Shrek is a 2001 American animated fantasy comedy film loosely based on the 1990 children's picture book of the same name by William Steig. Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson (in their feature directorial debuts) and written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S. H. Schulman, it is the first installment in the Shrek film series. The film stars Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. In the film, an embittered ogre named Shrek (Myers) finds his home in the swamp overrun by fairy tale creatures banished by the obsessive ruler Lord Farquaad (Lithgow). With the help of Donkey (Murphy), Shrek makes a pact with Farquaad to rescue Princess Fiona (Diaz) in exchange for regaining control of his swamp.

After purchasing rights to Steig's book in 1991, Steven Spielberg sought to produce a traditionally-animated film adaptation, but John H. Williams convinced him to bring the project to the newly founded DreamWorks in 1994. Jeffrey Katzenberg, along with Williams and Aron Warner, began development on Shrek in 1995, immediately following the studio's purchase of the rights from Spielberg. Chris Farley was cast as the voice for the title character, recording most of the required dialogue, but died in 1997 before his work on the film was finished; Myers was hired to replace him, and gave Shrek his Scottish accent. The film was initially intended to be created using motion capture, but after poor test results, the studio hired Pacific Data Images to complete the final computer animation. Shrek parodies other fairy tale adaptations, primarily animated Disney films.

Shrek premiered at the Mann Village Theatre In Westwood, and was later shown at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, making it the first animated film since Disney's Peter Pan (1953) to be chosen to do so. The film was theatrically released by DreamWorks Pictures in the United States on May 18, 2001, and grossed over $491 million worldwide, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 2001. It was widely praised by critics for its animation, voice performances, soundtrack, writing and humor, which they noted catered to both adults and children. Shrek was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It earned six nominations at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), winning for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film's success helped establish DreamWorks Animation as a competitor to Pixar in feature film computer animation. Three sequels have been released—Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever After (2010)—along with two spin-off films—Puss in Boots (2011) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)—and other productions in the Shrek franchise. It is also regarded as one of the most influential animated films of the 2000s. The United States Library of Congress selected Shrek for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2020, becoming the first animated film of the 21st century to be preserved.

Plot

Shrek is an anti-social and highly territorial ogre who loves the solitude of his swamp, fending off mobs and enjoying some privacy. His life is interrupted after the dwarfish Lord Farquaad of Duloc exiles a vast number of fairy-tale creatures, who inadvertently end up in the swamp. Angered by the intrusion, Shrek decides to visit Farquaad and demand they be moved elsewhere. He reluctantly allows a talkative Donkey, who was exiled as well, to tag along and guide him to Duloc.

Meanwhile, Farquaad is presented with the Magic Mirror, who tells him that he must marry a princess in order to become king. Farquaad chooses Princess Fiona, who is imprisoned in a castle guarded by Dragon. Unwilling to rescue Fiona himself, he organizes a tournament in which the winner will receive the "privilege" of performing the task on his behalf. When Shrek and Donkey arrive at Duloc, Farquaad announces that whoever kills the ogre will be crowned the victor; however, Shrek and Donkey defeat Farquaad's knights with relative ease. Amused, Farquaad proclaims them champions, and agrees to relocate the fairy-tale creatures if Shrek rescues Fiona.

Shrek and Donkey travel to the castle and are attacked by Dragon. Shrek locates Fiona, who is appalled by his lack of romanticism; they flee the castle after rescuing Donkey. When Shrek removes his helmet and reveals he is an ogre, Fiona stubbornly refuses to go to Duloc, demanding Farquaad arrive in person to save her; Shrek carries her against her will. That night, after setting up camp and with Fiona alone in a cave, Shrek confides with Donkey about his frustration with being feared and rejected by others over his appearance. Fiona overhears this and decides to be kind to Shrek. The next day, the three are harassed by Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, with Fiona dispatching them easily using martial arts. Shrek becomes impressed with Fiona, and they begin to fall in love.

When the trio nears Duloc, Fiona takes shelter in a windmill for the evening. Donkey later enters alone and discovers that Fiona has transformed into an ogre. She explains she has been cursed since childhood, forced to transform into an ogre every night, and changing back at sunrise. She tells Donkey that only "true love's kiss" will break the spell and change her to "love's true form". Meanwhile, Shrek is about to confess his feelings to Fiona, when he overhears Fiona referring to herself as an "ugly beast". Believing that she is talking about him, Shrek angrily leaves and returns the next morning with Farquaad. Confused and hurt by Shrek's abrupt hostility, Fiona accepts Farquaad's marriage proposal and requests they be married before nightfall.

Shrek abandons Donkey and returns to his now-vacated swamp. He quickly realizes that despite his privacy, he feels miserable and misses Fiona. Donkey returns to the swamp and confronts Shrek, explaining that the "ugly beast" Fiona was referring to was someone else, and urges him to express his feelings to Fiona before she marries. The two reconcile and quickly travel to Duloc by riding Dragon, who Donkey has befriended. Shrek interrupts the wedding just before the ceremony completes and tells Fiona that Farquaad is only marrying her to become king. The sun sets as Fiona transforms into an ogre in front of everyone, causing Shrek to understand what he overheard. Outraged and disgusted, Farquaad orders Shrek drawn and quartered and Fiona re-imprisoned, so that he will still be king by technicality. The two are saved when Dragon, alongside Donkey, break in and devour Farquaad. Shrek and Fiona profess their love and share a kiss. Though Fiona's curse is broken, this permanently makes her an ogre against her expectations, though Shrek reassures her that he still finds her beautiful. They marry in the swamp with fairy-tale creatures in attendance, then leave for their honeymoon.

Voice cast

 Mike Myers as:
Shrek
One of the Three Blind Mice
 Eddie Murphy as Donkey
 Cameron Diaz as Princess Fiona
 John Lithgow as Lord Farquaad
 Vincent Cassel as "Monsieur" Robin Hood
 Conrad Vernon as Gingerbread Man
 Chris Miller as:
Magic Mirror
Geppetto
 Cody Cameron as:
Pinocchio
The Three Little Pigs
 Simon J. Smith as Blind Mouse
 Christopher Knights as:
Thelonius
One of the Three Blind Mice
 Aron Warner as Big Bad Wolf
 Jim Cummings as Captain of the Guards
 Kathleen Freeman as Old Woman (Donkey's ex-owner) This was Freeman's last film role before her death.
 Andrew Adamson as Duloc Mascot (a man dressed in a suit that looks like Lord Farquaad)
 Bobby Block as Baby Bear from the Three Bears
 Michael Galasso as Peter Pan

Production

Development
At the time DreamWorks Pictures was founded, producer John H. Williams got hold of the book from his children and when he brought it to DreamWorks, it caught Jeffrey Katzenberg's attention and the studio decided to make it into a film. Recounting the inspiration of making the film, Williams said:
After buying the rights to the film, Katzenberg quickly put it in active development in November 1995. Steven Spielberg had thought about making a traditionally animated film adaptation of the book before, when he bought the rights to the book in 1991 before the founding of DreamWorks, where Bill Murray would play Shrek and Steve Martin would play Donkey. In the beginning of production, co-director Andrew Adamson refused to be intimidated by Katzenberg and had an argument with him about how much the film should appeal to adults. Katzenberg wanted both audiences, but he deemed some of Adamson's ideas, such as adding sexual jokes and Guns N' Roses music to the soundtrack, to be too outrageous. Adamson and Kelly Asbury joined in 1997 to co-direct the film. However, Asbury left a year later for work on the 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and was replaced with story artist Vicky Jenson, although Asbury would later co-direct the sequel. Both Adamson and Jenson decided to work on the film in half, so the crew could at least know whom to go to with specific detail questions about the film's sequences; "We both ended up doing a lot of everything," Adamson said. "We're both kinda control freaks, and we both wanted to do everything."

Some early sketches of Shrek's house were done between 1996 and 1997 using Photoshop, with the sketches showing Shrek first living in a garbage dump near a human village called Wart Creek. It was also thought one time that he lived with his parents and kept rotting fish in his bedroom. Donkey was modeled after Pericles (born 1994; also known as Perry), a real miniature donkey from Barron Park in Palo Alto, California. Raman Hui, supervising animator of Shrek, stated that Fiona "wasn't based on any real person" and he did many different sketches for her. He had done over 100 sculptures of Fiona before the directors chose the final design. In early development, the art directors visited Hearst Castle, Stratford upon Avon, and Dordogne for inspiration. Art Director Douglas Rogers visited a magnolia plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, for inspiration of Shrek's swamp. Planned characters not used in the film include Goldilocks and Sleeping Beauty.

During production, animators who failed while working on other projects, such as The Prince of Egypt, were often sent to work on Shrek. The reassignment was known as being "Shreked" and being sent to "the Gulag".

Casting
Nicolas Cage was initially offered the role of Shrek but he turned it down because he did not want to look like an ogre. In 2013, Cage explained furthermore: "When you're drawn, in a way it says more about how children are going to see you than anything else, and I so care about that."

Chris Farley was initially hired to voice Shrek, and he had recorded nearly all of the dialogue for the character, but died before completing the project. A story reel featuring a sample of Farley's recorded dialogue was leaked to the public in August 2015. DreamWorks then re-cast the voice role to Mike Myers, who insisted on a complete script rewrite, to leave no traces of Farley's version of Shrek. According to Myers, he wanted to voice the character "for two reasons: I wanted the opportunity to work with Jeffrey Katzenberg; and [the book is] a great story about accepting yourself for who you are."

After Myers had completed providing the voice for the character over the course of 1999 and the film was well into production, a rough cut of the movie was shown to him in February 2000. Myers asked to re-record all of his lines with a Scottish accent, similar to that his mother used when she told him bedtime stories and also used for his roles in other films, such as So I Married an Axe Murderer and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. According to the DVD commentary, he had also tried using a Lothar of the Hill People accent and a Canadian accent. After hearing the alternative, Katzenberg agreed to redo scenes in the film, saying, "It was so good we took $4M worth of animation out and did it again." Myers disputed the cost, saying "it didn't cost the studio 'millions of dollars'," as rumored. "What it meant is instead of me going in for ten sessions, I went in for twenty sessions. I got paid the same." Because of Myers voicing the character, more ideas began to come. There were clearer story points, fresher gags and comedy bits. "I got a letter from Spielberg thanking me so much for caring about the character," Myers said. "And he said the Scottish accent had improved the movie."

Another person planned to voice a character in the film was Janeane Garofalo, who was set to star alongside Farley as Princess Fiona. However, she was fired from the project for unexplained reasons. Years later, Garofalo stated "I was never told why [I was fired]. I assume because I sound like a man sometimes? I don't know why. Nobody told me ... But, you know, the movie didn't do anything, so who cares?"

Animation
Shrek was originally set up to be a live-action/CG animation hybrid with background plate miniature sets and the main characters composited into the scene as motion-captured computer graphics, using an ExpertVision Hires Falcon 10 camera system to capture and apply realistic human movement to the characters. A sizable crew was hired to run a test, and after a year and a half of R & D, the test was finally screened in May 1997. The results were not satisfactory, with Katzenberg stating "It looked terrible, it didn't work, it wasn't funny, and we didn't like it." The studio then turned to its production partners at Pacific Data Images (PDI), who began production with the studio in 1998 and helped Shrek get to its final, computer-animated look. At this time, Antz was still in production at the studio and effects supervisor Ken Bielenberg was asked by Aron Warner "to start development for Shrek". Similar to previous PDI films, PDI used its own proprietary software (like the Fluid Animation System) for its animated movies. For some elements, however, it also took advantage of some of the powerhouse animation software on the market. This is particularly true with Maya, which PDI used for most of its dynamic cloth animation and for the hair of Fiona and Farquaad.

"We did a lot of work on character and set-up, and then kept changing the set up while we were doing the animation," Hui noted. "In Antz, we had a facial system that gave us all the facial muscles under the skin. In Shrek, we applied that to whole body. So, if you pay attention to Shrek when he talks, you see that when he opens his jaw, he forms a double chin, because we have the fat and the muscles underneath. That kind of detail took us a long time to get right." One of the most difficult parts of creating the film was making Donkey's fur flow smoothly so that it did not look like that of a Chia Pet. This fell into the hands of the surfacing animators, who used flow controls within a complex shader to provide the fur with many attributes (ability to change directions, lie flat, swirl, etc.). It was then the job of the visual effects group, led by Ken Bielenberg, to make the fur react to environment conditions. Once the technology was mastered, it could be applied to many aspects of the movie, including grass, moss, beards, eyebrows, and even threads on Shrek's tunic. Making human hair realistic was different from Donkey's fur, requiring a separate rendering system and much attention from the lighting and visual effects teams.

Shrek has 31 sequences, with 1,288 total shots. Aron Warner said that the creators "envisioned a magical environment that you could immerse yourself into". Shrek includes 36 separate in-film locations to make the world of the film, which DreamWorks claimed was more than any previous computer-animated feature. In-film locations were finalized and, as demonstrated by past DreamWorks animated movies, color and mood was of the utmost importance. The animation was completed in 2000.

Music

Shrek is the third DreamWorks animated film (and the only film in the Shrek series) to have Harry Gregson-Williams team up with John Powell to compose the score following Antz (1998) and Chicken Run (2000). Powell was left out to compose scores for later Shrek films with Gregson-Williams due to a conflict. The score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios by Nick Wollage and Slamm Andrews, with the latter mixing it at Media Ventures and Patricia Sullivan-Fourstar handling mastering.

Shrek introduced a new element to give the film a unique feel. The film used pop music and other Oldies to make the story more forward. Covers of songs like "On the Road Again" and "Try a Little Tenderness" were integrated in the film's score. The band Smash Mouth's song "All Star" gained massive popularity due to its usage in the film's opening credits. As the film was about to be completed, Katzenberg suggested to the filmmakers to redo the film's ending to "go out with a big laugh"; instead of ending the film with just a storybook closing over Shrek and Fiona as they ride off into the sunset, they decided to add a song "I'm a Believer" covered by Smash Mouth and show all the fairytale creatures in the film.

Although Rufus Wainwright's version of the song "Hallelujah" appeared in the soundtrack album, it was John Cale's version that appeared in the film; in a radio interview, Rufus Wainwright suggested that his version of "Hallelujah" did not appear in the film due to the "glass ceiling" he was hitting because of his sexuality. An alternative explanation is that, although the filmmakers wanted Cale's version for the film, licensing issues prevented its use in the soundtrack album, because Wainwright was an artist for DreamWorks but Cale was not.

Cultural references
In many places the film references classic movies, predominantly those by Disney. When Tinker Bell falls on Donkey and he says "I can fly" and people around including the Three Little Pigs say "He can fly, he can fly"; this is a reference to Disney's Peter Pan. Donkey then says, while still flying, "You might have seen a house fly, maybe even a super fly, but I bet you ain't never seen a Donkey fly!". This scene is a reference to the Disney film Dumbo. The scene where Fiona is singing to the blue bird is a reference to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The transformation scene at the end of the film references Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

When Shrek crosses the bridge to the Castle and says, "That'll do, Donkey, that'll do", this is a reference to the movie Babe. The scene where Princess Fiona is fighting the Merry Men is a lengthy reference to the film The Matrix. At the end of the film, the Gingerbread Man at the end with a crutch (and one leg) says "God bless us, everyone" which is a reference to Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.

In the scene where the Magic Mirror gives Lord Farquaad the option to marry three princesses, it parodies popular American television show The Dating Game featuring: Cinderella and Snow White. In addition, Lord Farquaad's theme park style kingdom Duloc heavily mimics Disneyland, even in so far as parodying the famous "It's a Small World" musical ride in the scene with the singing puppets. It has been suggested that Lord Farquaad himself is an unflattering parody of then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, whom producer Katzenberg reportedly dislikes.

Release

Marketing
In 2000, IMAX released CyberWorld onto its branded large-screen theaters. It was a compilation film that featured stereoscopic conversions of various animated shorts and sequences, including the bar sequence in Antz. DreamWorks was so impressed by the technology used for the sequence's "stereoscopic translation", that the studio and IMAX decided to plan a big-screen 3D version of Shrek. The film would have been re-released during the Christmas season of 2001, or the following summer, after its conventional 2D release. The re-release would have also included new sequences and an alternate ending. Plans for this was dropped due to "creative changes" instituted by DreamWorks and resulted in a loss of $1.18 million, down from IMAX's profit of $3.24 million.

Radio Disney was told not to allow any ads for the film to air on the station, stating, "Due to recent initiatives with The Walt Disney Company, we are being asked not to align ourselves promotionally with this new release Shrek. Stations may accept spot dollars only in individual markets." The restriction was later relaxed to allow ads for the film's soundtrack album onto the network.

On May 7, 2001, Burger King began promotions for the film, giving out a selection of nine exclusive Candy Caddies based on the Shrek characters, in Big Kids Meal and Kids Meal orders. Ice cream chain Baskin-Robbins also ran an 8-week promotion of the film, selling products such as Shrek's Hot Sludge Sundae, a combination of Oreo Cookies 'n Cream ice cream, hot fudge, crushed chocolate cookies, whipped cream and squiggly gummy worms, and Shrek Freeze Frame Cake, featuring an image of Shrek and Donkey framed by sunflowers. This was to support the film's DVD/VHS release.

Home media
Shrek was released by DreamWorks Home Entertainment on VHS and DVD on November 2, 2001. It surpassed Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menaces record for becoming the fastest-selling DVD ever, selling 2.5 million copies within the first three days of release. Another 4.5 million copies were sold on VHS in the same timespan, making it the biggest opening weekend in retail video since The Lion King in 1995. Both releases included Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party, a 3-minute musical short film, that takes up right after Shreks ending, with film's characters performing a medley of modern pop songs.

Coincidentally, the film was released on video the same day that Pixar's Monsters, Inc. hit theaters. Since videos were traditionally released on Tuesdays, Disney's executives did not receive this well, saying that the move "seemed like an underhanded attempt to siphon off some of their film's steam". DreamWorks responded that it "simply shifted the release to a Friday to make it more of an event and predicted that it and other studios would do so more frequently with important films." Monsters, Inc. earned that weekend more than $62 million, breaking the record for an animated film, while Shreks video release made more than $100 million, and eventually became the biggest selling DVD at the time with over 5.5 million sales. This broke the record previously held by Gladiator, another DreamWorks film. Shrek generated more than $420 million in revenue for DreamWorks on DVD and VHS, and has sold more than 21 million copies of the 23 million shipped by January 2002. Worldwide, more than 10 million Shrek DVDs have been sold by that point.

A 3D version of the film was released on Blu-ray 3D by Paramount Home Entertainment on December 1, 2010, along with its sequels, and a regular 2D Blu-ray boxset of the series was released six days later.

In commemoration of the film's 20th anniversary, an Ultra HD Blu-ray edition was released on May 11, 2021, by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

Reception and legacy

Box office
Shrek opened on around 6,000 screens across 3,587 theaters; eleven of them showed the film digitally. This was the first time that DreamWorks had shown one of its films digitally. The film earned $11.6 million on its first day and $42.3 million on its opening weekend, topping the box office for the weekend and averaging $11,805 from 3,587 theaters. In its second weekend, due to the Memorial Day Weekend holiday, the film gained 0.3 percent to $42.5 million and $55.2 million over the four-day weekend, resulting in an overall 30 percent gain. Despite this, the film finished in second place behind Pearl Harbor and had an average of $15,240 from expanding to 3,623 sites. In its third weekend, the film retreated 34 percent to $28.2 million for a $7,695 average from expanding to 3,661 theaters. By mid-June 2001, Shrek became the top-grossing movie of the year domestically, defeating The Mummy Returns. The film closed on December 6, 2001, after grossing $267.7 million domestically, along with $216.7 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $484.4 million. Produced on a $60 million budget, the film was a huge box office smash and is the fourth highest-grossing film of 2001.

Shrek became the highest-grossing animated film ever to be released in Australia, passing the mark set by The Lion King in 1994. In the United Kingdom, Shrek regained the top spot at the British box office after being beaten out the previous week by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, earning a $20.3 million since its opening in the UK.

Critical response
In addition to being an instant box office success, Shrek received wide critical acclaim.  of  professional reviews of the film on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes are positive, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "While simultaneously embracing and subverting fairy tales, the irreverent Shrek also manages to tweak Disney's nose, provide a moral message to children, and offer viewers a funny, fast-paced ride." Metacritic assigned Shrek a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert praised the film, giving it four stars out of a possible four and describing it as "jolly and wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart". USA Todays Susan Wloszczyna praised Eddie Murphy's performance, stating it "gives the comic performance of his career, aided by sensational digital artistry, as he brays for the slightly neurotic motormouth". Richard Schickel of Time also enjoyed Murphy's role, stating "No one has ever made a funnier jackass of himself than Murphy." Peter Rainer of New York magazine liked the script, also stating "The animation, directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, is often on the same wriggly, giggly level as the script, although the more "human" characters, such as Princess Fiona and Lord Farquaad, are less interesting than the animals and creatures—a common pitfall in animated films of all types." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Shrek is a world-class charmer that could even seduce the Academy when it hands out the first official animation Oscar next year." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying "Shrek is not a guilty pleasure for sophisticated movie-goers; it is, purely and simply, a pleasure." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote "The witty, fractured fairy tale Shrek has a solid base of clever writing." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A−, saying "A kind of palace coup, a shout of defiance, and a coming of age for DreamWorks." Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel wrote "It's a pleasure to be able to report that the movie both captures and expands upon the book's playful spirit of deconstruction."

Steven Rosen of The Denver Post wrote "DreamWorks Pictures again proves a name to trust for imaginative, funny animated movies that delight kids and adults equally." Susan Stark of The Detroit News gave the film four out of four stars, saying "Swift, sweet, irreverent, rangy and as spirited in the writing and voice work as it is splendid in design." Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News gave the film four out of four stars, saying "The brilliance of the voice work, script, direction and animation all serve to make Shrek an adorable, infectious work of true sophistication." Rene Rodriguez gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "a gleefully fractured fairy tale that never becomes cynical or crass". Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times gave the film four out of five stars, saying "Beating up on the irritatingly dainty Disney trademarks is nothing new; it's just that it has rarely been done with the demolition-derby zest of Shrek." William Steig, the author of the original book, and his wife Jeanne Steig also enjoyed the film, stating "We all went sort of expecting to hate it, thinking, 'What has Hollywood done to it?' But we loved it. We were afraid it would be too sickeningly cute and, instead, Bill just thought they did a wonderful, witty job of it."

John Anderson of Newsday wrote "The kind of movie that will entertain everyone of every age and probably for ages to come." Jay Carr of The Boston Globe wrote "In an era when much on film seems old, Shrek seems new and fresh and clever." Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post gave the film five out of five stars, saying "Despite all its high-tech weirdness, it is really that most perdurable of human constructions, a tale told well and true." Joe Baltake of The Sacramento Bee wrote that it "isn't so much a fractured spoof of everything Disney, but actually a Monty Python flick for kids – kids of all ages". Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer wrote "What gives Shrek its special artistic distinction is its witty and knowingly sassy dialogue, delivered by vocally charismatic performers whose voices remind us of their stellar screen personae in live-action movies." Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader wrote "This romantic fantasy complicates the roles of beauty and beast, making it hard to guess what form a sensitive resolution will take." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote "The charms of Shrek, which is based on the children's book by William Steig, go far beyond in-jokes for adults." John Zebrowski of The Seattle Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The movie is helped immensely by its cast, who carry it through some of the early, sluggish scenes. But this is Murphy's movie. Donkey gets most of the good lines, and Murphy hits every one."

A mixed review came from Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune, who gave the film two and a half stars out of four and compared it to Toy Story 2, which he said "had a higher in-jokes/laughs ratio without straining to demonstrate its hipness or to evoke heartfelt emotions". On the more negative side, Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice said he was "desperately avoiding the risk of even a half-second of boredom", and said "the movie is wall-to-window-to-door noise, babbling, and jokes (the first minute sees the first fart gag), and demographically it's a hard-sell shotgun spray." Christy Lemire of the Associated Press described Shrek as a "90-minute onslaught of in-jokes", and said while it "strives to have a heart" with "a message about beauty coming from within", "somehow [the message] rings hollow". Anthony Lane of The New Yorker said, despite the film "cunning the rendering of surfaces, there's still something flat and charmless in the digital look, and most of the pleasure rises not from the main romance but from the quick, incidental gags."

Accolades
At the 74th Academy Awards, Shrek won the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. It was also the first animated film to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, but lost to A Beautiful Mind. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Prince Charming? So last millennium. This decade, fairy-tale fans – and Princess Fiona – fell for a fat and flatulent Ogre. Now, that's progress." It was also nominated for The Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Shrek was also nominated for 6 BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Eddie Murphy became the first actor to ever receive a BAFTA nomination for a voice-over performance. The film was also nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, Best Film Music, and won the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shrek was nominated for a dozen Annie Awards from ASIFA-Hollywood, and won eight Annies including Best Animated Feature and Outstanding Individual Achievement for Directing in an Animated Feature Production.

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten"; the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community Shrek was acknowledged as the eighth best film in the animated genre, and the only non-Disney·Pixar film in the Top 10. Shrek was also ranked second in a Channel 4 poll of the "100 Greatest Family Films", losing out on the top spot to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In 2005, Shrek came sixth in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons poll behind The Simpsons, Tom and Jerry, South Park, Toy Story and Family Guy. In November 2009, the character, Lord Farquaad, was listed No. 14 in IGN UK's "Top 15 Fantasy Villains". In 2006, it was ranked third on Bravo's 100 funniest films list. The film's title character was awarded his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2010.

American Film Institute recognition:
 AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
 Shrek – Nominated Hero
 AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
 I'm a Believer – Nominated
 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
 AFI's 10 Top 10 – No. 8 Animated film

Festivals
Shrek premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, making it the first animated film since Disney's Peter Pan (1953) to be chosen to do so.

Cultural impact
The New York Times retrospectively described the film as "a beloved, offbeat fairy tale whose characters and jokes continue to permeate pop culture, reaching another generation of fans." Previous films and TV shows, such as Fractured Fairy Tales and The Princess Bride, have parodied the traditional fairy tale. Shrek had a significant impact that influenced a later generation of mainstream animated films, receiving recognition for being one of the most influential from the 2000s. Particularly after Shrek 2, animated films began to incorporate more pop culture references and end-film musical numbers. Such elements can be seen in films like Robots, Chicken Little and Doogal. It also inspired a number of computer animated films which also spoofed fairy tales, or other related story genres, often including adult-oriented humor, most of which were not nearly as successful as Shrek, such as Happily N'Ever After, Igor, Hoodwinked!, Enchanted, Hotel Transylvania, and Secret Magic Control Agency  In 2020, the United States Library of Congress selected Shrek to be preserved in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Other media

Several video game adaptations of the film have been published on various game console platforms, including Shrek (2001), Shrek: Hassle at the Castle (2002), Shrek: Extra Large (2002), Shrek: Super Party (2002) and Shrek SuperSlam (2005). Shrek was also included as a bonus unlockable character in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004).

In 2003, Dark Horse Comics released a three-issue mini-series comic book adaptation of Shrek which was written by Mark Evanier, and the issues were later compiled into a trade paperback.

A musical version, based on the film, with music by Jeanine Tesori and a book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire, opened on Broadway on December 14, 2008, and closed January 3, 2010, running for a total of 441 performances. It starred Brian d'Arcy James in the title role, Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona, Christopher Sieber as Lord Farquaad, Daniel Breaker as Donkey, and John Tartaglia as Pinocchio. The Broadway production was recorded and released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital media. A North American Tour opened July 25, 2010, in Chicago. A London production opened in the West End on June 7, 2011. The musical received many Tony Award nominations and won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Costume Design. It received five Laurence Olivier Award nominations including Best New Musical.

A shot-for-shot fan remake titled Shrek Retold was released through 3GI Industries on November 29, 2018. The project was a collaboration of 200 filmmakers and mixes live action, hand drawn animation, Flash animation, CGI and various other art forms to recreate the film. The film is available on YouTube for free.

Sequels and spin-offs

Three sequels were released over the years – the Oscar-nominated Shrek 2 in 2004, Shrek the Third in 2007, and Shrek Forever After in 2010. Shrek 2 was the only one to receive similar acclaim from critics, though all three sequels were commercially successful. Shrek the Halls (2007) and Scared Shrekless (2010) were released as holiday-themed short films. A spin-off prequel film entitled Puss in Boots, centered on the titular character's life before his debut in Shrek 2, was released in 2011, while a sequel, titled Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and set after the events of Shrek Forever After, was released in 2022. A fifth feature film was originally planned during the development of Shrek Forever After, but the idea was later abandoned by DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Leading up to NBCUniversal's planned acquisition of DreamWorks Animation in 2016, it was announced that a fifth Shrek film would be released in 2019. On November 6, 2018, Variety reported that Chris Meledandri had been tasked to reboot both Shrek and Puss in Boots, with the original cast potentially returning to reprise their roles. While cast members reported that a script was completed for a fifth Shrek film, development stalled and future plans have yet to be officially announced.

See also
Shrek fandom

References

Bibliography

External links

  at DreamWorks

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Shrek


Angelo Donghia (March 7, 1935 – April 10, 1985) was an American interior designer.

History
Donghia was born in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, on March 7, 1935. He grew up spending time at his father's tailoring shop which is where his appreciation for design grew and developed. He realized his calling at a young age and by the time he turned 11 his father had granted him his first decorating job at the tailoring shop, for which Angelo Donghia would recall "The result was perhaps liked by some and hated by others, but that didn't bother me. What mattered was that I had made something which was really the way I saw it and felt it."

He left for New York City to study interior design at Parsons School of Design when he was 18 years old. After graduation Donghia joined the firm of Yale Burge Interiors, where Burge became his mentor and helped him hone his craft and develop a personal style. In 1966, on the recommendation of Billy Baldwin (interior designer), Mr. Donghia designed the Metropolitan Opera Club room at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center which, with silver foil ceilings, blue chandeliers and black upholstery, was met with great acclaim. He was soon made partner of the design firm, then renamed Burge-Donghia.

At the time of his death on April 10, 1985, the New York-based Donghia Companies included five branches: Donghia Associates, Donghia Furniture, Donghia Textiles, Donghia Showrooms and Donghia Licensing.

Career
Donghia was also one of the first in his field to realize the importance of extending his point of view to mass-market products. Donghia said: "I knew that what I had wasn't enough and that my growth had to be through means which weren't the decorating business." By 1968 Mr. Donghia was already expanding with the establishment of &Vice Versa, a to-the-trade collection and showroom of fabrics and wallcoverings (later to become Donghia Textiles) originally inspired by the designs of friend Seymour Avigdor. Licensing his name and designs played a major role in Angelo Donghia's success and, concurrently with his interior design work, he began designing a number of products including an award-winning sheet and towel collection for J.P. Stevens, an affordable furniture collection for Kroehler, and coordinated dinner and barware for Toscany Imports Ltd.

After Yale Burge died in 1972, Burge-Donghia was renamed Donghia Associates and served the areas of residential, contract and hospitality interior design. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Mr. Donghia's client list grew to include major corporations, cultural institutions, mass manufacturers, as well as a number of celebrities. Projects included the S.S Norway, the Omni International Hotels in Miami and Atlanta, and the St. Andrews Country Club in Florida, while Ralph Lauren, Halston, Donald Trump, Barbara Walters, Mary Tyler Moore, Liza Minnelli, Neil Simon, Grace Mirabella and Diana Ross were amongst his celebrity clientele.

His business continued to expand and in 1976 he opened the first of a series of Donghia Showrooms in Los Angeles. Well known for his entertaining, the opening reception included such names as Edith Head, Joel Schumacher, Diane Von Furstenburg and Norma Kamali. Soon after, in 1978, he founded Donghia Furniture, a collection of made-to-order upholstered furniture sold exclusively to the trade.

To this day Donghia, Inc. maintains the design philosophy of its founder. Angelo Donghia's vision lives on through the company and also through the Angelo Donghia Foundation, which provides scholarships each year to promising interior design students in the United States. The Foundation has made such donations as the Angelo Donghia Materials Library and Study Center at the Parsons School of Design and the Angelo Donghia Studio for Interior Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as smaller donations to AIDS organizations for research and treatment.

Personal style
Donghia's design philosophy, a less is more approach, extended to all his projects. Inspired by Jean-Michel Frank, Angelo Donghia noted in a 1977 New York magazine piece, "I feel that I've developed my own style that is as classic and minimal as the thirties style it reflects." Furthermore, he understood what people like and enjoy living with and had an uncanny ability to turn that knowledge into comfortable, elegant designs. "He starts with a concern for living," stated the late Grace Mirabella, both a client and editor of Vogue. In his interiors he created total environments – not just rooms – on the tenet that "You should feel at all times that what is around you is attractive . . . and that you are attractive." His trademarks included the use of silver gray, often through gray flannel, an attention to ceilings and "fat" furniture.
His design philosophy also translated into his homes, as indicated in the design of his sophisticated East Side Manhattan townhouse, relaxed late-Victorian Key West home, and traditional Lake Hill, Connecticut farm.

Awards
Angelo Donghia was the recipient of many awards during his lifetime including: the Tommy Award for Fabric Design, the Annual Euster Merchandise Mart Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Home Furnishings Industry, an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts by The New School of Social Research and Parsons School of Design, the Marshall Field's "Distinction and Design" Award. He was also, posthumously, inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame.

Documentary
In 2016, editor at large produced a documentary film on the life and work of Angelo Donghia. Editor and filmmaker Julia Noran Johnston interviewed friends and colleagues close to the designer such as Paige Rense, Joel Schumacher, Melvin Dwork, John Boone, Ronald Bricke, Mario Buatta, Susan Buscavage, Chuck Chewning, Ann Sonet, and Masaru Suzuki.

References

"Cross Bones" by Kathy Reichs (published by Scribner) pg. 269.

External links
Donghia.com
Donghia Product
Donghia Digest
Architecturaldigest.com
Time.com
Editoratlarge.com
Imdb.com
Amazon.com
Editoratlarge.com

American interior designers
1935 births
1985 deaths
AIDS-related deaths in Pennsylvania
People from Vandergrift, Pennsylvania
American designers

Angelo Donghia


Albert I (Albert Honoré Charles Grimaldi; 13 November 1848 – 26 June 1922) was Prince of Monaco from 10 September 1889 until his death. He devoted much of his life to oceanography, exploration and science. Alongside his expeditions, Albert I made reforms on political, economic and social levels, bestowing a constitution on the principality in 1911.

Early life
Born on 13 November 1848 in Paris, France, the son of Prince Charles III (1818–1889), and Countess Antoinette de Mérode-Westerloo (1828–1864), a Belgian noblewoman, maternal aunt of Donna Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo, Princess della Cisterna, Duchess consort of Aosta and Queen consort of Spain.

As a young man, Prince Albert served in the Spanish Navy as a navigator. During the Franco-Prussian War, he joined the French Navy where he was awarded the Legion of Honor. In addition to his interest in oceanographic studies, Albert had a keen interest in the origins of man and in Paris, he founded the "Institute for Human Paleontology" that was responsible for a number of archeological digs. The "Grimaldi Man" found in the Baousse-Rousse cave was named in his honour. Albert's intellectual achievements gained him worldwide recognition and in 1909, the British Academy of Science made him a member.

First marriage

On 21 September 1869 at the Château de Marchais (which is still in the possession of the Grimaldi family today) in Champagne, Prince Albert was married to Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton (1850–1922), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, a daughter of the 11th Duke of Hamilton and his wife, Princess Marie of Baden. The couple met for the first time in August 1869 at a ball hosted by the Emperor and Empress of France; their marriage had been arranged by Albert's grandmother Caroline.

Caroline had tried to make a match between Albert and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, the first cousin of Queen Victoria, and sought the help of Napoléon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) and his wife, Empress Eugénie. The Emperor convinced Caroline that Queen Victoria would never allow a relative of hers to marry into a family who made a living out of gambling. He then suggested Mary, his third cousin and sister of his good friend, the 12th Duke of Hamilton, as a suitable alternative. Mary was a granddaughter of Charles, Grand Duke of Baden and related by blood to the French Imperial family through her maternal grandmother Stéphanie de Beauharnais, Emperor Napoléon I's adopted daughter and second cousin of Napoléon III's mother, Hortense de Beauharnais. The Hamiltons were well aware of the extent of Monaco's estate, which was no bigger than theirs, but were sufficiently impressed by its status as an independent principality. The couple married at Château de Marchais on 21 September 1869.

Within a year of their marriage, the couple's only child (Louis) was born, but Mary, from the hills of Scotland, disliked Monaco and everything Mediterranean. While Albert was away fighting in the Franco-Prussian war, she left Monaco permanently. The couple divorced and their marriage was annulled by the Church on 3 January 1880, although a special provision was made by the Vatican to allow Louis to remain legitimate in the eyes of the Church. Civilly, the marriage was dissolved on 28 July 1880, by the Order of Prince Charles III. That same year, the former Princess of Monaco remarried in Florence, Italy, to a Hungarian nobleman, Prince Tassilo Festetics von Tolna.

Accession and second marriage

On 10 September 1889, Albert ascended the throne of Monaco on the death of his father. That same year in Paris, on 30 October, he married the Dowager Duchess de Richelieu, née Marie Alice Heine (1858–1925). The American daughter of a New Orleans building contractor of German-Jewish descent, Alice Heine had married the Duc de Richelieu but had been widowed by age 21 and left with a young son, Armand. Her marriage to Prince Albert proved an equal blessing for him and the tiny principality of Monaco, since Alice brought a strong business acumen, well in advance of her youth. Having helped put her husband's principality on a sound financial footing, she would devote her energies to making Monaco one of Europe's great cultural centers, with an opera, theater, and a ballet under the direction of the famed Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev.

Despite the initial success of the marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Alice, in 1902, they separated legally, without issue, though did not divorce. According to Anne Edwards' book The Grimaldis of Monaco, this was due to the Princess's friendship with the composer Isidore de Lara. By the same token, the courtesan Caroline Otero, La Belle Otero, who had served him as a high class prostitute between 1893 and 1897, recalled Albert fondly in her memoirs and claimed that he was not a virile man and suffered from erection difficulty. Princess Alice had La Belle Otero banned from the principality in 1897 for being seen with her husband.

Later life
In March 1910, there were mass protests against his rule. The Monegasque demanded a constitution and a parliament to rein in the absolute monarch or else they would overthrow him and establish a republic. They were dissatisfied about French domination of the principality's politics and economy. There was severe unemployment, as the principality lacked factories and farmland, and the casinos did not allow citizens to work there. On 5 January 1911, Prince Albert I granted Monaco a constitution, but the document had little real meaning in terms of reducing autocratic rule and was soon suspended by the Prince when World War I broke out. Also in 1911, Prince Albert created the Monte Carlo Rally, an automobile race designed to draw tourists to Monaco and the Casino.

Despite his military service, or perhaps because of it, the Prince became a pacifist, establishing the International Institute of Peace in Monaco as a place to develop a peaceful settlement for conflict through arbitration. In the tension-filled times leading up to World War I, Prince Albert made numerous attempts to dissuade Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II from war.

When war came, Prince Albert could not avoid becoming involved. In one incident, he even wrote personally to the Kaiser in an effort to ameliorate the consequences of Gen. Karl von Bülow's wrath. Without the Prince's intervention, the French villages of Sissonne and Marchais would have been destroyed. In the "Great War to End All Wars", Monaco declared its neutrality, but in fact, provided the Allied forces with hospitals, convalescent centers, and soldiers, including Prince Albert's only son, Louis.

Albert died on 26 June 1922 in Paris, France, and was succeeded by his son, Louis II.

Oceanography, paleontology, geography
Prince Albert I of Monaco devoted much of his life to the study of the sea and oceans, and Monaco diplomats around the world forwarded scientific papers to him. At 22 years old, he embarked on a career in the then relatively new science of oceanography. Understanding the importance of the relationship between living creatures and their environment, he devised a number of techniques and instruments for measurement and exploration. Albert I was also the "instigator and promulgator" of the oceanographic science he contributed to create. He founded the Institut océanographique, Foundation Albert I, Prince of Monaco in 1906, a private foundation recognized of public utility. It has two buildings: The Oceanographic Institute of Paris, now renamed Ocean House, and what became the world-renowned Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. This includes an aquarium, a museum, and a library, with research facilities in Paris.

He owned four, increasingly impressive research yachts, Hirondelle, Princesse Alice, Princesse Alice II and Hirondelle II. Accompanied by some of the world's leading marine scientists, he travelled the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, making numerous oceanographic studies, maps and charts. In 1896, on an oceanographic survey of the Azores, he discovered the Princess Alice Bank.

From an early age, Prince Albert I of Monaco evidenced a strong fascination for the polar regions. In the years 1898-1907 he made four scientific cruises to Svalbard on his yacht Princesse Alice. His efforts are honored by the later naming of Albert I Land on Spitsbergen.

The first cruise in the summer of 1898 was an oceanographical and zoological reconnaissance, aimed mainly at adding to the collections of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, for which the construction had just started.

On the second expedition, in 1899, the focus was on the hydrography and topography of Raudfjorden, on the north-western tip of Spitsbergen, of which a map was published. His efforts are acknowledged by the later naming of Albert I Land, which comprises the part of Spitsbergen west of Raudfjorden.

The third trip, in 1906, meteorology was added to the range of observations and surveys were pursued. The Prince also provided support for two other expeditions, that of the Scotsman, William Bruce, to Prins Karls Forland, and that of the Norwegian, Gunnar Isachsen, to northwestern Spitsbergen. His funding of the latter lead to regular Norwegian scientific expeditions on Svalbard, and in 1928 the foundation of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

The Prince's fourth expedition in 1907, was aimed at completing the results from the previous summer. Prince Albert also lent his support, either financially, or through gifts or loans of oceanographic instruments, to numerous Arctic and Antarctic explorers. The same year, he provided funds and support for the foundation of the Friends of the French National Museum of Natural History Society. In 1909 he joined the Société de Géographie and the British Academy. In 1910 the Prince was the main founder of the Institute of Human Paleontology (Institut de paléontologie humaine) in Paris, close to the Jardin des plantes which is the seat of the French National Museum of Natural History. Finally, he showed a keen interest in environmental protection, especially in Svalbard. This is demonstrated by his responses to a questionnaire that Hugo Conwentz, a German botanist sent him in 1912.

In 1918, the US National Academy of Sciences awarded Prince Albert its Alexander Agassiz Medal for his achievements. The Explorers Club elected Albert I to its highest category of membership — Honorary Member — in 1921. He was also awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society. Prince Rainier of Monaco and the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans established the Prince Albert I Medal in the physical and chemical sciences of the oceans in his honor.

Philately

Albert I constituted a collection of postage stamps. The collection was later continued by Louis II and finally became part of the postal museum Rainier III that created in 1950.

Numismatics
Albert I was featured on a €2 commemorative coin issued by the Principality of Monaco in 2022.

Honours
Decorations

Notes

External links

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1848 births
1922 deaths
19th-century Princes of Monaco
20th-century Princes of Monaco
House of Grimaldi
Monegasque scientists
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Albert I, Prince of Monaco


Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the first big optical space observatory telescope. Being above the atmosphere means it can see the sky more clearly than a telescope on the ground. The atmosphere blurs starlight before it reaches Earth. Named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope can observe 24 hours a day. The main mirror is 94.5 inches (2.4 meters) across.  The telescope can take pictures of things so far away it would be nearly impossible to see them from anywhere else.

It was made by both NASA and the ESA working together. It is 600 km in space and was launched on April 24, 1990. Like other things in low Earth orbit it travels at 5 miles (10 km) per second. If you were going this speed on Earth, you would be able to get from New York to San Francisco in 10 minutes. This speed creates difficulty in scheduling observations.

The Hubble itself is the size of a large school bus, but still small enough to fit inside the cargo bay of a Space Shuttle. It was repaired in 1993 due to problems in the picture quality.

Launch
The telescope was launched in 1990 by a space shuttle. When it entered orbit, everything seemed fine. But there was a problem with the telescope that was not discovered until it started taking pictures.

Problems
When the HST took its first pictures, astronomers were happy to see the images, but they were not as sharp and as crisp as expected. Telescopes in space can take better pictures than telescopes on Earth, but for some reason, the pictures were not better than the pictures taken on Earth. They found a problem with the telescope's mirror. The mirror was not curved right. It was only wrong by 2.2 microns (1/50th as thick as a piece of paper). Still, this was enough to cause the images to be blurred. Some said that Hubble was nearsighted.

Repair
Another space shuttle was soon sent up to repair the space telescope. The repair was not easy. The astronauts had to install some small mirrors to correct the light from the big mirror. The big mirror could still be used. It took five days of space walks. When an astronaut opened one of the doors on Hubble to install a new camera, the door would not close. The astronauts had to think of a creative way to get around the problem. Eventually, Hubble was fixed.

Repairs and servicing missions have been made to the Hubble Space Telescope five times to keep it in orbit and make it even better as technology improved.  The space shuttle program was kept going longer than planned to send an extra trip up to the Hubble Space Telescope for a final fix.

Accomplishments

 Early on, in 1994, Hubble stared at what was thought to be an empty area of space for ten days. It found there were actually many galaxies even there, but very faint and very far away.  No other telescope could have seen that.
 In 2004, Hubble looked back several billion years to the first galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
 It was able to help settle the age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years.  Before the Hubble, scientists only knew it was between 10 and 20 billion years old.
 It took the first picture of a planet outside our solar system, and was able to find what type of atmosphere other planets might have.

Replacement
Hubble has been replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope which is located even further from Earth.  There are now other telescopes in orbit, like the Herschel Space Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Kepler Spacecraft, which was specially made for finding Earth-like planets around other stars.

References

Other websites
NASA Hubble Site
HubbleSite (STSI)

Space telescopes
Spacecraft launched in the 1990s

Hubble Space Telescope


Autoimmune disease is when the body's immune system attacks its own body. The function of the immune system is to recognise and reject foreign bodies like bacteria. Sometimes the system goes wrong, and the body itself gets damaged by its immune system. Examples are:

Crohn's disease
Graves' disease
Type 1 diabetes
Multiple sclerosis
Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (also called juvenile idiopathic arthritis)
Coeliac disease
Myasthenia gravis

Autoimmune disease


The Chomsky hierarchy is a concept of theoretical computer science. Noam Chomsky looked at grammars of regular language and classified them into four levels, numbered 0 to 3.

Group 0 consists of regular expressions without restriction, while groups 1 to 3 contain restrictions. Grammars in higher-numbered levels also satisfy the constraints of all levels below them. The concept was developed in the 1950s.

Language education
Linguistics

Chomsky hierarchy


James Wallace Black (February 10, 1825 – January 5, 1896), known professionally as J.W. Black,  was an early American photographer whose career was marked by experimentation and innovation.

Biography
He was born on February 10, 1825, in Francestown, New Hampshire.

After trying his luck as a painter in Boston, he turned to photography, beginning as a daguerreotype plate polisher. He soon partnered with John Adams Whipple, a prolific Boston photographer and inventor. Black's photograph of abolitionist John Brown in 1859, the year of his insurrection at Harpers Ferry, is now in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

In March 1860, Black took a photograph of poet Walt Whitman when Whitman was in Boston to oversee the typesetting of his 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Black's studio at 173 Washington Street was less than a block from the publishing firm of Thayer and Eldridge, who apparently commissioned the photograph to promote the 1860 edition.

On October 13, 1860, two years after the French photographer Nadar conducted his earliest experiments in balloon flight, Black made the first successful aerial photographs in the United States in collaboration with the balloon navigator Samuel Archer King on King's hot-air balloon, the Queen of the Air. He photographed Boston from a hot-air balloon at , taking 8 plates of glass negative measuring . One good print resulted, which the photographer entitled Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It. This was the first clear aerial image of a city.

Almost immediately, aerial reconnaissance would be put to use by the Union and Confederate Armies during the American Civil War, though there is no credible evidence that aerial photography was successful.

Black later became the authority on the use of the magic lantern, a candlelight-powered projector that was a predecessor of today's slide projectors. By the late 1870s Black's business largely consisted of lantern slide production, including his famous images of the Great Boston Fire of 1872, published a photographic album titled Ruins of the Great Fire in Boston, November 1872.

He died on January 5, 1896, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Collections of his work
 Boston Athenaeum
 Boston Public Library
 George Eastman House
 Historic New England
 Massachusetts Historical Society
 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

References

Further reading

 In Memoriam: JW Black. Wilsons Photographic Magazine, March 1896
 Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century photography, Volume 1. CRC Press, 2008.

External links
 Boston Public Library on Flickr. James Wallace Black Photographs
 Cambridge Historical Society on Flickr

Image gallery

American portrait photographers
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1896 deaths
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James Wallace Black


The Shire is a fictional location is part of the legendarium created by the British author J. R. R. Tolkien and appears in their novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

It is a region in the northwest of Middle-earth, one of the continents of the fictional world of Arda  where elapses the most part of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. It is, in turn, within the great region of Eriador, where previously existed the kingdom of Arnor. Is inhabited only by hobbits, a race similar to the men and characterized by their short stature. Founded in the middle of the Third Age, their known history is small and with little significants events because the peaceful nature of its inhabitants, with the exception of the events that took place during the War of the Ring.

Even if is not mentioned as such in the novel The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien already was then an idea of what was the Shire, was created "officially" during the composition of the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings and inspired principally in the neighborhood of Sarehole, Birmingham, where the author lived during his childhood.

The Shire in the languages of the Middle-Earth

Hobbits sometimes call it Sûza (which means "Shire")  or Sûzat ("the Shire"), terms that have their origin in the Rohirric, the language of Rohan with which they came in contact before colonizing the Shire. On the other hand, in the Elvish language Sindarin they call it i Drann. It is also called "Four frames", the name refers to their territorial division.

Geography

According to Tolkien, the Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) from the Far Downs in the west to the Brandywine Bridge in the east, and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from the northern moors to the marshes in the south,  This is confirmed in an essay by Tolkien on translating The Lord of the Rings, where he describes the Shire as having an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 km²).

The original territory of the Shire was bounded on the east by the Baranduin River, on the north by uplands rising to the old centre of Arnor, on the west by the White Downs, and on the south by marshland south of the River Shirebourne. After the original settlement, hobbits also expanded to the east into Buckland between the Baranduin and the Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the White Downs and the Tower Hills.

The Shire was originally divided into four Farthings. The outlying lands of Buckland and the Westmarch were formally added after the War of the Ring when they were officially granted by King Elessar. Within the Farthings there are some smaller unofficial clan homelands: the Tooks nearly all live in or near Tuckborough in Tookland, for instance. A Hobbit surname often indicates where the family came from: Samwise Gamgee's last name derives from Gamwich, where the family originated. Buckland was named for the Oldbucks (later called the Brandybucks).

The Shire was densely populated, with many towns and few cities, but still had large areas of forests and wetlands. It is described as a "small land", but beautiful and fruitful, beloved by its inhabitants. Their location gives it a natural fertility and therefore the hobbits have an extensive farming system, being able to find many supplies such as cereals, fruits, wood and pipe-weed (one of the favorite pleasures of the hobbits). However, its economy is almost self-sufficient and hobbits typically consume all the products of their crops, or reserve them for gifts.

Orography
The Shire is a region of low elevations, and these are no higher than hills. The main ones are:

Far Downs, are between the Tower Hills, west, and the White Downs to the east. They were originally the western frontier of the Shire, but after expansion "in 32" of the "Fourth Age of the Sun," were included in it and became part of the Westfarthing. They found the village of Greenholm
White Downs: also called White Hills, are in the Westfarthing, on the east of Far Downs. The town Michel Delving was there. The Free Fair, where hobbits elected there Mayor of the Shire, was held here.
Hills of Scary: in the Eastfarthing and extend from the river Baranduin until near the border with the Northfarthing. Scary and Quarry villages are close to the hills, ob the south.
Green Hills, extending from the Westfarthing, through the Southfarthing and ending in the Eastfarthing, going into the Woody End. All the lands who occupied were called the Green Hill Country. In the west was the town Tuckborough, where the Took family and the Thain lived. In these hills born the river of the Shire and the river of the Cardoon.

Weather

The climate in the Shire was primarily temperate maritime or ocean, depending on the area. In general, temperatures are slightly warmer in the south than in the north and seasonal changes of temperature are lightly more pronounced (hotter summers and colder winters) in the extreme east than the extreme west. The rainfalls are moderate throughout the whole year and especially in the Northframe, Can snow during the occasional visits of polar air from the north.

Climate studying and modeling based on local topography and geography by climatologists at the University of Bristol, UK, have found that the Shire holds an annual average temperature of 44 °F (6.7 °C) and an annual yearly precipitation average of 24 inches (61 cm), similar to that of Lincolnshire or Leicestershire, England, or Dunedin, New Zealand.

Population

The Shire is populated only by hobbits. By the time of the War of the Ring, most of the whole hobbit race was there, except those who lived in Bree-land to the east.

The original three tribes of hobbits (Harfoots, Fallohides, Stoors) united and mixed in the Shire. Only in the east part of the Shire there is a bigger Stoorish influence, which can be seen in that those hobbits sometimes grow beards.

The Shire has three leader positions:
The Thain is the leader of all Shire-hobbits. The Thain originates from the Took family.
The Master of Buckland, at the eastern border of the Shire. The Master of Buckland is from the Brandybuck family.
The Mayor of Michel Delving. He is elected every seven years by the Shire-hobbits. He administers the post system and the police.

References

Middle-earth

de:Regionen und Orte in Tolkiens Welt#Auenland
lb:Länner a Stied aus Middle-earth#The Shire

Shire (Middle-earth)


Peppers are plants, but there are many unrelated genera
 The genus Piper. It contains Black pepper, a plant that is grown to produce the peppercorn, the dark powder known as pepper is made of.
 The genus Capsicum. It contains the Chili pepper which is most often used as a vegetable
 Sichuan pepper, a condiment that is different from black pepper, and unrelated to it.
 Brazilian pepper, a shrub that is native to South America. It is widely used as an ornamental plant in frost-free regions. Its fruit is sometimes sold as pink peppercorns. It is poisonous in larger quantities.
 Tasmanian pepper, or Mountain pepper, an evergreen flowering plant of Australia and New Zealand
 Ukrainian Red Midget, a plant that produces peppers sometimes referred to at Thai Hot.

Pepper


TACPOL (Tactical Procedure Oriented Language) is a block structured programming language developed by the United States Army for the TACFIRE Tactical Fire Direction command and control application.  TACPOL is similar to PL/I.

Language constructs

Reserved words
Unlike PL/I, TACPOL keywords—called particles—are reserved words and cannot be used as identifiers. There are roughly 100 reserved words.

Identifiers
TACPOL identifiers can be any length, but if longer than eight characters only the first five concatenated with the last three characters were actually used.

Data types
TACPOL supports fixed-point binary numeric data, fixed-length character strings up to 512 bytes, and fixed-length bit strings up to 32 bits.  There is no support for floating point numeric data or for pointers.  Arrays may have up to three dimensions, but dynamic bounds are not permitted.  Additional types are records, called groups, limited to a single level of nesting, tables (arrays of groups), and unions, called cells.

Control structures
Control structures include IF-THEN-ELSE, iteration, WHILE and CASE statements.

Procedures
Procedures may have value parameters, quantity parameters – by reference without type-checking, parameterless procedure and label parameters.

Implementations
The TACPOL compiler ran on and generated code for the AN/GYK-12, a militarized version of the Litton Industries L-3050 32-bit minicomputer.

Criticism and defense

Positive features
 TACPOL is easy to learn.

Negative features
 "TACPOL has a large number of special language features which were included for reasons of efficiency because the inclusion of corresponding cleanly designed general purpose features was not properly understood."
 "Cost per instruction of TACPOL [is] higher than language used for other military computers."

Notes

References

External links
 TACPOL Reference Manual (USACSCS-TF-4-1)
 Serafino, et.al. "Report to the High Order Language Working Group" (1977)
 United States General Accounting Office.  "Tactical Operations System Should Not Continue as Planned" (1979)

See also

 JOVIAL
 CMS-2
 CORAL
 Ada

United States Army equipment
Domain-specific programming languages

TACPOL (programming language)


Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero (December 24, 1916 – March 17, 2005) was an American guitarist, singer and farm labor activist best known for his strong influence on later Latin musical artists.

Early life
Guerrero was born in Tucson, Arizona, one of 21 siblings (although only nine survived). His father worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Guerrero left his hometown to pursue his dream in music. He says that he gives his mother all the credit for his musical talent, and Guerrero said she taught him to "embrace the spirit of being Chicano". Lalo's mother, Concepcion Guerrero, taught him some basic musical skills and encouraged him to hone them during adolescence. She was no professional musician but had taught herself to play guitar. His relationship with his mother greatly influenced his music; one of the major themes of his work was the visibility of the Chicana struggle for dignity. His first group, Los Carlistas (the quartet included Greg "Goyo" Escalante, Chole Salaz and Joe Salaz), represented Arizona at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and performed on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour on radio.

He moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s, and had a few uncredited roles in movies, including Boots and Saddles and His Kind of Woman. He recorded for Imperial Records and fronted the Trio Imperial. He also formed his own orchestra and toured throughout the Southwest. He performed at the La Bamba club in Hollywood, a place frequented by the biggest stars in the movie business. In the 1960s, he bought a night club in Los Angeles and renamed it "Lalo's". In the 1940s he became a friend of the Ronstadt family of Arizona, in particular Gilbert Ronstadt, father of popular vocalist Linda Ronstadt. Linda recalls childhood memories of Guerrero serenading her. At his funeral, Linda sang a traditional Mexican song in tribute.

Music
Guerrero is known as the father of Chicano music. He recorded and wrote many songs in all sorts of genres. He recorded over 700 songs since his first record in 1939 with Los Carlistas on Vocalion Records. As a songwriter Guerrero wrote songs for El Trio los Panchos, Lola Beltran and many other famous artists.

His first American hit was "Pancho López", a parody of the popular 1950s hit "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett". Guerrero used the Davy Crockett melody and wrote his own lyrics, telling the story of a legendary Mexican character. Due to criticism Guerrero received over this song, he never performed it publicly, not wanting to contribute to an inappropriate stereotype. Guerrero went on to record several more parody songs, including "Pancho Claus," "Elvis Perez," "Tacos For Two" (to the tune of "Cocktails For Two"), and "There's No Tortillas" (to the tune of "O Sole Mio"). Guerrero's earliest Pachuco compositions of the 1940s and 1950s  were the basis of the Luis Valdez stage musical, Zoot Suit.

Early career
Prior to WWII, he primarily played songs of Mexican origin. Guerrero explained that this was not necessarily because they were his favorite songs to play. "They couldn't conceive of a Mexican, especially one who looks as Indian as I do, sitting up there and singing Bing Crosby songs. So naturally the Anglos would get the jobs.... I reverted to singing Mexican music".

Labor songs
He also wrote songs about Cesar Chavez, other farm workers and braceros. Chavez said at tribute to Guerrero in 1992 in Palm Desert, California: "Lalo has chronicled the events of the Hispanic in this country a lot better than anyone." He worked closely with Chavez for farm workers' rights and lent voice to the movement with the song, "No Chicanos On TV."

WWII: Zoot Suit and Pachuca/o Subculture
During WWII, Mexican-American women known as Pachucas began to challenge societal norms in relation to gender, labor, communication and representation. These Pachuca/o citizens were living in a paradox, a reality with three options in regard to their Mexican Vs. American heritage. They could either; completely assimilate and adhere to white America's definition of "American", completely rebel and be labeled Mexican delinquents, or they could try to find a balance in which they did not abandon their cultural identities, but also upheld values that would characterize them as American. The last option listed was the choice of those Pachuca/os wearing Zoot Suits. They wished to be their own person, make it in society on their own terms, and embrace being bilingual and multicultural. This movement and ideology played a key role in determining our modern definition of what it means to be an American. "The struggle for dignity by zoot suiters was thus a politics of refusal: a refusal to accept humiliation, a refusal to quietly endure dehumanization, and a refusal to conform." These women, fighting for dignity, recognition, and equality would form a collective movement marching forward to the anthem of Lalo Guerrero's music.

Guerrero's music simultaneously evolved into the Zoot Suit/ Pachuca/o music of the 1940s and 1950s. His songs infused with Pachuco slang, a combination of informal Spanish and English, acted as a megaphone contextualizing the efforts of Chicanas. "His compositions about the pachuco era produced a string of hits and generated interest in the Pachuco dialect." His Musical parodies such as, "Pancho Lopez" and "Mexican Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Busboys" invoke a comedic tone while also juxtaposing the American vs. Mexican-American experience. His emphasis on the gap between Anglo-American and Mexican-American goes hand in hand with the assertion of Chicanas that they are stuck in a paradox. Chicanas, during this time, sought to bridge the gap between the Anglo-American experience and the experiences of Mexican-Americans when it came to socioeconomic opportunity and equality.

Children's music
He also wrote children's songs presented via his "Las Ardillitas," or "Three Little Squirrels", with his voice sped up. Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, threatened lawsuit over alleged similarities between the Chipmunks and Las Ardillitas, until Guerrero provided evidence that he had conceived Las Ardillitas first.

In 1995 he recorded a children's album Papa's Dream with Los Lobos.

Collaborations
In 2005, Guerrero was one of several Chicano musicians who collaborated with Ry Cooder on Cooder's Chávez Ravine album, for which he provided vocals on three songs ("Corrido de Boxeo", "Los Chucos Suaves", and "Barrio Viejo") which helped bring him, at the twilight of his life, to the attention of a wider Anglo audience. Guerrero recorded his last full CD on Break Records, a Los Angeles-based record label, this at age 83. This would become his last music CD. The recording is a collection of Guerrero's best "Zoot Suit" compositions of Latin swing "Pachuco" music. The music CD was produced by music producer Benjamin Esparza, one of Guerrero's trusted friends during his last years. The Musical CD contained new recordings of his 1940s "Pachuco" swing music which was used in the Broadway play and Universal Pictures movie "Zoot Suit". The play was written and directed by Luis Valdez. The album, Vamos A Bailar-Otra Vez, was produced by Esparza and Justo Almario of Break Records.

Contributions to Mexican-American women's rights
Lalo Guerrero was able to amplify the voices of the Pachuca/o and Chicana/o Movements by playing songs which represented their culture; one of Mexican and American heritage. "In a career that spanned la Crisis of the 1930s, the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Guerrero embodied the essential humanity of the barrios (Spanish speaking low income areas). He transformed what he saw and heard as a young man on la Calle Meyer (Meyer St.) into songs that touched millions of people." Guerrero's music directly aided the ability of Mexican-Americans, especially women, to publicly demonstrate the duality of their heritage and helped to bring their culture into mainstream America.

Legacy
His career is somewhat symbolic of the various Mexican-American women's rights movements. In the beginning of his career he was relegated to performing only Mexican songs in Spanish for audiences of Mexican descent. He, like the Chicanas and Pachucas, created something new, "…in a sense, Lalo was a greater artist than his predecessors because only he created his own music- music that made people laugh or cry, music that captured the jazzy spirit of a culture and a generation." Lalo was able to successfully claim a public space for Chicano and Pachuco music and slang, as were the Chicanas and Pachucas. For most of his career, he was playing his music in other people's clubs, just as the Chicanas were living their lives within other people's guidelines. "Lalo remained in southern California after the war was over, singing in other people's nightclubs until 1956, when the success of "Pancho López," his parody of "Davy Crockett," enabled him to open Lalo's Place in East Los Angeles." The opening of Lalo's Place symbolizes the success Mexican Americans experienced in creating a space for themselves within American society, and progress in their quest to attain the opportunities of and be recognized as Americans but also respected as Mexican-American.

Tributes
Guerrero was officially declared a national folk treasure by the Smithsonian Institution in 1980 and was presented with the National Medal of Arts in 1996 by then United States President Bill Clinton. In 1991 Guerrero received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. In late 2005 Guerrero was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. Along with that he was also inducted into the Tejano Hall of Fame and the Mariachi Hall of Fame.

Guerrero's contributions have resulted in Las Glorias, a restaurant in central Phoenix, Arizona displaying a poster of him with his signature on it on the wall for everyone to see in loving memory of him. He also has a blown-up, candid photograph of him as a young man on the wall of a major underpass in Tucson. In Cathedral City, California, the main street in front of the Civic Center is named for him: Avenida Lalo Guerrero. All official city documentation contains Lalo's name in the address.

In 1994 a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him.

Personal life and death
Guerrero was married for over 34 years to his wife Lidia Guerrero. They both lived in Cathedral City, California for over 28 years. Guerrero died on March 17, 2005, in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 88 years old.

References

Further reading

External links

 Lalo Guerrero discography from his son Mark's website
 National Public Radio report on Guerrero's death
 Break Records website
 Guide to the Lalo Guerrero collection at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives

1916 births
2005 deaths
American musicians of Mexican descent
American blues guitarists
American jazz guitarists
American norteño musicians
American rhythm and blues guitarists
American salsa musicians
American comedy musicians
Mambo musicians
Parody musicians
American parodists
Rock and roll musicians
Swing guitarists
Hispanic and Latino American musicians
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Musicians from Los Angeles
Musicians from Tucson, Arizona
People from Cathedral City, California
20th-century American musicians
National Heritage Fellowship winners
Imperial Records artists

Lalo Guerrero


Malba Tahan, full name Ali Yezzid Izz-Edin ibn-Salim Hanak Malba Tahan,  was a fictitious Persian scholar. He was the creation and frequent pen name of Brazilian author Júlio César de Mello e Souza.

Biography
According to the dedication and introductory chapters of The Man Who Counted (ostensibly written in the month of Ramadan in the year of the Hijra 1321, corresponding to November 1943 AD), Malba Tahan was a native and well-connected resident of Baghdad, a sharif (a descendant of Caliph Ali Ibn Abi Talib), and a hajj (a Muslim who made the pilgrimage to Mecca).

In the year of the Hijrah 1255 (1877 AD), Malba Tahan moved to Constantinople with his lifelong friend Beremiz Samir, the namesake of Malba's book The Man Who Counted.

Alternate biography
In other works by Julio César, however, Malba Tahan was born on May 6, 1885, in the apparently fictitious village of "Muzalit", near Mecca (possibly modern Al-Muzahmiyya). He lived for 12 years in Manchester, England, where his father was a prosperous merchant.  After his father retired, the family moved to Cairo where they remained prosperous. Malba Tahan studied first in Cairo and afterwards went to Constantinople where he concluded his studies of social science.  His first literary works date from this period and were published in Turkish in several newspapers and magazines.  He was still a young man when his friend emir Abd el-Azziz ben Ibrahim appointed him mayor of Medina, a post which he filled with distinction for several years.  In 1912, at the age of 27, he received a large inheritance from his father, which allowed him to travel widely around the world, including China, Japan, Russia, India, and Europe.  He died in July 1931 near Riyadh, Arabia, fighting for the freedom of a local tribe.

Origin of the name
Malba Tahan is said to mean "the miller from the oasis" in Arabic. But Tahan was in fact the surname of one of Julio Souza's students, Maria Zechsuk Tahan.

References

External links
"Brazil's other passion: Malba Tahan and The man who counted" by Alex Bellos, BBC News, 6 May 2014

Fictional Iranian people
Fictional Muslims
Fictional scholars
Fictional social scientists

Malba Tahan