title: John Paxson

text: After Paxson's retirement, Bulls head coach Phil Jackson hired him as an assistant coach for the 1995–96 season. The Bulls won the title that year, fueled by Michael Jordan's return and the addition of another eventual Hall of Famer, Dennis Rodman. Paxson resigned shortly after the season to join Neil Funk on radio broadcasts, saying "I knew full well the time commitment coaching takes. But after that year I missed my wife and kids so much. I realized that if I didn’t prioritize, I’d miss everything that they were doing." When Jordan joined the Washington Wizards, he asked Paxson to consider the head coaching job, but Paxson declined for the same reasons.


title: John Paxson

text: In April 2003, Paxson left his broadcasting position to become General Manager for the Bulls after the resignation of longtime Bulls general manager Jerry Krause.


title: John Paxson

text: After a promising conclusion to the 2002–03 NBA season, Paxson pledged that the team would make the playoffs. He made headlines by signing former icon Scottie Pippen after years of bad relations between the franchise and one of the stars of their championship years. However, the Bulls opened the 2003–04 NBA season in sloppy and uninspired form, and Paxson opted to begin reshaping the character of the team by trading leading scorer Jalen Rose for Antonio Davis and firing friend and former teammate coach Bill Cartwright, replacing him with Scott Skiles. These moves had virtually no impact at all, and the Bulls finished Paxson's first season as general manager with a 23–59 record, second-worst in the NBA.


title: John Paxson

text: In his second season, however, Paxson was able to reshape the franchise with remarkable speed through the draft. Kirk Hinrich made the NBA All-Rookie Team in 2003-04, and the 2004–05 rookie class yielded four major contributors, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Chris Duhon and Andrés Nocioni. After a long drought dating back to Jordan's departure, the Bulls returned to the playoffs and posted the third-best record in the Eastern Conference, a 24-game improvement from the previous year. The Bulls were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round, by the Washington Wizards despite having home-court advantage, a better regular-season record and a 2-0 lead in the best of seven playoff series. The absence of starting center and leading scorer Eddy Curry and promising small forward Luol Deng in this series played a major role, although Tyson Chandler and Kirk Hinrich both performed well.


title: John Paxson

text: When center Eddy Curry showed possible symptoms of a heart problem shortly before the playoffs, Paxson took a cautious approach and would not clear Curry to play without extensive DNA testing. Ultimately, Curry was traded along with Antonio Davis to the New York Knicks for Michael Sweetney, Tim Thomas, and several draft picks. This trade would give them the Knicks' first-round pick in 2006, which they eventually used to acquire Tyrus Thomas, and the right to swap first-round picks with the Knicks in 2007. The Bulls floundered in the season that followed, but the team made a late-season run to finish at 41-41 and earn a second consecutive trip to the playoffs – as well as a second consecutive first-round exit. Eddy Curry has yet to miss another game due to a heart-related injury.


title: John Paxson

text: Paxson acknowledged "It's no secret we need to get size in our frontcourt and we need to get a bigger guard if we can, a defensive-oriented guard. And we really need some leadership on the floor. I think our guys are still young in their development there; it's a lot to ask an entire group to assume that leadership role. So, that's the wish list, if you could get everything you wanted. I'm optimistic about this offseason. We should be, we're in a really good position; we've got good, young players and the ability to add to that."


title: John Paxson

text: Following the Bulls' first-round loss to eventual champion, the Miami Heat, Paxson sought to improve the Bulls' frontcourt and defensive guard play by trading for rookie forward Tyrus Thomas, drafting guard Thabo Sefolosha, and signing four-time Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace.


title: John Paxson

text: The Bulls experienced an up-and-down regular season in 2006-07, winning 49 games but suffering a demoralizing loss to the New Jersey Nets in the last game of the season, dropping as a result from the 2-seed in the East to the 5-seed. Deng rewarded his general manager's loyalty by playing dominating basketball in the Bulls' first-round playoff sweep of the defending champion Heat in April 2007. But Paxson observed the Bulls' lack of a low-post threat when they were beaten by the Pistons in six games.


title: John Paxson

text: After high expectations for the 2007–08 season, the Bulls started 9-16 and were last in the Central division. He fired Scott Skiles on December 24, 2007. Saying "This was a difficult decision to make, but one that was necessary at this time. Scott helped us in many ways during his time with the Bulls; most importantly, he helped this franchise get back to respectability. I am appreciative of his hard work and the imprint that he left on our team." Over the span of five seasons with the Bulls, Skiles compiled a record of 165-172 (.490), and guided the team to the playoffs three consecutive years before getting fired. Paxson promoted assistant coach Jim Boylan to interim head coach and the Bulls finished the year with a 33-49 record, missing the playoffs. Despite having only 1.7% probability, the Bulls won the NBA Draft Lottery and selected Chicago native Derrick Rose with the first pick in the 2008 NBA draft. In June 2008, Paxson named former NBA player and scout Vinny Del Negro head coach, but their relationship eventually went sour. Multiple reports surfaced that on March 30, 2010, Paxson and Del Negro got into a physical altercation over the minutes of Bulls center Joakim Noah, who was recovering from a foot injury. Paxson allegedly grabbed Del Negro by the tie and shoved him. Del Negro was fired a little over a month later.


title: John Paxson

text: On May 21, 2009, Gar Forman replaced Paxson as general manager, when he was promoted to vice president of basketball operations.


title: John Paxson

text: During Paxson's leadership of the Bulls front office, the Bulls have had below-average success. From the 2003–04 through 2018–19 seasons, they failed to make the playoffs five times; lost in the first round seven times; lost in the conference semifinals three times; and lost in the conference finals once.


title: John Paxson

text: On April 13, 2020, Paxson was reassigned as senior advisor of basketball operations, when the Bulls named Artūras Karnišovas executive vice president of basketball operations.


title: John Paxson

text: His father, James, played in the NBA for two years in the mid-1950s, for the Minneapolis Lakers and Cincinnati Royals, and his brother Jim played 11 years in the NBA with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Boston Celtics.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway (; ; ) is the main town of the Western Isles and the capital of Lewis and Harris in Scotland.


title: Stornoway

text: The town's population is around 6,953, making it by far the largest town in the Outer Hebrides, as well as the third largest island town in Scotland after Kirkwall in Orkney and Lerwick in Shetland. The traditional civil parish of Stornoway, which includes various nearby villages, has a combined population of just over 10,000. The Comhairle nan Eilean Siar measures population in a different area: the "Stornoway settlement" area, Laxdale, Sandwick and Newmarket; in 2019, the estimated population for this area was 6,953.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway is an important port and the major town and administrative centre of the Outer Hebrides. It is home to "Comhairle nan Eilean Siar" (the Western Isles Council) and a variety of educational, sporting and media establishments. Until relatively recently, observance of the Christian Sabbath (Sunday) has been associated with Hebridean culture. Recent changes mean that Sundays on Lewis now more closely resemble those in most parts of the Southern Isles, i.e., Benbecula, South Uist, Barra, and Vatersay, or on mainland Scotland.


title: Stornoway

text: The town was founded by Vikings in the early 9th century, with the Old Norse name "Stjórnavágr". The settlement grew up around a sheltered natural harbour and became a hub for people from all over the island, who travelled to Stornoway either by family boat or by horse-drawn coach, for onward travel to and trade with the rest of Scotland and further afield.


title: Stornoway

text: At some point in the mid 1500s, the already ancient MacLeod castle in Stornoway 'fell victim to the cannons of the Duke of Argyle'. By the early 1600s rumbling trade wars came to a head, and all further government attempts to curtail traditional shipping rights were firmly resisted by the islanders, as was an attempt by James VI, King of Scotland, to establish on the island the Scottish trading company known as the Fife Adventurers around 1598. As a result, James VI transferred Lewis to the MacKenzies of Seaforth in 1610.


title: Stornoway

text: In 1844, the MacKenzies sold Stornoway, and the Isle of Lewis as a whole, to Sir James Matheson (and his descendants) who built the present Lews Castle on a hill overlooking the bay of Stornoway. Fragmentary ruins of the old Stornoway Castle had survived in the bay until that time, and can even be seen in Victorian photographs, but Matheson destroyed them in 1882, in order to expand the harbour; a few remains of Stornoway Castle still remain, hidden beneath pier number 1, close to the shore, slightly west of centre. By 1863, the town had become a police burgh.


title: Stornoway

text: In 1918, Matheson sold the island to William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme. Lord Leverhulme held the island for a short time. His economic plans for the island (together with various business setbacks) overstretched his finances. Faced with failure in Lewis, he gave Stornoway parish to the people of the town. The Stornoway Trust was formed and continues to administer the parish for the people.


title: Stornoway

text: During World War II the Stornoway aerodrome was used by the military and the town was the base for anti-submarine planes and a fuelling station for other aircraft. The castle was used as a hospital and living quarters for the personnel of 700 Naval Air Squadron. Between 1986 and 1993, the airport was employed as a "NATO Forward Operating Base for Air Defence aircraft protecting the fleet" for six weeks each year.


title: Stornoway

text: The Isle of Lewis web site states that the town's "economy is a mix of traditional businesses like fishing, Harris Tweed and farming, with more recent influences like Tourism, the oil industry and commerce". The sheltered harbour has been important for centuries; it was named Steering Bay by Vikings who often visited.


title: Stornoway

text: A 2018 report states that the fishing industry's primary focus is on aquaculture - fish farming. A conventional fishery still existed, "composed solely of inshore shellfish vessels targeting prawns, crabs and lobsters around the islands and throughout the Minch".


title: Stornoway

text: On 1 January 1919, the "Iolaire" sank at the entrance of the harbour, one of the worst maritime disasters in Scottish or UK waters, with a death toll of 205 men, who were returning home from World War I.


title: Stornoway

text: Today, the harbour hosts a fishing fleet (and associated shoreside services) somewhat reduced from its heyday, a small marina and moorings for pleasure craft, a small shipyard and slipway, three larger piers for commercial traffic and Stornoway Lifeboat Station, run by the RNLI and home to a , "Tom Sanderson". His Majesty's Coastguard operates a Maritime Rescue Sub Centre from a building near the harbour.


title: Stornoway

text: A lighthouse, seaweed processing plant and a renewable energy manufacturing yard are situated on Arnish Point at the mouth of the harbour and visually dominate the approaches. Arnish Point is also earmarked by AMEC as the landfall for its proposed private sub-sea cable which would export the electricity generated from the Lewis Windpower wind farm with a planning application for 181 turbines submitted to the Scottish Executive. In 2008, the Scottish Government rejected the plans.


title: Stornoway

text: Since then Lewis Windpower has obtained planning consent for a maximum of 36 wind turbines to be sited to the west of Stornoway on land held by community-owned Stornoway Trust Estate.


title: Stornoway

text: The Arnish area was also surveyed by SSE for a second sub-sea cable but lost out in favour of Gravir to the south as the preferred site. SSE prefers Arnish Point as of 2016. The manufacturing yard was originally established in the 1970s as a fabrication plant for the oil industry but suffered regular boom and bust cycles. The downturn in business from the North Sea oil industry in recent years led to a move away from serving this market. The yard is now earmarked as a key business in the development of the whole Arnish Point industrial estate and has received large amounts of funding in recent years.


title: Stornoway

text: In 2007, the Arnish yard was taken over by its third tenant in as many years. Cambrian Engineering fell into liquidation as did Aberdeen-owned Camcal Ltd with relatively large-scale redundancies. Both firms were affected by the absence of a regular stream of orders and left a chain of large debts impacting upon local suppliers. Altissimo Ltd is a new firm backed by a group of Swiss and Dutch investors, and has purchased the Camcal name from the previous operator. In December 2007, the yard won a contract to construct 49 towers for wind turbines in Turkey. This will ensure employment for around 70 employees for over six months.


title: Stornoway

text: In September 2020, Stornoway Port Authority announced that development of a new £49 million deep water terminal was to go ahead following the approval of marine licences by Marine Scotland.


title: Stornoway

text: The new multi-purpose terminal will provide berthing for vessels up to 360m long with a water depth of 10m below Chart Datum, a ferry berth, and 6.5 hectares of land for unloading, storage and industrial uses.


title: Stornoway

text: In April 2022, Stornoway Port Authority announced they had signed a £49 million construction contract for their new Deep Water Terminal.


title: Stornoway

text: The contract was awarded to building and civil engineering firm McLaughlin and Harvey. Work is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.


title: Stornoway

text: The UK's largest community-owned wind farm, the 9MW Beinn Ghrideag, is located outside Stornoway and is operated by Point and Sandwick Trust (PST). In February 2021, that organisation was shortlisted for the title of Best Community Energy Project at the Scottish Highlands and Islands Renewable Energy Awards. A February 2021 report stated that this operation "already has a number of awards and multiple nominations". Point and Sandwick Trust helps fund community activities "because of the revenue created at our wind farm, Beinn Ghrideag. The 3 turbine, 9MW scheme is built on common grazings land on the Isle of Lewis".


title: Stornoway

text: Like much of the British Isles, Stornoway has an oceanic climate, with relatively little variation of temperature and damp conditions throughout the year. Winters are exceptionally mild for such a northerly location; average nighttime low temperatures in January and February, the coldest months, are above , while daytime high temperatures average about . Summers are cool, due to influence from the Atlantic Ocean; average daytime high temperatures in July and August are just over . Precipitation falls mostly as rain (though snow occasionally falls in winter), and October through January are the wettest months due to frequent, sometimes intense storms from the North Atlantic, which can bring heavy rain and high winds. April through July represents a markedly drier season, when storm frequency and intensity diminish markedly. June is the driest month in Stornoway, averaging of precipitation, while January is the wettest month, averaging .


title: Stornoway

text: The Caledonian MacBrayne-operated ferry has been sailing since 2015, from Stornoway harbour to Ullapool on the Scottish mainland, taking 2 hours 30 minutes. There are an average of two return crossings a day: more in summer than in winter. The former main ship on the route, (1995), used to carry the freight crossing; however, she has now been reassigned elsewhere by CalMac. This means that MV "Loch Seaforth" is often heavily congested, particularly during the summer months.


title: Stornoway

text: The idea of an undersea tunnel linking Lewis and Harris to the Scottish mainland was suggested in early 2007. One of the possible routes, between Stornoway and Ullapool, would be over long: the longest road tunnel in the world.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway is the hub of bus routes in Lewis: buses run to Point, Ness, Back and Tolsta, Uig, the West Side, Lochs and Tarbert, Harris. These buses are operated by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and several private operators.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway Airport is located next to the village of Melbost, east of the town; there are flights to Benbecula, Edinburgh, Inverness and Glasgow, all operated by Loganair. The airport is also the base of an HM Coastguard Search & Rescue Sikorsky S-92 helicopter, and was previously home to RAF Stornoway. In 1898, the Hebridean Light Railway Company was proposed, with a terminus at Stornoway, but the line was never constructed.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway is home to the Nicolson Institute: founded in 1873, it is the largest school in the Western Isles and the only secondary school in Lewis providing a six-year course. It has a roll of around 1,000 pupils. After a two-year rebuilding project costing £29 million, the new school building was formally opened in October 2012.


title: Stornoway

text: Primary education in Stornoway is in Stornoway Primary School, which opened in August 1969. The school is on Jamieson Drive and has around 400 pupils. The head teacher is Annette Murray.


title: Stornoway

text: There is a further education college, Lews Castle College, which was founded in 1953 and is now part of the University of the Highlands and Islands. Lews Castle College runs over 140 courses and has around 2700 students.


title: Stornoway

text: There is also a small campus of the University of Stirling in Stornoway, teaching nursing, based in the Western Isles Hospital. It provides undergraduate degree programmes for adult nursing and supports postgraduate students, who can choose from various higher-level courses.


title: Stornoway

text: Football is the most popular amateur sport and Goathill Park is the home ground of Stornoway United, with a capacity of 1,000. Stornoway United play in the Lewis and Harris Football League.


title: Stornoway

text: Shinty is making a resurgence thanks to the Lewis Camanachd team, who are based in the town. Rugby Union is also popular, and Stornoway RFC men's and women's teams compete regularly in national leagues and cups.


title: Stornoway

text: The town also has a very popular gymnastics group, which competes annually in sports festivals. Stornoway Golf Club (the only 18-hole golf course in the Outer Hebrides), meanwhile, is set in the undulating slopes of the Lews Castle Grounds.


title: Stornoway

text: Very near to the Nicolson Institute is the Lewis Sports Centre ("Ionad Spors Leòdhas"), which has a sports hall, fitness suite, climbing wall, swimming pool and various other facilities. It has a running track and an AstroTurf football pitch. There is also the Stornoway Karate Club, a member of the International Japan Karate Association.


title: Stornoway

text: According to the 2011 Census, there are 5,492 Scottish Gaelic speakers (43%) in the greater Stornoway area.


title: Stornoway

text: The annual Hebridean Celtic Festival is a 4-day community-led festival which attracts over 10,000 visitors during July of each year. The Royal National Mòd has been held in Stornoway on a number of occasions, most recently in 2005, 2011 and 2016. Large influxes of visitors such as for these events can strain the town's accommodation capacity.


title: Stornoway

text: An Lanntair (The Lantern) is a multi-purpose arts centre on Stornoway's seafront. The purpose-built facility opened in October 2005. The arts centre was previously housed upstairs in Stornoway Town Hall.


title: Stornoway

text: The venue comprises an art gallery, theatre, cinema, dance studio and concert hall, and acts as a performance space for poetry and literature.


title: Stornoway

text: The radio station Isles FM is based in Stornoway and broadcasts on 103FM, featuring a mixture of Gaelic and English programming. It is also home to a studio operated by BBC Radio nan Gàidheal. The Gaelic-language public service broadcaster BBC Alba, launched on 19 September 2008, is based in Stornoway.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway Library in Cromwell Street opens four days a week. The library is closed Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. On other days it is open 10 am to 3 pm, except Saturday when it is open 10 am to 12 pm and 1 pm to 3 pm. The library offers book borrowing services as well as free access to WiFi and computer access to the internet.


title: Stornoway

text: As part of its collections, the library offers access to a wide range of Gaelic materials, with a large collection of books and periodicals such as Gairm, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Scottish Gaelic Studies and Guth, as well as out of print publications An Gaidheal and Guth na Bliadhna. In their newspaper section, the library holds copies of Alba and Mac-Talla as well as Sruth, Scotland's only bilingual newspaper from the 1960s. Through the library membership, it is also possible to access An Stòr-dàta Stuthan Gàidhlig, a database of Gaelic educational resources.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway Library also holds an extensive local studies collection for research purposes. As part of those collections, the library holds an archive of local newspaper back editions including the Stornoway Gazette from 1917, the Highland News from 1883, the West Highland Free Press from 1972, the Oban Times from 1861, the Inverness Courier from 1817, the Inverness Advertiser from 1849 and the Inverness Courier and Advertiser from 1885. Other resources include a collection of Ordnance Survey maps and Admiralty charts for the local area, old parochial registers, 19th century Census returns, minutes of the former Stornoway Town Council as well as current Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and school log books. The library also holds the Seaforth Muniments (Seaforth Estate Papers), local croft histories and rental and valuation rolls dated as far back as the 18th century.


title: Stornoway

text: In 2018, Stornoway Library announced plans to transform their coffee shop into a makerspace available to the general public where they run educational activities on topics including 3D printing and virtual reality.


title: Stornoway

text: The Stornoway Media Centre is the base for Intermedia Services Ltd. and its various titles, including the free monthly magazine, EVENTS, founded in 2005.


title: Stornoway

text: The company was formerly based in Rigs Road but took over a converted church on James Street. ND Macleod's Electrical had formerly occupied the building for many years.


title: Stornoway

text: The Church House building, originally a United Presbyterian church dating back to the late 19th Century, is now a media hub that spans print, websites, advertising, and latterly signage.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway black pudding ("Scots Gaelic" - marag dhubh) is a gourmet black pudding, and was granted PGI status in 2013 by the European Commission to prevent inferior puddings produced elsewhere being marketed as "Stornoway" or "Stornoway Style".


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway kippers and Stornoway smoked salmon are produced in town. They have one of the last working brick kilns in the UK, at the establishment of Stornoway Fish Smokers, Shell Street.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway became immortalised in the song "Lovely Stornoway" by Calum Kennedy and Bob Halfin, the song has recently been covered in by Hebridean rock band Peat and Diesel.


title: Stornoway

text: The now defunct 4AD Records folk-rock band Stornoway took their name from the town, after seeing it on the BBC weather report. They signed their record deal outside the Woodlands Centre in Lews Castle Grounds, Stornoway, after performing in the town for the first time in April 2010. Their second concert there was as headliners on the main stage of the Hebridean Celtic Festival on 13 July 2011.


title: Stornoway

text: "Stornoway" is the name of the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition in Canada's Parliament. It was built in 1913 by wholesale grocery magnate, Ascanio Joseph Major. He commissioned architect, Alan Keefer to design the 'country house.' Stornoway was bought by the local Perley-Robertson family in 1923 and they extended the property over the next few years.


title: Stornoway

text: The novel "The Stornoway Way" by Lewisman Kevin MacNeil tells of one man's attempts to escape his hometown, the novel was later adapted for the stage and premiered at An Lanntair, Stornoway on August 30, 2019


title: Stornoway

text: RAF Stornoway is featured in the Tom Clancy novel "Red Storm Rising" as a base for Allied air operations over the North Atlantic and against Soviet-held Iceland.


title: Stornoway

text: In the motion picture "Latitude Zero" by Toho Productions (1969), Stornoway Harbour is featured on a wall plaque as the construction site of the submarine "Alpha".


title: Stornoway

text: In 2007, the British car manufacturer Land Rover introduced "Stornoway Grey" as a colour choice for its vehicle line-up. In response, Stornoway's councillor Angus Nicolson appealed to Land Rover to relabel the colour as "Silvery Stornoway", fearing that the association of "grey" with "dull" and "boring" would hurt the image of the town with tourists. Mr Nicolson said: "This is deeply insulting and is offensive, inaccurate and inherently degrading. This will hit tourism as it subliminally implants adverse connotations in the minds of those who have never experienced the reality of these beautiful islands." Land Rover replied that the colour in question is one of the most popular ones and the use of Stornoway in its name will instead "keep it on the map".


title: Stornoway

text: In 2011, Scottish author Peter May published "The Blackhouse", the first of The Lewis Trilogy of thrillers based on Lewis, where the primary police murder investigation is based in Stornoway.


title: Stornoway

text: Stornoway has several churches of various Christian and non Christian denominations. In May 2018, the first mosque of the Western Isles opened to serve a small Muslim population.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Joi Lansing (born Joy Rae Brown, April 6, 1929 – August 7, 1972) was an American model, film and television actress, and nightclub singer. She was noted for her pin-up photos and roles in B-movies, as well as a prominent role in the famous opening "tracking shot" in Orson Welles' 1958 crime drama "Touch of Evil".


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing was often cast in roles similar to those played by her contemporaries Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. She frequently was clad in skimpy costumes and bikinis that accentuated her figure (34D bust), but she never posed nude. Publicity reports claimed that Lansing practiced yoga for relaxation and was a devout Mormon.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing was born at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1929 to Jack Glen Brown (also known as Glen Jack Brown and Glenn Jack Brown), a shoe salesman and orchestra musician, and Virginia Grace (née Shupe) Brown, a housewife.


title: Joi Lansing

text: She was later known by her stepfathers' surnames, i.e. Wassmansdorff and Loveland. In 1940, her family moved to Los Angeles, where her half-brother, Larry Vernon Loveland, stepsister Tammera Loveland, and stepbrother Kim Loveland were born. She began modeling at the age of 14 and was signed to an MGM contract; she completed high school on the studio lot.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing's film career began in 1948, and in 1952 she played an uncredited role in MGM's "Singin' in the Rain". She received top billing in "Hot Cars" (1956), a crime drama involving a stolen-car racket. In the famous opening sequence of Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil" (1958), she appeared as Zita, the dancer who dies in a car explosion at the end of the extended tracking shot after exclaiming to a border guard "I keep hearing this ticking noise inside my head!"


title: Joi Lansing

text: She had a brief role as an astronaut's girlfriend in sci-fi parody "Queen of Outer Space" (1958) and had fourth billing in the science fiction feature "The Atomic Submarine" (1959). During the 1960s, she starred in short musical films for the Scopitone video-jukebox system. Her songs included "The Web of Love" and "The Silencer".


title: Joi Lansing

text: In 1964, producer Stanley Todd discussed a film project with Lansing, tentatively titled "Project 22", with location shooting planned in Yugoslavia, and with George Hamilton and Geraldine Chaplin named to the cast. The film never was made.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing played "Lola" in the romantic comedy "Marriage on the Rocks" (1965), with a cast that included Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, and Dean Martin. Lansing previously had appeared in Sinatra's drama "A Hole in the Head" (1959) and in Martin's comedy "Who Was That Lady?" (1960). She turned down the chance to replace Jayne Mansfield in "The Ice House" (a 1969 horror film), and instead appeared opposite Basil Rathbone (in his last film appearance) and John Carradine in "Hillbillys in a Haunted House" (1967), as Mamie Van Doren's replacement. Her last film was "Bigfoot" (1970).


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing started singing in nightclubs in the early 1960s, and her performances are documented in several trade magazines. She performed with the Xavier Cugat orchestra and briefly toured with Les Paul, but little is known about the songs she actually recorded. Apparently, while starring on "Love That Bob", she recorded a 45 r.p.m. single on the small REO record label in 1957: "Love Me/What's It Gonna Be" (REO #1007). In 1962, she recorded six to eight sides at Que Recorders in Los Angeles. These turned up at auction and were acetates of four songs each (with two songs duplicated on the second acetate). It is unknown whether these tracks were released on an album. Both acetates list the same identifying number of #4-8351. The songs recorded on February 23, 1962, were "Masquerade Is Over", "All of You" (Cole Porter), "The One I Love" (which was most likely "The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)", and "Who Cares?" (George and Ira Gershwin). On April 30, 1962, the songs recorded were "Feel So Young" (which was probably "You Make Me Feel So Young"), "Dream (1944 song)", "Masquerade", and "All Of You". It was reported in "Cashbox" magazine on April 17, 1965, that Lansing was recording an album for RCA records with Jimmie Haskell (and suggested that it should be titled "Joi to the World of Jazz"), but nothing further is known about this project.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing appeared in "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok", "The Jack Benny Program", "It's a Great Life", "I Love Lucy", "Bat Masterson", "Where's Raymond?", "State Trooper", "The People's Choice", "Richard Diamond, Private Detective", "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", "Sugarfoot", "This Man Dawson", "Maverick", "Perry Mason", "The Joey Bishop Show", "Petticoat Junction", "The Mothers-in-Law", and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", and had a recurring role in "The Beverly Hillbillies".


title: Joi Lansing

text: She named Ozzie Nelson as possessing the greatest sex appeal of any actor with whom she worked. The two played a love scene in a 1956 "Fireside Theater" drama titled "Shoot the Moon". Lansing had a recurring role as Shirley Swanson in "The Bob Cummings Show" or "Love That Bob" (1956–59). She appeared in several episodes as a busty model who was the foil for photographer Bob Collins, Cummings' series name. The series ran for 173 episodes.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing appeared as herself in a 1956 "I Love Lucy" season 6 episode, "Desert Island". In 1957, she played Vera Payson in the "Perry Mason" episode "The Case of the Crimson Kiss". She achieved some distinction for beating out Lois Lane (Noel Neill) to marry Superman (George Reeves) as the title character in "Superman's Wife", a 1958 episode of "The Adventures of Superman".


title: Joi Lansing

text: What was possibly Lansing's best television role may have been her least-seen as the leading lady in "The Fountain of Youth", a Peabody Award-winning unsold television pilot directed by Orson Welles for Desilu in 1956 and broadcast on the "Colgate Theatre" two years later. The half-hour film remains available for public viewing at the Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.


title: Joi Lansing

text: She appeared in a 1960 episode of “The Untouchables” entitled “The Noise of Death,” playing a character named Georgina Jones. In the 1960–61 season of "Klondike", Lansing appeared as Goldie with Ralph Taeger, James Coburn, and Mari Blanchard. In 1960, she appeared as Evelyn in the "Election Bet" episode of the "Mr. Lucky" TV series (season 1, episode 34). In May 1963, Lansing appeared in "Falcon Frolics '63". The broadcast honored the men stationed at the Vandenberg Air Force Base.


title: Joi Lansing

text: She appeared in six episodes of "The Beverly Hillbillies" in the role of Gladys Flatt, the glamorous wife of bluegrass musician Lester Flatt.


title: Joi Lansing

text: Lansing died from breast cancer on August 7, 1972, at St. John's Hospital, Santa Monica, California. She had been treated surgically for the disease two years earlier. She also suffered from severe anemia. While some press accounts gave her age as 37, she was actually 43 years old.


title: Joi Lansing

text: "Joi Lansing: A Body to Die For", a 2015 memoir about Lansing's last three years, was written by her companion Alexis Hunter.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The Formation World Tour was the seventh concert tour by American singer Beyoncé in support of her sixth studio album, "Lemonade" (2016). The all-stadium tour was announced following her guest appearance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show. The tour started on April 27, 2016 at Marlins Park in Miami, Florida and concluded on October 7, 2016 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, comprising 49 dates. The tour's title is in reference to Beyoncé's 2016 song "Formation".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The tour's production and staging consisted of a 60 foot tall rotating LED cuboid referred to as the 'Monolith', a treadmill runway and a secondary stage that stores and produces 2,000 gallons of water. The theme of the tour was described as following the same linear chapters to that of the tour's supporting album "Lemonade", with each rotation of the aforementioned 'Monolith' representing a new chapter of the show. Several music critics gave the show positive reviews, with a variety of publications praising both the tour's production and Beyoncé's performance and vocal abilities. The tour had a variety of notable opening acts, including a number of special guests joining prominent opener DJ Khaled on stage. Supporting acts also included artists signed to Beyoncé's own management company, Parkwood Entertainment, such as the duo Chloe x Halle, who were relatively unknown at the time.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The Formation World Tour ranked at #1 and #2 on "Pollstar"'s 2016 mid-year Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide respectively, with a total mid-year worldwide gross of $137.3 million from the first 25 shows (including $126.3 million from the first North American leg of the tour). In total, the tour grossed $256 million from 49 sold-out shows according to "Billboard" Boxscore, and ranked at #2 on "Pollstar"'s 2016 Year End Tours chart.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: On February 6, 2016, Beyoncé released "Formation" for free on the music streaming service TIDAL and its accompanying music video on her official YouTube. The following day on February 7, 2016, Beyoncé performed "Formation" during her guest appearance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show. Immediately after the performance, a commercial aired announcing The Formation World Tour, which would kick off in Miami on April 27, with the first pre-sales going on sale just two days after the announcement on February 9, 2016.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Leading up to the tour announcement, Beyoncé was praised and criticized over her new song and Black Panther-influenced costume for the Super Bowl halftime performance. As a result of this, the hashtags "#BoycottBeyonce" and "#IStandWithBeyonce" begun trending on social media platforms such as Twitter. A group of protesters also planned to stage an "anti-Beyoncé" rally outside of the NFL's headquarters in New York City on the day general sale of tickets went for sale. However, the planned rally was met with zero protesters and instead dozens of Beyoncé supporters who held a counter-protest. The tour's associated album "Lemonade" was released four days prior to the start of the tour. In a press release by Live Nation Entertainment following the tour's announcement, it was revealed that The Formation World Tour would be supporting local United Way of America programs, as well as the Flint water crisis. After the first North American leg of the tour was completed, it was announced that fans, who had the option to add a donation to the Flint water crisis when purchasing tickets, had raised $82,234 for the cause. In the same press release, Beyoncé's partnership with THX was announced, with the purpose of providing the highest level of audio quality at concerts for the duration of the tour. Following on from the aforementioned controversy over "Formation", The Miami Fraternal Order of Police were reported to be pushing for a national boycott of police officers working the security for the concert, ahead of the tour's opening night in Miami. Other police departments reportedly pushing to avoid the concert included Tampa and Nashville, Tennessee; however a Tampa police spokesperson stated that these 'boycotts' had been blown "way out of proportion".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Rehearsals for the tour took place at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium, which was rented by Live Nation for $745,000. TSA board member Thomas Scott spoke on the large-scale production of the tour after seeing the stage during rehearsals, stating "that's one of the largest stages they ever put up, I don't think I've seen a stage that size". During the same rehearsal period, members of Beyoncé's team met with more than 20 Tampa leaders, including the Tampa Police Chief, for a private luncheon in Ybor City, in which they discussed ways to make Tampa a better city, resulting in Beyoncé making multiple financial pledges to certain initiatives.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The stage for the tour was described by Brian Levine, senior project manager from Tait Towers, as "a game-changer for what can be achieved in a stadium touring environment. The entire collaboration from scenic, to structure, to mechanics was custom-made to create an epic experience for both Beyoncé and her fans". Designed by Es Devlin and engineered and built collaboratively by Stageco and Tait Towers, the tour's stage features a centrepiece of a revolving 60 foot tall box, made with video screen walls. Known as the 'Monolith', Devlin spoke on the box stating of "wanting this to be the tallest object in the stadium, a piece of kinetic stadium architecture the equivalent of a seven-story, revolving LED building". Devlin also commented the box was perceived as "a giant 3D billboard, a huge LED armor within which Beyoncé is revealed as an all-too-human-scale, real-life figure" and noted that Beyoncé was heavily involved in the creative process of every inch of stages design. The rotations of the box were said to represent a new chapter of the show, in a similar chapter line to that of "Lemonade". The box takes approximately 4 minutes to achieve one rotation.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The stage also consists of a runway, which also acts as a treadmill leading onto a B-stage that fills with a pool of water. The treadmill on the catwalk was designed to be waterproof in order to withstand unpredictable weather found in outdoor stadiums. The B-stage stores 2,000 gallons of water inside of it and takes approximately 10 minutes to fill up, which occurs without the audience even realising. The inspiration for the water within the B-stage was inspired by the tour's supporting album "Lemonade", in particularly the song "Forward", as the songs message is described as a turning point from anger to forgiveness. "The pool of water is the antithesis to the fire-spitting monolith; the most joyful, redemptive sequence of the show takes place here, from "Freedom" through to "Halo"", stated Devlin. The tour's stage and production was said to be so large that the maximum capacity of some venues was reduced in order to make space for it. A writer for the "Belfast Telegraph" stated that the maximum capacity for Beyoncé's concert in Dublin at Croke Park was reduced from 82,500 to 75,000 people to allow for the size of the stage, with event organiser Eamon Fox stating "It's a jaw-dropping production and stage show and one of the biggest that's ever been in Croke Park".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Beyoncé worked with a variety of designers for her on-stage costumes during the tour. All styled by Beyoncé's stylist, Marni Senofonte, references of the tour's costumes were compared to that of the wild west, the "antebellum south", Africa and BDSM. The opening outfit consisted of a Victorian-inspired look created by Dean and Dan Caten (DSQUARED), complete with a crystal embroidered bustier and an oversized western style hat. The hats for Beyoncé and her dancers were made by Baron Hats. The outfit also included leather gloves and a "tattoo lace" bodysuit. Balmain too produced a Victorian themed floral white bodysuit, which contained hand-embroidered pearls, crystals and glass beads. The outfit was accompanied with matching suede boots. Peter Dundas of Roberto Cavalli produced an all over black crystal embroidered bodysuit for the tour, which also included gold metallic thread and accompanying knee high tiger print boots in a military style. Alessandro Michele working for Gucci designed a sequinned bodysuit for Beyoncé, incorporating a geometric print and a red mink fur coat. London based designer Atsuko Kudo designed and produced a more simple bodysuit for the tour, creating an all red latex outfit with shoulder pads and a ruffled neckline. Kudo also stated that in order to make the outfit, a life sized cast of Beyoncé was used in order to fit the latex accurately to her body. Beyoncé also requested to Kudo that the outfit was in sync with the antebellum theme which runs through the tour's supporting album "Lemonade", which influenced the inclusion of frills across the chest and scooping neckline. It was also noted how Beyoncé performed barefoot in water during one performance, whilst wearing a simple sequinned bodysuit. Beyoncé also sported a Givenchy haute couture by Riccardo Tisci bronze bodysuit, showing an exposed midriff. Beyonce commissioned several ensembles from Inbal Dror, a designer notable for "attention-demanding details like sheer cup corsets, dramatic cut-outs and slits, and barely there silhouettes" for the Tour.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: During Beyoncé's hometown performance in Houston, Texas, Gucci provided another costume for Beyoncé: a custom bodysuit created with "ruched tulle and sequins and embellished with a black-beaded panther". During the London shows of the tour, Beyoncé debuted a gold leotard covered in 70,000 Swarvoski crystals, designed by Julien Macdonald. The outfit also contained 24 carat gold embroidered components. Fishnet tights worn in accompaniment with the tour's outfits were hand dyed in crock pots in order to correctly match the varying skin tones of Beyoncé's dancers. Notable merchandise sold to fans during the tour included "Hot Sauce" tote bags, a nod to the line in her single "Formation", and "Boycott Beyoncé" T-shirts, which were a nod to the aforementioned controversy Beyoncé received after her Super Bowl 50 halftime show.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Throughout the concert, a large, rotating LED screen is featured centre stage, projecting live images of Beyoncé and her twenty backup dancers to the audience. The concerts begins with Beyoncé performing "Formation", alongside her all-female dancers shadowing her and performing a choreography. "Angry" red lighting and pyrotechnics are displayed as "Sorry", "Bow Down" and "Run the World (Girls)" are subsequently performed. "Mine", "Baby Boy" and "Hold Up" are performed next, which then seamlessly transition into "Countdown". During this performance, Beyoncé and her dancers perform and walk down a catwalk leading to the middle of the crowd. Between sets and costume changes, video clips from "Lemonade" are projected onto the LED cuboid, as well as aerial dancers performing a choreography. Before performing "Me Myself and I" Beyoncé would often stop and talk to the crowd, speaking on the relationship she and the audience have with God and themselves. This act of the show was ended with a performance of "All Night" which Beyoncé stated was her favourite song from her aforementioned new album. "Don't Hurt Yourself" was performed with many interchangeable snippets of other songs including "Ring the Alarm" and "Independent Women". The next act consisted of Beyoncé and her dancers performing more up-tempo numbers, such as "Feeling Myself", "Yoncé", "Drunk in Love" and "Partition". Another costume change took place, and the show continued with Beyoncé and her dancers performing "Daddy Lessons" and "1+1". This was then followed by Beyoncé performing an a cappella rendition of "Love On Top", which was said to connect Beyoncé with her fans and break down the space between them.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The first of two tributes to Prince is seen as Beyoncé performs a rendition of "The Beautiful Ones". This is then followed by the large LED cuboid on stage lighting up in complete purple, as an original recording of "Purple Rain" is played to the audience. The stage is then seen to contain human sized boxes, in which Beyoncé and her dancers perform inside of, in sync to the 2014 remix of "Crazy in Love", which is then followed by "Naughty Girl". The final act of the show is performed in a large pool of water on the tour's secondary stage. Here Beyoncé and her dancers perform a choreography and splash in the water to "Freedom", "Survivor", "End of Time" and the shows closing number, "Halo". During "Halo" Beyoncé sings alone, starting the performance on her knees in the pool of water. As the concert concludes, Beyoncé was described as standing on stage "drenched, hair sopping, makeup running and her exhausted body looking at once all but human".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: The opening night of the tour received rave reviews from critics. Hermione Hoby of "The Guardian" awarded the concert 5 stars, stating "She sounds, moves and looks like a goddess and most of us 'bow down' accordingly". Kelli Kennedy writing for the Associated Press noted that Beyoncé "slays at tour opening" and further commented "her commanding performance of "Freedom" served as reminder to the world that she 'breaks chains all by myself. I'm gonna keep running because a runner don't quit on herself'". Becky Randel of "Billboard" felt that emotion guided the mood for the evening and stated that "Bey was overcome when the audience knew all the lyrics to her new song, "Hold Up" and she often stopped to smile or nod at her exuberant BeyHive. Writing for "Rolling Stone", Kat Bein said Beyoncé was "a prime example of entertainment and a vision of an artist at her apex" and later commented "the show was a visual feast as well as an emotional tour de force, packed with fireworks, confetti, rearranging stage designs and aerial dancers".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Other reviews from the North American leg of the tour included Melissa Ruggierie writing for "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" online blog. Ruggierie praised Beyoncé's performance, particularly the strong vocals demonstrated in "1+1" and concluded "watching her command a stadium stage for two hours was another reminder of her limitless ambition". However, it was noted that Beyoncé did not speak to the crowd very often. After Beyoncé's hometown performance in Houston, Brandon Caldwell of the "Houston Press" introduced his article stating "Hours after the slaying, the wig snatching, the fitted snatching, the life getting, the boy byes and various curses of shock, amazement and confusion, I stood with a perplexed look on my face. How? How does Beyoncé do this? On this level? With this magnitude?". Lorraine Ali of the "Los Angeles Times" concluded her positive review of the Pasadena stop of the tour with "Soaking wet and sitting onstage alone, she left the audience with the closing number, "Halo". She'd been baptized and reborn into a less-perfect version of Queen Bey, allowing a more powerful Beyoncé to arise from that imperfection". Jim Harrington of the "San Jose Mercury News" began his article stating "there were so many moving parts – a tremendous swirl of sharply choreographed dance routines, cool special effects, brilliant fireworks and other tactics for delighting tens of thousands", Harrington noted however that too many snippets of songs rather than their full versions were performed, feeling quality over quantity was missed. The first Canadian show of the tour in Edmonton was performed in cold and rainy conditions, with Beyoncé stating "Can you feel your fingers? I can't feel mine" and "I have to say this is the coldest show I've ever done". Despite this, Sandra Sperounes of the "Edmonton Journal" commented "not even rain or bitter wind could stop our Ms. Flawless, our Survivor, our Queen Bey from dazzling an estimated 40,000 fans at Commonwealth Stadium on a stormy Friday night." Sperounes concluded "the sun was nowhere to be found, but thanks to Bey's brilliant set, the crowd left beaming with giddiness, girl power and generosity".


title: The Formation World Tour

text: By the end of 2019, The Formation World Tour was named the best tour of the decade (2010s) by "Consequence of Sound". "Rolling Stone" included the performance on their list of the 50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years, in 2017.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: A writer for Radio DeeJay reviewing the tour's stop in Milan, Italy, introduced their article saying "Those who were there will remember for years: Beyoncé [at] the San Siro stadium in Milan was more than a concert". The writer continued to praised the shows stage, visuals and Beyoncé's choreography and live singing before concluding the review with "Beyoncé has proven beyond doubt to be the best performer and one of the best singers our time". Mathilde Doiezie of "Le Figaro" ended his positive review of the Saint-Denis show with "A moment of grace concluded by Halo sung open heart, kneeling in water, face still dripping. Cannons plan glitter to indicate the end of the siege. After two hours of concert, not a minute more, Beyoncé returned backstage. Leaving there speechless tens of thousands of spectators who came to worship their pop idol". A writer for Metro International France speaking on the same show praised the tour's production stating it was the greatest show the Stade de France had seen since the U2 360° Tour. However, the article also felt the show lacked emotion in certain parts, noting Beyoncé did not mention the 2016 Nice truck attack that happened one week prior to the concert.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Following the announcement of the tour, Beyoncé's website temporarily crashed, as a result of the post-Super Bowl advertisement. After the first round of North American ticket pre-sales, a second show at New York City's Citi Field was added to the itinerary, due to the high demand. During the first round of the European general sale, Beyoncé's performance at Amsterdam Arena sold out within 20 minutes, prompting a waiting list to be opened and promoters attempting to organise a second show. Some Swedish fans were left unhappy due to the speed tickets sold out for the Friends Arena date of the tour, with complaints being made about the queueing system implemented by Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster apologised and stated "unfortunately, there were more who wanted tickets than what was available." The UK shows were met with huge commercial success, with all tickets being sold in under 30 minutes, including 90,000 tickets at London's Wembley Stadium. Many fans shared their displeasure online with not being able to secure tickets, and, as is usual with in-demand concert tours, many tickets found their way onto the secondary market place with a large markup on the original price. As a result of this, a second London show was added to the schedule, set for July 3, 2016.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: After the first round of dates for the North American general sale opened to the public, an additional show was added at Chicago's Soldier Field, due to the "overwhelming demand". Jesse Lawrence of "Forbes" reported that on the secondary market, tickets for The Formation World Tour were averaging at $432 before the tickets hit the general public. On February 17, 2016, Live Nation gave a press release announcing that nearly 1 million tickets had already been sold for the tour in 48 hours, including sell-outs in Miami, Arlington, Pasadena, Toronto, Chicago, Foxborough, Philadelphia, New York City, Baltimore, Sunderland, London, Manchester, Dublin, Amsterdam and Stockholm. On May 5, 2016, a second wave of US dates were announced, including 7 new shows and a rescheduled date for the previously postponed Nashville show. After her performance in Minneapolis, it was announced that Beyoncé was the first female to headline a stadium show in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area, held at TCF Bank Stadium.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: Chairman of Live Nation Global Touring Arthur Fogel confirmed in an article with "Billboard" that The Formation World Tour had already exceeded $100 million in gross revenue, as well as stating that Nashville's Nissan Stadium date of the tour, which had gone on sale the day of the article, had already sold 33,000 tickets and grossed $4 million. In July 2016, "Pollstar"s top 100 worldwide and North American tours charts were announced. Beyoncé ranked at #1 in North America with a domestic gross of $126.3 million from the first North America leg of the tour, and at #2 with $137.3 million on the worldwide chart, accounting for the first 25 shows of the tour.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: According to "Billboard" Boxscore, the first North American leg of the tour generated $123 million in ticket sales and played to 972,719 fans over 23 sold-out shows. These included a two night stint at Chicago's Soldier Field, playing for 89,270 people and two nights at New York City's Citi Field, playing for 73,486. The highest grossing single show of the leg was at Los Angeles' Rose Bowl, playing for 55,736 and grossing $7.1 million. In Europe, the tour continued to be a success, with another 17 sold-out shows being reported by "Billboard". The leg included two sell out nights at London's Wembley Stadium, playing for 142,500 fans and grossing $15.3 million, the sixth largest boxscore of the year reported by "Billboard" at the time of the article. The highest attended stop of the European stint, and the tour overall, was at Saint-Denis' Stade de France, which played to a crowd of 75,106 people. The leg grossed $86.9 million and played for 867,025 people in total. Following the final leg of the tour being reported to Billboard Boxscore, the tour's total gross revenue reached $256,084,556, with total attendance topping out at 2,242,099. Beyoncé, with The Formation World Tour, also ranked at #2 on "Pollstar"s annual Year End Top Worldwide Tours chart. Other "Pollstar" year end charts showed that Beyoncé's two performances at Wembley Stadium during the tour were the 6th largest grossing shows of the year worldwide, whilst the tour's two stops at New York City's Citi Field were the 5th highest-grossing concerts within the US. Chris Hunt, writing for ticket merchant AXS, reported that The Formation World Tour was one of the top 20 highest-grossing tours of all time. Hunt also noted that within the same top 20, the tour had the fewest shows.


title: The Formation World Tour

text: This set list is from the June 10 show in Baltimore. It is not intended to represent all dates throughout the tour.


title: Avengement

text: Avengement is a 2019 British action film directed by Jesse V. Johnson, starring Scott Adkins, Craig Fairbrass, and Thomas Turgoose. The film follows Cain Burgess, a prisoner who escapes police custody after his mother's death and visits a private bar, holding its members hostage as he starts revealing his past and what led to him becoming a violent fighter.


title: Avengement

text: "Avengement" was released on 24 May 2019 on VOD and in selected theatres. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who highlighted the action sequences and Adkins' performance. In 2020, a special edition was released, containing an uncut version of the film.


title: Avengement

text: Prisoner Cain Burgess is being escorted by police to a hospital where he learns of his mother's death. After seeing her corpse, he fights off the cops and escapes their custody. He then visits a private bar, entering it after attacking the bouncers. While having his drink, he overhears one of the patrons named Tune describe how an unknown assailant killed a fellow gangster named Rook. Cain intervenes with his laughter, only to invite the wrath of Tune, his fellow patrons and Bez, the bartender. Claiming himself to be a friend of Lincoln, the owner of the bar, he tells everyone he'd walk away after finishing his drink, but gets into a brawl, acquires a double-barreled shotgun and holds everyone hostage. Soon, Lincoln's lieutenant Hyde arrives, recognizes Cain as Lincoln's brother and is also held hostage. One of the patrons trying to intervene is shot in the kneecap by Cain, who blames Hyde and Lincoln for his condition. Cain then starts narrating that he got sent to the notorious London prison HMP Belmarsh and had to fight for survival in prison due to a £20,000 price put on his head.


title: Avengement

text: It is revealed that Cain used to be a skilled but quick-tempered martial artist who caused Lincoln, a loan shark, and several gangsters to lose substantial amounts of money every time he wins. Seeking to invest in a legitimate business, Cain comes to Lincoln for financial help, and is pulled into the world of crime when he is asked to rob a mark who has retrieved a package from one of Lincoln's gangsters, in exchange for money. Cain succeeds in stealing the package from a middle-aged woman who pursues him and gets killed in an accident during the chase. Cain is arrested and charged with manslaughter. Detective O'Hara explains that Lincoln's scam baits marks into acting as a bagman to forgive their debts. Lincoln arranges for someone to steal the bag, causing the mark to owe Lincoln even more money than before. When Cain refuses to cooperate with the police, a corrupt cop, Sgt. Evans, beats him up. Despite his clean record, Cain is sentenced to England's most violent prison where he gets into several fights and sustains severe injuries to his teeth and face. Despite fighting in self-defense, his sentence is repeatedly extended and this prompts him to become a cold-blooded killer in order to survive. After several years, one of his attackers reveals Lincoln has put a large bounty on his head. O'Hara, who has since learned about the bounty, once again asks Cain to give up his brother. Cain agrees on the condition that he be allowed to visit his dying mother at a hospital. They are too late, and Cain misses his chance but escapes custody after violently beating the police officers who delayed his visit.


title: Avengement

text: By night, Lincoln arrives and is similarly threatened by Cain. Lincoln appeals to Cain's better nature, not realizing the changes he has been forced to undergo. Hyde mocks Cain and insults the people they conned. Enraged at his flippant attitude at destroying so many lives, including his own, Cain shoots and kills Hyde in front of the others. Realizing that Cain has changed, Lincoln drops his pretenses and admits to ordering a hit. Cain angrily says that he never spoke to the police and that Sgt. Evans admitted to spreading the false rumor before Cain killed him. Although surprised at the viciousness of Cain's vengeance, Lincoln says he never even cared whether it was true; the real reason he ordered the hit on Cain was because he lost respect either way from just the rumor, which Lincoln couldn't abide. After proving that he has emptied Lincoln's bank account, Cain announces that he will now kill Lincoln, and offers to let everyone else leave. Tune leaves, but returns with a submachine gun planning to ambush Cain before being quickly subdued by him. The rest are killed in the ensuing fight. Lincoln vows to recover, and, with all the guns emptied, attacks Cain with a knife. Cain eventually overpowers and stabs his brother, killing Lincoln. He then morbidly leaves Bez behind, and stumbles out of the bar before collapsing on a nearby bench. In his office, Detective O'Hara discovers that Lincoln's bank account has been divided amongst his victims by Cain.


title: Avengement

text: Johnson's script was inspired by a 1962 samurai film called "Harakiri" by director Masaki Kobayashi. Adkins had been looking for a film project based in the United Kingdom and Johnson selected "Avengement", one of his older scripts. Stu Small was brought in to rewrite the dialogue and tailor it to Adkins. Stu extensively rewrote the script, and updated older parts of the script. Shortly before filming began Johnson watched a documentary on crime in the UK and used it to add true crime elements to the story.


title: Avengement

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: ""Avengement" compensates for a lack of narrative originality with thrilling sequences of violent, bone-crunching action, elevated by Scott Adkins' brutally intense performance." On Metacritic the film has a score of 63% based on reviews from 5 critics.


title: Avengement

text: Chris Nashawaty of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote: "Director Jesse V. Johnson sprinkles in enough cruel twists of fate and melancholy-laced flashbacks to prevent Avengement from becoming just another disposable exercise in action sadism on a budget. The real credit, though, goes to Adkins, who one of these days will hopefully get called up to the Hollywood big leagues and wind up surprising a lot of people — and grin while he’s doing it."


title: Avengement

text: Noel Murray of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote: "Avengement features a good balance of colorfully profane British gangster-speak and intense, explicitly gory punch-outs." Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "Portraying his most complex character to date, Adkins delivers a ferocious turn that proves visceral in its emotional as well as physical intensity."


title: Nabla symbol

text: The nabla is a triangular symbol resembling an inverted Greek delta: formula_1 or ∇. The name comes, by reason of the symbol's shape, from the Hellenistic Greek word for a Phoenician harp, and was suggested by the encyclopedist William Robertson Smith to Peter Guthrie Tait in correspondence.


title: Nabla symbol

text: The nabla symbol is available in standard HTML as codice_1 and in LaTeX as codice_2. In Unicode, it is the character at code point U+2207, or 8711 in decimal notation, in the Mathematical Operators block.


title: Nabla symbol

text: The differential operator given in Cartesian coordinates formula_2 on three-dimensional Euclidean space by


title: Nabla symbol

text: was introduced in 1837 by the Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who called it ◁. (The unit vectors formula_3 were originally right versors in Hamilton's quaternions.) The mathematics of ∇ received its full exposition at the hands of P. G. Tait.


title: Nabla symbol

text: After receiving Smith's suggestion, Tait and James Clerk Maxwell referred to the operator as nabla in their extensive private correspondence; most of these references are of a humorous character. C. G. Knott's "Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait" (p. 145):


title: Nabla symbol

text: It was probably this reluctance on the part of Maxwell to use the term Nabla in serious writings which prevented Tait from introducing the word earlier than he did. The one published use of the word by Maxwell is in the title to his humorous Tyndallic Ode, which is dedicated to the "Chief Musician upon Nabla", that is, Tait.


title: Nabla symbol

text: William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) introduced the term to an American audience in an 1884 lecture; the notes were published in Britain and the U.S. in 1904.


title: Nabla symbol

text: is "very" important. Physical mathematics is very largely the mathematics of ∇. The name Nabla seems, therefore, ludicrously inefficient.


title: Nabla symbol

text: Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs (independently) are credited with the development of the version of vector calculus most popular today.


title: Nabla symbol

text: The influential 1901 text "Vector Analysis", written by Edwin Bidwell Wilson and based on the lectures of Gibbs, advocates the name "del":


title: Nabla symbol

text: This symbolic operator ∇ was introduced by Sir W. R. Hamilton and is now in universal employment. There seems, however, to be no universally recognized name for it, although owing to the frequent occurrence of the symbol some name is a practical necessity. It has been found by experience that the monosyllable "del" is so short and easy to pronounce that even in complicated formulae in which ∇ occurs a number of times, no inconvenience to the speaker or listener arises from the repetition. ∇"V" is read simply as "del "V"".


title: Nabla symbol

text: This book is responsible for the form in which the mathematics of the operator in question is now usually expressed—most notably in undergraduate physics, and especially electrodynamics, textbooks.


title: Nabla symbol

text: The 'nabla' is used in vector calculus as part of the names of three distinct differential operators: the gradient (∇), the divergence (∇⋅), and the curl (∇×). The last of these uses the cross product and thus makes sense only in three dimensions; the first two are fully general. They were all originally studied in the context of the classical theory of electromagnetism, and contemporary university physics curricula typically treat the material using approximately the concepts and notation found in Gibbs and Wilson's "Vector Analysis".


title: Nabla symbol

text: A symbol of the same form, though presumably not genealogically related, appears in other areas, e.g.:


title: Edward Lear

text: Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.


title: Edward Lear

text: His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems.


title: Edward Lear

text: As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear was born into a middle-class family at Holloway, North London, the penultimate of 21 children (and youngest to survive) of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a stockbroker formerly working for the family sugar refining business. He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Jeremiah Lear ended up defaulting to the London Stock Exchange in the economic upheaval following the Napoleonic Wars; owing to the family's now more limited finances, Lear and his sister were required to leave the family home, Bowmans Lodge, and live together when he was aged four. Ann doted on Edward and continued to act as a mother for him until her death, when he was almost 50 years of age.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear suffered from lifelong health afflictions. From the age of six he suffered frequent "grand mal" epileptic seizures, bronchitis, asthma and, during later life, partial blindness. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father. The event scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition. His adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. When Lear was about seven years old he began to show signs of depression, possibly due to the instability of his childhood. He suffered from periods of severe melancholia which he referred to as "the Morbids".


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear was already drawing "for bread and cheese" by the time he was aged 16 and soon developed into a serious "ornithological draughtsman" employed by the Zoological Society and from 1832 to 1836 by the Earl of Derby, who kept a private menagerie at his estate, Knowsley Hall. He was the first major bird artist to draw birds from real live birds, instead of skins. Lear's first publication, published when he was 19 years old, was "Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots" in 1830. One of the greatest ornithological artists of his era, he taught Elizabeth Gould whilst also contributing to John Gould's works and was compared by some to the naturalist John James Audubon. After his eyesight deteriorated too much to work with such precision on the fine drawings and etchings of plates used in lithography, he turned to landscape painting and travel.


title: Edward Lear

text: Among other travels, he visited Greece and Egypt during 1848–49, and toured India during 1873–75, including a brief detour to Ceylon. While travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings in a distinctive style, which he converted later in his studio into oil and watercolour paintings, as well as prints for his books. His landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour.


title: Edward Lear

text: Between 1878 and 1883, Lear spent his summers on Monte Generoso, a mountain on the border between the Swiss canton of Ticino and the Italian region of Lombardy. His oil painting "The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso" is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.


title: Edward Lear

text: Throughout his life, he continued to paint seriously. He had a lifelong ambition to illustrate Tennyson's poems; near the end of his life, a volume with a small number of illustrations was published.


title: Edward Lear

text: In 1842, Lear began a journey into the Italian peninsula, travelling through the Lazio, Rome, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily. In personal notes, together with drawings, Lear gathered his impressions on the Italian way of life, folk traditions, and the beauty of the ancient monuments. Of particular interest to Lear was the Abruzzo, which he visited in 1843, through the Marsica (Celano, Avezzano, Alba Fucens, Trasacco) and the plateau of Cinque Miglia (Castel di Sangro and Alfedena), by an old sheep track of the shepherds.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear drew a sketch of the medieval village of Albe with Mount Sirente, and described the medieval village of Celano, with the castle of Piccolomini dominating the vast plain of Lago Fucino, which was drained a few years later to promote agricultural development. At Castel di Sangro, Lear described the winter stillness of the mountains and the beautiful basilica.


title: Edward Lear

text: More adventurous was the voyage to the regions of southern Italy in 1847, described in Lear's "Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria, & c". The broad Calabria section in which Lear tells his itinerary among breathtaking landscapes and often surreal characters, is among the best in his travel literature.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear primarily played the piano, but he also played the accordion, flute, and small guitar. He composed music for many Romantic and Victorian poems, but was known mostly for his many musical settings of Tennyson's poetry. He published four settings in 1853, five in 1859, and three in 1860. Lear's were the only musical settings that Tennyson approved of. Lear also composed music for many of his nonsense songs, including "The Owl and the Pussy-cat", but only two of the scores have survived, the music for "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò" and "The Pelican Chorus". While he never played professionally, he did perform his own nonsense songs and his settings of others' poetry at countless social gatherings, sometimes adding his own lyrics (as with the song "The Nervous Family"), and sometimes replacing serious lyrics with nursery rhymes.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear's most fervent and painful friendship was with Franklin Lushington. He met the young barrister in Malta in 1849 and toured southern Greece with him. Lear developed an infatuation for him that Lushington did not wholly reciprocate. Although they remained friends for almost forty years until Lear's death, the disparity of their feelings constantly tormented Lear. Indeed, Lear's attempts at male companionship were not always successful; the very intensity of Lear's affections may have doomed these relationships.


title: Edward Lear

text: The closest he came to marriage was two proposals, both to the same woman 46 years his junior, which were not accepted. For companions, he relied instead on friends and correspondents, and especially, during later life, on his Albanian Souliote chef, Giorgis, a faithful friend and (as Lear complained) a thoroughly unsatisfactory chef. Another trusted companion in San Remo was his cat, Foss, who died in 1887 and was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear eventually settled in San Remo, on his beloved Mediterranean coast in the 1870s at a villa he named "Villa Tennyson."


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear was known to introduce himself with a long pseudonym: "Mr Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph" or "Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla


title: Edward Lear

text: Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps", which he based on "Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos".


title: Edward Lear

text: After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888 of heart disease, from which he had suffered since at least 1870. Lear's funeral was described as a sad, lonely affair by the wife of Dr. Hassall, Lear's physician, none of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear is buried in the Cemetery Foce in San Remo. On his headstone are inscribed these lines about Mount Tomohrit (in Albania) from Tennyson's poem "To E.L. [Edward Lear], On His Travels in Greece":


title: Edward Lear

text: The centenary of his death was marked in Britain with a set of Royal Mail stamps in 1988 and an exhibition at the Royal Academy. Lear's birthplace area is now marked with a plaque at Bowman's Mews, Islington, in London, and his bicentenary during 2012 was celebrated with a variety of events, exhibitions and lectures in venues across the world including an International Owl and Pussycat Day on his birth anniversary.


title: Edward Lear

text: In 1846, Lear published "," a volume of limericks which went through three editions and helped popularise the form and the genre of literary nonsense. In 1871, he published "Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets", which included the nonsense song, "The Owl and the Pussycat," which he wrote for the children of his patron Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Many other works followed.


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but a rumour developed that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym, and the books' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, his patron the Earl of Derby. Promoters of this rumour offered as evidence that both men were named Edward, and that "Lear" is an anagram of "Earl".


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. One of his most famous verbal inventions, the phrase "runcible spoon", occurs in the closing lines of "The Owl and the Pussycat," and is now found in many English dictionaries:


title: Edward Lear

text: Though known for his neologisms, Lear used a number of other devices in his works in order to defy reader expectations. For example, "Cold Are the Crabs" conforms to the sonnet tradition until its dramatically foreshortened last line.


title: Edward Lear

text: Today, limericks are invariably typeset as five lines. Lear's limericks, however, were published in a variety of formats; it appears that Lear wrote them in manuscript in as many lines as there was room for beneath the picture. For the first three editions, most are typeset as, respectively, two, five, and three lines. The cover of one edition bears an entire limerick typeset in two lines:


title: Edward Lear

text: In Lear's limericks, the first and last lines usually end with the same word rather than rhyming. For the most part they are truly nonsensical and devoid of any punch line or point. They are completely free of the bawdiness with which the verse form is now associated. A typical thematic element is the presence of a callous and critical "they". An example of a typical Lear limerick:


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear's self-description in verse, "How Pleasant to know Mr. Lear," ends with this stanza, a reference to his own mortality:


title: Edward Lear

text: Five of Lear's limericks from the "Book of Nonsense", in the 1946 Italian translation by Carlo Izzo, were set to music for choir a cappella by Goffredo Petrassi in 1952.


title: Edward Lear

text: Edward Lear has been played in radio dramas by Andrew Sachs in "The Need for Nonsense" by Julia Blackburn (BBC Radio 4, 9 February 2009) and by Derek Jacobi in "By the Coast of Coromandel" by Lavinia Murray (BBC Radio 4, 21 December 2011).


title: Edward Lear

text: Lear's written work was used extensively in the short-lived "The Tomfoolery Show," a Saturday morning cartoon that was produced by Rankin-Bass and broadcast on NBC in 1970–1971.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: The International is a 2009 action thriller film directed by Tom Tykwer and written by Eric Warren Singer. Starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, the film follows an Interpol agent and an American district attorney who jointly investigate corruption within the IBBC, a fictional merchant bank based in Luxembourg. It serves organized crime and corrupt governments as a banker and as an arms broker. The bank's ruthless managers assassinate potential threats, including their own employees.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Inspired by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal of the 1980s, the film raises concerns about how global finance affects international politics across the world. Production began in Berlin in September 2008, including the construction of a life-size replica of New York's Guggenheim Museum for the film's central shootout scene. The film opened the 59th Berlin International Film Festival on 5 February 2009. The Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus praised the action sequences and locations but criticized the plot.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Louis Salinger, an Interpol detective, and Eleanor Whitman, an Assistant District Attorney from Manhattan, are assigned to investigate the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC), which funds criminal activities such as money laundering, terrorism, arms trading, and the destabilization of governments. Salinger's and Whitman's investigation takes them to Milan, where the IBBC assassinates Umberto Calvini, an arms manufacturer and Italian prime ministerial candidate. The assassin diverts suspicion to a local assassin with political connections, who is then promptly killed by a corrupt policeman. Salinger and Whitman get a lead on the second assassin, but the policeman confronts the two and orders them out of the country. At the airport, they are able to check the security camera footage for clues on the whereabouts of the bank's assassin, and follow a suspect to New York City.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: In New York, Salinger and Whitman are met by two New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives, Iggy Ornelas and Bernie Ward, who have a photograph of the assassin's face. Salinger, Ornelas, and Ward locate Dr. Isaacson to whose practice the assassin's leg brace has been traced, and they are able to follow him to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Jonas Skarssen, the chairman of the IBBC, reveals to his lawyer White and security adviser Wexler that Calvini was killed so that they could have his sons buy missile guidance systems in which the bank has invested. Since the bank knows that Salinger and Whitman are close to finding their assassin, they send a team of hitmen to kill him, while Wexler is arrested by Ornelas. As Salinger and Ward speak to the assassin and attempt to arrest him, a shootout at the Guggenheim erupts when a number of gunmen attack them. Ward is killed in the chaos, and Salinger is forced to team up with the assassin to fight off the gunmen. However, the assassin is mortally wounded during their escape and dies of his injuries.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: When Salinger goes to interrogate Wexler, a veteran Stasi officer, the latter reveals that the IBBC is practically untouchable due to its connections to terrorist organizations, drug cartels, governments, and powerful corporations, though Wexler indicates a willingness to help Salinger take down the IBBC. Meanwhile, Salinger persuades Whitman to let him continue alone.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: In Italy, Salinger tells Calvini's sons of the IBBC's responsibility for their father's murder, prompting them to cancel the deal with the bank and order White to be killed. Salinger then accompanies Wexler to Istanbul, where Skarssen is buying the guidance systems from their only other manufacturer, Ahmet Sunay. Salinger attempts to record the conversation so that he can obstruct the deal by proving to the buyers that the missiles will be useless, but he ultimately fails. Both Wexler and Skarssen are then killed by a hitman contracted by the Calvinis to avenge their father's murder. Salinger is left stunned, his investigation, pursuit, and determination to bring down the IBBC having led to nothing.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Afterwards, the bank successfully continues its operations despite the death of Skarssen, as he had predicted to Salinger before he was killed. However, with the new and more aggressive chairman, the IBBC's increased expansion and aggression ultimately lead to greater scrutiny, leading to a United States Senate investigation headed by Whitman.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: The screenplay was written by Eric Warren Singer after he developed an interest in the banking scandals from the 1980s and 90s, he was looking for "a paranoid thriller vibe" from that period; ""The Godfather III" was really the only film up to this point that dealt with the banking scandals, because it was really gangster warfare on a corporate level, and I thought that was the best part of the film." Later reviewers compared it directly to "The Parallax View" (1974) and "All The President's Men" (1976). A year later Tom Tykwer got involved through his agent, but decided a contemporary setting would work better. In April 2007, Clive Owen agreed to perform in "The International". He said the script interested him because he was reminded of "those '70s paranoia pictures" and because it combined a factual, intelligent basis with an international thriller plot. The following July, actress Naomi Watts was cast opposite Owen. In August, the film received US$5.4 million from the toward its budget. The following month its funding increased to $7.9 million, based on the board's assessment that two-thirds of "The International" would be produced in Germany and that a number of Germans were in important roles, such as actors Armin Mueller-Stahl and Axel Milberg, cinematographer Frank Griebe, and production designer Uli Hanisch. Filming began in Berlin on 10 September 2007. Part of the production took place in Babelsberg Studios.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Clive Owen called the shoot-out scene "one of the most exquisitely executed sequences I've been involved in". Tom Tykwer planned the scene in detail and toured the museum with the principals months in advance. The lobby entrance scene was filmed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, but for the shooting sequences a wide, life-size replica, including an audio visual exhibition with works of Julian Rosefeldt, was built in Germany. This set was too large for the studio, so it was instead built in a disused locomotive warehouse outside Berlin; its construction took ten weeks. Having filmed in the real museum interior and on the sound stage in Germany, the film crew had to track the lights and camera angles carefully throughout to ensure continuity. The scene includes a sequence in which the protagonist sends a huge art-chandelier hanging from the ceiling crashing to the ground; the entire stunt was created using computer generated imagery.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Clive Owen, discussing the film's relevance, said it "ultimately does ask questions about whether banks use people's money appropriately, and if they're completely sound institutions." More boldly put, Philip French, reviewing the film in "The Observer", surmised the sentiment as "Let's kill all the bankers", a modern-day version of Dick the Butcher's "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers", from Shakespeare's "Henry VI", Part II. Salinger's (Owen) central revelation is that the world is governed by anonymous forces, staffed by disposable individuals. The powerlessness of the ordinary citizen is symbolised by the huge, impersonal buildings that the villains inhabit.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: The film draws on a number of macabre incidents from international banking: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International crisis in 1991; the murder of Roberto Calvi, an alleged banker to the Sicilian Mafia, in London in 1982; and the assassination by poisoning of Georgi Markov in London, in 1978. The bank is making large loans to rogue states and simultaneously acting as their munitions broker. The script offers the chilling insight that the creditors are the real winners of any conflict. A.O. Scott commented on the opportunity to make a film critical of international finance, "that multinational weapons manufacturers can be portrayed as more decent, civic-minded and principled than global financiers surely says something about the state of the world."


title: The International (2009 film)

text: "The International" was first screened on 5 February 2009 at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival and was released in the United States and Canada on 13 February 2009. In a six-week run in America, it earned $25 million at the box office. It was released in Australia on 19 February and the United Kingdom on 27 February 2009. Its total theatrical earnings worldwide were $60,161,391.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: It was released in France under the title ""L'Enquête"" ("The Investigation") on 11 March 2009, it earned €264,054 during a three-week theatrical release.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: Reviewers called the film "topical" and "remarkably prescient", due to its release just after the financial crisis of 2007–08 during the start of the Great Recession. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on 9 June 2009. It contains a digital copy for portable devices.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: , the film holds a 58% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 213 reviews and an average rating of 5.80/10. The consensus statement reads: ""The International" boasts some electric action sequences and picturesque locales, but is undone by its preposterous plot." Metacritic gives the film a 52% rating based on 34 reviews.


title: The International (2009 film)

text: In his review for "The Guardian", Peter Bradshaw wrote, "I felt occasionally that Owen's rumpled performance is in danger of becoming a little one-note ... but this is still an unexpectedly well–made thriller with brainpower as well as firepower". Philip French, in his review for "The Observer", called the film a "slick, fast-moving conspiracy thriller" and the gunfight in the Guggenheim "spectacular". In his review for "The Independent", Anthony Quinn wrote, "It's reasonably efficient, passably entertaining, and strenuously playing catch-up with the Bourne movies: flat-footed Owen doesn't look as good as Matt Damon sprinting through city streets, and the editing doesn't match Doug Liman's whiplash pace". "The New Yorker" magazine's David Denby wrote, "And there's a big hole in the middle of the movie: the director, Tom Tykwer, and the screenwriter, Eric Warren Singer, forgot to make their two crusaders human beings". In his review for "The New York Post", Lou Lumenick wrote, "There, an anticlimactic rooftop chase reminds us that Tykwer, the German director who reinvented the Euro thriller with "Run, Lola, Run" a decade ago, has been far surpassed by Doug Liman and the Bourne adventures, yet thankfully lacking the rampant and nonsensical roller-coaster style of editing, where no shot lingers for longer than a nano-second.". A.O. Scott, in his review for "The New York Times", wrote, ""The International", in contrast, is so undistinguished that the moments you remember best are those that you wish another, more original director had tackled".


title: The International (2009 film)

text: In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Kenneth Turan wrote, "It's got some effective moments and aspects, but the film goes in and out of plausibility, and its elements never manage to unify into a coherent whole". Claudia Puig, in her review for "USA Today", wrote, "The dialogue by screenwriter Eric Warren Singer is spotty. There are some great, pithy lines and others whose attempt at profundity ring false". Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Clive Owen makes a semi-believable hero, not performing too many feats that are physically unlikely. He's handsome and has the obligatory macho stubble, but he has a quality that makes you worry a little about him". "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a "B−" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "the star of the pic may well be NYC's Guggenheim Museum and Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, both of which figure in cool action chase sequences that pay handsome dividends".


title: The International (2009 film)

text: The film earned an average rating of three stars from five from French critics according to AlloCiné. Reviewing the film for "Le Monde", which gave the film one star, Jacques Mandelbaum said that the modern, destructive forces of political fantasy and derivative finance which power the film's plot should have created sparks, "but in reality, the film trudges along. While the film constituted a thrilling geographic tour of the genre tropes, it forgot to focus on characters and mood."


title: Godzilla Singular Point

text: The setting is Nigashio City, Chiba Prefecture in the year 2030. Engineer Yun Arikawa of the local "do-it-all" shop Otaki Factory investigates happenings in a Western-style house, long thought abandoned. Mei Kamino, a graduate student studying imaginary creatures, investigates mysterious signals received from Misakioku, the former Tsuguno district's administrative building. These two strangers, visiting completely different places as part of completely different investigations, both hear the same song. As they become united, they are led into a battle beyond imagination involving the whole world. "Godzilla Singular Point" features a brand new staff and original story which depicts the young geniuses as they take on this unprecedented threat to the universe with their companions.


title: Godzilla Singular Point

text: On October 6, 2020, Toho Animation and Netflix announced plans for an anime "Godzilla" series, titled "Godzilla Singular Point", it aired from April 1 to June 24, 2021 on Tokyo MX and other channels. Production for the show is by Bones in partnership with Orange, blending hand-drawn and computer animation styles respectively. Atsushi Takahashi served as the director with scripts by Toh EnJoe, and music composed by Kan Sawada. Character design was handled by "Blue Exorcist" manga creator Kazue Kato, with former Studio Ghibli animator Eiji Yamamori designing the monsters. The series' opening theme, "in case...", is performed by BiSH, while Polkadot Stingray performed the ending theme song . There is also the recurring insert theme "ALAPU UPALA", performed by Indian-American singer Annette Philip, which is utilized in the storyline as a deus ex machina. The series debuted earlier on Netflix in Japan on March 25, 2021, which was followed by a global release on June 24, 2021.


title: Godzilla Singular Point

text: First images and poster art were released on October 26, 2020 during Netflix's Anime Festival, with the streaming service releasing a teaser trailer later that same day. The teaser revealed that the series would air in April 2021 and would feature monsters and characters from the Shōwa era of the "Godzilla" franchise, such as Rodan, Anguirus, Jet Jaguar, Manda, and what initially appeared to be Titanosaurus and Gabara --the latter two later being revealed as new kaiju Godzilla Aquatilis and Salunga. On October 12, 2020, it was announced that Takahashi, EnJoe, Bones producer Naoki Amano, Orange producer Jiro Ando, and Toho producer Takashi Yoshizawa would all appear in a panel during the "Godzilla Fest Online 2020" event on November 3, 2020. On February 12, 2021, the full design of Godzilla was revealed, illustrated by Eiji Yamamori and colored by Yūji Kaneko.


title: Godzilla Singular Point

text: "Godzilla Singular Point" received a DVD/Blu-ray release in Japan in three separate volumes: the first volume was released on August 18, 2021, with the other two on September 22 and October 20. The show also received Bandai soft vinyl action figures as part of the "Movie Monster" series toyline. The first to be revealed was of Jet Jaguar and Godzilla in his Ultima form on March 6, 2021 in Japan. These two were later followed up by another vinyl figure of Godzilla in his Aquatilis form on April 17. Vinyl figures of Angurius and Manda were released on April 24. A vinyl figure of Godzilla in his Amphibia form to follow on May 15, and his Terrestris form one week later on May 22.


title: Godzilla Singular Point

text: "Godzilla Singular Point" won VFX-Japan Awards' 2022 "Excellence" and "Best" awards in the Television/Distribution Program Anime CG Category. It was also nominated for the 42nd Nihon SF Taisho Award. The anime series was awarded the 53rd Seiun Award in the Best Media category in 2022.


title: Principality of Antioch

text: The Principality of Antioch was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade which included parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria. The principality was much smaller than the County of Edessa or the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date.


title: Principality of Antioch

text: It had roughly 20,000 inhabitants in the 12th century, most of whom were Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians, with a few Muslims outside the city itself. Most of the crusaders who settled there were of Norman origin, notably from the Norman Kingdom of southern Italy, as were the first rulers of the principality, who surrounded themselves with loyal subjects. Few of the inhabitants apart from the Crusaders were Roman Catholic even though the city was under the jurisdiction of the Latin Patriarchate of Antioch, established in 1100. This patriarchate would endure as a titular one after the Crusades, until it was dropped in 1964.


title: Principality of Antioch

text: While Baldwin of Boulogne headed east from Asia Minor to set up the County of Edessa, the main army of the First Crusade continued south to besiege Antioch in late October 1097. Antioch had been a major Byzantine stronghold in the area under the control of a doux before falling to the Seljuk Turks in 1084. The crusaders besieged the city under the command of Bohemond of Taranto due to its strategic and religious significance. With over four hundred towers, the city's defenses were formidable. The siege lasted throughout the winter, with much attrition among the Crusader force, who were often forced to eat their horses, or, as legend has it, the bodies of all fellow Christians who had not survived.