title: Oxyhydrogen

text: This mixture may also be referred to as (Scandinavian and German Knallgas: "bang-gas"), although some authors define knallgas to be a generic term for the mixture of fuel with the precise amount of oxygen required for complete combustion, thus 2:1 oxyhydrogen would be called "hydrogen-knallgas".


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Oxyhydrogen will combust when brought to its autoignition temperature. For the stoichiometric mixture, 2:1 hydrogen:oxygen, at normal atmospheric pressure, autoignition occurs at about 570 °C (1065 °F). The minimum energy required to ignite such a mixture, at lower temperatures, with a spark is about 20 microjoules. At standard temperature and pressure, oxyhydrogen can burn when it is between about 4% and 95% hydrogen by volume.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: When ignited, the gas mixture converts to water vapor and releases energy, which sustains the reaction: 241.8 kJ of energy (LHV) for every mole of burned. The amount of heat energy released is independent of the mode of combustion, but the temperature of the flame varies. The maximum temperature of about is achieved with an exact stoichiometric mixture, about hotter than a hydrogen flame in air.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: When either of the gases are mixed in excess of this ratio, or when mixed with an inert gas like nitrogen, the heat must spread throughout a greater quantity of matter and the flame temperature will be lower.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: A pure stoichiometric mixture may be obtained by water electrolysis, which uses an electric current to dissociate the water molecules:


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: William Nicholson was the first to decompose water in this manner in 1800. In theory, the input energy of a closed system always equals the output energy, as the first law of thermodynamics states. However, in practice no systems are perfectly closed, and the energy required to generate the oxyhydrogen always exceeds the energy released by combusting it, even at maximum practical efficiency, as the second law of thermodynamics implies (see Electrolysis of water#Efficiency).


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Many forms of oxyhydrogen lamps have been described, such as the limelight, which used an oxyhydrogen flame to heat a piece of lime to white hot incandescence. Because of the explosiveness of the oxyhydrogen, limelights have been replaced by electric lighting.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: The foundations of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe were laid down by Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley around the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The oxy-hydrogen blowpipe itself was developed by the Frenchman Bochard-de-Saron, the English mineralogist Edward Daniel Clarke and the American chemist Robert Hare in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It produced a flame hot enough to melt such refractory materials as platinum, porcelain, fire brick, and corundum, and was a valuable tool in several fields of science. It is used in the Verneuil process to produce synthetic corundum.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: An "oxyhydrogen torch" (also known as "hydrogen torch") is an oxy-gas torch that burns hydrogen (the fuel) with oxygen (the oxidizer). It is used for cutting and welding metals, glasses, and thermoplastics.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Due to competition from arc welding and other oxy-fuel torches such as the acetylene-fueled cutting torch, the oxyhydrogen torch is seldom used today, but it remains the preferred cutting tool in some niche applications.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Oxyhydrogen was once used in working platinum, because at the time, only it could burn hot enough to melt the metal . These techniques have been superseded by the electric arc furnace.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Brown's gas is associated with various exaggerated claims. It is often called "HHO gas", a term popularized by fringe physicist Ruggero Santilli, who claimed that his HHO gas, produced by a special apparatus, is "a new form of water", with new properties, based on his fringe theory of "magnecules".


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Many other pseudoscientific claims have been made about Brown's gas, like an ability to neutralize radioactive waste, help plants to germinate, and more.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: Oxyhydrogen is often mentioned in conjunction with vehicles that claim to use water as a fuel. The most common and decisive counter-argument against producing this gas on board to use as a fuel or fuel additive is that more energy is always needed to split water molecules than is recouped by burning the resulting gas. Additionally, the volume of gas that can be produced for on-demand consumption through electrolysis is very small in comparison to the volume consumed by an internal combustion engine.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: An article in "Popular Mechanics" in 2008 reported that Brown's gas does not increase the fuel economy in automobiles.


title: Oxyhydrogen

text: "Water-fueled" cars should not be confused with hydrogen-fueled cars, where the hydrogen is produced elsewhere and used as fuel or where it is used as fuel enhancement.


title: François Ozon

text: Ozon is considered one of the most important modern French filmmakers. His films are characterized by aesthetic beauty, sharp satirical humor and a free-wheeling view of human sexuality. Recurring themes in his films are friendship, sexual identity, different perceptions of reality, transience and death.


title: François Ozon

text: Ozon has achieved international acclaim for his films "8 femmes" (2002) and "Swimming Pool" (2003). He is considered one of the most important directors in the new "New Wave" in French cinema, along with Jean-Paul Civeyrac, Philippe Ramos, and Yves Caumon, as well as a group of French filmmakers associated with a "cinema du corps" ("cinema of the body").


title: François Ozon

text: Ozon was born in Paris, France. Having studied directing at the French film school La Femis, Ozon made several short films such as "A Summer Dress" ("Une robe d'été", 1996) and "Scènes de lit" (1998). His motion picture directing debut was "Sitcom" (also 1998), which was well received by both critics and audiences.


title: François Ozon

text: After the Fassbinder adaptation "Water Drops on Burning Rocks" ("Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes", 2000) came the film which made his name outside France, "8 Women" ("8 femmes", 2002), starring Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuelle Béart. With its quirky mix of musical numbers and murder mystery and a production design harking back to 1950s Hollywood melodramas such as those directed by Douglas Sirk, the film became a huge commercial success.


title: François Ozon

text: In 2003, "Swimming Pool", starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier, was released. Ozon considered it a very personal film that gives insight into the difficult process of writing a novel or screenplay.


title: François Ozon

text: In 2004 he directed the film "5x2". In 2005 his film "Time to Leave" ("Le temps qui reste") was screened at film festivals worldwide.


title: François Ozon

text: Ozon's first full English-language production, "Angel", starring Romola Garai, was released in 2007. The film, based on a novel by British writer Elizabeth Taylor, follows the story of a poor girl who climbs Edwardian England's social ladder by becoming a romance writer. The film was shot at Tyntesfield House and Estate near Bristol, at other UK locations and in Belgium.


title: François Ozon

text: His film "The Refuge" had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2009.


title: François Ozon

text: His 2013 film "Young & Beautiful" ("Jeune & Jolie") was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Ozon was voted best screenwriter at the 2013 European Film Awards for his 2012 film "In the House".


title: François Ozon

text: His 2014 film "The New Girlfriend" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2014.


title: François Ozon

text: His film "Peter von Kant", a gender-flipped reinterpretation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1972 film "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic nematode (roundworm) that causes angiostrongyliasis, the most common cause of eosinophilic meningitis in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Basin. The nematode commonly resides in the pulmonary arteries of rats, giving it the common name rat lungworm. Snails are the primary intermediate hosts, where larvae develop until they are infectious.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Humans are incidental hosts of this roundworm, and may become infected through ingestion of larvae in raw or undercooked snails or other vectors, or from contaminated water and vegetables. The larvae are then transported via the blood to the central nervous system, where they are the most common cause of eosinophilic meningitis, a serious condition that can lead to death or permanent brain and nerve damage. Angiostrongyliasis is an infection of increasing public health importance, as globalization contributes to the geographic spread of the disease.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: First described by the renowned Chinese parasitologist Hsin-Tao Chen (1904–1977) in 1935, after examining Cantonese rat specimens, the nematode "Angiostrongylus cantonensis" was identified in the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient with eosinophilic meningitis by Nomura and Lim in Taiwan in 1944. They noted that raw food eaten by the patient may have been contaminated by rats.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: During her time working at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research (QIMR), Australian entomologist Mabel Josephine Mackerras catalogued the history of rat lungworm. This enabled later research to identify it as the etiological agent of eosinophilic meningitis in Pacific Islanders, leading researchers to name the species after her.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: "A. cantonensis" is a helminth of the phylum Nematoda, order Strongylida, and superfamily Metastrongyloidea. Nematodes are roundworms characterized by a tough outer cuticle, unsegmented bodies, and a fully developed gastrointestinal tract. The order Strongylida includes hookworms and lungworms. Metastrongyloidea are characterized as 2-cm-long, slender, threadlike worms that reside in the lungs of the definitive host. "Angiostrongylus costaricensis" is a closely related worm that causes intestinal angiostrongyliasis in Central and South America.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Following World War II, "A. cantonensis" spread throughout Southeast Asia and Western Pacific Islands, including Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Cases were soon reported in New Caledonia, the Philippines, Rarotonga, Saipan, Sumatra, Taiwan, and Tahiti. In the 1960s, even more cases were reported from the region from locations such as Cambodia, Guam, Hawaii, Java, Thailand, Sarawak, Vietnam, and Vanuatu.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: In 1961, an epidemiological study of eosinophilic meningitis in humans was conducted by Rosen, Laigret, and Bories, who hypothesized that the parasite causing these infections was carried by fish. However, Alicata noted that raw fish was consumed by large numbers of people in Hawaii without apparent consequences, and patients presenting with meningitis symptoms had a history of eating raw snails or prawns in the weeks before presenting with symptoms. This observation, along with epidemiology and autopsy of infected brains, confirmed "A. cantonensis" infection in humans as the cause of the majority of eosinophilic meningitis cases in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Since then, cases of "A. cantonensis" infestations have appeared in American Samoa, Australia, Hong Kong, Bombay, Fiji, Hawaii, Honshu, India, Kyushu, New Britain, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, Western Samoa, and most recently mainland China. Other sporadic occurrences of the parasite in its rat hosts have been reported in Cuba, Egypt, Louisiana, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Puerto Rico.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: In 2013, "A. cantonensis" was confirmed present in Florida, USA, where its range and prevalence are expanding. In 2018, a case was found in a New Yorker who had visited Hawaii.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: In recent years, the parasite has been shown to be proliferating at an alarming rate due to modern food-consumption trends and global transportation of food products. Scientists are calling for a more thorough study of the epidemiology of "A. cantonensis", stricter food-safety policies, and the increase of knowledge on how to properly consume products commonly infested by the parasite, such as snails and slugs that act as intermediate hosts or those that act as paratenic hosts, such as fish, frogs, or freshwater prawns. Ingestion of food items that can be contaminated by the mucus excretions of intermediate or paratenic hosts, such as snails and slugs, or by the feces of rats that act as definitive hosts, can lead to infection of "A. cantonensis". The most common route of infection of "A. cantonesis" in humans is by ingestion of either intermediate or paratenic hosts of the larvae. Unwashed fruits and vegetables, especially romaine lettuce, can be contaminated with snail and slug mucus or can result in accidental ingestion of these intermediate and paratenic hosts. These items need to be properly washed and handled to prevent accidental ingestion of "A. cantonensis" larvae or the larvae-containing hosts. The best mechanism of prevention of "A. cantonesis" outbreak is to institute an aggressive control of snail and slug population, proper cooking of intermediate and paratenic hosts such as fish, freshwater prawn, frogs, molluscs, and snails along with proper food-handling techniques. The common prevention techniques for diarrheal illness are very effective in preventing "A. cantonensis" infection. Not much is known about why it targets the brain in humans, but a chemically induced chemotaxis has been implicated recently. Acetylcholine has been previously reported to enhance motility of this worm via nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Experimental assays in animal models are needed to validate a chemically induced chemotaxis by use of anticholinergic drugs to prevent cerebral infection following infections by "A. cantonesis".


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Definitive hosts of "A. cantonensis" include wild rodents, especially the brown rat ("Rattus norvegicus") and the black rat ("Rattus rattus").


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Paratenic hosts of "A. cantonensis" include the predatory land flatworm "Platydemus manokwari" and the amphibians, "Bufo asiaticus", "Rana catesbeiana", "Rhacophorus leucomystax" and "Rana limnocharis".


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: In 2004, a captive yellow-tailed black cockatoo ("Calyptorhynchus funereus") and two free-living tawny frogmouths ("Podargus strigoides") suffering neurological symptoms were shown to have the parasite. They were the first avian hosts discovered for the organism. In 2018, in Mallorca two North African hedgehogs with signs of acute neurological disease were found to have "A. cantonensis" in their brains, one of them with a gravid female. It was the first report of hedgehogs as hosts of "Angiostrongylus".


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: The Hawaiʻi Dept. of Health states that fresh water opihi can carry the parasite, as well as other aquatic organisms such as prawns, frogs, and water monitor lizards. House pets may interact with "A. cantonensis"-carrying animals yet not well studied. Cats are known to carry and spread feline lungworm in rat and snail interactions.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: The presence of parasitic worms burrowed in the neural tissue of the human central nervous system (CNS) causes complications. All of the following result in damage to the CNS:


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Although the clinical disease caused by "Angiostrongylus" invasion into the CNS is commonly referred to as "eosinophilic meningitis", the actual pathophysiology is of a meningoencephalitis with invasion not just of the meninges, or superficial lining of the brain, but also deeper brain tissue. Initial invasion through the lining of the brain, the meninges, may cause a typical inflammation of the meninges and a classic meningitis picture of headache, stiff neck, and often fever. The parasites subsequently invade deeper into the brain tissue, causing specific localizing neurological symptoms depending on where in the brain parenchyma they migrate. Neurologic findings and symptoms wax and wane as initial damage is done by the physical in-migration of the worms and secondary damage is done by the inflammatory response to the presence of dead and dying worms. This inflammation can lead in the short term to paralysis, bladder dysfunction, visual disturbance, and coma and in the long term to permanent nerve damage, mental retardation, nerve damage, permanent brain damage, or death.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Eosinophilic meningitis is commonly defined by the increased number of eosinophils in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In most cases, eosinophil levels rise to 10 or more eosinophils per μl in the CSF, accounting for at least 10% of the total CSF leukocyte (white blood cell) count. The chemical analysis of the CSF typically resembles the findings in "aseptic meningitis" with slightly elevated protein levels, normal glucose levels, and negative bacterial cultures. Presence of a significantly decreased glucose on CSF analysis is an indicator of severe meningoencephalitis and may indicate a poor medical outcome. Initial CSF analysis early in the disease process may occasionally show no increase of eosinophils, only to have classical increases in eosinophils in subsequent CSF analysis. Caution should be advised in using eosinophilic meningitis as the only criterion for diagnosing angiostrongylus infestation in someone with classic symptoms, as the disease evolves with the migration of the worms into the CNS.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: Eosinophils are specialized white blood cells of the granulocytic cell line, which contain granules in their cytoplasm. These granules contain proteins that are toxic to parasites. When these granules degranulate, or break down, chemicals are released that combat parasites such as "A. cantonensis". Eosinophils, which are located throughout the body, are guided to sites of inflammation by chemokines when the body is infested with parasites such as "A. cantonensis". Once at the site of inflammation, type 2 cytokines are released from helper T cells, which communicate with the eosinophils, signaling them to activate. Once activated, eosinophils can begin the process of degranulation, releasing their toxic proteins in the fight against the foreign parasite.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: According to a group case study, the most common symptoms in mild eosinophilic meningitis tend to be headache (with 100% of people in the study suffering from this symptom), photophobia or visual disturbance (92%), neck stiffness (83%), fatigue (83%), hyperesthesias (75%), vomiting (67%), and paresthesias (50%). Incubation period is often 3 weeks, but can be 3–36 days and even 80 days.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: The severity and clinical course of "Angiostrongylus" disease depends significantly on the ingested load of third-stage larvae, creating great variability from case to case, making clinical trials difficult to design, and effectiveness of treatments difficult to discern. Typical conservative medical management including analgesics and sedatives provide minimal relief for the headaches and hyperesthesias. Removing cerebrospinal fluid at regular 3- to 7-day intervals is the only proven method of significantly reducing intracranial pressure and can be used for symptomatic treatment of headaches. This process may be repeated until improvement is shown. There is growing evidence of moderate quality that suggests corticosteroid therapy using prednisolone or dexamethasone has beneficial effect in treating the CNS symptoms related to "A. cantonensis" infections. Although early research did not show treatment with antihelminthic agents (parasite-killing drugs) such as thiobendazole or albendazole effective in improving the clinical course of the illness, a number of recent studies from Thailand and China show that the combination of glucocorticoids and antihelminthics is safe and decreases the duration of headaches and the number of patients who had significant headache. Although the addition of antihelminthic agents for management of "A. cantonensis" infection has a theoretic risk of precipitating a neurologic crisis by releasing an overwhelming load of antigens through simultaneous death of the larvae, no study has shown this to exist in the clinical setting. Additionally, the failure to kill parasites before they attempt to migrate out of the CNS increases the risk of mechanical damage by migrating larvae. Although combination therapy using albendazole and prednisolone has no significant advantage compared to treatment using prednisolone alone in mild cases, the treatment with antihelminthics is demonstrably safe and may have significant benefit for patients with high parasite loads at risk for permanent disability or death.


title: Angiostrongylus cantonensis

text: The diagnosis of disease caused by "A. cantonensis" infestation is often difficult and relies heavily on the history of a likely ingestion of a commonly infested host and the presence of typical features of the disease. The presumptive diagnosis is particularly strong when eosinophilic meningoencephalitis can be confirmed. The diagnosis of eosinophilic meningitis can be arrived at through detection of elevated cranial pressure and increased numbers of eosinophils. The diagnosis of the cause of eosinophilic meningitis and the presence of "A. cantonensis" is remarkably more difficult. A spinal tap, or a sample of CSF, must be taken to search for "A. cantonensis" worms or larvae. "A. cantonensis" is undetectable in the CSF of more than half of the infected individuals. Current methods of detecting specific antigens associated with "A. cantonensis" are also unreliable. Consequently, alternative approaches to detect antigen-antibody reactions are being explored, such as immuno-PCR. A rapid dot-blot ELISA test is also available for quick, effective, and economical on-site diagnosis of "A. cantonensis".


title: Inveniam viam

text: "Aut inveniam viam aut faciam" (or "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam") is Latin for "I shall either find a way or make one."


title: Inveniam viam

text: The first word "aut" may be omitted, corresponding to omitting the English word "either" from the translation.


title: Inveniam viam

text: The phrase has been attributed to Hannibal; when his generals told him it was impossible to cross the Alps by elephant, this was supposedly his response. The first part of the sentence, "inveniam viam", "I shall find a way," also appears in other contexts in the tragedies of Seneca, spoken by Hercules and by Oedipus, and in Seneca's "Hercules Furens" (Act II, Scene 1, line 276) the whole sentence appears, in third person: "inveniet viam, aut faciet."


title: Inveniam viam

text: It has been used as a motto for instance by Francis Bacon as well as Robert Peary. It still is popular in social, educational and military organisations.


title: Inveniam viam

text: In first person plural, the quote is written on an iron arch over the class of 1893 memorial gate at the University of Pennsylvania. A painting in the National Portrait Gallery, formerly attributed as Sir Philip Sidney and now thought to depict his brother Robert, is adorned with the phrase.


title: Inveniam viam

text: In "The Dunciad", Alexander Pope writes of John Henley that he "turned his rhetoric to buffoonry" by handing out medallions engraved with this motto.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Anthony George Booth (9 October 1931 – 25 September 2017) was an English actor, best known for his role as Mike Rawlins in the BBC series "Till Death Us Do Part". He was the father-in-law of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and the widower of "Coronation Street" star Pat Phoenix, marrying her a few days before her death in 1986.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth was born into a working-class family in Jubilee Road, Liverpool, in 1931 and raised Catholic. His mother was a Roman Catholic of Irish descent, and his father was a merchant seaman during World War II and Catholic convert. Tony Booth attended St Edmund's Infants School and spent a year in hospital as a child with diphtheria. He then passed the Eleven-plus examination and attended St Mary's College, Crosby, where he was awarded a bursary to cover the cost of his books.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: His hopes of going to university were dashed when he had to leave school and get a job after his father was badly injured in an industrial accident. He then worked as a clerk in a docklands warehouse and at the United States Consulate in Liverpool, before being called up for national service with the Royal Corps of Signals.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth developed a taste for acting when posted in the Army to SHAPE in Paris. He spent five years in repertory theatre, before appearing in films and television during the 1960s. He played roles in over twenty films, including "The L-Shaped Room" (1962), "Corruption" (1968), "The Girl with a Pistol" (1968), "Brannigan" (1975), "Priest" (1994) and "Owd Bob" (1997). He appeared early in the run of the television series "Coronation Street" in 1960 and in an episode of "The Avengers", but it was his role as the left-wing son-in-law in "Till Death Us Do Part" (1965) that brought him recognition.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth made guest appearances in many other television series. He starred alongside Robin Askwith in the "Confessions of ..." British sex comedy film series as Sidney Noggett between 1974 and 1977. These were "Confessions of a Window Cleaner", "Confessions of a Pop Performer", "Confessions of a Driving Instructor" and "Confessions from a Holiday Camp".


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: From 1985 to 1986, Booth appeared as pub landlord Ted Pilkington in the short-lived ITV soap "Albion Market". He starred in the 1998 short film "The Duke", playing an elderly man who tells his adoring grandson that he is John Wayne. In 2001, Booth appeared in several episodes of "Family Affairs" playing Barry Hurst, Sadie Hargreaves' brother-in-law.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth played a tramp named Nobby Stuart in a special two-hander episode of "EastEnders". In 2007, he also played a tramp called Errol Michaels in "Emmerdale". Both of these characters played the purpose of a spiritual guide to a down-and-out character, in "EastEnders", Alfie Moon (Shane Richie) and in "Emmerdale", Bob Hope (Tony Audenshaw).


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth was married four times and had eight daughters by five women. By his first wife Gale Howard, he had two daughters, Cherie and Lyndsey. Cherie, a King’s Counsel, is married to the former Prime Minister Tony Blair. While Booth was a long-standing supporter of the Labour Party, his politics differed from that of his daughter and her husband.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth nearly burned to death in November 1979 when, during a drunken attempt to get into his locked flat, he fell into a drum of paraffin. He spent six months in hospital and needed 26 skin graft operations. Shortly after his discharge from hospital, he went to visit an 'old flame', "Coronation Street" actress Pat Phoenix. She took him in and nursed him back to full health, and they lived together for six years. Phoenix's own health subsequently declined, and the pair married a few days before her death from lung cancer in 1986.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth had five other daughters with partners he did not marry. He left Gale, his first wife, in 1961 for Julia Allan, with whom he had two daughters Jenia and Bronwen. He had a daughter, Lucy Thomas in 1967 with Ann Gannon, who worked in radio sales, after a brief relationship; this did not become known publicly until 2002. His relationship with Pamela Smith, which began in the 1960s, lasted 13 years; the couple had Booth's other two daughters, Emma and Lauren Booth, a broadcaster and journalist.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: In a rebuke to the British government's treatment of pensioners, Booth retired to Blacklion, County Cavan, in Ireland in 2003, but returned and lived in Broadbottom, east of Manchester. In 2006 he said he was the victim of anti-English bias while living in Ireland.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: Booth was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2004. He suffered a stroke in 2010. He also had chronic heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Booth died on 25 September 2017 at home, aged 85.


title: Tony Booth (actor)

text: In March 2019, Booth's widow Steph published the book "Married to Alzheimer's: A Life Less Ordinary with Tony Booth", a memoir about her time caring for her husband.


title: Frequency response

text: In signal processing and electronics, the frequency response of a system is the quantitative measure of the magnitude and phase of the output as a function of input frequency. The frequency response is widely used in the design and analysis of systems, such as audio and control systems, where they simplify mathematical analysis by converting governing differential equations into algebraic equations. In an audio system, it may be used to minimize audible distortion by designing components (such as microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers) so that the overall response is as flat (uniform) as possible across the system's bandwidth. In control systems, such as a vehicle's cruise control, it may be used to assess system stability, often through the use of Bode plots. Systems with a specific frequency response can be designed using analog and digital filters.


title: Frequency response

text: The frequency response characterizes systems in the frequency domain, just as the impulse response characterizes systems in the time domain. In linear systems, either response completely describes the system and thus have one-to-one correspondence: the frequency response is the Fourier transform of the impulse response. The frequency response allows simpler analysis of cascaded systems such as multistage amplifiers, as the response of the overall system can be found through multiplication of the individual stages' frequency responses (as opposed to convolution of the impulse response in the time domain). The frequency response is closely related to the transfer function in linear systems, which is the Laplace transform of the impulse response. They are equivalent when the real part formula_1 of the transfer function's complex variable formula_2 is zero.


title: Frequency response

text: Measuring the frequency response typically involves exciting the system with an input signal and measuring the resulting output signal, calculating the frequency spectra of the two signals (for example, using the fast Fourier transform for discrete signals), and comparing the spectra to isolate the effect of the system. In linear systems, the frequency range of the input signal should cover the frequency range of interest.


title: Frequency response

text: Several methods using different input signals may be used to measure the frequency response of a system, including:


title: Frequency response

text: The frequency response is characterized by the "magnitude", typically in decibels (dB) or as a generic amplitude of the dependent variable, and the "phase", in radians or degrees, measured against frequency, in radian/s, Hertz (Hz) or as a fraction of the sampling frequency.


title: Frequency response

text: For the design of control systems, any of the three types of plots may be used to infer closed-loop stability and stability margins from the open-loop frequency response. In many frequency domain applications (such as audio systems), the phase response is relatively unimportant and the magnitude response of the Bode plot may be all that is required. In digital systems (such as digital filters), the frequency response often contains a main lobe with multiple periodic sidelobes, due to spectral leakage caused by digital processes such as sampling and windowing.


title: Frequency response

text: If the system under investigation is nonlinear, linear frequency domain analysis will not reveal all the nonlinear characteristics. To overcome these limitations, generalized frequency response functions and nonlinear output frequency response functions have been defined to analyze nonlinear dynamic effects. Nonlinear frequency response methods may reveal effects such as resonance, intermodulation, and energy transfer.


title: Frequency response

text: In electronics this stimulus would be an input signal. In the audible range it is usually referred to in connection with electronic amplifiers, microphones and loudspeakers. Radio spectrum frequency response can refer to measurements of coaxial cable, twisted-pair cable, video switching equipment, wireless communications devices, and antenna systems. Infrasonic frequency response measurements include earthquakes and electroencephalography (brain waves).


title: Frequency response

text: Frequency response requirements differ depending on the application. In high fidelity audio, an amplifier requires a frequency response of at least 20–20,000 Hz, with a tolerance as tight as ±0.1 dB in the mid-range frequencies around 1000 Hz; however, in telephony, a frequency response of 400–4,000 Hz, with a tolerance of ±1 dB is sufficient for intelligibility of speech.


title: Frequency response

text: Frequency response curves are often used to indicate the accuracy of electronic components or systems. When a system or component reproduces all desired input signals with no emphasis or attenuation of a particular frequency band, the system or component is said to be "flat", or to have a flat frequency response curve. In other case, we can be use 3D-form of frequency response surface.


title: Frequency response

text: Once a frequency response has been measured (e.g., as an impulse response), provided the system is linear and time-invariant, its characteristic can be approximated with arbitrary accuracy by a digital filter. Similarly, if a system is demonstrated to have a poor frequency response, a digital or analog filter can be applied to the signals prior to their reproduction to compensate for these deficiencies.


title: Frequency response

text: The form of a frequency response curve is very important for anti-jamming protection of radars, communications and other systems.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Blagoveshchensk (, meaning "City of the Annunciation") is a city and the administrative center of Amur Oblast, Russia. It is located at the confluence of the Amur and the Zeya Rivers, opposite to the Chinese city of Heihe. Population:


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The Amur has formed Russia's border with China since the 1858 Aigun Treaty and the 1860 Treaty of Peking. The area north of the Amur belonged to the Manchu Qing dynasty by the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689 until it was ceded to Russia by the Aigun Treaty in 1858.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The early residents of both sides of the Amur in the region of today's Blagoveshchensk were the Daurs and Duchers. An early settlement in the area of today's Blagoveshchensk was the Ducher town whose name was reported by the Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov as Aytyun in 1652, as Aigun from 1683 to 1685, and as Aigun Old Town from 1685 until the massacre in 1900, which known to Russian archaeologists as the Grodekovo site, after the nearby village of Grodekovo some southeast of Blagoveshchensk. The Grodekovo site is thought by archaeologists to have been populated since ca. 1000 CE.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: As the Russians tried to assert their control over the region, the Ducher town was probably vacated when the Duchers were evacuated by the Qing to the Sungari or Hurka in the mid-1650s. Since 1673, the Chinese re-used the site for their fort ("Old Aigun", in modern literature), which served in 1683-1685 as a base for the Manchus' campaign against the Russian fort of Albazin further north.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: After the capture of Albazin in 1685 or 1686, the Chinese relocated their town, to a new site on the right (southwestern, i.e. presently Chinese) bank of the Amur, about downstream from the original site; it later became known as Aigun.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The series of conflicts between Russians and China ended with Russia's recognition of the Chinese sovereignty over both sides of the Amur by the Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: As the balance of power in the region had changed by the mid-19th century, the Russian Empire was able to take over the left (generally northern, but around Blagoveshchensk, eastern) bank of the Amur from China. Since the 1858 Aigun Treaty and the 1860 Treaty of Peking, the river has remained the border between the countries, although the Qing subjects were allowed to continue to live in the so-called Sixty-Four Villages east of the Amur and the Zeya (i.e., within today's Blagoveshchensk's eastern suburbs).


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Although Russian settlers had lived in the area as early as 1644 and was known as ()., the present-day city began in 1856 as the military outpost of "Ust-Zeysky"; this name means "settlement at the mouth of the Zeya River" in Russian. Tsar Alexander II gave approval for the founding of the city in 1858 as the seat of government for the Amur region, to be named Blagoveshchensk (literally "the city of good news") after the parish church which was dedicated to the Annunciation. According to Blagoveshchensk authorities, by 1877 the city had some 8,000 residents, with merely 15 foreigners (presumably, Chinese) among them.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The city was an important river port and trade center during the late 19th century, with growth further fueled by a gold rush early in the 20th century and by its position on the Chinese border opposite the city of Heihe.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Local historians noted the pre-eminence of Blagoveshchensk in the economy of the late 19th century Russian Far East, which was reflected when the heir to the Russian throne, Nicholas Alexandrovich (the future Tsar Nicholas II), visited in 1891 during his grand tour of Asiatic Russia, and the locals presented him with bread and salt on a gold tray, rather than on a silver one as in other cities of the region.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: In the course of the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing Imperial army (made out of Manchus and Han Chinese) and Boxer insurgents shelled the city in July 1900. Chinese Honghuzi forces joined the attack against Blagoveshchensk. According to the Orthodox belief, the city was allegedly saved by a miraculous icon of Our Lady of Albazin, which was prayed to continuously during the shelling which lasted almost two weeks.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: On 3 July (Old Style), a decision was made by the city's Police Chief Batarevich and the Military Governor Gribsky to deport the city's entire community of Qing subjects including ethnic Manchus, Daur people and Han, numbering 4,008), who were viewed as potential fifth columnists. As cross-river shipping was interrupted by the rebellion, the question arose how to get them from the Russian to the Chinese side of the Amur. Batarevich suggested that the deportees could be first taken east of the Zeya, where they should obtain boats from the local Chinese villagers. The plan, however, was vetoed by the governor, and the decision was made instead to take the deportees to the "stanitsa" of Verkhneblagoveshchenskaya—the place where the Amur is at its narrowest—and make them leave Russia there. As the local "ataman" refused to provide boats to take them across the river (despite the orders of his superior), few of them made it to the Chinese side. The rest drowned in the Amur, or were shot or axed by the police, Cossacks and local volunteers, when refusing to leave the bank. Local Chinese memory holds that a massacre that took place then, at the hand of Cossacks, which killed so many that the Amur River was choked.According to Chinese sources, about 5,000 people reportedly died during these events of 4-8 July 1900.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: There were 1,266 households in the city, including 900 Daurs and 4,500 Manchus until the massacre. Many Manchu villages were burned by Cossacks in the massacre according to Victor Zatsepine.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: This expulsion of the local Chinese caused some hardships for Blagoveshchensk consumers. For example, during the second half of 1900 it became almost impossible to buy any green vegetables in the town, and ten eggs would cost 30-50 kopecks (and in winter, as much as a rouble), while before it had been possible to buy ten eggs for 10-15 kopecks.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The massacre angered the Chinese, and had ramifications for the future: the Chinese Honghuzi fought a guerilla war against Russian occupation and assisted the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War against the Russians in revenge. Louis Livingston Seaman mentioned the massacre as being the reason for the Chinese Honghuzi hatred towards the Russians:The Chinaman, be he Hung-hutze or peasant, in his relation to the Russians in this conflict with Japan has not forgotten the terrible treatment accorded him since the Muscovite occupation of Manchuria. He still remembers the massacre at Blagovestchensk when nearly 8,000 unarmed men, women, and children were driven at the point of the bayonet into the raging Amur, until — as one of the Russian officers who participated in that brutal murder told me at Chin-Wang-Tao in 1900 — "the execution of my orders made me almost sick, for it seemed as though I could have walked across the river on the bodies of the floating dead." Not a Chinaman escaped, except forty who were employed by a leading foreign merchant who ransomed their lives at a thousand roubles each. These, and many even worse, atrocities are remembered and now is their moment for revenge. So it was easy for Japan to enlist the sympathy of these men, especially when emphasized by liberal pay, as is now the case. It is believed that more than 10,000 of these bandits, divided into companies of from 200 to 300 each and led by Japanese officers, are now in the pay of Japan.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The city was also the site of conflict during the Russian Civil War, with Japanese troops occupying the city in support of the White Army. From 1920 until 1922, the city was declared part of the Far Eastern Republic, an area which was nominally independent, but in reality a buffer zone under control of the Russian SFSR. The city became the administrative center of Amur Oblast in 1932.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: During the Cultural Revolution in China, the city was subject to Maoist propaganda blasted from loudspeakers across the river 24 hours a day.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Blagoveshchensk is the administrative center of the oblast and, within the framework of administrative divisions, it also serves as the administrative center of Blagoveshchensky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is, together with six rural localities, incorporated separately as Blagoveshchensk Urban Okrug—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, this administrative unit also has urban okrug status.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: In July 2013, a public hearing was held at which citizens declared themselves to be in favor of a return to the direct election of the mayor. A meeting of deputies voted for rejection of the "two-headed" management. In September 2013, City Council voted for a return to the


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Blagoveschensk experiences a monsoon-influenced hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen "Dwa"), bordering on a monsoon-influenced warm-summer humid continental climate ("Dwb") which it had before 1990. The city features frigid, windy, but dry winters due to the influence of the Siberian high, and warm, wet summers, due to the East Asian monsoon. On 1 August 2011, it became the first city in the Russian Far East to be hit by a tornado.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the city's economic focus has turned to border trade with China. The town is now home to a large Chinese expatriate community. Blagoveshchensk is part of a free trade zone which includes the Chinese city of Heihe, located on the other side of the Amur River.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The city is served by a branch highway and railway connecting it to Belogorsk on the Trans-Siberian Railway and Trans-Siberian Highway. It is also served by a river port. On the other side of the Amur River is Heihe, Heilongjiang Province, China, which is the starting point of China National Highway 202 that goes south to Harbin and Dalian. Ignatyevo Airport, located northwest of the city center, serves domestic destinations.


title: Blagoveshchensk

text: The Blagoveshchensk–Heihe Bridge, completed at the end of 2019, includes a 2-lane highway bridge over the Amur to link Blagoveshchensk and Heihe.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Howl is a 2015 British horror film directed by Paul Hyett and starring Ed Speleers, Sean Pertwee, Holly Weston, Shauna Macdonald, Elliot Cowan, Rosie Day, Calvin Dean, Duncan Preston and Ross Mullan.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Howl opens with Alpha Trax train guard Joe Griffin (Ed Speleers) doing a shift on a overnight passenger train, which is scheduled to depart London at midnight. The regular guard, is sick. His only consolation is the chance to spend time with his unrequited love, the tea-trolley girl, Ellen (Holly Weston). A shot of the full moon is shown piecing through a heavy thunderstorm as the train travels.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: A few miles before reaching the final station, Eastborough, the train is nearly derailed in a forested area when it hits a deer. The driver is forced to make an emergency stop to check the situation and finds the dead deer stuck to the wheels, which he tries to remove. As he struggles with the deer carcass, a nearby werewolf attacks and kills him. Unaware of the dangers outside, the remaining passengers, Kate (Shauna Macdonald), Adrian (Elliot Cowan), Matthew (Amit Shah), Billy (Sam Gittins), Nina (Rosie Day), Paul (Calvin Dean), and Ged (Duncan Preston) and his wife Jenny (Ania Marson), are frustrated to learn that an emergency team will not be able to reach the train due to downed trees all along the line, so they persuade Joe and Ellen into letting them off the train to attempt to walk to Eastborough Instead. Soon, Joe and Ellen find the driver's eviscerated body as they walk through the woods, leading them to rush everyone back to the train, but a werewolf pursues them and bites Jenny's leg before she is pulled to safety.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: As the others bandage Jenny's wound, Joe tries to call for help again but receives no response. Eventually, everyone realizes that none of them have cell phone reception, because of a broken antenna on the train's roof. Billy, an engineering student, determines that the fuel lines were damaged and leaking, which needed repair in order for the train to continue moving. Meanwhile, the werewolf tries to force its way into the cabin but is unable to penetrate the metal roof or double-paned windows. Later, when it climbs up on the roof of the train, the cellphone reception comes on and Nina's phone begins to ring. When she moves into a less secure area of the car, the werewolf smashes through the window and pulls her out.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The remaining passengers barricade themselves in another car, using the train's power tools to reinforce the windows and doors with metal grates.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Paul is killed when the werewolf manages to enter the car through the bathroom roof while he is dealing with diarrhea. The werewolf proceeds to break through the passengers' barricades, but the passengers fight together and kill it. Matthew recognizes the creature as a werewolf, leading Adrian to recall that someone bitten by a werewolf will become one. Thus, despite the objections of others', Adrian tries to kill Jenny, who is becoming disoriented, coughing up blood, and spitting out her teeth, before becoming a werewolf herself. Joe knocks Adrian unconscious, then has the others tie him up along with Jenny.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Unaware that the werewolf's death cries have alerted the rest of its pack, Billy and Joe attempt to repair the train so it can be driven to safety. As Joe and Ellen monitor the console, Billy goes out to fix the fuel lines. Matthew comes out to help protect him, but he runs into the forest when he hears a voice calling for help. He discovers Nina being eaten alive by a werewolf before he is attacked and killed himself. As the train begins to move again, the werewolf pack snatches Kate, who dies.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Jenny eventually transforms into a full werewolf and kills her husband, before trying to kill Adrian, but Joe kills her. Unfortunately, the other werewolves manage to board the train, and Adrian traps Joe and Ellen to cover his escape. Billy tries to beat off the werewolves with torches but is killed, while Joe and Ellen flee into the forest, pursued by the pack. Realizing they will not make it, Joe stays behind to fight them as Ellen safely makes it to the nearest station. Although Joe fights bravely, he is bitten by the chief werewolf and transforms into a werewolf. Shortly after, Adrian stumbles onto the scene and is attacked by the newly transformed Joe, while the other werewolves watch him from close.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: "Howl" was directed by Paul Hyett, previously known for his effects collaborations with fellow British horror film director Neil Marshall. Hyett had previously been a special effects, creature, prosthetic and make-up designer for Marshall's earlier films such as "Doomsday", "The Descent", "Centurion", and "Dog Soldiers"; the latter 2002 film also a werewolf movie. Actress Shauna Macdonald played the lead role Sarah in "The Descent", and also has a starring role in "Howl". Sean Pertwee starred in "Dog Soldiers" and also has a role in "Howl". Paul Hyett also worked on the effects for the British horror films "The Woman in Black" and "Attack the Block".


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The interior train shots were filmed in Croydon, London, and London Waterloo station in Lambeth. Exterior shots were filmed in the Black Park Country Park adjacent to Pinewood Studios.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The Horror Addict channel on YouTube premiered the official trailer for "Howl" on 13 May 2015. The video currently has almost two and a half million views. A total of three different official trailers for the film were released over the summer.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Four different film posters have been released; one showing a bloodied, inhuman claw in the sky, hovering over the train, and variations of; one of the glowing eyes looking through a window over bloodstained seats; and the final poster is a bloodied human hand on the window, with a full moon outside.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The film had no theatrical release but was shown at several international film festivals before its release on home video. "Howl" first premiered at Fantasy Filmfest, which was held in Germany on 5 August 2015. It was subsequently shown at FrightFest in the United Kingdom on 31 August, and Popcorn Frights Film Festival in the United States on 3 October.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The DVD release date was initially set for 16 October, but has been pushed back closer to Halloween at 26 October. The DVD will be age-rated 18 in the UK market due to disturbing imagery and graphic and bloody violence.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: The film was met with a generally positive response and currently has 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews.


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Kate Muir of "The Times" negatively likened the film to "Snakes on a Plane", giving it two out of five stars. "Soon, it all gets bloody as the (somewhat unconvincing) lycanthrope goes loco on the locomotive."


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Luiz H. C., one of the critics of horror film magazine and website "Bloody Disgusting", gave the film a positive review with three-and-a-half out of five stars, saying that: ""Howl" is a fun and frightening romp." Pat Torfe, also of "Bloody Disgusting", gave the film four out of five stars, saying that: ""Howl" lives up to its title in many ways."


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Kim Newman of "Empire Magazine" gave the film three out of five stars, and said of the film: "An unashamed B-movie, but unashamed fun." Mark Kermode of "The Observer": "Engagingly sympathetic portrayals of stoical working women and harassed railway guards keep us on side as the action rattles through familiar generic junctions." Hannah McGill of "The List": "The black humour hits home without breaking the tension, while the gore - as one might expect given Hyett's background in makeup effects - is grimly convincing." Garry McConnachie of "The Daily Record": "There's still much to admire and enjoy."


title: Howl (2015 film)

text: Mark McConnell of paranormal magazine "Fortean Times" gave the movie 8 out of 10, saying: "The film's climax made me wonder if it wasn't the director's exploration of interpersonal relationships between men and women that made me want to watch it a second time. Hats off to Hyett, who has taken the mundane British Rail journey and turned it into a feast of bloody horror."


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Julien Donkey-Boy is a 1999 American experimental drama film written and directed by Harmony Korine. The story concentrates on Julien, a man with schizophrenia, played by Scottish actor Ewen Bremner, and his dysfunctional family. The film also stars Chloë Sevigny as Julien's sister, Pearl, and Werner Herzog as his father. "Julien Donkey-Boy" was the sixth film to be made under the self-imposed rules of the Dogme 95 manifesto, and the first non-European film to be made under the Dogme 95 "vow of chastity".


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Julien, a young man with untreated schizophrenia, meets a young boy playing with several turtles in a New York City park. Fascinated by the turtles, Julien asks if he can have one. When he is denied, he strangles the boy, then buries his body in the mud before praying for mercy from God.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: At home, Julien resides with his dysfunctional family, consisting of his domineering and emotionless German father; his childlike pregnant sister Pearl (whose child may be Julien's); his younger brother, Chris, an aspiring wrestler who spends his days exercising and practicing wrestling moves; and their paternal grandmother, who is largely disconnected from the rest of the family.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: The family's father spends the majority of his time recounting national historical narratives, drinking, and inflicting psychological and physical abuse on Chris. During one of Chris's exercise sessions, his father forces him outside in the cold and hoses him down with water. He also pines for his deceased wife, going so far as begging Chris to wear his mother's wedding dress and dance with him. Meanwhile, Julien works as a teacher's aide at a school for the blind. Julien spends most of his spare time going to confession, muttering to himself on the streets, and imagining conversations with Adolf Hitler.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Julien is also riddled with grief over his mother's death, and Pearl sometimes soothes him by pretending to be their mother on the telephone. Pearl spends most of her days searching for baby clothes for her soon-to-be-born child, and making lists of her favorite baby names. Searching for other hobbies, she decides to take up learning to play the harp. Chris compulsively practices wrestling moves on trash cans, and sometimes incites matches with Julien. Their father recounts historical stories, lambasts Julien and Pearl for "artsy-fartsy" poetry and being "a dilettante and a slut" respectively, and pines for his dead wife.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Julien and Pearl accompany their father to a local Baptist church, where the sermon has a profound impact on Julien. Some time later, Pearl and Julien spend a day together going ice skating at an indoor skating rink. Julien tries to sell some homemade skates to a Hasidic boy and Pearl takes to the ice despite being heavily pregnant. She trips, landing on her abdomen and causing a miscarriage. At the hospital, Julien convinces a nurse to let him hold the baby, saying it is his. She allows it, but while alone with the baby, Julien escapes home on a bus. Julien goes to his room, hides under the blankets, cradles the baby and mutters prayers.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: "Julien Donkey-Boy" was the first American film made in accordance with the Danish filmmaking collective Dogme 95. Shot in New York on MiniDV tape, the film was transferred to 16mm film before being blown up to 35mm film for the master print. Korine used this method to give the film a low-definition, grainy aesthetic. Much of the actors' dialogue was improvised.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: The film utilizes several cinematographic styles, including stop-motion photography, parallel cuts, and still photographs in order to tell its story.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Korine broke a few of the Dogme 95 rules in making the film. Dogme 95's tenets stipulate all the camerawork must be handheld, but this film uses hidden cameras that are technically not handheld. There is also the use of non-diegetic music (Oval's "Mediation" from "Systemisch" in the ice-skating scene, same group's "Shop In Store" from "94 Diskont"). Finally, the film breaks the rule that the director must not be credited; however, the film only displays Harmony Korine's name and not an official director title.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Despite these transgressions, the original Dogme 95 committee endorsed "Julien Donkey-Boy". In an interview on the "Epidemic" DVD, Lars Von Trier, Dogme 95 co-creator, lauded Korine's ability to interpret the rules creatively.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 1999. It received a limited release in Los Angeles at a single cinema on October 15, 1999; the film showed for a month's time at the Los Angeles Theatre, and grossed a total of $80,226 by that November. It was given a wide theatrical release in European countries the following year, particularly in France and the Netherlands. The film grossed $85,400 domestically and $7,042 in other countries for a worldwide total of $92,442.


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: "Julien Donkey-Boy" currently holds a 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Director Harmony Korine takes a big stylistic swing that will miss with most audiences, producing an unfocused and mean-spirited art film with a bitter aftertaste." The film has a weighted average score of 52/100 on Metacritic based on 23 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: "Empire Magazine" said that "Despite some creditable performances, Korine's bizarre, shambling direction renders the result less ground-breakingly experimental than rectum-numbingly dull." Edward Guthmann of the "San Francisco Chronicle" called the film "A self-indulgent mess."


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Despite a sense of negative reaction to "Julien Donkey-Boy", it was praised by some critics. Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" gave the film a positive review, saying the film attained a "depth of compassion and understanding ... [it] acquires a spiritual dimension that allows it ultimately to become an act of redemption". Lisa Schwarzbaum from "Entertainment Weekly" awarded the film a score of B+, describing the film as "an exciting artistic leap", while writing that "Korine — working with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who shot the Dogma breakthrough "The Celebration" — discovers visual ways to convey emotional terrain that will serve him well, I hope, even after he outgrows shock as an artistic goal."


title: Julien Donkey-Boy

text: Additional praise for the film came from "Chicago Sun Times" film critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3/4 stars, saying that "[The film] adds up to something, unlike a lot of movies where individual shots are sensational, but they add up to nothing"; Ebert did, however, note that the film had a very limited audience: "The odds are good that most people will dislike this film and be offended by it. For others, it will provoke sympathy rather than scorn. You know who you are".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: The Sword of Shannara is a 1977 epic fantasy novel by American writer Terry Brooks. It is the first book in a titular trilogy.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: The novel interweaves two major plots into a fictional world called The Four Lands. One follows the protagonist Shea Ohmsford on his quest to gain the Sword of Shannara and use it to confront the Warlock Lord (the antagonist). The other plot shadows Prince Balinor Buckhannah's attempt to oust his insane brother Palance from the throne of Callahorn while the country and its capital (Tyrsis) come under attack from overwhelming armies of the Warlock Lord. The novel contains themes of mundane heroism and nuclear holocaust throughout.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Brooks wrote "The Sword of Shannara" over seven years, during which time he also attended law school. Ballantine Books published the novel and used it to launch the company's new subsidiary Del Rey Books. "The Sword of Shannara"s success significantly boosted the commercial prospects of the fantasy literary genre. Critics derided the novel for being derivative of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". Some accused Brooks of lifting the entire plot and many of his characters directly from Tolkien's work; others praised its execution despite the lack of originality.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "The Sword of Shannara"s events take place 2000 years after the "Great Wars": a nuclear holocaust that has wiped out most of the planet. These wars rearranged the planet's geography and wiped out most human life on Earth. Only traces of technological artifacts have been found; most advanced technology has been lost, but magic has been rediscovered. During this time, Mankind mutated into several distinct races: humans, dwarves, gnomes and trolls, all named after creatures from "age-old" myths. Also, elves begin to emerge after having been in seclusion and hiding for centuries.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: A thousand years before "The Sword of Shannara", an Elf named Galaphile gathers all of the people who still had some knowledge of the old world to Paranor to try to bring peace and order to all of the races. They name themselves the First Druid Council. Brona, a rogue Druid, and his followers leave, taking the Ildatch with them; this magical tome controls their minds. Hundreds of years later, Brona begins the First War of the Races when he convinces all Men to attack the other races. He almost succeeds in seizing rule of the Four Lands, but the tide turns, and the war ends with his defeat and disappearance. The Druids divide the Four Lands among the races and become reclusive, withdrawing to Paranor because of their shame at the betrayal by one of their own members.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Several centuries after the First War of the Races, Brona returns as the Warlock Lord, now with Skull Bearers as his servants. Chronicled in the prequel novel "First King of Shannara", the Second War of the Races begins with the destruction of the Druid Order. A lone Druid, Bremen, forges a magical talisman to destroy the Warlock Lord; it is given to the Elven King, Jerle Shannara. As it takes the form of a blade, the talisman is named the "Sword of Shannara". It succeeds in banishing the Warlock Lord. He is not killed, but his army is defeated by the combined armies of the Elves and Dwarves. Peace comes at a high price, interracial tension is renewed and the Druids have vanished.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Five centuries later, the Ohmsford family of Shady Vale in the Southland takes in the half-Elven child Shea. He takes the name Ohmsford and is raised as a brother to the family's son Flick. Becoming inseparable, the brothers run the family inn.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Some time later, the last Druid Allanon arrives in Shady Vale. Allanon warns the Ohmsford brothers that the Warlock Lord has returned to the Skull Kingdom in the Northland and is coming for Shea. As the last descendant of Jerle Shannara, Shea is the only one capable of wielding the Sword of Shannara against the Warlock Lord.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Allanon departs, leaving Shea three Blue Elfstones for protection. He tells Shea to flee at the sign of the Skull. A few weeks later, a creature bearing a symbol of a skull shows up: a Skull Bearer, one of the Warlock Lord's "winged black destroyers", has arrived to search for Shea. The brothers are forced to flee with the Skull Bearer on their heels. They take refuge in the nearby city of Leah where they find Shea's friend Menion, the son of the city's lord. Menion decides to accompany the two, and he travels with them to Culhaven, to meet with Allanon. While at Culhaven, they are joined by a prince of Callahorn, Balinor Buckhannah, two elven brothers, Durin and Dayel Elessedil, and the dwarf Hendel.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: The party sets out for Paranor. But along the way, Shea falls over a waterfall and becomes separated from the group. Allanon spurs the group to continue to Paranor. Once there, the party gets into a battle with minions of the Warlock Lord and find that the Sword of Shannara has already been removed. The party then learns of the Warlock Lord's invasion of the Southland, and decide to split up to do what they can to stop it.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Disguised by Allanon, Flick infiltrates the enemy camp and rescues the captive Elven King, Eventine Elessedil; at the same time, in Kern, Menion saves a woman named Shirl Ravenlock and falls in love with her. They organize an evacuation of Kern before the Northland army reaches the city.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Balinor returns to Tyrsis to activate the Border Legion only to find that it has been disbanded. Balinor is then imprisoned by his insane brother Palance Buckhannah, who has taken control of Callahorn's rule. His advisor, Stenmin, has driven Palance insane with drugs, making him his pawn. With help from Menion, Balinor escapes and confronts both Palance and Stenmin. Practically cornered, Stenmin stabs Palance as a distraction and flees.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Now commanded by Balinor, Callahorn's reformed Border Legion marches out of Tyrsis and engages the Northland army at the Mermiddon River, killing many Northlanders before being forced to pull back; the Border Legion retreats to Tyrsis and make preparations for defense. During the siege of Tyrsis, Hendel and Menion come upon Stenmin and some of his supporters. Hendel is killed, but Menion kills Stenmin. After three days, the Border Legion is beaten back from the Outer Wall of Tyrsis as a result of treachery—the wall falls when the traitors destroy the locks on the main gate, jamming it open. At the defenders' last stand on the Bridge of Sendic, the Northlanders abruptly break and run.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: After being captured by gnomes, Shea is rescued by the one-handed thief Panamon Creel and his mute Troll companion Keltset Mallicos. Journeying to the Northland, they reach the Skull Kingdom, where the insane Gnome deserter Orl Fane has carried the Sword of Shannara.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Infiltrating the Warlock Lord's fortress in the Skull Mountain, Shea reaches the sword and unsheathes it. He learns about its true power, the ability to confront those with the truth about their lives. The Warlock Lord materializes and tries to destroy Shea, but the youth stands his ground and confronts his enemy with the sword. Although immune to physical weapons, the Warlock Lord vanishes after being forced to confront the truth about himself: he had deluded himself into believing that he is immortal, but this is impossible. The Sword forces him to confront this paradox, and it kills him.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Keltset sacrifices himself to save his companions during the Skull Kingdom's destruction. In the south, the Northland army retreats after the Warlock Lord's downfall. Allanon saves Shea's life and reveals himself as Bremen's centuries-old son, before disappearing to the Druid Sleep. Peace returns to the Four Lands. Balinor takes up his country's rule, while Dayel and Durin return to the Westland, and Menion returns to Leah with Shirl. Shea and Flick reunite and return to Shady Vale.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Brooks began writing "The Sword of Shannara" in 1967 when he was twenty-three years old. He started writing the novel to challenge himself and as a way of staying "sane" while he attended law school at Washington and Lee University. Brooks had been a writer since high school, but he had never found 'his' genre: "I tried my hand at science fiction, westerns, war stories, you name it. All those efforts ... weren't very good." When he was starting college, he was given a copy of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" to read for the first time. From then on, Brooks knew that he had found a genre he could write in. Writing "Sword" took seven years, as Brooks worked on it only sporadically while also completing his law school courses and rewrote it many times.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Brooks initially submitted his manuscript to DAW Books, whose editor Donald A. Wollheim rejected it and recommended submission to Judy-Lynn del Rey at Ballantine Books instead. Ballantine Books accepted "The Sword of Shannara" in November 1974. Brooks' editor was Lester del Rey, who used the book to launch Ballantine's new Del Rey Books imprint/subsidiary. Del Rey chose it because he felt that it was "the first long epic fantasy adventure which had any chance of meeting the demands of Tolkien readers for similar pleasures."


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: In 1977, "The Sword of Shannara" was simultaneously released as a trade paperback by Ballantine Books and hardback by Random House. The Brothers Hildebrandt, who had previously done illustration work for the work of Tolkien, were asked to make the cover. Greg Hildebrandt remembers the Del Reys as being "obsessed with the project. It was their baby." The novel was a commercial success, becoming the first fantasy fiction novel to appear on "The New York Times" trade paperback bestseller list.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: The original inspiration for "The Sword of Shannara" was Brooks' desire to put "Tolkien's magic and fairy creatures [into] the worlds of Walter Scott and [Alexander] Dumas". Brooks was inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and adventure fiction such as Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers", Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island", Arthur Conan Doyle's "The White Company" and Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Brooks decided not to use historical settings like these works. He instead followed Tolkien's use of a fantasy setting:


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: He admits that he was very influenced by "The Lord of the Rings" when writing it, being his first novel, but that he has evolved his own style since:


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Brooks also made decisions about his novel's characterization and use of magic, saying that the magic "couldn't be dependable or simply good or bad". Also, he wanted to blur the distinctions between good and evil, "because life simply [doesn't] work that way." He wanted to ensure that readers would identify with his protagonist, Shea, which he accomplished by casting Shea as "a person simply trying to muddle through".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "Ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances" is a prevalent theme in "The Sword of Shannara". Brooks credits Tolkien with introducing this theme of mundane heroism into fantasy literature and influencing his own fiction. "[M]y protagonists are cut from the same bolt of cloth as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. It was Tolkien's genius to reinvent the traditional epic fantasy by making the central character neither God nor hero, but a simple man in search of a way to do the right thing. ... I was impressed enough by how it had changed the face of epic fantasy that I never gave a second thought to not using it as the cornerstone of my own writing."


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "The Sword of Shannara" is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where chemical and nuclear holocaust devastated the land in the distant past. Due to the numerous references in "Sword" to this catastrophe, Brooks was asked a question about whether he thought that his 'prediction' might come true. He answered:


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Environment plays a role in all of the "Shannara" novels: "Environment is a character in my story and almost always plays a major role in affecting the story's outcome. I have always believed that fantasy, in particular, because it takes place in an imaginary world with at least some imaginary characters, needs to make the reader feel at home in the setting. That means bringing the setting alive for the reader, which is what creating environment as a character is really all about." However, Brooks believes that "Sword" was more about behavioral issues and personal sacrifice.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "The Sword of Shannara" received mixed reviews following its publication, most of which remarked on its similarity to J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". "Choice" stated that the novel was "exceptionally well-written, very readable" and "will be accepted by most teenagers." Marshall F. Tymn also thought that it contained quality prose. Tymn believed that "Sword" followed "Lord of the Rings" too closely, but he also cited some of the differences, such as the use of a post-holocaust setting with the races which sprang from it, and an "unexpected ending springing from the nature of the sword." Cathi Dunn MacRae felt that his strength was "his plot's momentum, maintained through cliffhangers" and "unexpected twists of fortune".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "The Sword of Shannara" has drawn extensive criticism from critics who believe that Brooks derived too much of his novel from Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". In 1978, American fantasy editor Lin Carter denounced "The Sword of Shannara" as "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read". He further wrote that "Terry Brooks wasn't trying to imitate Tolkien's prose, just steal his story line and complete cast of characters, and he did it with such clumsiness and so heavy-handedly, that he virtually rubbed your nose in it." Roger C. Schlobin was kinder in his assessment, though he still thought that "The Sword of Shannara" was a disappointment because of its similarities to "The Lord of the Rings". Brian Attebery accused "The Sword of Shannara" of being "undigested Tolkien" which was "especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" with "The Lord of the Rings". In an educational article on writing, author Orson Scott Card cited "The Sword of Shannara" as a cautionary example of overly derivative writing, finding the work "artistically displeasing" for this reason.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the novel is distinctive for "the dogged way in which it follows Tolkien point for point". Shippey located analogues for Tolkien characters within Brooks' novel, such as Sauron (Brona), Gandalf (Allanon), the Hobbits (Shea and Flick), Aragorn (Menion), Boromir (Balinor), Gimli (Hendel), Legolas (Durin and Dayel), Gollum (Orl Fane), the Barrow-wight (Mist Wraith), the Nazgûl (Skull Bearers), and Tom Bombadil (King of the Silver River), among others. He also found plot similarities to events in "The Lord of the Rings", such as the Fellowship of the Ring's formation and adventures, the journeys to Rivendell (Culhaven) and Lothlórien (Storlock), Gandalf's (Allanon) fall in Moria (Paranor) and subsequent reappearance, and the Rohirrim's arrival at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (Battle of Tyrsis), among others. Shippey attributes the book's success to the post-Tolkien advent of the fantasy genre: "What "The Sword of Shannara" seems to show is that many readers had developed the taste ... for heroic fantasy so strongly that if they could not get the real thing they would take any substitute, no matter how diluted."


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Terry Brooks has said that Tolkien's works were a major influence in his writing, though he has also said that Tolkien was not his only influence. Other influences included his editor Lester del Rey, as well as the many different books which he had read over his life. Also, mythology and ancient civilizations that he had learned about in school.


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: Author Gene Wolfe defended Brooks' derivation of material from Tolkien in a 2001 "Interzone" essay: "Terry Brooks has often been disparaged for imitating Tolkien, particularly by those reviewers who find his books inferior to Tolkien's own. I can say only that I wish there were more imitators—we need them—and that all imitations of so great an original must necessarily be inferior." "Dune" author Frank Herbert also defended Brooks: "Brooks demonstrates that it doesn't matter where you get the idea; what matters is that you tell a rousing story."


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: John Batchelor feels that it was the weakest of the 1977 surge in fantasy, ranking it below Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever", Seamus Cullen's "Astra and Flondrix", and "The Silmarillion", edited by Christopher Tolkien, while commenting that it "unabashedly copies" "Lord of the Rings". "The Pittsburgh Press" feels that "Sword" embodies the Tolkien spirit and tradition but is quite able to stand apart from "Lord of the Rings".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: "The Sword of Shannara" sold about 125,000 copies in its first year in print, and this success provided a major boost to the fantasy genre. Louise J. Winters writes that "until "Shannara", no fantasy writer except J. R. R. Tolkien had made such an impression on the general public." Critic David Pringle said that Brooks "demonstrated in 1977 that the commercial success of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" had not been a fluke, and that fantasy really did have the potential to become a mass-market genre". Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever" and "The Sword of Shannara" ushered in "the era of the big commercial fantasy" and helped make epic fantasy the leading fantasy subgenre. "The Sword of Shannara" and its sequels helped inspire later versions of "Dungeons and Dragons".


title: The Sword of Shannara

text: The Shannara books were to be adapted by Mike Newell, the director of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", but he left the project. The books eventually were adapted for television by Farah Films and executive produced by Brooks, Dan Farah, and Stewart Till. They began with "Elfstones", intending to leave "Sword" for a later date. "The Shannara Chronicles" premiered on American television network MTV on January 5, 2016.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to survive in the totalitarian and oppressive world of World War II-era Japan.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: "The Human Condition" follows the journey of the well-intentioned, yet naïve Kaji who transitions from being a labor camp supervisor to an Imperial Army soldier and eventually Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and time again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: In World War II-era Japan, Kaji marries his sweetheart Michiko despite his misgivings about the future. To gain exemption from military service, he moves his wife to a large mining operation in Japanese-colonized Manchuria, where he serves as a labor chief assigned to a workforce of Chinese prisoners.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Kaji aggravates the camp bureaucracy by implementing humane practices to improve both labor conditions and productivity, clashing with foremen, administrators, and the Kenpeitai military police. Ultimately his efforts to grant autonomy to the POWs are undermined by scheming officials, resulting in the electrocution of several prisoners and the beheading of others accused of attempted escape. When Kaji protests the brutality, he is tortured and then drafted into the army to relieve the camp supervisors of his disruptive presence.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Kaji, having lost his exemption from military service by protecting Chinese prisoners from unjust punishment, has now been conscripted into the Japanese Kwantung Army. Under suspicion of leftist sympathies, Kaji is assigned the toughest duties in his military recruiting class despite his excellent marksmanship and strong barracks discipline. His wife Michiko pleads for understanding in a letter to his commanding officer and later pays Kaji a highly unorthodox visit to his military facility to express her love and solidarity. Kaji considers escaping across the front with his friend Shinjo, who is similarly under suspicion due to his brother's arrest for communist activities. Distrusting the idea that desertion will lead to freedom, and being faithful to his wife, Kaji ultimately commits to continued military service despite his hardships.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: When Obara, a poor-sighted, weak soldier in Kaji's unit, kills himself after troubles from home are compounded by ceaseless punishment and humiliation from other soldiers, Kaji demands disciplinary action from his superiors for PFC Yoshida, the ring leader of the troops who pushed Obara over the brink. While Yoshida is not disciplined, Kaji helps to seal his fate by refusing to rescue the vicious soldier when both men are trapped in quicksand while in pursuit of Shinjo, who finally seized the opportunity to desert. Kaji is released from hospitalization related to the quicksand incident and is transported to the front with his unit.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Kaji is asked to lead a group of recruits and promoted to private first class. He accepts his assignment with the condition that his men will be separated from a group of veteran artillerymen, who practice intense cruelty as punishment for the slightest offenses. Often taking the punishment for his men, Kaji is personally beaten many times by these veterans, despite his relationship with Second Lieutenant Kageyama. Demoralized by the fall of Okinawa and continually battling with the veterans, Kaji and most of his men are sent on a month-long trench digging work detail. Their work is interrupted by a Soviet army onslaught that produces heavy Japanese casualties and the death of Kageyama. Forced to defend flat terrain with little fortification and a light armament, the Japanese troops are overrun by Soviet tanks, and untold men are killed. Kaji survives the battle but is forced to kill a maddened Japanese soldier with his bare hands to prevent Soviet soldiers from discovering his position. The film ends with Kaji uttering "I'm a monster, but I'm going to stay alive!" and running and screaming in desperate search of any other Japanese survivors.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: The Japanese forces having been shattered during the events of the second film, Kaji and some comrades attempt to elude capture by Soviet forces and find the remnants of the Kwantung army in South Manchuria. Following the bayonetting of a Russian soldier, however, Kaji is increasingly sick of combat and decides to abandon any pretense of rejoining the army. Instead, he leads fellow soldiers and a growing number of civilian refugees as they attempt to flee the warzone and return to their homes. Lost in a dense forest, the Japanese begin to infight, and eventually many die of hunger, poisonous mushrooms, and suicide. Emerging from the forest on their last legs, Kaji and the refugees encounter regular Japanese army troops, who deny them food as if they were deserters. Carrying on further south, Kaji and his associates find a well-stocked farmhouse that is soon ambushed by Chinese peasant fighters. A prostitute to whom Kaji had shown kindness is killed by these partisans, and Kaji vows to fight them rather than escape. However, overpowered by these newly armed Chinese forces, Kaji and his fellow soldiers are nearly killed and are forced to run through a flaming wheat field to survive. Kaji then encounters a group of fifty Japanese army holdouts who are attempting to resume combat in alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, whom they believe will be supported by American forces, in a civil war against Russian-backed Communist Chinese. Kaji, a believer in pacifism and socialism, rejects this strategy as misguided and doomed to failure. Eventually, Kaji and a group of Japanese soldiers, whose number has grown to fifteen, fight through Russian patrols and find an encampment of women and old men who seek their protection. Kaji is driven to continue moving in search of his wife but decides to surrender to Soviet forces when the encampment is besieged.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Captured by the Red Army and subjected to treatment that echoes the violence meted out to the Chinese in the first film, Kaji and his protégé Terada resist the Japanese officers who run their work camp in cooperation with Soviet forces. While such resistance amounts to no more than picking through the Russians' garbage for scraps of food and wearing gunnysacks to protect them from increasingly colder weather, Kaji is branded a saboteur and judged by a Soviet tribunal to harsh labor. With a corrupt translator and no other means of talking to the Russian officers with whom he feels ideological sympathies, Kaji becomes increasingly disillusioned by conditions in the camp and with Communist orthodoxy. When Terada is driven to exhaustion and death by harsh treatment from the collaborating officer Kirihara, Kaji decides to kill the man and then escape the camp alone. Still dreaming of finding his wife and abused as a worthless beggar and as a "Japanese devil" by the Chinese peasants of whom he begs mercy, Kaji eventually succumbs to the cold and dies in the vast winter wasteland covered in snow.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: The film was based upon Junpei Gomikawa's six-part autobiographical novel of the same name, which strongly resonated with the director Masaki Kobayashi. Like the novel's protagonist, he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and stationed in Japan-occupied Manchuria. Self-described as a pacifist and socialist, he had refused to rise above the rank of a private, feeling opposed to both the war and Japan's imperialist ideology at the time. Kobayashi adhered to such views for the rest of his life, always remaining critical of Japan's conformist culture.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Remembering his own experiences in the war and feeling connected to the novel's events, Kobayashi secured the rights from Gomikawa and petitioned Shochiku to approve the project. Due to the subject matter directly criticizing the actions of Japan during World War II, the studio was initially unenthusiastic about the film and only relented when Kobayashi threatened to quit. During filming, Kobayashi aimed to be as faithful to Gomikawa's work as possible; he had a copy of the original novel on hand to help in this regard. If any scenes were in the book, but not the script, they would be added in when possible. The actors were usually notified of these changes a day in advance to memorize their new lines. Because of this striving for accuracy, Gomikawa was reportedly very pleased with the adaptation.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Tatsuya Nakadai, who had previously appeared in Kobayashi's "The Thick-Walled Room" and "Black River", was specifically chosen by the director to play the protagonist Kaji. Much of the supporting cast were veteran film and stage actors who had previously worked with Kobayashi on other projects, or who would later become regulars with the director. The film marked Nakadai's first leading role, and he later recalled his performance as being exceptionally challenging. Certain fight scenes called for actual contact, leading to the actor's face becoming swollen. The final sequence additionally involved Nakadai lying face-down in a field, the cameras not stopping until he was completely covered in a mound of snow.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: As opposed to hiring Shochiku staff, the crew from the independent studio Ninjin Club were used instead. Kobayashi utilized cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima for the film, having been an admirer of his work for director Fumio Kamei. Despite featuring extensive dialogue in Mandarin, none of the actors were actually Chinese. These lines were spoken phonetically with accompanying burnt-in Japanese subtitles on all prints. Non-Japanese and Russians were seemingly used for the roles of Soviet soldiers, though only Ed Keene and Ronald Self are credited. Due to the non-existent China–Japan relations at the time, Kobayashi scouted out filming locations in Hokkaido for the Manchurian setting over two months. Including pre-production, "The Human Condition" took four years to complete.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: Noted for its length, "The Human Condition" runs at nine hours, and thirty-nine minutes (579 minutes) and would be the longest film in Kobayashi's career.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: The film was released as a trilogy in Japan between 1959 and 1961, while shown at various film festivals internationally. All-night marathons of the entire trilogy were occasionally shown in Japan; screenings with Tatsuya Nakadai in attendance typically sold out. In 1999, Image Entertainment released "The Human Condition" on three separate Region 0 DVDs. These discs were criticised for their image and sound quality and translation. On 8 September 2009, The Criterion Collection released the entire trilogy with restored image, new translation and supplements. Arrow Video released a dual-format (Blu-ray and DVD) edition of "The Human Condition" in September 2016. This release included an introduction and select scene commentary by film critic Philip Kemp and supplements, including a booklet with new writing by film scholar David Desser.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: While the trilogy earned considerable controversy at the time of its release in Japan, "The Human Condition" was critically acclaimed, won several international awards, and established Masaki Kobayashi as one of the most important Japanese directors of the generation.


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: The British film critic David Shipman described the trilogy in his 1983 book, "The Story of Cinema", as "unequivocally the greatest film ever made." In his review for "The New York Times" in 2008, A. O. Scott declared, "Kobayashi's monumental film can clarify and enrich your understanding of what it is to be alive." Critic Philip Kemp, in his essay written for The Criterion Collection's release of the trilogy, argues that while "the film suffers from its sheer magnitude [and] from the almost unrelieved somberness of its prevailing mood ... "The Human Condition" stands as an achievement of extraordinary power and emotional resonance: at once a celebration of the resilience of the individual conscience and a purging of forced complicity in guilt (of a nation and, as the title implies, of the whole human race)."


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: In 2021, David Mermelstein of Wall Street Journal writes positively of the trilogy "What's astonishing is the way that Kobayashi juggles the complicated narrative, with its panoply of incidents and significant characters (friends, nemeses and everything in between), so that clarity is never compromised."


title: The Human Condition (film series)

text: At the 21st Venice International Film Festival, the film won the San Giorgio Prize and Pasinetti Award.


title: Thakur (title)

text: Thakur is a historical feudal title of the Indian subcontinent. It is also used as a surname in the present day. The female variant of the title is Thakurani or Thakurain, and is also used to describe the wife of a Thakur.


title: Thakur (title)

text: There are varying opinions among scholars about its origin. Some scholars suggest that it is not mentioned in the Sanskrit texts preceding 500 BCE, but speculates that it might have been a part of the vocabulary of the dialects spoken in northern India before the Gupta Empire. It is viewed to have been derived from word "Thakkura" which, according to several scholars, was not an original word of the Sanskrit language but a borrowed word in the Indian lexis from the Tukhara regions of Inner Asia. Another view-point is that "Thakkura" is a loan word from the Prakrit language.


title: Thakur (title)

text: Scholars have suggested differing meanings for the word, i.e. "god", "lord", and "master of the estate". Academics have suggested that it was only a title, and in itself, did not grant any authority to its users "to wield some power in the state".


title: Thakur (title)

text: In India, the social groups which use this title include the Brahmins, Rajput, Charans, Ahirs, Kolis, and Jats.


title: Thakur (title)

text: The meaning of the word "Thakur" was suggested to be "god" by S. K. Das; "lord" by Blair B. Kling; and "master of the estate" by H. B. Gurung.


title: Thakur (title)

text: Nirmal Chandra Sinha stated that the word "Thakura" is "unknown" to the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit and finds no mention in the Sanskrit literature preceding 500 BCE. He suggests, however, that "the word was possibly current in many north Indian dialects before the Imperial Guptas". Sinha notes that many scholars, such as Buddha Prakash, Frederick Thomas, Harold Bailey, Prabodh Bagchi, Suniti Chatterji, and Sylvain Lévi, have suggested that "Thakura" is a borrowed word in the Indian lexis from the Tukhara regions of Inner Asia. Sinha observed:


title: Thakur (title)

text: Byomkes Chakrabarti noted that the Sanskrit word "Thakkura" finds mention in "late Sanskrit". He doubted, however, that "Thakkura" is "an original Sanskrit word" and was of the opinion that "Thakkura" is probably a loan word from the Prakrit language.


title: Thakur (title)

text: Susan Snow Wadley noted that the title "Thakur" was used to refer to "a man of indeterminate but mid-level caste, usually implying a landowning caste". Wadley further notes that "Thakur" was viewed as a "more modest" title in comparison to ""Rājā" (King)".


title: Thakur (title)

text: S. K. Das noted that while the word "thakur" means "god", it is also used to refer to the father-in-law of a woman. It is also used for a Brahmin, Rajput, Ahir, Charan, Koli and Jat.


title: Thakur (title)

text: Some academics have suggested that ""Thakur" was merely a title and not an office whereby a holder was entitled to wield some power in the state". However, some other academics have noted that this title had been used by "petty chiefs" in the western areas of Himachal Pradesh.


title: Thakur (title)

text: The title was used by rulers of several princely states, including Ambliara, Vala, Morbi, Barsoda, and Rajkot State. Sons of thakurs were given the Sanskrit title of "Kumara" ('prince'), popular usage being "Kunwar" in the North and "Kumar" in Bengal and South India.


title: Assaad Bouab

text: Assaad Bouab (, born July 31, 1980) is a French-Moroccan actor whose first co-starring role was in "Whatever Lola Wants", directed by Nabil Ayouch and co-starring Laura Ramsey as Lola. The film premiered on 11 December 2007 at the Dubai International Film Festival. Bouab attended Cours Florent from 1999 to 2002, and graduated from CNSAD in Paris in 2006. He has had a regular role in the awarded and popular French television series "Call My Agent!".


title: Assaad Bouab

text: From 2017 to 2020, Bouab starred as Hicham Janowski in the French comedy-drama series "Call My Agent!". He also played CIA operative Qamar Maloof in the Netflix series Messiah.


title: Assaad Bouab

text: In 2021, Bouab starred in the romantic drama television miniseries written and directed by Emily Mortimer, "The Pursuit of Love" alongside Lily James and Andrew Scott. Bouab joined the cast for the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders in 2022.


title: New Woman

text: The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, Irish writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article, to refer to independent women seeking radical change, and in response the English writer Ouida (Maria Louisa Ramé) used the term as the title of a follow-up article. The term was further popularized by British-American writer Henry James, who used it to describe the growth in the number of feminist, educated, independent career women in Europe and the United States. Independence was not simply a matter of the mind; it also involved physical changes in activity and dress, as activities such as bicycling expanded women's ability to engage with a broader, more active world.


title: New Woman

text: The New Woman pushed the limits set by a male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906).