony and Charlene's sister. With her, Charlene's recently divorced also naïve sister Carlene (Jan Hooks) also accepts a job as their receptionist while Charlene is off to England. This lineup does not last long and Allison decides to pull her money out after one year of partnership, and by that time, the women meet wealthy and sarcastic Texan widow Bonnie Jean Poteet (Judith Ivey), who also joins them. "Designing Women" quickly lost all popularity with the writing out of Suzanne and Charlene, with plummetting ratings leading to its cancellation by the network after seven seasons and 163 episodes.


title: Designing Women

text: The exterior of the house seen in the series as the location of the Sugarbakers' design firm is the Angelo Marre House located in the historic Quapaw Quarter district in Little Rock, Arkansas.


title: Designing Women

text: The home of Suzanne Sugarbaker seen in the series is the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, also in the Quapaw Quarter. Both homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Designing Women

text: When the show debuted in CBS's Monday-night lineup in 1986, it garnered respectable ratings; however, CBS moved the show several times to other time slots. After dismal ratings in Sunday night and Thursday night time slots, CBS placed it on hiatus and was ready to cancel the show, but a viewer campaign saved the show and returned it to its Monday night slot. The show's ratings solidified, and it regularly landed in the top 20 rankings. From 1989 through 1992, "Designing Women" and "Murphy Brown" (which also centered around a strong, opinionated female character) aired back-to-back, creating a very successful hour-long block for CBS, as both shows were thought to appeal to similar demographics. The show was a top 30 hit for three seasons, from 1989 to 1992, in which the 1989–1992 seasons made it the most successful of the time and helped CBS, which struggled in the ratings around the late 1980s. A move to the Friday night death slot in fall 1992 caused ratings to fall again and the series to be canceled.


title: Designing Women

text: Show creators Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason were strong supporters of longtime friend and then-Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary. Midway through the seventh season, Julia is stranded in the airport while attempting to attend Clinton's first inauguration, in an episode ("The Odyssey") that aired five days prior. Earlier in the series, Charlene mentions working for Clinton during his Arkansas governorship. Another Clinton-related joke was the introduction during the sixth season of the prissy character, Allison Sugarbaker, who makes it quite clear to the others that she attended Wellesley College, Hillary's alma mater. An early third season episode ("The Candidate") also revolves around Julia running for commissioner; she debates on television against a conservative candidate, to whom she eventually loses.


title: Designing Women

text: In reality, Dixie Carter was a libertarian-leaning Republican who disagreed with some of the liberal views expressed by her onscreen character. However, she did support liberal causes, such as civil rights and same-sex marriage. Carter cut a deal with the Thomasons in which Julia would sing a song in a future episode for every liberal-leaning monologue.


title: Designing Women

text: On September 2, 2003, Sony Pictures released "The Best of Designing Women", a single-disc DVD featuring five episodes ranging between seasons one through four: "Designing Women (Pilot)" (season 1), "Killing All the Right People" (season 2), "Reservations for Eight" (season 2), "Big Haas and Little Falsie" (season 3) and "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" (season 4).


title: Designing Women

text: On September 28, 2010, Shout! Factory released "Designing Women, Volume 1", a single-disc DVD featuring seven episodes from the first season: "Designing Women (Pilot)", "A Big Affair", "Design House", "I Do, I Don't", "New Year's Daze", "Monette", "And Justice for Paul".


title: Designing Women

text: On June 5, 2012, Shout! Factory released "Designing Women – 20 Timeless Episodes", aimed for casual fans to enjoy the series without buying full season sets. The 2-disc DVD set included the following episodes, ranging from seasons one through five: Disc 1 – "Designing Women (pilot)" (season 1), "New Year's Daze" (season 1), "Monette" (season 1), "Oh Suzannah" (season 1), "Ted Remarries" (season 2), "Killing All the Right People" (season 2), "Heart Attacks" (season 2), "Return of Ray Don" (season 2), "Big Haas & Little Falsie" (season 3), "The Wilderness Experience" (season 3). Disc 2 – "The Naked Truth" (season 3), "Stand & Fight" (season 3), "Nightmare from Hee Haw" (season 3), "Julia Gets Her Head Caught in a Fence" (season 4), "Julia & Suzanne's Big Adventure" (season 4), "Foreign Affairs" (season 4), "A Blast from the Past" (season 5), "And Now, Here's Bernice" (season 5), "This is Art?" (season 5) and "The Pride of the Sugarbakers" (season 5).


title: Designing Women

text: CBS ran reruns of the show in their daytime lineup at 10:00 a.m. (ET) from April 1991 to June 1992. Subsequently, "Designing Women" aired on the Lifetime cable network for over a decade. Despite its popularity, the show left the network on August 4, 2006.


title: Designing Women

text: A 90-minute retrospective special, "The Designing Women Reunion", aired on Lifetime on July 28, 2003, reuniting Burke, Potts, Smart, Carter and Taylor in which they shared memories from their time on the series, and also featured interviews with the Thomasons and various writers. Actors Alice Ghostley, Hal Holbrook, Gerald McRaney, and Richard Gilliland also took part in the special.


title: Designing Women

text: The series also aired on Nick at Nite beginning October 2, 2006; however, it quickly left and later appeared on its sister network TV Land, airing at various late-night and morning times occasionally until the network lost the rights to air the show in 2008. The series aired on ION Television in 2007 and has also aired on Comedy Gold, TV Guide Network, and Logo.


title: Designing Women

text: In recognition of the show's 30th anniversary, getTV began running the series in June 2017 with nightly blocks featuring 30 fan-favorite episodes, after which the series began airing regularly on the network.


title: Designing Women

text: As of Spring 2021, Antenna TV airs two episodes of the show on weeknights at 12:00 and 12:30 a.m. ET, while FETV airs the show weekdays at 3:00 and 3:30 a.m. as of March 2021.


title: Designing Women

text: As of August 28, 2019, the series is available for streaming on Hulu. The episodes are not the original versions aired on CBS, but syndication edits, which contain an altered opening credit sequence and choppy edits to allow more time for commercials.


title: Designing Women

text: Burke returned as the Suzanne Sugarbaker character in the 1995 spin-off series, "Women of the House". The series ran for one season, airing on CBS from January 4, 1995, to August 18, 1995, with the final four episodes airing on Lifetime on September 8, 1995.


The 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Georgia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump of Florida, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence of Indiana against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware, and his running mate California Senator Kamala Harris. Georgia has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College.


title: 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia

text: Biden narrowly won Georgia by a margin of 0.23% and 11,779 votes. Leading up to the election, Georgia was seen as a key swing state in both the presidential and senatorial elections—both a regular Class II U.S. Senate election and a special election—due to the rapid growth and diversification of Atlanta's suburbs, where Republicans were once dominant. Polls of the state throughout the campaign indicated a close race, and prior to election day, most news organizations considered Georgia a toss-up. This was the only state in the Deep South carried by Biden, made possible by significant racial demographic shifts over the previous decade, especially in Metro Atlanta.


text: Like in other states, Trump had an early lead on election night due to the state counting in-person votes first on that day, before counting mail-in ballots over the following days. Biden subsequently cut into Trump's margin over the course of the week and eventually overtook Trump on Friday morning. Although majority-minority Burke County—near Augusta—flipped to Trump after supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden was able to build Clinton's vote shares in the densely populated Metro Atlanta counties of Gwinnett, Cobb, and Henry, increasing her vote shares of 50%, 48%, and 50% to 58%, 56%, and 60%, respectively–in all three cases, the best showing for a non-Georgian Democrat since John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election. This helped Biden win the state by a plurality, despite not flipping any counties.


text: Due to the close margins in the initial election results, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on November 11 that a full audit by hand would be conducted. The audit was completed on November 18, and Biden was confirmed to be the winner on November 19.


text: Biden became the first Democrat to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992; the first to win a statewide election in Georgia since 2006; the first to carry a state in the Deep South since Bill Clinton carried Louisiana in 1996; and the first to gain over 70% of the vote in Fulton County since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. He was also the first non-Southern Democrat to carry a state in the Deep South since Kennedy in 1960.


text: This is the first time since 1992 that Georgia voted more Democratic than neighboring Florida and the first time since 2000 that it voted more Democratic than also-neighboring North Carolina. Additionally, it was the first time since 1860 that Laurens County and Monroe County did not vote for the statewide winner. Biden also became the first Democrat to win the White House without carrying Baker, Burke, Dooly, Peach, Quitman, or Twiggs Counties since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.


text: The presidential preference primary was originally scheduled for March 24, 2020. On March 14, it was moved to May 19 due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 9, the preference primary was again rescheduled to June 9, being combined with the regular, usually-separate primary for other federal and state primaries as well as local elections in some counties, the first time in Georgia history that all primaries were combined on the same date. Secretary of State Raffensperger approved sending out absentee ballot application forms to 6.9 million active voters for the combined primary, of which 1.1 million absentee ballots were requested. The total turnout for the combined primary was the highest since the 2008 presidential primary, and broke the record for most absentee ballots cast in a Georgia primary.


text: Incumbent President Donald Trump ran unopposed in the Republican primary and thus received all of Georgia's 76 delegates to the 2020 Republican National Convention.


text: These slates of electors were nominated by each party in order to vote in the Electoral College should their candidates win the state:


text: Voter registration for the 2020 general elections ended on October 5 in Georgia, with a final total of 7,233,584 active registered voters, an increase of 1,790,538 new voters since the 2016 election and 805,003 new voters since the 2018 gubernatorial election. Absentee mail ballots were first sent out on September 15. Unlike the June 9 combined primary, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger declined to mail out absentee ballot request forms for the November 3 election, and instead established a website for registered voters to apply for an absentee ballot; in addition, third-party non-profit organizations such as the Voter Participation Center sent out over 2.2 million absentee request forms to registered voters by mail, including to voters who did not have computers nor Internet access. 1,731,117 absentee ballots were requested by mail or online by voters by the deadline of October 23. The Secretary of State's office allowed counties to install multiple drop boxes for absentee voters to bypass the postal system, on the condition that the drop boxes be installed on county government property and surveilled with 24-hour cameras.


text: Early in-person voting began on October 12. Complaints regarding hours-long early-voting lines soon arose across the state, especially in Metro Atlanta counties; state officials attributed the long durations of lines to voter enthusiasm and lack of preparation by county boards of elections.


text: Raffensperger recorded 126,876 votes having been cast early or absentee across the state on October 12, a record turnout for the first day of early voting in a Georgia general election. The record turnout continued throughout the first week, with 1,555,622 having been cast by October 19. By October 21, 2,124,571 votes had been cast, over 50% of total votes cast in the 2016 election, and by October 30, over 50% of registered voters had cast their ballots.


text: Following the November 3 general election, voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected could submit corrections until 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6.


text: Like its fellow Deep South neighbors, Georgia is a former Solid South state that had gradually become part of the red wall since the Reagan Revolution starting in 1984. While Southerner Bill Clinton carried the state in 1992 and nearly did again in 1996, Georgia became a safe red state in 2000 and 2004, and a lean red state from 2008 to 2016.


text: Demographic changes and population shifts made Georgia trend blue, starting in 2016; Donald Trump carried Georgia by just over 5 points against Hillary Clinton. Further signalling Georgia's blue shift were the state 2018 midterms, where Democrat Stacey Abrams nearly won the governor's race against Republican Brian Kemp.


text: Georgia's trend towards the Democrats can be partly explained by the growth of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Atlanta has attracted many transplants from heavily blue-leaning areas of the United States. Additionally, the state's population is diversifying faster than that of most states, with the population of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians all growing over the last 10 years, and these blocs generally lean Democratic.


text: In what was likely the biggest key to Biden's victory in Georgia, the Democratic Party invested heavily in the state, with activist and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams heading an effort to boost minority turnout, especially among African-American voters. The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA focused on Georgia near the end of the 2020 campaign, even sending former president Barack Obama to campaign in the state. Black voters made up 29% of the electorate, and Latinos made up about 7%, a significant increase compared to previous years.


text: Biden performed well across the board; he won independent voters by 9 points, and was able to pick up 6% of Republican voters in the state. Biden also won young voters in Georgia, sweeping each age group under 50 years old. Trump's strength in the state came from Southern whites—mainly those outside of Atlanta's urban area—as he easily won those without a college degree, especially in Georgia's rural areas; his vote share with college-educated whites dropped, however, and Trump only won suburban Georgia by 3 points this cycle.


text: Outside of Atlanta, Biden's strongest performances came in Georgia's other urban and suburban areas, such as Chatham County (Savannah), Muscogee County (Columbus), Richmond County (Augusta), Bibb County (Macon), and majority-college educated Clarke County (Athens). Trump, on the other hand, performed strongest in the northern and southeastern parts of the state, which are rural and were historically a hotbed for Dixiecrats.


text: Following the nationwide trend, Georgia's voting patterns were split between urban, suburban and rural areas. Biden won urban areas by 35 points, while Trump carried the suburbs by 3 points, and these areas combined made up 85% of the electorate, showing the rapidly evolving demographics of Georgia. Trump carried rural areas by 39 points.


text: On November 11, the Secretary of State of Georgia announced there would be a full statewide audit of each of the nearly 5 million ballots by hand, to be completed by November 20, 2020. On November 15, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, denounced Trump's criticism of the state's recount process.


text: During this audit, it was discovered that Fayette County had missed tabulating 2,755 votes, Floyd County had about 2,600 ballots that were never scanned, Douglas County failed to include a memory card from an Election Day precinct that included 156 votes, and Walton County discovered a memory card with 284 votes. The final statewide result from the completed audit is Biden with 2,475,141 votes and Trump with 2,462,857 votes, a spread of 12,284 votes. The result before the audit had been Biden with 2,473,383 votes and Trump with 2,459,825. Therefore, the results of the audit netted Trump 1,274 votes.


text: While the audit was ongoing, the Republican Senator of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, privately called Raffensperger to discuss Georgia's vote counting. Raffensperger told "The Washington Post" that Graham had asked Raffensperger whether Raffensperger could disqualify all mail-in ballots in counties with more signature errors. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official and staffer to Raffensperger, was present in the call; Sterling confirmed that Graham had asked that question. Raffensperger viewed Graham's question as a suggestion to throw out legally-cast ballots, while Graham denied suggesting this. Graham acknowledged calling Raffensperger to find out how to "protect the integrity of mail-in voting" and "how does signature verification work"; but if Raffensperger "feels threatened by that conversation, he's got a problem". Graham stated that he was investigating in his own capacity as a senator, although he is the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee.


text: The Trump campaign had until November 24, 2020, to request a recount of the results. Unlike the statewide audit of each individual ballot by hand, the recount would involve a re-scanning of the voting machines. They filed a petition formally seeking the recount on November 21.


text: On December 2, Raffensperger suggested that Biden was likely to win the recount. Biden was later confirmed as the winner of the recount on December 7.


text: On November 19, Judge Steven D. Grimberg, a federal judge who was appointed by Trump in 2019, denied the Trump campaign's request to have further delay in the certification of the election results in Georgia.


text: On November 30, Gabriel Sterling, a top election official for the Georgia Secretary of State, gave a press conference in which he denounced death threats made against an election technician. Sterling appealed to President Trump: "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed, and it's not right."


text: In December 14, 2020, Georgia's electoral votes were cast for Biden, formalizing his victory in the state, which Biden won by 11,779 votes. On the same day, a group of pro-Trump Republicans claimed to cast Georgia's electoral votes for Trump; the fake votes have no legal standing.


text: On January 2, 2021, Trump and Raffensperger spoke for one hour by telephone, during which Trump threatened Raffensperger by saying he was taking "a big risk" by declaring Biden as the victor. Referring to Biden’s 11,779-vote victory margin, Trump instructed Raffensperger that "there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated...I just want to find 11,780 votes."


text: On May 21, 2021, a Henry County Superior Court Judge, Brian Amero, agreed to unseal 147,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County. The petitioners in the case alleged that fraud had occurred – based on sworn affidavits provided by four election workers who all claimed to have handled thousands of fraudulent ballots. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger welcomed the decision. "Fulton County has a long-standing history of election mismanagement that has understandably weakened voters' faith in its system. Allowing this audit provides another layer of transparency and citizen engagement." However, on June 25, 2021, Amero dismissed most of the lawsuit seeking to inspect the ballots. On October 13, Amero dismissed the suit altogether, closing the last legal challenge to Georgia election results, ruling the suit lacked standing because it "failed to allege a particularized injury."


text: On May 2, 2022, Raffensperger tweeted a link to a Just the News article outlining how Georgia election regulators have issued four subpoenas demanding the identity of a John Doe whistleblower and other evidence concerning an alleged ballot trafficking operation in the 2020 election. The subpoenas were sent to a Conservative election integrity group "True the Vote" who earlier provided information to Georgia officials that as many as 242 people (dubbed mules) illegally gathered third-party ballots during the battleground state's November 2020 election and subsequent U.S. Senate races and then stuffed the ballots into multiple mail-in-ballot drop boxes in numerous locations around the state. "Credible evidence was given to us that people were harvesting ballots," said Raffensperger to The National Desk's Jan Jeffcoat. "This information was provided to us and they said there's a witness, a 'John Doe.' And so we're looking at subpoenaing that person to get the information." True the Vote have worked with Dinesh D'Souza to help produce the 2022 movie "2000 mules" which alleges widespread fraud in the November 2020 election.


text: On August 15, 2022, it was announced that Rudolph W. "Rudy" Giuliani is a target of the Georgia election probe. On the same day, a federal judge, District Court Judge Leigh Martin May, ordered that Lindsey Graham testify before the grand jury.


To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar is a 1995 American road comedy film directed by Beeban Kidron and starring Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo as three New York City drag queens who embark on a road trip. Its title refers to an iconic autographed photo of Julie Newmar that they carry with them on their journey. Newmar additionally appears in the film as herself.


title: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

text: The film was notable for being the first major Hollywood studio movie to center on drag queens. The film was released on September 8, 1995 and was in the number 1 spot in the North American box office for two weeks with a worldwide gross of $47.8 million. Critical response was mixed, with particular criticism towards the plot and its familiar elements, but Swayze, Snipes, and Leguizamo’s performances were lauded. Swayze and Leguizamo both earned Golden Globe Award nominations as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.


text: After tying for the win in New York City's "Drag Queen of the Year" contest, Noxeema Jackson and Vida Boheme win a trip to Hollywood to take part in the even bigger "Miss Drag Queen of America Pageant". Before they depart, Vida persuades Noxeema to take along the inexperienced "drag princess" Chi-Chi Rodriguez as their protégé (they initially refer to him simply as a "boy in a dress" rather than as a full-fledged drag queen). To do this, they cash in their plane tickets to a friend, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, and use the money to buy a yellow convertible 1967 Cadillac DeVille. They set off for Los Angeles in it, carrying with them an iconic autographed photo of Julie Newmar (signed "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar") that Vida took from a restaurant wall.


text: While on the road, they are pulled over by Sheriff Dollard, who hurls racial slurs, then forces Vida out of the car and tries to rape her. Vida strikes him and he is knocked unconscious. He is presumed dead and the queens drive off. At a rest stop, they recover from the incident but their car breaks down. Bobby Ray, a young man from the nearby small town of Snydersville, happens to pass by and gives them a ride to a bed and breakfast inn. The inn is owned by Carol Ann and her abusive car repairman husband, Virgil.


text: They are stranded in the town for the weekend waiting for the replacement part for their car. Chi-Chi is harassed by a group of roughnecks but is saved by Bobby Ray. While volunteering to help with the town's Strawberry Social, they decide the town's women need a day with them getting their hair done, picking out new outfits, and talking in a café. While searching for the new outfits, they are ecstatic to find vintage fashions from the 1960s in the town's clothing store and give the female residents (and themselves) a makeover.


text: Following their makeover, they are abused by the same roughnecks that attempted to harass Chi-Chi. Fed up, Noxeema handles the situation in a typically New York City manner and teaches their ringleader a lesson in manners. Vida, Noxeema, and Chi-Chi do what they can to be positive, and they set out to improve the lives of the townspeople, including offering assistance in organizing the Strawberry Social. Meanwhile, Sheriff Dollard is ridiculed by his colleagues, who believe he was beaten up by a girl. He goes in search of the drag queens.


text: Vida becomes acutely aware of Carol Ann's abuse at the hands of Virgil, and one night decides to intervene and beats Virgil up before throwing him out of the house. Carol Ann is able to repair their car, but they remain for the Strawberry Social. Carol Ann reveals to Vida that she knew she was a drag queen all along due to her Adam's apple.


text: Virgil runs into Sheriff Dollard at a bar, and they realize that the newcomers are the same people Dollard has been searching for. They head back to Snydersville, and Dollard demands that the townspeople turn them over. The other townspeople, who now realize that their new friends are not women, devise a ruse to protect them. One by one, they confront Dollard, each one claiming to be a drag queen (in a similar fashion to "Spartacus"). Dollard is humiliated and flees. The Strawberry Social commences with everyone dressed in vibrant red outfits. The townspeople then say goodbye to Noxeema, Vida, and Chi-Chi as they prepare to leave. In honor of their friendship, Vida gives Carol Ann the autographed photo of Julie Newmar that has accompanied them on their trip.


text: They eventually make it to Los Angeles where Chi-Chi, after having received many tips from Vida and Noxeema during their ordeal, wins the title of Drag Queen of the Year. The crown is presented by Julie Newmar herself.


text: Writer Douglas Carter Beane originally envisioned the script as a stage play, but changed his mind when he realized putting a car on stage might not work. Beane was inspired by an anti-gay propaganda film called "The Gay Agenda". Of that film, Beane said, "There's a scene where they show drag queens going through a town, and the narrator is warning the viewers that these people will take over your town, and I thought, "Well, that would be fun"."


text: The script found its way to Mitch Kohn, then a development executive at Amblin Entertainment. Kohn passed the script along to his boss Steven Spielberg, who “loved it." Spielberg had his friend Robin Williams do a humorous cold reading of the script while on a plane, which “mesmerized” the director. Williams expressed interest in a possible role but did not want to distract from the three leads, so he opted for a small cameo appearance.


text: When the script officially went into development at Amblin, multiple unnamed male directors passed on directing. British director Beeban Kidron happily accepted the job. Though advertising companies wanted to change the film’s title to the shorter “Ladies’ Night” or “She’s a Lady", Beane's script managed to keep the original title, which came from an autographed picture of Julie Newmar that Beane saw on the wall of a Times Square Chinese restaurant in the mid-1980s. Beane said Wong Foo is meant to be a metaphor for God, “because you have to thank God for everything. You have to be grateful for life. You just have to stop where you are and say thank you for everything.” A scene was filmed where the characters provide more context, but it was deleted.


text: When it came to casting the leading men, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo (whom the role of Chi-Chi Rodriguez was specifically written for) both immediately said yes. Many actors were considered for the role of Vida Boheme, including Robert Downey Jr., William Baldwin, Gary Oldman, Matthew Broderick, James Spader, John Cusack, Mel Gibson, Robert Sean Leonard, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, and Robin Williams (who has a brief cameo in the finished film). Patrick Swayze was one of the last actors to audition for Vida. Director Beeban Kidron said that it was ultimately Swayze's walk that sealed the deal, saying "Swayze had his own makeup people transform him into a woman, and he insisted that he and Beeban take a walk around the city to prove he could pass as a woman," and "With his beauty and dancer's grace, he did just that. He had the job."


text: The film featured dozens of New York City's drag performers and underground stars in small roles or as featured extras. Included in the mix were RuPaul, Joey Arias, Lady Bunny, Miss Understood, Candis Cayne, Flotilla DeBarge, Miss Coco Peru, and Quentin Crisp. The three lead actors spent time in the local drag scene while researching their roles, and were each given a drag mentor to work with in developing their characters. Costume designer Marlene Stewart had the leads' wardrobes, including the shoes and corsets, custom-made.


text: Filming took place from July to October 1994. The drag contest seen in the beginning scene was filmed at Webster Hall in New York City. The John Shaffer Phipps Estate in Old Westbury, New York, now known as Old Westbury Gardens, was the site of the Miss Drag Queen USA contest at the end of the film. Film locations in New Jersey included Jersey City (site of the Canton Restaurant in which the opening restaurant scenes were shot) and Montclair (substitute location for scenes set in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania). Much of the film was shot on location in Nebraska in the areas of Loma, Lincoln, and Omaha. Though greatly faded, a "Welcome to Snydersville" outdoor mural remains in Loma.


text: In interviews and recollections with actors and crew after the film, the production of "To Wong Foo" has been described as "a tough shoot," partly due to the discomfort the male leads experienced with their extensive makeup and costumes. On location filming and a 4½-month-long shoot also contributed to friction among cast and crew.


text: A scene involving the drag trio dining at a McDonald's was scrapped after the company told producers they did not want to be associated with drag queen culture. Coca-Cola agreed to product placement, and a billboard for the soda company is featured in a prominent scene in the film.


text: The Australian film "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" was released in 1994 and became an international and critical hit. "To Wong Foo" shares certain plot details with "Priscilla", which also concerns two drag queens and a transgender woman on a road trip who manage to win over the locals of a small town. Despite the similarities, "To Wong Foo" had already been in production by the time "Priscilla" was released. The crew of "Priscilla" had heard about the film while shooting their own, and though a producer was initially worried the films might be too similar, after reading "To Wong Foo"'s script, producers decided it was sufficiently different from "Priscilla." The success of "Priscilla", along with the popularity of drag queens like RuPaul and the 1990 documentary "Paris Is Burning", is credited with helping pave the way for "To Wong Foo".


text: Professional golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez sued the production company and distributor over the use of his name in the film, eventually settling with undisclosed terms.


text: The film was released on VHS after its theatrical release and on DVD on January 7, 2003, with several deleted scenes. It was released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory on May 28, 2019.


text: With a lifetime box-office gross revenue of worldwide, the film was number one at the box office in the United States for its first two weeks in the theater.


text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 43% based on 42 reviews. The site's consensus states: ""To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" seeks to celebrate individuality, but is too timid and predictable to achieve its admittedly noble aims." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60% based on reviews from 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B+" on scale of A to F.


text: Though critical reviews were mixed, the performances of the three leads were roundly praised. Joe Brown of "The Washington Post" called the film "fiercely funny" and wrote, "Three snaps up for Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo, who walk the walk, and work it." Emanuel Levy of "Variety" gave a mixed review, but wrote, "Sporting blond wigs, Snipes admirably wiggles his hips while wearing high-heeled red shoes. Using a low register, Swayze also excels as a man still suffering from parental rejection. Shining throughout is the brilliant Leguizamo, as the Latino spitfire who needs to prove to his comrades that he’s more than 'a mere boy in a dress.'"


text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote "What is amazing is how the movie manages to be funny and amusing while tippy-toeing around (a) sex, (b) controversy and (c) any originality in the plot. Credit for that belongs to Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo, who are surprisingly good at playing drag queens." While Ebert gave the film two and ½ stars out of four, his colleague Gene Siskel gave a more positive review and predicted an Oscar nomination for Swayze.


text: Multiple critics pointed out the film’s similarities to "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", and said "To Wong Foo" was subpar in comparison due to the predictability of its plot, script and tonal unevenness. The decision to have the leads spend most of the film in drag, even going to bed in their wigs and makeup, was also criticized as straining credulity. Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote screenwriter Beane and director Kidron "don’t seem to know any way to emphasize the humanity of their characters except by swaddling them in mushy cliches." Actor and writer Michael Kearns argued the film and its promotion is "eager to wink and snicker at homosexuality." The film's omission of "any hint of gay sexuality" was noted by Janet Maslin of "The New York Times", as well as Brown of the "Post", who decried the fact that "always in the (admittedly few) mainstream movies with gay characters, [the film's] hero-ines" do not get to partake in the film's romantic story arcs, and appear to only function as asexual fairy godmothers for the townspeople of Snydersville.


text: In a positive review, Edward Guthmann of the "San Francisco Chronicle" wrote, "It's a distant cry from the reality of gay bashings, poverty and evictions that real-life drag queens suffer -- which may be part of its point. Imagine, "'Wong Foo"' suggests, a world where people stopped judging one another and simply surrendered to the silliness that's dormant inside us.”


text: "The Austin Chronicle"'s Alison Macor shared a similar sentiment, writing "For some, the film's unabashed sentimentality and fairy-tale quality may go too far, but "To Wong Foo" is such a delight that it's easy to overlook the few awkward moments. Calling "To Wong Foo" campy doesn't do the film justice: The film camps it up but still allows us to believe in the characters. Snipes and Swayze are so successful in exploring their feminine sides that all of their future roles should be played in drag.”


text: Emanuel Levy concluded though the film "is not as outrageous or funny as ["Priscilla"]...it still offers some rewards as mainstream entertainment," and that “ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.”


text: Swayze and Leguizamo were nominated at the 1996 Golden Globe Awards, for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.


text: "To Wong Foo" is considered groundbreaking for being the first real mainstream Hollywood production to depict drag queens. Rita Kempley of "The Washington Post" wrote that in comparison to previous films that featured cross-dressing like "Some Like It Hot" or "Tootsie", "The heroines [in "To Wong Foo"] aren't cross-dressing to escape the mob or to prove a point, they're just being true to their nature."


text: In a 2019 retrospective piece about the film, writer Naveen Kumar noted "the film’s language and understanding of gender variance is undoubtedly limited as a product of its time" and that the film "[blended] iterations of queer experience that tend to have clearer distinctions in the real world, and for which we have more nuanced language today." Among the film's language and concepts that are now considered problematic is the terminology used by the characters to describe the differences in queer identities.


text: Of the leads being in drag for the duration of the film, some critics said this was an intentional part of the film's camp element. Kumar added, "That "To Wong Foo"’s drag performances remain completely unbroken throughout the film’s entirety heightens the movie’s extreme emphasis on beauty and artifice" and that the film is very "conscious of its ironies [as] Swayze and Snipes were both box-office draws known for hypermasculine and romantic leading roles; the perceived incongruity of dressing them in drag is part of what fuels the comedy." In this way, Kumar wrote, ""To Wong Foo" plays on viewers’ suspension of disbelief (Swayze and Snipes, in particular, are clearly recognizable under their women’s garb)" and that the "movie’s own characterizations tend to blur the lines between drag as a conscious performance and their desire to actually be seen, day and night, as women."


text: Of the characters staying in drag, Douglas Carter Beane said his intent was to create an illusion, saying, "It is about fantasy and the illusion. It's about the work that goes into the art form. It was never meant to be an absolutely truthful documentary look at drag.” The fantasy element can also be seen as "[perpetuating] an idea that transgender identity is nothing but make-believe." Drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck said that what the film does best is "the camaraderie between the girls... the way they look out for each other and protect one another. The movie also illustrates the transformative power of drag. It helps people become empowered, no matter where they come from or what kind of life they lead.”


text: In 2017, it was announced that Douglas Carter Beane and his husband Lewis Flinn were working on a musical adaptation for Broadway. In an interview, Beane stated that he had originally written "To Wong Foo" for the stage, and had retained stage rights when the screenplay was produced.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: Resident Evil is an American action horror television series developed by Andrew Dabb for Netflix. Loosely based on the video game series of the same name by Capcom, it is the second television adaptation of the franchise after the animated miniseries "" (2021), and the third live-action adaptation after the film series of the same name and the reboot film "" (2021). The series is set in its own universe but features the video game series' storyline as its backstory and basis.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: The series features an ensemble cast led by Lance Reddick as the clones of Albert Wesker, Ella Balinska and Adeline Rudolph as Wesker's children, Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong as the daughters' younger selves, and Paola Núñez as James Marcus's daughter Evelyn. It alternates between two timelines, following Jade and Billie Wesker during their days in New Raccoon City where they discover their father's and Umbrella Corporation's dark secrets, and 14 years in the future, where Jade tries to survive the end of the world.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: In 2019, Netflix began development with Constantin Film, the rightsholders who have previously produced the film series, as the production company involved. The series was formally announced in 2020, having been greenlit as an eight-episode series with each episode one hour in length. Dabb was hired as showrunner alongside a number of other Netflix projects. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, production was delayed eight months and took place from February to July 2021. "Resident Evil" premiered on July 14, 2022, to mixed reviews from critics and negative reviews from audiences. In August 2022, the series was canceled after one season.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: The series' main plot is spread out over two points in time – 2022 and 2036, with a gap of some 14 years. The past plotline deals with the struggles of 14-year-old fraternal twins Billie and Jade, the children of Dr Albert Wesker, conceived through suspicious circumstances. Their lives take a dramatic turn when Albert is awarded an executive position at the struggling Umbrella Corporation that once employed him, and they move to Umbrella's planned community, New Raccoon City (). While there the two girls stumble onto the dark secrets behind their origins and Umbrella's dark legacy, their father coordinates a response to the outbreak of a retroviral bioweapon called T-virus.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: In the present of 2036, the T-virus has reduced human civilization to 300 million refugees living in walled city-states and other settlements, surrounded by the six billion man-eating humans known as Zeroes who contracted the disease. The most powerful organization left on Earth is the Umbrella Corporation, backed by its military arsenal, who are conducting a global manhunt for Jade.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: In January 2019, it was announced that Netflix was in development of a series based upon the "Resident Evil" franchise. No major updates were given, until August 2020 when it was revealed that the series had been picked up for 8 one hour episodes. It was also revealed that Andrew Dabb would write the series, in addition to him serving as an executive producer and showrunner. Bronwen Hughes was also executive producer and directed the first two episodes.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: Production was originally set to take place from June to October 2020, to be handled by Moonlighting Films, which previously worked on "". Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, these plans were shelved for the rest of the year. Over 2020 the series went through retooling, with the promotion of Jeffrey Howard as co-Executive Producer in place of Dabb who was busy overseeing "Grendel". Production resumed on February 19, 2021, with principal photography split into four production blocks and concluding on July 9. On August 26, 2022, Netflix canceled the series after one season.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: Casting took place in November 2020, with casting directors working in the United Kingdom, United States for the principal cast, and South Africa for the supporting cast and extras. American actor Lance Reddick was cast in the role of Albert Wesker. The role of Billie Wesker was given to American actresses Siena Agudong and Adeline Rudolph, with British actresses Tamara Smart and Ella Balinska cast as her sister Jade. Paola Núñez was cast in the role of Wesker's assistant, Carol. Pakistani actor Ahad Raza Mir joined the cast for the role of Arjun Batra.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: Principal photography took place from February to July 2021. Internal scenes were filmed on a soundstage at Cape Town Film Studios, while dilapidated local buildings such as the Werdmuller Centre and the Maitland Abattoir were used for location filming. Production was divided into four production blocks, with directors Bronwen Hughes, Rob Seidenglanz, Batán Silva and Rachel Goldberg each responsible for two episodes each. As part of block 3, scenes were filmed aboard the "Sarah Baartman" and S.A. "Agulhas", with the help of Frog Squad, a company specialising in underwater filming.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: While Netflix maintained a press embargo on the series before and during principal photography, a synopsis for an early series pitch was accidentally published and then deleted. Similarly, an early copy of the first episode's script was published on the Internet Archive before being taken down in a copyright complaint. The series was officially announced in August 2020, with Andrew Dabb posting the front page of the completed "Welcome to New Raccoon City" script, with the principal cast being announced near the end of filming in June 2021.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: Marketing for the series proper began on November 30, 2021, with the opening of an official Instagram page for the series, which posted an image of a mutant dog which was set to appear. Two trailers were released online on May 11, 2022, with the first two episodes aired at a private press screening. In attendance, Dabb described the original universe of the show as featuring the video games as their backstory and basis.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 54% approval rating with an average rating of 5.8/10, based on 50 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While "Resident Evil" comes closer than previous adaptations to honoring the beloved video games' labyrinthine lore, this zombie serial could still use more brains." On Metacritic, the first season has a score of 53 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The audience and fan reaction to the show was overwhelmingly negative.


title: Resident Evil (TV series)

text: According to Samba TV, 988,000 US households watched the premiere of the series during its first four days streaming on Netflix. The series premiere over-indexed most with Black and Hispanic viewers by +29% and +27% respectively. It debuted second, behind "Stranger Things" (season 4), then dethroned it days later. From July 11 to July 17, the show was the second most streamed on Netflix globally, and was within the top ten in over 92 countries.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD, and unlike the primarily 8-bit AVC, HEVC's higher fidelity Main 10 profile has been incorporated into nearly all supporting hardware.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: While AVC uses the integer discrete cosine transform (DCT) with 4×4 and 8×8 block sizes, HEVC uses integer DCT and DST transforms with varied block sizes between 4×4 and 32×32. The High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) is based on HEVC. , HEVC is used by 43% of video developers, and is the second most widely used video coding format after AVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: In most ways, HEVC is an extension of the concepts in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Both work by comparing different parts of a frame of video to find areas that are redundant, both within a single frame and between consecutive frames. These redundant areas are then replaced with a short description instead of the original pixels. The primary changes for HEVC include the expansion of the pattern comparison and difference-coding areas from 16×16 pixel to sizes up to 64×64, improved variable-block-size segmentation, improved "intra" prediction within the same picture, improved motion vector prediction and motion region merging, improved motion compensation filtering, and an additional filtering step called sample-adaptive offset filtering. Effective use of these improvements requires much more signal processing capability for compressing the video, but has less impact on the amount of computation needed for decompression.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: HEVC was standardized by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC), a collaboration between the ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T Study Group 16 VCEG. The ISO/IEC group refers to it as MPEG-H Part 2 and the ITU-T as H.265. The first version of the HEVC standard was ratified in January 2013 and published in June 2013. The second version, with multiview extensions (MV-HEVC), range extensions (RExt), and scalability extensions (SHVC), was completed and approved in 2014 and published in early 2015. Extensions for 3D video (3D-HEVC) were completed in early 2015, and extensions for screen content coding (SCC) were completed in early 2016 and published in early 2017, covering video containing rendered graphics, text, or animation as well as (or instead of) camera-captured video scenes. In October 2017, the standard was recognized by a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: HEVC contains technologies covered by patents owned by the organizations that participated in the JCT-VC. Implementing a device or software application that uses HEVC may require a license from HEVC patent holders. The ISO/IEC and ITU require companies that belong to their organizations to offer their patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing (RAND) terms. Patent licenses can be obtained directly from each patent holder, or through patent licensing bodies, such as MPEG LA, Access Advance, and Velos Media.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The combined licensing fees currently offered by all of the patent licensing bodies are higher than for AVC. The licensing fees are one of the main reasons HEVC adoption has been low on the web and is why some of the largest tech companies (Amazon, AMD, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, and more) have joined the Alliance for Open Media, which finalized a royalty-free alternative video coding format AV1 on March 28, 2018.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The HEVC format was jointly developed by more than a dozen organisations across the world. The majority of active patent contributions towards the development of the HEVC format came from five organizations: Samsung Electronics (4,249 patents), General Electric (1,127 patents), M&K Holdings (907 patents), NTT (878 patents), and JVC Kenwood (628 patents). Other patent holders include Fujitsu, Apple, Canon, Columbia University, KAIST, Kwangwoon University, MIT, Sungkyunkwan University, Funai, Hikvision, KBS, KT and NEC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: In 2004, the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) began a major study of technology advances that could enable creation of a new video compression standard (or substantial compression-oriented enhancements of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard). In October 2004, various techniques for potential enhancement of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard were surveyed. In January 2005, at the next meeting of VCEG, VCEG began designating certain topics as "Key Technical Areas" (KTA) for further investigation. A software codebase called the KTA codebase was established for evaluating such proposals. The KTA software was based on the Joint Model (JM) reference software that was developed by the MPEG & VCEG Joint Video Team for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Additional proposed technologies were integrated into the KTA software and tested in experiment evaluations over the next four years.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: Two approaches for standardizing enhanced compression technology were considered: either creating a new standard or creating extensions of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The project had tentative names "H.265" and "H.NGVC" (Next-generation Video Coding), and was a major part of the work of VCEG until its evolution into the HEVC joint project with MPEG in 2010.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The preliminary requirements for NGVC were the capability to have a bit rate reduction of 50% at the same subjective image quality compared with the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High profile and computational complexity ranging from 1/2 to 3 times that of the High profile. NGVC would be able to provide 25% bit rate reduction along with 50% reduction in complexity at the same perceived video quality as the High profile, or to provide greater bit rate reduction with somewhat higher complexity.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) started a similar project in 2007, tentatively named "High-performance Video Coding". An agreement of getting a bit rate reduction of 50% had been decided as the goal of the project by July 2007. Early evaluations were performed with modifications of the KTA reference software encoder developed by VCEG. By July 2009, experimental results showed average bit reduction of around 20% compared with AVC High Profile; these results prompted MPEG to initiate its standardization effort in collaboration with VCEG.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: MPEG and VCEG established a Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) to develop the HEVC standard.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: A formal joint Call for Proposals on video compression technology was issued in January 2010 by VCEG and MPEG, and proposals were evaluated at the first meeting of the MPEG & VCEG Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC), which took place in April 2010. A total of 27 full proposals were submitted. Evaluations showed that some proposals could reach the same visual quality as AVC at only half the bit rate in many of the test cases, at the cost of 2–10× increase in computational complexity, and some proposals achieved good subjective quality and bit rate results with lower computational complexity than the reference AVC High profile encodings. At that meeting, the name "High Efficiency Video Coding" (HEVC) was adopted for the joint project. Starting at that meeting, the JCT-VC integrated features of some of the best proposals into a single software codebase and a "Test Model under Consideration", and performed further experiments to evaluate various proposed features. The first working draft specification of HEVC was produced at the third JCT-VC meeting in October 2010. Many changes in the coding tools and configuration of HEVC were made in later JCT-VC meetings.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On January 25, 2013, the ITU announced that HEVC had received first stage approval (consent) in the ITU-T Alternative Approval Process (AAP). On the same day, MPEG announced that HEVC had been promoted to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) status in the MPEG standardization process.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On April 13, 2013, HEVC/H.265 was approved as an ITU-T standard. The standard was formally published by the ITU-T on June 7, 2013, and by the ISO/IEC on November 25, 2013.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On July 11, 2014, MPEG announced that the 2nd edition of HEVC will contain three recently completed extensions which are the multiview extensions (MV-HEVC), the range extensions (RExt), and the scalability extensions (SHVC).


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On October 29, 2014, HEVC/H.265 version 2 was approved as an ITU-T standard. It was then formally published on January 12, 2015.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On June 3, 2016, HEVC/H.265 version 4 was consented in the ITU-T and was not approved during a vote in October 2016.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 29, 2014, MPEG LA announced their HEVC license which covers the essential patents from 23 companies. The first 100,000 "devices" (which includes software implementations) are royalty free, and after that the fee is $0.20 per device up to an annual cap of $25 million. This is significantly more expensive than the fees on AVC, which were $0.10 per device, with the same 100,000 waiver, and an annual cap of $6.5 million. MPEG LA does not charge any fee on the content itself, something they had attempted when initially licensing AVC, but subsequently dropped when content producers refused to pay it. The license has been expanded to include the profiles in version 2 of the HEVC standard.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: When the MPEG LA terms were announced, commenters noted that a number of prominent patent holders were not part of the group. Among these were AT&T, Microsoft, Nokia, and Motorola. Speculation at the time was that these companies would form their own licensing pool to compete with or add to the MPEG LA pool. Such a group was formally announced on March 26, 2015, as HEVC Advance. The terms, covering 500 essential patents, were announced on July 22, 2015, with rates that depend on the country of sale, type of device, HEVC profile, HEVC extensions, and HEVC optional features. Unlike the MPEG LA terms, HEVC Advance reintroduced license fees on content encoded with HEVC, through a revenue sharing fee.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The initial HEVC Advance license had a maximum royalty rate of US$2.60 per device for Region 1 countries and a content royalty rate of 0.5% of the revenue generated from HEVC video services. Region 1 countries in the HEVC Advance license include the United States, Canada, European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and others. Region 2 countries are countries not listed in the Region 1 country list. The HEVC Advance license had a maximum royalty rate of US$1.30 per device for Region 2 countries. Unlike MPEG LA, there was no annual cap. On top of this, HEVC Advance also charged a royalty rate of 0.5% of the revenue generated from video services encoding content in HEVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: When they were announced, there was considerable backlash from industry observers about the "unreasonable and greedy" fees on devices, which were about seven times that of the MPEG LA's fees. Added together, a device would require licenses costing $2.80, twenty-eight times as expensive as AVC, as well as license fees on the content. This led to calls for "content owners [to] band together and agree not to license from HEVC Advance". Others argued the rates might cause companies to switch to competing standards such as Daala and VP9.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On December 18, 2015, HEVC Advance announced changes in the royalty rates. The changes include a reduction in the maximum royalty rate for Region 1 countries to US$2.03 per device, the creation of annual royalty caps, and a waiving of royalties on content that is free to end users. The annual royalty caps for a company is US$40 million for devices, US$5 million for content, and US$2 million for optional features.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On February 3, 2016, Technicolor SA announced that they had withdrawn from the HEVC Advance patent pool and would be directly licensing their HEVC patents. HEVC Advance previously listed 12 patents from Technicolor. Technicolor announced that they had rejoined on October 22, 2019.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On November 22, 2016, HEVC Advance announced a major initiative, revising their policy to allow software implementations of HEVC to be distributed directly to consumer mobile devices and personal computers royalty free, without requiring a patent license.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On March 31, 2017, Velos Media announced their HEVC license which covers the essential patents from Ericsson, Panasonic, Qualcomm Incorporated, Sharp, and Sony.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: The following organizations currently hold the most active patents in the HEVC patent pools listed by MPEG LA and HEVC Advance.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On February 29, 2012, at the 2012 Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm demonstrated a HEVC decoder running on an Android tablet, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor running at 1.5 GHz, showing H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and HEVC versions of the same video content playing side by side. In this demonstration, HEVC reportedly showed almost a 50% bit rate reduction compared with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On February 11, 2013, researchers from MIT demonstrated the world's first published HEVC ASIC decoder at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2013. Their chip was capable of decoding a 3840×2160p at 30 fps video stream in real time, consuming under 0.1 W of power.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On April 3, 2013, Ateme announced the availability of the first open source implementation of a HEVC software player based on the OpenHEVC decoder and GPAC video player which are both licensed under LGPL. The OpenHEVC decoder supports the Main profile of HEVC and can decode 1080p at 30 fps video using a single core CPU. A live transcoder that supports HEVC and used in combination with the GPAC video player was shown at the ATEME booth at the NAB Show in April 2013.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On July 23, 2013, MulticoreWare announced, and made the source code available for the x265 HEVC Encoder Library under the GPL v2 license.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On August 8, 2013, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone announced the release of their HEVC-1000 SDK software encoder which supports the Main 10 profile, resolutions up to 7680×4320, and frame rates up to 120 fps.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On November 14, 2013, DivX developers released information on HEVC decoding performance using an Intel i7 CPU at 3.5 GHz with 4 cores and 8 threads. The DivX 10.1 Beta decoder was capable of 210.9 fps at 720p, 101.5 fps at 1080p, and 29.6 fps at 4K.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On December 18, 2013, ViXS Systems announced shipments of their XCode (not to be confused with Apple's Xcode IDE for MacOS) 6400 SoC which was the first SoC to support the Main 10 profile of HEVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On April 5, 2014, at the NAB show, eBrisk Video, Inc. and Altera Corporation demonstrated an FPGA-accelerated HEVC Main10 encoder that encoded 4Kp60/10-bit video in real-time, using a dual-Xeon E5-2697-v2 platform.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On August 13, 2014, Ittiam Systems announced availability of its third generation H.265/HEVC codec with 4:2:2 12-bit support.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 5, 2014, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that the 4K Blu-ray Disc specification would support HEVC-encoded 4K video at 60 fps, the Rec. 2020 color space, high dynamic range (PQ and HLG), and 10-bit color depth. 4K Blu-ray Discs have a data rate of at least 50 Mbit/s and disc capacity up to 100 GB. 4K Blu-ray Discs and players became available for purchase in 2015 or 2016.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 9, 2014, Apple announced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus which support HEVC/H.265 for FaceTime over cellular.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 18, 2014, Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 980 (GM204) and GTX 970 (GM204), which includes Nvidia NVENC, the world's first HEVC hardware encoder in a discrete graphics card.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On October 31, 2014, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 10 will support HEVC out of the box, according to a statement from Gabriel Aul, the leader of Microsoft Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals Team. Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 9860 added platform level support for HEVC and Matroska.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On November 3, 2014, Android Lollipop was released with out of the box support for HEVC using Ittiam Systems' software.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On January 5, 2015, ViXS Systems announced the XCode 6800 which is the first SoC to support the Main 12 profile of HEVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On January 5, 2015, Nvidia officially announced the Tegra X1 SoC with full fixed-function HEVC hardware decoding.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On January 22, 2015, Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 960 (GM206), which includes the world's first full fixed function HEVC Main/Main10 hardware decoder in a discrete graphics card.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On February 23, 2015, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced that their UVD ASIC to be found in the Carrizo APUs would be the first x86 based CPUs to have a HEVC hardware decoder.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On February 27, 2015, VLC media player version 2.2.0 was released with robust support of HEVC playback. The corresponding versions on Android and iOS are also able to play HEVC.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On March 31, 2015, VITEC announced the MGW Ace which was the first 100% hardware-based portable HEVC encoder that provides mobile HEVC encoding.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On August 5, 2015, Intel launched Skylake products with full fixed function Main/8-bit decoding/encoding and hybrid/partial Main10/10-bit decoding.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 9, 2015 Apple announced the Apple A9 chip, first used in the iPhone 6S, its first processor with a hardware HEVC decoder supporting Main 8 and 10. This feature would not be unlocked until the release of iOS 11 in 2017.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On August 30, 2016, Intel officially announced 7th generation Core CPUs (Kaby Lake) products with full fixed function HEVC Main10 hardware decoding support.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 7, 2016 Apple announced the Apple A10 chip, first used in the iPhone 7, which included a hardware HEVC encoder supporting Main 8 and 10. This feature would not be unlocked until the release of iOS 11 in 2017.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On October 25, 2016, Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 1050Ti (GP107) and GeForce GTX 1050 (GP107), which includes full fixed function HEVC Main10/Main12 hardware decoder.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On June 5, 2017, Apple announced HEVC H.265 support in macOS High Sierra, iOS 11, tvOS, HTTP Live Streaming and Safari.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On June 25, 2017, Microsoft released a free HEVC app extension for Windows 10, enabling some Windows 10 devices with HEVC decoding hardware to play video using the HEVC format inside any app.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On October 17, 2017, Microsoft removed HEVC decoding support from Windows 10 with the Version 1709 Fall Creators Update, making HEVC available instead as a separate, paid download from the Microsoft Store.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On November 2, 2017, Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (GP104), which includes full fixed function HEVC Main10/Main12 hardware decoder.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On September 20, 2018, Nvidia released the GeForce RTX 2080 (TU104), which includes full fixed function HEVC Main 4:4:4 12 hardware decoder.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: On October 25 2022, Chrome released version 107, which starts supporting HEVC hardware decoding for all platforms "out of box", if the hardware is supported.


title: High Efficiency Video Coding

text: In May 2021, an estimated 18% of browsers in use on desktop and notebook systems were able to play HEVC videos in HTML5 webpages, based on data from StatCounter.