title: Mazu

text: Her worship subsequently spread: Li Junfu's early-13th century "Putian Bishi" records temples on Meizhou and at Qiaodou, Jiangkou, and Baihu. By 1257, Liu Kezhuang was noting Putian's "large market towns and small villages all have... shrines to the Princess" and that they had spread to Fengting to the south. By the end of the Song, there were at least 31 temples to Mazu, reaching at least as far as Shanghai in the north and Guangzhou in the south.


title: Mazu

text: As Mazuism spread, it began to absorb the cults of other local shamanesses such as the other two of Xianyou's "Three Princesses" and even some lesser maritime and agricultural gods, including Liu Mian and Zhang the Heavenly Instructor. By the 12th century, she had already become a guardian to the people of Qiaodou when they suffered drought, flood, epidemic, piracy, or brigandage. She protected women during childbirth and assisted with conception. As the patron of the seas, her temples were among the first erected by arriving overseas Chinese, as they gave thanks for their safe passage. Despite his Islamic upbringing, the Ming admiral and explorer Zheng He credited Mazu for protecting one of his journeys, prompting a new title in 1409. He patronized the Mazu temples of Nanjing and prevailed upon the Yongle Emperor to construct the city's Tianfei Palace; because of its imperial patronage and prominent location in the empire's southern capital, this was long the largest and highest-status center of Mazuism in China. During the Southern Ming resistance to the Qing, Mazu was credited with helping Koxinga's army capture Taiwan from the Dutch; she was later said to have personally aided some of Shi Lang's men in defeating Liu Guoxuan at Penghu in 1683, ending the independent kingdom of Koxinga's descendants and placing Taiwan under Qing control. The Ming prince Zhu Shugui's palace was converted into Tainan's Grand Matsu Temple, the first to bear her new title of "Heavenly Empress".


title: Mazu

text: In late imperial China, sailors often carried effigies of Mazu to ensure safe crossings. Some boats still carry small shrines on their bows. Mazu charms are also used as medicine, including as salves for blistered feet. As late as the 19th century, the Qing government officially credited her divine intervention with their 1884 victory over the French at Tamsui District during the Sino-French War and specially honored the town's temple to her, which had served as General Sun Kaihua's headquarters during the fighting. When US forces bombed Taiwan during World War II, Mazu was said to intercept bombs and defend the people.


title: Mazu

text: Today, Mazuism is practiced in about 1500 temples in 26 countries around the world, mostly in the Sinosphere or the overseas Chinese communities such as that of the predominantly Hokkien Philippines. Of these temples, almost 1000 are on Taiwan, representing a doubling of the 509 temples recorded in 1980 and more than a dozen times the number recorded before 1911. These temples are generally registered as Taoist, although some are considered Buddhist. There are more than 90 Mazu Temples in Hong Kong. In Mainland China, Mazuism is formally classified as a cult outside of Buddhism and Taoism, although numerous Buddhist and Taoist temples include shrines to her. Her worship is generally permitted but not encouraged, with most surviving temples concentrated around Putian in Fujian. Including the twenty on Meizhou Island, there are more than a hundred in the prefecture and another 70 elsewhere in the province, mostly in the settlements along its coast. There are more than 40 temples in Guangdong and Hainan and more than 30 in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, but many historical temples are now treated as museums and operated by local parks or cultural agencies. From the early 2000s, pilgrimages from Taiwan to temples in Fujian have been permitted, particularly to the one in Yongchun, where Taiwan's Xingang Mazu Temple has been allowed to open a branch temple. The A-Ma Temple on Macao Island is the probable source of its name in Portuguese and English; the historic and protected Tin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay in Hong Kong is the source of the Tin Hau area's name from the Cantonese pronunciation of one of Mazu's titles, "Empress of Heaven". The Mazu temple in Melbourne is the largest Chinese temple in Australia.


title: Mazu

text: A major project to build the world's tallest Mazu statue at Tanjung Simpang Mengayau in Kudat, Borneo, was officially launched by Sabah. The statue was to be 10 stories high, but was canceled due to protests from Muslims in Sabah and political interference. In its absence, the world's tallest statue of the goddess is the Mazu of Tianjin that was erected in 2012.


title: Mazu

text: Informal centers of pilgrimage for Mazu's believers include Meizhou Island, the Zhenlan Temple in Taichung on Taiwan, and Xianliang Temple in Xianliang Harbor, Putian. Together with Meizhou Island, the Xianliang Temple is considered the most sacred place to Mazu, whose supposed death happened on the seashore of Xianliang Harbor. A ceremony attended by pilgrims from different provinces of China and from Taiwan commemorates this legendary event each year in October.


title: Mazu

text: The primary temple festival in Mazuism is Lin Moniang's traditional birthday on the 23rd day of the 3rd month of the Chinese lunar calendar. In Taiwan, there are two major pilgrimages made in her honor, the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage and the Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage. In both festivals, pilgrims walk more than 300 kilometers to carry a litter containing statues of the goddess between two temples. Another major festival is that around the Tianhou Temple in Lukang. Depending on the year, Mazu's festival day may fall as early as mid-April or as late as mid-May.


title: Mazu

text: The anniversary of her death or supposed ascension into Heaven is also celebrated, usually on the Double Ninth Festival (the ninth day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar).


title: Mazu

text: After her death, Mazu was remembered as a young lady who wore a red dress as she roamed over the seas. In religious statuary, she is usually clothed in the attire of an empress, and decorated with accessories such as a ceremonial "hu" tablet and a flat-topped imperial cap ("mian'guan") with rows of beads ("liu") hanging from the front and back. Her temples are usually protected by the door gods Qianliyan and Shunfeng'er. These vary in appearance but are frequently demons, Qianliyan red with two horns and two yellow sapphire eyes and Shunfeng'er green with one horn and two ruby eyes.


title: Mazu

text: "Lin Moniang" (2000), a minor Fujianese TV series, was a dramatization of Mazu's life as a mortal. "Mazu" 2007) was a Taiwanese animated feature film from the Chinese Cartoon Production Co. depicting her life as a shamaness and goddess. Its production director Teng Chiao admitted the limited appeal to the domestic market: "If young people were our primary target audience, we wouldn't tell the story of Mazu in the first place since they are not necessarily interested in the ancient legend[;] neither do they have loyalty to made-in-Taiwan productions". Instead, "when you look to global markets, the question that foreign buyers always ask is what can best represent Taiwan". "Mazu", with its story about "a magic girl and two cute sidekicks [Mazu's door gods Qianliyan and Shunfeng'er] spiced up with a strong local flavor" was instead designed with an intent to appeal to international markets interested in Taiwan.


title: Film criticism

text: Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets; and academic criticism by film scholars who are informed by film theory and are published in academic journals. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place in the history of its genre or in the whole of film history.


title: Film criticism

text: Film criticism is also labeled as a type of writing that perceives films as possible achievements and wishes to convey their differences, as well as the films being made in a level of quality that is satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Film criticism is also associated with the journalistic type of criticism, which is grounded in the media's effects being developed, and journalistic criticism resides in standard structures such as newspapers. Journal articles pertaining to films served as representatives for the film critics who desired to increase the amount of communication about movies to a high degree that ascended above content that was normally featured in popular publications. The critics who work in the media are normally commissionaires who affect culture, since the judgments and choices of critics have the effect of influencing what audience members perceive about objects that are supplied to them, and critics are also able to influence how the audience members choose to think about objects that are supplied to them.


title: Film criticism

text: In the current era of history, film criticism is interestingly rich in having digital devices that allow films to be analyzed through visual and auditory methods that involve critical strategies of creativity that allow people to become immersed in film criticism. Film criticism is also associated with the cultural type of criticism, which is also referred to as academic criticism, and academic criticism is able to primarily make interpretations of films from the viewpoint of directors while the interpretations place emphasis on parallels that films have with previous works that were deemed to be of high quality.


title: Film criticism

text: Film was introduced in the late 19th century. The earliest artistic criticism of film emerged in the early 1900s. The first paper to serve as a critique of film came out of "The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal", followed by the "Bioscope" in 1908.


title: Film criticism

text: Film is a relatively new form of art, in comparison to music, literature and painting which have existed since ancient times. Early writing on film sought to argue that films could also be considered a form of art. In 1911, Ricciotto Canudo wrote a manifesto proclaiming cinema to be the "Sixth Art" (later "Seventh Art"). For many decades after, film was still being accorded less prestige than longer-established art forms. In Sweden, serious film criticism was spearheaded by Bengt Idestam-Almquist, whom the Swedish Film Institute has called the "father of Swedish film criticism".


title: Film criticism

text: By the 1920s, critics were analyzing film for its merit and value, and as more than just entertainment. The growing popularity of the medium caused major newspapers to start hiring film critics. In the 1930s, the film industry saw audiences grow increasingly silent as films were now accompanied by sound. However, in the late 1930s audiences became influenced by print news sources reporting on movies and criticism became largely centered around audience reactions within the theaters.


title: Film criticism

text: In the decades of the 1930s and the 1940s, the type of criticism pertaining to films had to overcome some difficult challenges. The first difficult challenge involves how film criticism in the 1930s decade didn't have any stable foundations to reside on, and film criticism also involved critics having vocabularies that were limited. During the 1930s, the jobs of critics weren't perceived to be great and critics didn't earn high wages for their work. The next difficult challenge involves the fact that the industry related to film even attempted to use intimidation as a way of making movie critics cease with reviewing films. In the year of 1948, a critic named Eileen Arnot Robertson was forcibly removed from her job as a critic. Despite the fact that she filed a lawsuit against the film industry, the film industry said that Robertson's firing didn't occur out of maliciousness. These difficult challenges led to the existences of movie critics who had respect for films, and those new film critics sought to make film criticism be a respected job.


title: Film criticism

text: In the 1940s, new forms of criticism emerged. Essays analyzing films were written with a distinctive charm and style, and sought to persuade the reader to accept the critic's argument. This trend brought film criticism into the mainstream, gaining the attention of many popular magazines; this eventually made film reviews and critiques a staple among most print media. As the decades passed, some critics gained fame, and a few became household names, among them James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, and more recently Roger Ebert and Peter Travers.


title: Film criticism

text: The film industry also got the chance to see that sound was able to influence how people behaved in movie theaters. When people spoke or made other kinds of sounds, they would be causing disruptions that created difficulties for people to listen to the conversations that were occurring in films. Audience members changed how they behaved in movie theaters, since they would shush people as a way of communicating the messages related to telling other people that they needed to be silent. By keeping themselves in silence, audience members such as film critics were able to make all of their attention be on the movies that they were watching.


title: Film criticism

text: Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications mainly review new releases, although they also review older films. An important task for these reviews is to help readers decide whether they want to see a particular film. A film review will typically explain the premise of the film before discussing its merits or flaws. The verdict is often summarized using a rating system, such as 5- or 4-star scales, academic-style grades, and pictograms (such as those used by the "San Francisco Chronicle"). Film reviews are created with the purposes of making the characters, movie plots, and the directors be known in detailed descriptions to influence audience members into deciding if films need to be viewed or be ignored.


title: Film criticism

text: Some well-known journalistic critics are James Agee ("Time", "The Nation"); Vincent Canby ("The New York Times"); Roger Ebert ("Chicago Sun-Times"); Mark Kermode (BBC, "The Observer"); James Berardinelli; Philip French ("The Observer"); Pauline Kael ("The New Yorker"); Manny Farber ("The New Republic", "Time", "The Nation"); Peter Bradshaw ("The Guardian"); Michael Phillips ("Chicago Tribune"); Andrew Sarris ("The Village Voice"); Joel Siegel ("Good Morning America"); Jonathan Rosenbaum ("Chicago Reader"); and Christy Lemire ("What The Flick?!").


title: Film criticism

text: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel popularised the practice of reviewing films via a television program, in the show "Siskel & Ebert At the Movies", which became syndicated in the 1980s. Both critics had established their careers in print media, and continued to write reviews for newspapers during the run of their television show.


title: Film criticism

text: Research says that there are ways in how film critics are able to write criticisms that involve critical discussions containing rationality. When critics are looking for film criticisms that are factual, they must not behave with excessive optimism or be too demanding. Creations and criticisms are activities that humans participate in, and these activities cannot be substituted out for an objective list of morals to be utilized. Humans are restrained by the fact that criticisms cannot communicate messages for forms of artwork, and only the artworks can communicate their messages. The second way in how film critics are able to write criticisms that involve critical discussions containing rationality involves critics analyzing their reasons for not liking specific movies, and critics must discover if they dislike movies for the same criteria that caused them to initially dislike specific movies. That requires utilizing criticism that is analytical and thorough with detail. The third way in how film critics are able to write criticisms that involve critical discussions containing rationality involves critics making blatant statements that are scientific in regards to the workings of films, and how the films are able to affect people. In fact, viewers can watch films to see if they are affected by the movies in the same way that the film critics were affected by them. The fourth way in how film critics are able to write criticisms that involve critical discussions containing rationality involves critics being less arrogant when they want they perceptions of films to be talked about, and critics must be aware of criticisms that have been published. The critics who want to argue must base their arguments in criticisms that have been stated by other critics. The fourth way in how film critics are able to write criticisms that involve critical discussions containing rationality pertains to critics moving away from the idea that artwork such as a film shall have clear meanings. Instead, critics must view artwork such as films to be the results of working hard, many hours of thinking, and ideas being compromised for meanings to not be clear. This research concludes that film critics must repeatedly view films as a way of studying them, if they desire to write thorough reviews on those particular films. Secondly, film critics have the task of making sure that they are highly informed about the film and film critics are also responsible for initiating the discussions about the films. Film critics are also responsible for knowing the creators of the films. Thirdly, film critics must blatantly state their own biases and preferences without associating them with any theories. Fourthly, film critics must appreciate the films that are given positive criticisms and film critics must not be ungrateful towards those films. Finally, a film critic must enjoy the movies that they are criticizing. In this specific regard, a film critic must also want to make their reviews persuade other people watch the movies that the film critic has criticized.


title: Film criticism

text: In the academic field of films and cinema, several studies involving research have discovered a positive connection between film critics evaluating films and how well the films perform with audience members. Also, studies involving research in the fields of films and cinema have discovered a connection between film critics evaluating films and audience members having interests or no interests in viewing those films. Based in the perspective of an audience member, a review serves as more than an object that is useful for making decisions. Listening to a review from a critic, watching a critic's review, and reading a critic's review are all ways in which the review is useful to an audience member. The critic's review is able to be referenced in conversations where audience members communicate with other individuals, and audience members can communicate messages about the artistic film that was critically examined or connect the criticism to problems that occur in society.


title: Film criticism

text: Websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic seek to improve the usefulness of film reviews by compiling them and assigning a score to each in order to gauge the general reception a film receives. Another aggregator is the Movie Review Query Engine, which is a large data storage on the internet that stores interviews, reviews about movies, news, and other kinds of materials that pertain to specific films. These areas of storage are not intended to help people find specific films or movie content that has aired on television, but the storages are able to help people find reliable film criticisms that can be used as readings for students.


title: Film criticism

text: Blogs are a good example to view in relation to how the internet has grown to where social networks and live chats exist alongside websites such as YouTube where people can post their own content. That is because blogging has created new ways for people to make themselves engage with cinematic movies. People who engage themselves with movies choose to participate in various forms of film criticism by using video or DVD clips from YouTube that are placed alongside parts of other films for the sound effects or images from the other films to be used in criticizing the sounds or images that pertain to the YouTube clips that are being criticized. Film critics are also reviewers who are amateurs on websites such as IMDb. Also, many postings from amateur film critics are on IMDb.


title: Film criticism

text: Some websites specialize in narrow aspects of film reviewing. For instance, there are sites that focus on specific content advisories for parents to judge a film's suitability for children. Others focus on a religious perspective (e.g. CAP Alert). Still others highlight more esoteric subjects such as the depiction of science in fiction films. One such example is "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics" by Intuitor. Some online niche websites provide comprehensive coverage of the independent sector; usually adopting a style closer to print journalism. They tend to prohibit advertisement and offer uncompromising opinions free of any commercial interest. Their film critics normally have an academic film background.


title: Film criticism

text: The Online Film Critics Society, an international professional association of Internet-based cinema reviewers, consists of writers from all over the world, while New York Film Critics Online members handle reviews in the New York tri-state area.


title: Film criticism

text: Online film criticism has provided online film critics with challenges related to journalism's purpose changing on the internet. For example, critics must contend with the drawback of too many critics being online to the extent of preventing critics from writing original statements. Critics can write original statements online, but there are websites that will steal their ideas and not give credit to the credit. Another challenge in film criticism pertains to film critics being pressured into writing reviews that are hasty, since users of the internet will give their attention to other topics if film critics don't post movie reviews at quick paces.


title: Film criticism

text: Community-driven review sites, that allow internet users to submit personal movie reviews, have allowed the common movie goer to express their opinion on films. Many of these sites allow users to rate films on a 0 to 10 scale, while some rely on the star rating system of 1–5, 0–5 or 0–4 stars. The votes are then converted into an overall rating and ranking for any particular film. Some of these community driven review sites include Letterboxd, Reviewer, Movie Attractions, Flixster, FilmCrave, Flickchart and Everyone's a Critic. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregate both scores from accredited critics and those submitted by users.


title: Film criticism

text: On these online review sites, users generally only have to register with the site in order to submit reviews. This means that they are a form of open access poll, and have the same advantages and disadvantages; notably, there is no guarantee that they will be a representative sample of the film's audience. In some cases, online review sites have produced wildly differing results to scientific polling of audiences. Likewise, reviews and ratings for many movies can greatly differ between the different review sites, even though there are certain movies that are well-rated (or poorly-rated) across the board.


title: Film criticism

text: Research has found that moviegoers are inclined to leave reviews for films that aren't available in movie theaters, and the amount of reviews will decrease as the films earn more money each week. When the amount of money that films earn in movie theaters is increasing, the expected quantity of movie reviews that were posted at prior points in time also increases. This ends up making individuals experience increases in their desires to write movie reviews about films that are earning high quantities of money. When movies are given high ratings, those high ratings are able to persuade viewers of movies to watch other films that share aspects of the movies that viewers prefer to see. The explanations for why movies are given high ratings are able to reach online groups of people who watch movies, and the explanations for movies having high ratings are explained through the usage of reviews that are posted in those online groups.


title: Film criticism

text: More often known as film theory or film studies, academic critique explores cinema beyond journalistic film reviews. These film critics try to examine why film works, how it works aesthetically or politically, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are usually published in scholarly journals and texts which tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines.


title: Film criticism

text: Most academic criticism of film often follows a similar format. They usually include summaries of the plot of the film to either refresh the plot to the reader or reinforce an idea of repetition in the film's genre. After this, there tends to be discussions about the cultural context, major themes and repetitions, and details about the legacy of the film.


title: Film criticism

text: Academic film criticism, or film studies can also be taught in academia, and is featured in many California colleges in the United States due to its established home of film: Hollywood. Some of these colleges include University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, as well as many other colleges across the world.


title: Film criticism

text: Academic criticism is typically divided and taught in the form of many different disciplines that tackle critique in different manors. These can include:


title: Film criticism

text: Academic film criticism is associated with formalism, which involves visual aspects and the rules regarding how they are organized as if they were forms of artwork. Formalism also involves stages of development occurring in an orderly manner, such as learning easy instructions before learning difficult ones. Stages of development in formalism also involved organized stages of development that are orderly, and one example involves people learning simple instructions before they have to follow instructions that involve complexity.


title: Film criticism

text: Academic film criticism is also associated with structuralism, which involves controlling a situation in an attempt to make it be coherent, and all the aspects of a situation are assumed to be in a structured order.


title: Film criticism

text: Academic film criticism tackles many aspects of film making and production as well as distribution. These disciplines include camera work, digitalization, lighting, and sound. Narratives, dialogues, themes, and genres are among many other things that academic film critics take into consideration and evaluate when engaging in critique.


title: Film criticism

text: Some notable academic film critics include André Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (all writers for "Cahiers du Cinéma"); Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, and Sergei Eisenstein. Godard, Truffaut and Eisenstein were also film directors.


title: Film criticism

text: The critics that participated in academic film criticism during the years between 2002 and 2006 had written reviews pertaining to the fact that they disapproved of modern films that were in the horror genre. In the year 2002, a critic named Reynold Humphries made his own discussion in "The American Horror Film" reach its end when he said that the horror genre's films were not good, and Humphries also stated that films in the horror genre weren't enjoyable. A critic named Kendall Phillips wrote a book titled "Projected Fears", and ending the book during the year 2006 involved Phillips saying that American horror films had fallen into the cycle of being movies that had predictability.


title: Film criticism

text: Film theory is also part of academic film criticism, since two main film theories have been created. The first main film theory is the part-whole theory. This theory pertains to Eisenstein's philosophy that segments of films are not artistic works on their own, and they are just unemotional aspects of reality. When those segments of films are sequenced in the form of a montage, then the films are artwork. The second film theory is that films are related to reality. Bazin's philosophy involves movies being connected to the real world, which is reality.


title: Film criticism

text: Green film criticism is defined as eco-cinecriticism. This pertains to the specific film critics who are interested in environmental types of films. The cinematic counterpart to writings about nature is the creation of documentaries on nature and films that are about wild creatures.


title: Film criticism

text: Film critics are able to be influencers in the circumstances of persuading moviegoers to view or not view in the beginning weeks of movies being available for people to view them. Research has found that negative and positive film reviews are connected to the amounts of money that films earn in box offices over a duration of eight weeks of time, which displays the fact that film critics are influential towards how well films perform in box offices. Film critics are able to influence the choices of people in the public who decide on whether or not they will view a film. Film critics frequently receive invitations to early viewings of movies before the movies are available to all of the moviegoers who aren't film critics, and viewing films at early points in time allows the film critics to write film reviews that are influential to other moviegoers. Film critics have access to information regarding the earliest phases of films, unlike the public, and the earliest phases of films are when film critics are the only reliable sources of information pertaining to the movies that will be in theaters. Research has also displayed the fact that film critics desire to give moviegoers encouragement towards viewing films that are worth viewing while they also display innovation, instead of viewing movies that are simplistic.


title: Film criticism

text: However, in recent years, there has been a growing belief in the film industry that critic aggregators (especially Rotten Tomatoes) are increasing the collective influence of film critics. The underperformance of several films in 2017 was blamed on their low scores on Rotten Tomatoes. This has led to studies such as one commissioned by 20th Century Fox claiming that younger viewers give the website more credibility than the major studio marketing, which undercuts its effectiveness.


title: Film criticism

text: Today, fan-run film analysis websites like Box Office Prophets, CineBee and Box Office Guru routinely factor more into the opinions of the general public on films produced.


title: Film criticism

text: Research says that academic studies pertaining to films had a thorough histiography pertaining to films, which also included different styles of films throughout history. However, the academic studies almost made film criticism reach its end. The academic type of writing pertaining to films had created knowledge, which ended up appearing in areas that had been useful for writing film criticisms in a traditional style. Writing about academic films puts emphasis on generalized statements that can be verified. Writing academic films also involves film critics preferring to view films that are typical, instead of viewing films that are bizarre. That is because of the fact that ordinary kinds of films can be reviewed with generalized statements that can be verified.


title: Film criticism

text: The "undulating curve of shifting expectations" (UCoSE) refers to both the title of a recurring entertainment industry feature in "New York" magazine by cultural critic Adam Sternbergh and also to a concept of media analysis co-developed by writer Emily Nussbaum.


title: Film criticism

text: There have been many complaints against the film-criticism industry for its underrepresentation of women. A study of the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes shows that 91 per cent of writers for movie or entertainment magazines and websites are men, as are 90 per cent of those for trade publications, 80 per cent of critics for general interest magazines like "Time", and 70 per cent of reviewers for radio formats such as NPR.


title: Film criticism

text: Writing for "The Atlantic", Kate Kilkenny argued that women were better represented in film criticism before the rise of the Internet. In the past, when film was considered less prestigious than visual art and literature, it was easier for women to break into film criticism. In the year 1929, Iris Barry was a female film critic from Britain. When Barry lived in London, she earned money from being a writer for magazines, a newspaper, and periodical articles. Barry wrote film criticisms that discussed films that were made in Britain, films that were made in America, and Barry only wrote film criticisms on a selective amount of German movies. Barry also wrote film criticisms for French movies that were made as experiments. Barry wrote film criticisms with a critical amount of analysis. Judith Crist and Pauline Kael were two of the most influential film critics of the 1960s and 1970s. The Internet led to a decline in jobs at small newspapers where women were more likely to review films, whereas the more male-dominated jobs at major newspapers survived better. The Internet also encouraged a growth in niche review websites that were even more male-dominated than older media. Kilkenny also suggested that the shortage of female critics was related to the shortage of female opinion columnists.


title: Film criticism

text: Clem Bastow, culture writer at "The Guardian Australia", discussed the possible effects of this on the critical response to the 2015 film "The Intern", which received mixed reviews from critics:The critical response to "The Intern" was fascinating. There's a subset of male critics that clearly see Nancy Meyers as code for chick flick and react with according bile. What's very interesting, though, is that I think female critics, working in an industry that is coded as very male, if not macho, often feel the need to go hard on certain films for women, presumably because they worry that they'll be dismissed, critically speaking, if they praise a film like "The Intern" as though they're only reviewing it favorably because they're women.


title: Film criticism

text: Matt Reynolds of "Wired" pointed out that "men tend to look much more favorably on films with more masculine themes, or male leading actors." On online review sites such as IMDb, this leads to skewed, imbalanced review results as 70 per cent of reviewers on the site are men.


title: Film criticism

text: A study using Johanson analysis was used evaluate the representation of women in 270 films. Johanson complied statistics for the year 2015 on how having a female protagonist affected a movie, with the following results:


title: Film criticism

text: As of 2013, American film critics earned about US$82,000 a year. Newspaper and magazine critics made $27,364-$49,574. Online movie critics earned $2-$200 per review. TV critics made up to $40,000-$60,000 per month.


title: Central Federal District

text: The Central Federal District () is one of the eight federal districts of Russia. Geographically, the district is situated in the extreme west of present-day Russia; although it can be considered as the central region of European Russia. The district covers an area of , and recorded a population of 38,427,537 (81.3% urban) in the 2010 Census. The Presidential Envoy to the Central Federal District is Igor Shchyogolev.


title: Central Federal District

text: The district comprises the Central and Central Black Earth economic regions and eighteen federal subjects:


title: Central Federal District

text: , the GRP in Central Federal District reached RUB33.6 trillion(€407 billion) and around €10,000 per capita.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands (, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up the Sunda Islands. The islands are part of a volcanic arc, the Sunda Arc, formed by subduction along the Sunda Trench in the Java Sea. A bit more than 20 million people live on the islands. Etymologically, Nusa Tenggara means "Southeast Islands" from the words of "nusa" which means 'island' from Old Javanese language and "tenggara" means 'southeast'.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: The main Lesser Sunda Islands are, from west to east: Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Savu, Rote, Timor, Atauro, Alor archipelago, Barat Daya Islands, and Tanimbar Islands.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: The Lesser Sunda Islands consist of two geologically distinct archipelagos. The northern archipelago, which includes Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores and Wetar, is volcanic in origin. A number of these volcanoes, like Mount Rinjani on Lombok, are still active while others, such as Ilikedeka on Flores, are extinct. The northern archipelago began to be formed during the Pliocene, about 15 million years ago, as a result of the collision between the Australian and the Asian plates. The islands of the southern archipelago, including Sumba, Timor and Babar, are non-volcanic and appear to belong to the Australian plate. The geology and ecology of the northern archipelago share similar history, characteristics, and processes with the southern Maluku Islands, which continue the same island arc to the east.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: There is a long history of geological study of these regions since Indonesian colonial times; however, the geological formation and progression is not fully understood, and theories of the geological evolution of the islands changed extensively during the last decades of the 20th century.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: Lying at the collision of two tectonic plates, the Lesser Sunda Islands comprise some of the most geologically complex and active regions in the world.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: The Lesser Sunda Islands differ from the large islands of Java or Sumatra in consisting of many small islands, sometimes divided by deep oceanic trenches. Movement of flora and fauna between islands is limited, leading to the evolution of a high rate of localized species, most famously the Komodo dragon. As described by Alfred Wallace in "The Malay Archipelago", the Wallace Line passes between Bali and Lombok, along the deep waters of the Lombok Strait which formed a water barrier even when lower sea levels linked the now-separated islands and landmasses on either side. The islands east of the Lombok Strait are part of Wallacea, and are thus characterised by a blend of wildlife of Asian and Australasian origin in this region. Asian species predominate in the Lesser Sundas: Weber's Line, which marks the boundary between the parts of Wallacea with mainly Asian and Australasian species respectively, runs to the east of the group. These islands have the driest climate in Indonesia, and tropical dry broadleaf forests are predominant, in contrast to the tropical moist forests that prevail in most of Indonesia.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: More than half of the original vegetation of the islands has been cleared for planting of rice and other crops, for settlement and by consequent forest fires. Only Sumbawa now contains a large area of intact natural forest, while Komodo, Rincah and Padar are now protected as Komodo National Park.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: While many ecological problems affect both small islands and large landmasses, small islands suffer their particular problems and are highly exposed to external forces. Development pressures on small islands are increasing, although their effects are not always anticipated. Although Indonesia is richly endowed with natural resources, the resources of the small islands of Nusa Tenggara are limited and specialised; furthermore human resources in particular are limited.


title: Lesser Sunda Islands

text: The Lesser Sundas comprise many islands, most of which are part of Indonesia and are administered as the provinces of Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara and the southern part of Maluku.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The modern Celts (, see pronunciation of "Celt") are a related group of ethnicities who share similar Celtic languages, cultures and artistic histories, and who live in or descend from one of the regions on the western extremities of Europe populated by the Celts.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A modern Celtic identity emerged in Western Europe following the identification of the native peoples of the Atlantic fringe as Celts by Edward Lhuyd in the 18th century. Lhuyd and others equated the Celts described by Greco-Roman writers with the pre-Roman peoples of France, Great Britain, and Ireland. They categorised the ancient Irish and British languages as Celtic languages. The descendants of these ancient languages are the Brittonic (Breton, Cornish, and Welsh variants) and Gaelic (Irish, Manx, and Scottish variants) languages, and the people who speak them are considered modern Celts.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The concept of modern Celtic identity evolved during the course of the 19th century into the Celtic Revival. By the late 19th century, it often took the form of ethnic nationalism, particularly within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, where the Irish War of Independence resulted in the secession of the Irish Free State, in 1922. There were also significant Welsh, Scottish, and Breton nationalist movements, giving rise to the concept of Celtic nations. After World War II, the focus of the Celtic movement shifted to linguistic revival and protectionism, e.g. with the foundation of the Celtic League in 1961, dedicated to preserving the surviving Celtic languages.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The Celtic revival also led to the emergence of musical and artistic styles identified as Celtic. Music typically drew on folk traditions within the Celtic nations. Art drew on the decorative styles of Celtic art produced by the ancient Celts and early medieval Christianity, along with folk-styles. Cultural events to promote "inter-Celtic" cultural exchange also emerged.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In the late 20th century some authors criticised the idea of modern Celtic identity, usually by downplaying the value of the linguistic component in defining culture and cultural connection, sometimes also arguing that there never was a common Celtic culture, even in ancient times. These authors usually opposed language preservation efforts. Malcolm Chapman's 1992 book "The Celts: The Construction of a Myth" led to what archaeologist Barry Cunliffe has called a "politically correct disdain for the use of 'Celt.'"


title: Celts (modern)

text: Traditionally, the essential defining criterion of Celticity is seen as "peoples and countries that do, or once did, use Celtic languages" and it is asserted that an index of connectedness to the Celtic languages has to be borne in mind before branching out into other cultural domains. Another approach to defining "the Celts" is the contemporary inclusive and associative definition used by Vincent and Ruth Megaw (1996) and Raimund Karl (2010) that a Celt is someone who uses a Celtic language or produces or uses a distinctive Celtic cultural expression (such as art or music) or has been referred to as a Celt in historical materials or has identified themselves or been identified by others as a Celt or has a demonstrated descent from the Celts (such as family history or DNA ancestry).


title: Celts (modern)

text: Since the Enlightenment, the term "Celtic" has been applied to a wide variety of peoples and cultural traits present and past. Today, "Celtic" is often used to describe people of the Celtic nations (the Bretons, the Cornish, the Irish, the Manx, the Scots and the Welsh) and their respective cultures and languages. Except for the Bretons (if discounting Norman and Channel Islander connections), all groups mentioned have been subject to strong Anglicisation since the Early Modern period, and hence are also described as participating in an Anglo-Celtic macro-culture. By the same token, the Bretons have been subject to strong Frenchification since the Early Modern period, and can similarly be described as participating in a Franco-Celtic macro-culture.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Less common is the assumption of "Celticity" for European cultures deriving from Continental Celtic roots (Gauls or Celtiberians). These were either Romanised or Germanised much earlier, before the Early Middle Ages. Nevertheless, "Celtic" origins are many times implied for continental groups such as the Asturians, Galicians, Portuguese, Swiss, Northern Italians, Belgians and Austrians. The names of Belgium and Aquitaine hark back to "Gallia Belgica" and "Gallia Aquitania", respectively, in turn named for the Belgae and the Aquitani. The Latin name of the Swiss Confederacy, "Confoederatio Helvetica", harks back to the Helvetii, the name of Galicia to the Gallaeci and the Auvergne of France to the Averni.


title: Celts (modern)

text: 'Celt' has been adopted as a label of self-identification by a variety of peoples at different times. 'Celticity' can refer to the inferred links between them.


title: Celts (modern)

text: During the 19th century, French nationalists gave a privileged significance to their descent from the Gauls. The struggles of Vercingetorix were portrayed as a forerunner of the 19th-century struggles in defence of French nationalism, including the wars of both Napoleons (Napoleon I of France and Napoleon III of France). Basic French history textbooks emphasised the ways in which Gauls (""Nos ancêtres les Gaulois..."", 'our ancestors the Gauls') could be seen as an example of cultural assimilation. In the late Middle Ages, some French writers believed (incorrectly) that their language was primarily Celtic, rather than Latin. A similar use of "Celticity" for 19th-century nationalism was made in Switzerland, when the Swiss were seen to originate in the Celtic tribe of the Helvetii, a link still found in the official Latin name of Switzerland, "Confœderatio Helvetica", the source of the nation code CH and the name used on postage stamps (Helvetia).


title: Celts (modern)

text: Before the advance of Indo-European studies, philologists established that there was a relationship between the Goidelic and Brythonic languages, as well as a relationship between these languages and the extinct Celtic languages such as Gaulish, spoken in classical times. The terms Goidelic and Brythonic were first used to describe the two Celtic language families by Edward Lhuyd in his 1707 study and, according to the National Museum Wales, during that century "people who spoke Celtic languages were seen as Celts."


title: Celts (modern)

text: At the same time, there was also a tendency to stress other heritages in the British Isles at certain times. For example, in the Isle of Man, in the Victorian era, the "Viking" heritage was emphasised, and in Scotland, both Norse and Anglo-Saxon heritage was emphasised.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A romantic image of the Celt as a noble savage was cultivated by the early William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lady Charlotte Guest, Lady Llanover, James Macpherson, Chateaubriand, Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué and the many others influenced by them. This image coloured not only the English perception of their neighbours on the so-called "Celtic fringe" (compare the stage Irishman), but also Irish nationalism and its analogues in the other Celtic-speaking countries. Among the enduring products of this resurgence of interest in a romantic, pre-industrial, brooding, mystical Celticity are Gorseddau, the revival of the Cornish language, and the revival of the Gaelic games.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The "modern Celtic" groups' distinctiveness as "national", as opposed to regional, minorities has been periodically recognised by major British newspapers. For example, a "Guardian" editorial in 1990 pointed to these differences, and said that they should be constitutionally recognised:


title: Celts (modern)

text: Smaller minorities also have equally proud visions of themselves as irreducibly Welsh, Irish, Manx or Cornish. These identities are "distinctly national" in ways which "proud people from Yorkshire", much less proud people from Berkshire will never know. Any new constitutional settlement "which ignores these factors" will be built on uneven ground.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The Republic of Ireland, on surpassing Britain's GDP per capita in the 1990s for the first time, was given the moniker "Celtic tiger". Thanks in part to campaigning on the part of Cornish regionalists, Cornwall was able to obtain Objective One funding from the European Union. Scotland and Wales obtained agencies like the Welsh Development Agency, and in the first two decades of the 21st century Scottish and Welsh Nationalists have supported the institutions of the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd (Welsh Parliament). More broadly, distinct identities in opposition to that of the metropolitan capitals have been forged and taken strong root.


title: Celts (modern)

text: These latter evolutions have proceeded hand in hand with the growth of a pan-Celtic or inter-Celtic dimension, seen in many organisations and festivals operating across various Celtic countries. Celtic studies departments at many universities in Europe and beyond, have studied the various ancient and modern Celtic languages and associated history and folklore under one roof.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Some of the most vibrant aspects of modern Celtic culture are music, song and festivals. Under the "Music", "Festivals" and "Dance" sections below, the richness of these aspects that have captured the world's attention are outlined.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The USA has also taken part in discussions of modern Celticity. For example, Virginia Senator James H. Webb, in his 2004 book "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America", controversially asserts that the early "pioneering" immigrants to North America were of Scots-Irish origins. He goes on to argue that their distinct "Celtic traits" (loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness), in contrast to the "Anglo-Saxon" settlers, helped construct the modern "American identity". Irish Americans also played an important role in the shaping of 19th-century Irish republicanism through the Fenian movement and the development of view that the Great Hunger was a British atrocity.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In 1996, Dr Ruth Megaw and Emeritus Professor Vincent Megaw of Flinders University in the "Antiquity" article "Ancient Celts and modern ethnicity" examined "ethnic identity" particularly in relation to "Celtic identity" in arguing against critics seemingly motivated by an English nationalist agenda opposed to further integration with Europe who saw modern Celtic identity as a threat.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In 1998, Dr Simon James of the University of Leicester in the "Antiquity" article "Celts, politics and motivation in archaeology" replied to Ruth and Vincent Megaw's article questioning the suitability of the term "Celtic" in the historic sense. The core of his argument was that the Iron Age peoples of Britain should be considered not as generic Celts, but as a mosaic of different societies, each with their own traditions and histories.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Later in 1998, this line of reasoning came under criticism, being labelled an intellectual extension of modern British cultural colonialism, as well as for simplifying the anthropological correlation between material culture and ethnicity. Ruth and Vincent Megaw in the Antiquity article "The Mechanism of (Celtic) Dreams?': A Partial Response to Our Critics." attacked 'Celt-sceptics' for being motivated by English nationalism or anxieties about the decline of British imperial power.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Simon James, in 1998, wrote a response arguing that the rejection of a Celtic past was not 'nationalist' but partly due to archaeological evidence, and usually by a post-colonial and multi-cultural agenda with recognition that Britain has always been home to multiple identities.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Recently the Insular Celts have increasingly been seen as part of an Atlantic trading-networked culture speaking Celtic languages of the Atlantic Bronze Age and probably earlier.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In 2003, Professor John Collis of the University of Sheffield wrote a book titled "The Celts: Origins, Myths and Invention", itself criticised in 2004 by Ruth and Vincent Megaw in "Antiquity".


title: Celts (modern)

text: Six nations tend to be most associated with a modern Celtic identity, and are considered the "Celtic nations".


title: Celts (modern)

text: These six nations alone are considered Celtic by the Celtic League and the Celtic Congress, amongst others. These organisations ascribe to a definition of Celticity-based mainly upon language. Celtic languages have survived (or in some cases been revived) and continue to be used to varying degrees in these six geographical areas. There are also Celtic nomads: Irish Travellers called "Pavee" that speak a language called Shelta that is a creole of Irish Gaelic and other languages, and Indigenous Highland Scottish Travellers called "Tinkers" who speak a language called Beurla Reagaird that is an acrolect of Scottish Gaelic.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A number of activists on behalf of other regions/nations have also sought recognition as modern Celts, reflecting the wide diffusion of ancient Celts across Europe. Notable regions include Galicia, Northern Portugal, Asturias and Cantabria.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A Celtic language did not survive in Galicia / Northern Portugal (together Gallaecia), Asturias nor Cantabria, and as such they fall outside of the litmus test used by the Celtic League, and the Celtic Congress. Nevertheless, many organisations organised around Celticity consider that Galicia / Northern Portugal (Douro, Minho and Tras-os-Montes) and Asturias "can claim a Celtic cultural or historic heritage". These claims to Celticity are rooted in the long historical existence of Celts in these regions and ethnic connections to other Atlantic Celtic peoples (see Celtiberians, Celtici and Castro culture). In 2009, the Gallaic Revival Movement, sponsored by the Liga Celtiga Galaica (the Galician Celtic League), claimed to be reconstructing the Q-Celtic Gallaic language based on the "Atebivota Dictionary" and "Old Celtic Dictionary" compiled by Vincent F. Pintado.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Elements of Celtic music, dance, and folklore can be found within England (e.g. Yan Tan Tethera, well dressing, Halloween), and the Cumbric language survived until the collapse of the Kingdom of Strathclyde in about 1018. England as a whole comprises many distinct regions, and some of these regions, such as Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumbria, Western Yorkshire and Devon can claim more Celtic heritage than others. In 2009, it was claimed that revival of the Cumbric language was being attempted in Cumberland, England, however the idea that "Cumbric" was separate from Old Welsh has been criticised as stemming from the difficulty that many English historians have with accepting Old Welsh as the language once spoken all over England. It was suggested by Colin Lewis in Carn magazine that revivalists in the north of England use Modern Welsh to enable use of Welsh's existing rich cultural basis rather than having to "reinvent the wheel" in much the same way as has been done successfully in Derbyshire, another area where elements of Celtic culture survive.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Similarly, in France outside of Brittany, in Auvergne chants are sung around bonfires remembering a Celtic god. There are also modern attempts to revive the polytheistic religion of the Gauls.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A profound interest in genealogy and family history is noted as a feature of the culture of the Celtic nations and regions and people with a Celtic heritage. Historically, some people in Celtic areas could recite their genealogy back though the generations as history, moving rhythmically from one name to another using only Christian names as illustrated by lyrics of the Runrig song Sìol Ghoraidh "The Genealogy of Goraidh".


title: Celts (modern)

text: The genetic disorder hereditary haemochromatosis has by far its highest prevalence rate among people of Celtic ancestry. Other traits far more prevalent among people of Celtic ancestry include lactase persistence and red hair, with 46% of Irish and at least 36% of Highland Scots being carriers of red-head variants of the MC1R gene, possibly an adaptation to the cloudy weather of the areas where they live.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Although they are not usually considered a Celtic nation, the Faroe Islands have a population with a large Celtic heritage in genetic terms. Recent DNA analyses have revealed that Y chromosomes, tracing male descent, are 87% Scandinavian, whereas the mitochondrial DNA, tracing female descent, is 84% Celtic. The same can be said about Icelanders. The founder population of Iceland came from Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia: studies of mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes indicate that 62% of Icelanders' matrilineal ancestry derives from Scotland and Ireland (with most of the rest being from Scandinavia), while 75% of their patrilineal ancestry derives from Scandinavia (with most of the rest being from the Irish and British Isles). In addition, there are some areas of the accepted Celtic countries whose population are mostly not of Celtic heritage: for example, the Orkney and Shetland Islands in Scotland have populations of mostly Nordic descent.


title: Celts (modern)

text: A significant portion of the populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is composed of people whose ancestors were from one of the "Celtic nations". This concerns the Irish diaspora most significantly (see also Irish American), but to a lesser extent also the Welsh diaspora and the Cornish diaspora.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The most common mother-tongue amongst the Fathers of Confederation which saw the formation of Canada was Gaelic.


title: Celts (modern)

text: There is a movement in Cape Breton for a separate province in Canada, as espoused by the Cape Breton Labour Party and others.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In some former British colonies, or particular regions within them, the term Anglo-Celtic has emerged as a descriptor of an ethnic grouping. In particular, Anglo-Celtic Australian is a term comprising about 80% of the population.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The claim that distinctly Celtic styles of music exist was made during the nineteenth century, and was associated with the revival of folk traditions and pan-Celtic ideology. The Welsh anthem "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" was adopted as a pan-Celtic anthem. Though there are links between Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic folk musics, very different musical traditions existed in Wales and Brittany. Nevertheless, Gaelic styles were adopted as typically Celtic even by Breton revivalists such as Paul Ladmirault.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Celticism came to be associated with the bagpipe and the harp. The harp is considered to be the national instrument of Wales and is used to accompany penillion singing (or cerdd dant) where the harpist plays a melody and the singer sings in counterpoint to it. The roots revival, applied to Celtic music, has brought much inter-Celtic cross-fertilisation, as, for instance, the revival by Welsh musicians of the use of the mediaeval Welsh bagpipe under the influence of the Breton "binioù", Irish "uillean" pipes and famous Scottish pipes, or the Scots have revived the "bodhran" from Irish influence. Charles le Goffic introduced the Scottish Highland pipes to Brittany.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Unaccompanied or A cappella styles of singing are performed across the modern Celtic world due to the folk music revival, popularity of Celtic choirs, world music, scat singing and hip hop rapping in Celtic languages. Traditional rhythmic styles used to accompany dancing and now performed are Puirt a beul from Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Sean-nós singing from Ireland and Kan ha diskan from Brittany. Other traditional unaccompanied styles sung currently are Waulking song and Psalm singing or Lining out both from Scotland.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The emergence of folk-rock led to the creation of a popular music genre labelled Celtic music which "frequently involves the blending of traditional and modern forms, e.g. the Celtic-punk of The Pogues, the ambient music of Enya ... the Celtic-rock of Runrig, Rawlins Cross and Horslips." Pan-Celtic music festivals were established, notably the Festival Interceltique de Lorient founded in 1971, which has occurred annually since.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The Scottish Mod and Irish Fleadh Cheoil (and Gaelic Céilidh) are seen as an equivalent to the Breton Fest Noz, Cornish Troyl and Welsh Eisteddfod.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The Celtic Media Festival is an annual 3-day event that promotes the languages and cultures of the Celtic Nations and Regions in media. This festival takes place in a different Celtic nation every year and has been running since 1980.


title: Celts (modern)

text: The birthdays of the most important Celtic Saints of Celtic Christianity for each Celtic nation have become the focus for festivals, feasts and marches: Ireland – Saint Patrick's Day, Wales – Saint David's Day, Scotland – Saint Andrew's Day, Cornwall – Saint Piran's Day, Isle of Man – St Maughold's Feast Day and Brittany – Fête de la St-Yves and Grand Pardon of Sainte-Anne-d'Auray Pilgrimage.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Attitudes and customs associated with the routine of the year's work, religious beliefs and practices survived the coming of Christianity in the conservative rural areas of much of the Celtic countries. All over these lands there were sacred places which had earned their status in pre-Christian times and which had only been gingerly adopted by the Christian church and given a garnish of Christian names or dedications, hills, stones, and especially wells which can still be seen festooned with rags in observance of an old ritual.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Certain days in the year were marked as festivals, and time was counted forward and backwards from them without reference to the ordinary calendar. In her fine study of the festival of the beginning of harvest, in Irish "Lughnasa", Máire MacNeill has demonstrated the continuity between the myth known from the early Middle Ages and the customs which survive in the 21st century. Lughnasa, called Calan Awst in Welsh, is a summer feast and was dedicated to the god Lug. Of great interest is the use in the Coligny calendar of the word "Saman", a word that is still in use in Gaelic refer to Hallowe'en (evening of the saints), an important day and night and feast among the Celts (in Welsh it is called Calan Gaeaf). In Gaelic folklore, it was considered a particularly dangerous time, when magical spirits wandered through the land, particularly at nightfall. The other important feast days that also continued to be celebrated under Christian guise, but often with a pagan spirit were Imbolc (Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau in Welsh), the start of lambing, now the feast day of St Brigit and Beltane, the spring feast, now May Day (Calan Mai in Welsh).


title: Celts (modern)

text: In their pilgrimages the people combined the celebration of a holy place and a holy day. Pilgrimages are still an important feature of country life, particularly in Ireland, Brittany and Galicia. The most impressive pilgrimages include Croagh Patrick on the west coast of Ireland on the last Sunday in July (the beginning of harvest) and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The inspiration for famous Celtic singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt's million-selling CD "The Mask and the Mirror" came in part from a visit to Galicia and in particular Santiago de Compostela. Some of her songs are about Celtic feast days such as "All Souls Night" about Samhain on "The Visit" CD which featured in the erotic thriller film Jade starring David Caruso and "Huron Beltane Fire Dance" on the Parallel Dreams CD.


title: Celts (modern)

text: To signal the coming of summer and the return of real warmth, on Beltane ("Bel's Fire"), the May Day festival time, dances such as the 'Obby 'Oss dance festival at Padstow in Cornwall are held with the maypole as its focus point. The celebrations are tied to the promotion of fertility and a fruitful growing season with the 'Obby 'Oss dancing to the music through streets decked out in flowers, and sycamore, ash and maple boughs. Shortly afterwards, on 8 May, the ancient rites of Spring are celebrated with the Furry Dance procession to an ancient tune made famous in the song "The Floral Dance" through the streets of nearby Helston together with the mystery play Hal an Tow. Fertility festivals like this used to be celebrated all over Britain.


title: Celts (modern)

text: In the early 1980s seven-time world champion step-dancer, Michael Flatley toured the world with The Chieftains and performed five solo dances (including a triple spin) at Carnegie Hall, New York, in a defining moment that led more than a decade later to a show at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin that soon developed into the Irish dance extravaganza the world came to know as Riverdance Jean Butler, one of the original leads, also worked with The Chieftains. Flatley later put up his own show, Lord of the Dance. The spectacular success of both shows can certainly take the credit for the revitalised Celtomania of the last half of the 1990s.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Revival of Celtic art has been seen in the Celtic jewellery that revived ancient traditions based on the museum pieces that archaeologists had recovered. An example is the Claddagh ring produced in Galway since at least 1700, but popularised in the 1840s.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Textile craft industries based on Celtic fisher designs such as Aran jumpers were developed in the early 1900s by enterprising island women to earn income.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Following the authoritative publications on Celtic Art of the Hallstatt and La Tene periods by Joseph Déchelette (1908-1914) and Paul Jacobsthal (1944), Scottish artist George Bain popularized the revival of Celtic Art with his bestselling book "Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction" first published in 1951. Irish artist and writer Jim Fitzpatrick started to hold popular attention from the mid-1970s adopting Irish mythology in comic strip form in his series of books and posters "Nuada of the Silver Arm". From the 1980s, public fascination with Celtic Art spawned a small industry in Celtic art books and reinterpretations of ancient Celtic art works, such as the works of Welsh artist Courtney Davies.


title: Celts (modern)

text: Similarly, there has been a rebirth of interest in fantasy fiction based on Celtic themes inspired by history and the vast body of Celtic myths and legends.


title: Artist's Shit

text: Artist's Shit (Italian: ) is a 1961 artwork by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. The work consists of 90 tin cans, each reportedly filled with of faeces, and measuring , with a label in Italian, English, French, and German stating:


title: Artist's Shit

text: At the time the piece was created, Manzoni was producing works that explored the relationship between art production and human production, "Artist's Breath" (), a series of balloons filled with his own breath, being an example.


title: Artist's Shit

text: Another friend, Enrico Baj, has said that the cans were meant as "an act of defiant mockery of the art world, artists, and art criticism".


title: Artist's Shit

text: "Artist's Shit" has been interpreted in relation to Karl Marx's idea of commodity fetishism, and Marcel Duchamp's readymades.


title: Artist's Shit

text: In September 2021, YBA artist Gavin Turk made a piece called "Artist's Piss" where he canned his own urine and sold it for its weight in silver.


title: Artist's Shit

text: A tin was sold for €124,000 at Sotheby's on May 23, 2007. In October 2008, tin 83 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of £50,000–70,000. It sold for £97,250. On October 16, 2015, tin 54 was sold at Christies for £182,500. In August 2016, at an art auction in Milan, one of the tins sold for a new record of €275,000, including auction fees. The tins were originally to be valued according to their equivalent weight in gold – $37 each in 1961 – with the price fluctuating according to the market.


title: Artist's Shit

text: One of Manzoni's friends, Agostino Bonalumi, claimed that the tins are full not of faeces but plaster. The cans are steel, and thus cannot be x-rayed or scanned to determine the contents, and opening a can would cause it to lose its value; thus, the true contents of "Artist's Shit" are unknown. Bernard Bazile exhibited a partially opened can of "Artist's Shit" in 1989, titling it "Opened can of Piero Manzoni" (). The can's contents were difficult to identify on sight, being variously described as "paper wrapping with unidentified contents", "an unidentifiable wrapped object" and "a can within a can". Bazile did not attempt to extract or open the inner object.


title: Artist's Shit

text: The piece received media coverage due to a lawsuit in the mid-1990s, when an art museum in Randers, Denmark was accused by art collector John Hunov of causing leakage of a can which had been on display at the museum in 1994. Allegedly, the museum had stored the can at irresponsibly high temperatures. The lawsuit ended with the museum paying a 250,000 Danish kroner settlement to the collector.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: Darnell Mooney (born October 29, 1997) is an American football wide receiver for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Tulane.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: Darnell Mooney went to Gadsden City High School in Gadsden, Alabama. Mooney played football and basketball for the Gadsden City Titans.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: At Tulane, Mooney led the Green Wave in receiving in both his junior and senior seasons. He caught 48 passes each year, totaling 993 yards in 2018 and 713 yards in 2019. Mooney scored 19 touchdowns in his college career. At the NFL draft combine, Mooney ran a 40-yard dash time of 4.38 seconds.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: Mooney was selected by the Chicago Bears with the 173rd pick in the fifth round of the 2020 NFL Draft. He signed a four-year rookie contract with the team on July 21.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: In his NFL debut, a 27–23 victory over the Detroit Lions, Mooney caught three passes from Mitchell Trubisky for 38 yards. He scored his first touchdown the following week when he caught a 15-yard pass against the New York Giants. In Week 15 against the Minnesota Vikings, Mooney caught four passes and a touchdown; the former elevated his season reception total to 46, enabling him to set the Bears franchise record for the most catches by a rookie, passing Harlon Hill's 45 in 1954. Week 17 against the rival Packers, Mooney had his best game of his rookie season, catching 11 passes for 93 yards. Mooney sustained an ankle injury near the end of the Packers game, which forced him to miss the Bears' playoff game against the New Orleans Saints.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: For the 2021 season, Mooney caught 81 passes for 1,055 yards and four touchdowns. His best performance came in the last game where Mooney caught 12 passes for 126 yards.


title: Darnell Mooney

text: In 2022, Mooney started the first 12 games before suffering an ankle injury in Week 12. He was placed on injured reserve on November 29, 2022.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Najma Akbar Ali Heptulla (born 13 April 1940) is an Indian politician. She is the Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia since 2017. She was a six time member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, between 1980 and 2016, and Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha for sixteen years when she was a member of Congress. Later she was nominated vice-president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2012, and was a minister from 2014-2016 as a member of BJP in Narendra Modi's first government. From 2016 to 2021, she served as the 16th Governor of Manipur.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: She is a second cousin to actor Aamir Khan and grand niece of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. She contested the 13th vice-presidential election held in August 2007 but lost to Hamid Ansari by 233 votes. She took oath as a cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi headed government on 26 May 2014 and was replaced by Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in July 2016.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Najma was born as Sayyida Najma bint Yusuf on 13 April 1940 in Bhopal, Bhopal State, in present Madhya Pradesh to Sayyid Yusuf bin Ali AlHashmi and Sayyida Fatima bint Mahmood. She is a Dawoodi Bohra Ismaili Shia Gujarati Muslim with Arab ancestry, as traced by her ancestral roots in the Arabian peninsula as well as Gujarat state. She did her schooling at Motilal Vigyan Mahavidyalaya (MVM) Bhopal, and obtained an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree, both in Zoology (Cardiac Anatomy) from Vikram University, Ujjain.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: She married Akbar Ali Akhtar Heptulla in 1966, and has three daughters. Her husband, Akbar Ali Akhtar Heptulla, a manpower consultant, was instrumental in the establishment of the "Patriot" newspaper in the 1960s. He died on 4 September 2007, in New Delhi at the age of 75.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: She steadily climbed up in the Indian National Congress party, heading several divisions of the party's grassroots organisations. She was the General Secretary of Congress during 1986 with the additional responsibility of youth activities of the All India Congress Committee and the NSUI. Since 1980, she was a member of the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra for four terms, elected in 1980, 1986, 1992, 1998 as Congress candidate. Najma was the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha from January 1985 to January 1986 and from 1988 to July 2004.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Heptulla joined Bharatiya Janata Party in 2004. Media sources reported that she left the Congress apparently due to a strain in relationship with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Later she alleged that she was personally humiliated by Sonia Gandhi. She declared that she was leaving the party due to the problems with party leadership. In 2007, BJP-led NDA fielded her as a candidate in the elections for the Vice-President of India, which was won by Hamid Ansari.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: She was a member of Rajya Sabha, representing Rajasthan for BJP from July 2004 to July 2010. She was nominated by the BJP for the Rajya Sabha in 2012 from Madhya Pradesh, and assumed her office on 24 April 2012 upon election. Under Nitin Gadkari as BJP President, she became one of the 13 vice-presidents of the BJP in 2010, where later when Rajnath Singh took over, she was made a member of the party's national executive. Heptulla served as the Minister of Minority Affairs in Prime minister Narendra Modi's cabinet from 26 May 2014 to 12 July 2016. She said that minorities needed a level playing field in Indian society, but reservation is not the solution as it kills the spirit of competition.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: She resigned from her positions as a minister and a member of Rajya Sabha in 2016 when she was nominated Governor of Manipur.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Heptulla was nominated to head the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ICCR. She also presided over the women parliamentarians' group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1993 and became founder president of the parliamentarians' forum for human development the same year. She was also elected President of Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a Geneva-based international organisation at Council's 165th session in Berlin in 1999. She held the post from 16 October 1999 to 27 September 2002. Subsequently, in 2002, at Council's 171st session, she was chosen the Honorary President of the IPU Council. Heptulla was nominated by the United Nations Development Programme as its human development ambassador. Heptulla led a delegation to the UN Commission on Status of Women in 1997.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Heptulla has authored book on AIDS titled "AIDS: Approaches to Prevention". She has also written on human social security, sustainable development, environment, reforms for women and on ties between India and west Asia.


title: Najma Heptulla

text: Heptulla faced charges of having morphed a 1958 photograph to show her along with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in a publication of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR). The controversial photograph was published in an ICCR publication titled 'Journey of a legend', on the life of Maulana Azad, a noted scholar and the country's first education minister. He was also the first chairperson of the ICCR and the publication came out when the council was headed by Heptulla. The photograph came with an introduction and showed a young Heptulla with the Maulana. The caption read "Najma Heptulla with Maulana Azad after her graduation". This gave the game away as official inquiries later revealed Heptulla had graduated in May 1958, whereas the Maulana had died on February 22, 1958. The publication was later withdrawn by the ICCR and its revised version is released but without the controversial photograph. Delhi High court had directed the CBI to investigate the case on a public interest litigation filed by ICCR Employees Association president.


title: AGS-30

text: The AGS-30 "Atlant" is a Russian automatic grenade launcher currently in production in Russia and in service with the Russian armed forces.


title: AGS-30

text: Designed on the basis of AGS-17, the AGS-30 provides better mobility, longer range and better accuracy during firing. Significantly lighter than its previous version, the AGS-30 weighs 30 kg loaded, meaning it can be carried by one person. Using a specially designed GPD-30 grenade, the AGS-30 can engage targets at 2100m. Recoil is lessened with a smoother grenade ejection mechanism. An adjustable SAG-30 tripod mount (GRAU index 6P17) is also included.


title: AGS-30

text: After the success of the AGS-17 in Afghanistan, the KBP Instrument Design Bureau began work on a new grenade launcher. The Russian army needed a weapon that could easily flush militants out of their fortified building hideouts. The new design proved to be effective, and it was officially adopted in 2002, and was later adopted by the Russian Interior Ministry Troops.


title: AGS-30

text: The AGS-30 is fed from special belt drums that hold 29 linked rounds. The Loaded belt drum weighs about 14 kg. Spade grips are installed on a gun cradle integral to the tripod, instead of to the gun body. The AGS-30 can only fire in fully automatic. Standard sighting equipment is a 2.7X magnification PAG-17 optical sight.


title: AGS-30

text: AGS-30 uses standard VOG-17M, enhanced fragmentation VOG-30, VOG-30D and extended range GPD-30 grenades.


title: Eir

text: In Norse mythology, Eir (Old Norse: , "protection, help, mercy") is a goddess or valkyrie associated with medical skill. Eir is attested in the "Poetic Edda", compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the "Prose Edda", written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; and in skaldic poetry, including a runic inscription from Bergen, Norway from around 1300. Scholars have theorized about whether these three sources refer to the same figure, and debate whether Eir may have been originally a healing goddess or a valkyrie. In addition, Eir has been compared to the Greek goddess Hygieia.


title: Eir

text: In the "Poetic Edda" poem "Fjölsvinnsmál", the watchman Fjölsviðr presents a list of the maidens that attend the lady of the keep—Menglöð—that includes Eir, and states that they all sit on the hill Lyfjaberg (Old Norse "hill of healing" or "healing mountain"). The exchange between the hero Svipdagr and Fjölsviðr mentioning Eir is as follows:


title: Eir

text: After the exchange, Svipdagr asks if these figures will give aid if blóts are made to them. Fjölsviðr responds that Svipdagr is correct:


title: Eir

text: In chapter 35 of the "Prose Edda" book "Gylfaginning", the enthroned figure of High provides brief descriptions of 16 ásynjur. High lists Eir third, and says no more about her other than noting that "she is an extremely good physician." In chapter 75 of the "Prose Edda" book "Skáldskaparmál" Eir appears within a list of valkyrie names, but Eir is not included in the list of ásynjur in the same chapter.


title: Eir

text: In skaldic poetry, the name Eir is frequent in kennings for women. A sample construction is "Eir aura" ("Eir of riches"), occurring in "Gísla saga". The name is already used in this way by the 10th century poets Kormákr Ögmundarson and Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld. Similarly, the name Eir is used in a woman kenning in a runic inscription inscribed on a stick from Bergen, Norway around the year 1300. The stick records a common mercantile transaction followed by a verse from a displeased scribe (edits applied per the translator's notes):


title: Eir

text: Mindy Macleod and Bernard Mees posit that the first line of the inscription essentially means "women make me miserable" or potentially "marriage makes me miserable," whereas the second line means "women often take a lot of sleep from me."


title: Eir

text: Regarding the seemingly three different, seemingly conflicting, mentions of Eir, Andy Orchard says that the etymology of the name "Eir" may appear to fit the role of Eir as a goddess and servant of Menglöð best, but that one should consider that the valkyries also have the ability to waken the dead. John Lindow is skeptical of there having been a belief in Eir as a goddess, stating that "whether we should trust Snorri and imagine the existence of a goddess Eir is problematic". Rudolf Simek says that Eir may originally have been simply a valkyrie rather than a goddess, and lists the servant of Menglöð by the same name as a separate figure.


title: Eir

text: Hilda Ellis Davidson comments that "virtually nothing" is known about Eir outside of her association with healing, and points out that she is "singled out as one of the Norns who shape the lives of children". Davidson adds that "no satisfactory conclusions" have been drawn from her name, and considers all mentions of Eir as of the same figure. Davidson says that, in reference to Eir's appearance among Menglöð's maidens, that the names of these maidens "suggest that they are guardian spirits, and [they are] said to 'shelter and save' those who make offerings of them. They could be akin to protective spirits of the house, guarding both men and women." She additionally draws a link between these spirits and Lyfjaberg:


title: Eir

text: Lyfjaberg is where the goddess sits surrounded by her helpful spirits. Although healing by a goddess—or indeed by a god either—has left little mark on Norse myths as they have come down to us, there is no doubt that the healing power of goddesses was of enormous importance in daily life in the pre-Christian period, as was that of many women saints in Christian times. The goddess who presided over childbirth was held to possess power over life and death, and was revered as a lifegiver, both in the family home and in the courts of kings, though she might also pass sentence of death.


title: Eir

text: Henry Adams Bellows proposes a relationship between Eir and the place name "Lyfjaberg", which he translates as "hill of healing". Bellows notes that manuscripts vary about the spelling of the place name, and that he, like others, has followed 19th-century scholar Sophus Bugge's choice. Bellows states that the stanza mentioning Lyfjaberg "implies that Mengloth is a goddess of healing, and hence, perhaps an hypostasis of Frigg, as already intimated by her name [...]. In stanza 54, Eir appears as one of Mengloth's handmaidens, and Eir, according to Snorri ("Gylfaginning, 35") is herself the Norse Hygeia. Compare this stanza to stanza 32."


title: Classmates (manga)

text: Classmates, also known as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Asumiko Nakamura. The series follows the relationship between students Rihito Sajō and Hikaru Kusakabe, who meet while attending an all-boys high school. First published in the manga magazine "Opera" in July 2006, "Classmates" has spawned multiple sequels and spinoffs: "Sotsu Gyo Sei – Winter" ("Graduate – Winter"), "Sotsu Gyo Sei – Spring" ("Graduate – Spring"), "Sora and Hara", "O.B.", "Blanc", and "Futarigurashi" ("Living Together"). An anime film adaption of the first volume of the series, "Doukyusei: Classmates", was produced by A-1 Pictures and released in February 2016.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: Rihito Sajō is a quiet and intelligent student at Touichikou High School, an unexceptional all-boys high school, where he is tutored for the school's choir by classmate Hikaru Kusakabe. They begin dating after Kusakabe impulsively kisses Sajō, and grow closer over the course of the year; Kusakabe rebuffs a romantic advance on Sajō by music teacher Manabu Hara, and Sajō attends a concert where Kusakabe performs as a guitarist. On the day of his mock college entrance exam, Sajō suffers a panic attack, and reveals that his transfer to Touichikou was prompted by low test scores caused by his anxiety. Sajō takes the exam with encouragement from Kusakabe, and the two affirm their desire to remain together.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: In their final year of high school, Sajō is accepted to study pharmacology at Kyoto University; when his mother is diagnosed with cancer, he introduces Kusakabe to her as his boyfriend. Kusakabe intends to stay in Tokyo to pursue a career in music, and performs at a music festival in Nîmes that forces him to leave Japan until immediately before graduation. At graduation, Sajō and Kusakabe visit the classroom where they met, where they confront their divergent plans for their respective futures. Sajō confesses his love for Kusakabe, and they have sex; Kusakabe proposes they marry when they turn twenty, which Sajō accepts.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: In this spin-off series, Hara has an encounter with Aoto "Sora" Sorano at a bar in Ni-chōme, but rebuffs him upon discovering he is a student at Touichikou. Sora sets up a date between Hara and Sajō after learning about their history, and Hara achieves a sense of closure on his pursuit of Sajō. Satoshi Arisaka, a teacher Hara once kissed as a student, is hired as a substitute teacher at Touichikou. Satoshi is dating Hibiki Sano, a student, and Hara intervenes to reconcile their relationship. Sorano angrily tells Hara that he needs to care more about his own happiness; they kiss, but mutually decide not to pursue a relationship for the time being.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: Kusakabe and Sajō pursue a long-distance relationship. After Kusakabe spends a week in Kyoto visiting Sajō, they reaffirm their desire to marry at 20 and decide to start referring to each other by their first names. Satoshi learns his daughter is getting married, and reconciles their relationship with the support of Hibiki. Sora, having graduated high school, works as a fashion model; after a chance reunion with Hara, they begin to pursue a relationship.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: Sajō, now in his final year of university and lacking a clear direction for his future, asks Kusakabe to take a break on their relationship. When his mother's cancer returns, Kusakabe agrees to be her caretaker while Sajō concludes his studies in Kyoto and Sajō's father is abroad for work; she later dies from pneumonia brought on by the illness. After Sajō fights with his father when he comes out to him, he reconciles his relationship with Kusakabe, and they wed in a commitment ceremony.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: "Classmates" was conceived after editors at the manga magazine "Opera" approached Nakamura about creating a manga series for the magazine in the boys' love genre (male-male romance, also known as BL). While Nakamura had previously created works depicting male homosexuality in the erotic comics magazine "Manga Erotics F", she had never created works in the BL genre; "Classmates" would ultimately become Nakamura's first BL series, and her first series published in a BL magazine. She has stated that she wished to create "Classmates" as a story about a "slow, serious love" that was "cliché" and "almost hackneyed" in its execution. For example, Nakamura chose the setting as an all-boys school – historically a common setting in BL manga – despite the fact that BL works centered on schools and students had declined in popularity at the time of "Classmates"' initial publication.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: The series is noted as a departure from Nakamura's earlier and subsequent works, such as "" and "Kaori no Keishou", which typically focus on darker themes and erotic subject material. Nakamura has stated that she had created "aesthetically pleasing works" with "soft images" prior to the publication of "Classmates", but did not have the opportunity to publish them. In "Classmates", Nakamura stated that she wished to balance the exaggerated romance elements typical of BL with elements of realism, particularly in regards to LGBT issues and identity.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: "Classmates" and its sequels and spinoffs have been published in "Opera" since 2006. "Dou Kyu Sei" was serialized from June 2006 to July 2007, "Sotsu Gyo Sei – Winter" was serialized from January to October 2008, "Sotsu Gyo Sei – Spring" was serialized from January to August 2009, "Sora and Hara" was serialized from December 2009 to December 2011, "O.B." was serialized from April 2012 to December 2013, and "Blanc" was serialized from February 2018 to September 2020. "Futarigurashi" was originally published as a spin-off manga series on "Pixiv Comic" from October 2019 to January 2020 before beginning serialization in "Opera" as an ongoing series in December 2020. The series has been collected as eight "tankōbon" volumes published by Akane Shinsha.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: In North America, the digital distribution platform JManga released an English-language translation of the first volume of "Classmates" under the title "Doukyusei" in April 2012. In 2014, Digital Manga published the first volume of the series as an eBook under its "yaoi" imprint Juné as "Classmates"; it also published the second and third volumes in the series as "Graduate: Winter" and "Graduate: Spring". In July 2018, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that it had acquired the North American license for "Classmates", and began publishing the series in June 2019. Internationally, the series has been translated into French by Boy's Love IDP, Spanish by Ediciones Tomodomo, Italian by Magic Press, and Polish by Waneko.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: Since 2008, a series of audio drama CDs that adapt the manga have been produced by A+, a division of .


title: Classmates (manga)

text: "Doukyusei: Classmates" (stylized as "Doukyusei -Classmates-"), an anime film adaptation of the first volume of "Classmates", was announced by March 14, 2015 and released in theaters on February 20, 2016. The film is produced by A-1 Pictures, with its primary production staff composed of as director, as character designer, Chieko Nakamura as art director, and Ritsuko Utagawa as color designer. The film's soundtrack is composed by guitarist Kotaro Oshio, while its closing theme is performed by Oshio and Yuuki Ozaki of the rock band Galileo Galilei.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: In North America, "Doukyusei: Classmates" received a limited theatrical release through distributors Aniplex of America and Azoland Pictures, which opened on May 6, 2016. The film was released in North America on Blu-ray by Aniplex of America on September 20, 2016.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: , a "Classmates" art book, was published by Akane Shinsha in September 2011. A deluxe re-release was published in February 2016. "Classmates" was additionally included in a pop-up cafe run by "Opera" in Harajuku, Tokyo from March 16 to April 8, 2018. The cafe featured original merchandise and menu items inspired by the series.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: "Classmates" received positive reviews from critics. Akiko Mizoguchi, a BL researcher with the National Film Archive of Japan, commended the series for its depiction of LGBT identity, and for its depiction of LGBT issues that BL readers may not otherwise encounter in the genre. Reviewing the series for "Otaku USA", Brittany Vincent called the series "a sweet little LGBTQ+-friendly love letter" and offered praise for its artwork, favorably comparing it to "xxxHolic" by Clamp and "Mars" by Fuyumi Soryo. Morgana Santilli of "Comics Beat" noted that while the series is not an "earth-shattering, genre-defying romance", she praised it as "a straightforward teenage romance about gay boys, rather than the type of fetishistic gay drama that populates much of the boys' love manga that are licensed by North American publishers." RightStuf called the plot "underwhelming" while commending Nakamura's artwork.


title: Classmates (manga)

text: "Doukyusei: Classmates" was positively received by critics, many of whom offered extensive praise for the film's production and animation. Jacob Chapman of "Anime News Network" called the film "meticulous, careful, and almost painfully sensitive in its matchless character animation", and described the story "heartwarming and fulfilling, even if its substance isn't one drop as unique as the movie's style." In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Charles Solomon called the plot "rather standard", but offered praise for film's watercolor-style animation. Cody Perez of "Fandom Post" called the film a "bold attempt to bring over a rather niche anime genre to theaters across the US", noting that the "beautiful animation and believable romance help to overlook the very fast pacing and inconsistent tone."


title: Classmates (manga)

text: In its opening weekend, "Doukyusei: Classmates" opened in ninth place at the Japanese box office, grossing roughly ¥34 million in 30 theaters. The film ultimately sold 135,730 tickets in Japan, amounting to a total domestic gross of ¥201 million. Outside of Japan, the film grossed a total of USD$1.38 million.


title: Peaceful Warrior

text: Peaceful Warrior is a 2006 drama film directed by Victor Salva and written by Kevin Bernhardt based on the 1980 novel "Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman. Set at U.C. Berkeley, the film stars Scott Mechlowicz as a troubled but talented gymnast who meets a spiritual guide portrayed by Nick Nolte.


title: Peaceful Warrior

text: Dan Millman is a university student as well as a locally famous gymnast who dreams of winning a National Championship competition. He suffers from restlessness, and on one occasion, Dan attempts to compensate for the restlessness by running along streets before sunrise. At a car-service station, he encounters an old man who seems to know more about Dan's problem than Dan himself knows, whom Dan later nicknames "Socrates". Dan is unsettled by Socrates' knowledge; by the fact that Socrates had appeared in a nightmare as a faceless janitor, clad in mismatched shoes (by which he is identified in waking life), who sweeps up the pieces of Dan's shattered leg; and by the old man's extraordinary speed, agility, and coordination. As a result of his exposure to the last, Dan seeks to learn the secret behind it.


title: Peaceful Warrior

text: Socrates, prodded by the impatient and defiant Dan, gives the boy a series of tasks and lessons. The central concept of "Soc's" philosophy is this: that one must live entirely in the present moment. Other ideas include the related notion that at no time is "nothing going on" and the idea that an appropriate time exists for fighting and another for abstaining from violence. These lessons are conveyed through practical lessons, long contemplation, and one spectacular mystical experience. Dan gradually learns to appreciate every moment; to view the journey toward a goal as more meaningful and significant than the attainment; to pay attention to that which he is doing – thus increasing his gymnastic prowess; and (to a slightly lesser extent) control himself. Throughout the lesson, Dan learns virtually nothing about his mentor, other than the philosophy, Socrates' belief that service is the most noble action possible (hence his choice to work as a car serviceman), and the presence of another protégé.


title: Peaceful Warrior

text: This protégé, a woman of Dan's own age named Joy, has learned and integrated Socrates' philosophy into her life, to the extent that she seems as wise as Socrates himself. Dan attempts to ask her for information regarding Socrates, but receives little. Joy treats Dan indulgently, though she evidently respects him.


title: Peaceful Warrior

text: One day, Dan drives recklessly, and his motorcycle collides with a car that ran a red light, causing his right femur bone to shatter. He is rushed to a hospital, where a metal bar is placed in his leg to maintain its integrity. As a result, his gymnastic coach believes that Dan cannot compete in the National competition. Dan, hurt by this lack of faith, recovers from the injury and resumes his training under Socrates' tutelage. Eventually, he is restored to full health and strength, while his coordination improves and his mind is set entirely on the present moment. He competes in the U.S. Trials for the Olympics and achieves a victory.