Sowt (Arabic: صَوْت), Arabic for "voice", is an Arabic-language independent podcasting network based in Amman, Jordan. It was launched in 2017 by Hazem Zureiqat, Tarek Zureiqat, and Ramsey Tesdell. Sowt curates and produces podcasts on issues of political, social, and cultural nature. Among its most popular programmes are 'Eib', 'Dom Tak' and 'Blank Maps'.

History
Sowt started in the early 2010s as a social networking platform where users could share audio clips on a public feed. The application did not gain enough traction and in 2017, when former Nieman Lab contributor Ramsey Tesdell joined as managing partner, Sowt transformed into a podcasting network. Sowt produces its content with the support of grants from local and international organisations.

Programs
Sowt currently produces the following shows, most of which are narrative-driven:

 Eib: Arabic for "shame", a podcast that addresses social, cultural and religious taboos in Arab society such as divorce, homosexuality and sexual violence.
 Dom Tak: a narrative-driven podcast, produced in collaboration with Ma3azef, that explores the stories of unsung female singers in the Arab world.
 Masaha: a podcast offering women of various backgrounds the space to discuss their views on economic and social issues facing the region.
 Parliament: a regular podcast that facilitates a conversation between the public and the Jordanian House of Representatives.
 Razan: a narrative-podcast following the progress of the Syrian civil war through the kidnapping of lawyer and human rights activist Razan Zaitouneh.
Religion and State: a podcast exploring the relationship between state and religion in the Arab world from a philosophical and political lens.
Blank Maps: a podcast depicting stories of victims of statelessness across the Arab world.
Ya Rayeh: a podcast recounting stories of immigration attempts and experiences of citizens of Algeria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Ma Alaml: a podcast interviewing foreign domestic workers in the Middle East discussing the discrimination and legal difficulties they face.
Ali Alkadri: a podcast discussing Ali Alkadri's theories and the region's development difficulties.
Visualizing Conflict: a short series produced in cooperation with the University of Copenhagen to highlight the importance of images in conflict zones.

References

Companies of Jordan
Organisations based in Amman
Podcasting companies

Sowt (podcasting)


Uli may refer to:
Uli, Iran, a village
Uli, Anambra, a town in Nigeria
Uli I of Mali
Uli (design), by the Igbo people of Nigeria
Uli figure, from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
Uli (food), a rice-based food
 ISO 639 code for the Ulithian language

Uli is a name, short for Ulrich or Ulrike (disambiguation) and common in Germany.
 Uli Beckerhoff (born 1947), Jazz composer
Uli der Fehlerteufel, a character in German schoolbooks
 Uli Derickson (1944–2005), flight attendant during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847
 Uli Edel (born 1947), German film director
 Uli Herzner (born 1971), German American fashion designer
 Uli Hiemer (born 1962), German professional ice hockey player
 Uli Hoeneß (born 1952), German football (soccer) player
 Uli Kusch (born 1967), heavy metal drummer
 Uli Jon Roth (born 1954), German neoclassical metal guitarist
 Uli Schmidt (born 1961), South African rugby union footballer
Uli Sigg (born 1946), Swiss businessman, diplomat, art collector
 Uli Stein (born 1954), German football player
 Uli Stielike (born 1954), German football player
 Uli Trepte (1941–2009), German musician
 Uli Vos (born 1946), field hockey player from Germany

ULI may stand for:
Uniono por la Linguo Internaciona Ido (Union for the International Language Ido)
Union List of Israel
Urban Land Institute

Uli


Coffea (coffee) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. Out of about 120 species, we make coffee from only two, Coffea arabica and C. canephora.

Coffea are shrubs or small trees, native to subtropical Africa and southern Asia. The seeds are called "beans" in the coffee trade. Beans from the two productive species are widely cultivated in tropical countries. Coffee is one of the world's major commodity crops and is the major export product of some countries.

The caffeine in coffee "beans" protects the seeds of the plant. It is a form of natural plant defense against herbivory. The fruits and leaves also contain caffeine, and can be used to make a tea called 'Coffee cherry tea'. The fruit is also used in many types of soft drink.

Several insect pests attack the plants and affect coffee production.
Coffee is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) species.

History
in Europe Coffee entered Europe through two routes, through land trade of the Ottoman Empire and through sea trade, from the ports of Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Was.

It was also raised in this country. Around 1650 AD, coffee was imported to England and coffeehouses were established in Oxford and London.

The cultivation of coffee plant in England started from the same time, but pests and the cold weather of the region destroyed the coffee plants and the British had to turn to tea cultivation instead of coffee cultivation,  first in Europe to coffee as a drink. Muslims were viewed with suspicion, but it is said that around the year 1600, Pope Clement VIII  enjoyed a cup of coffee so much that he considered its monopoly in the hands of Muslims as a great mistake and demanded to "baptize" it. Coffee drinking in Austria increased dramatically after the defeat of the siege of Vienna in 1683 and the confiscation of their large coffee reserves.

Before the beginning of the 18th century, the use of coffee drinks was common throughout Europe. European countries introduced this plant to tropical regions so that these countries can cultivate and mass produce coffee plants. In Europe, like the Middle East and Greater Iran, coffeehouses became a place for socializing, studying and exchanging opinions on current issues. Another similarity was the possibility of turning them into a gathering place for undesirable elements and vandals. Charles II, King of England, introduced coffeehouses as "places for traitors to meet, and to spread vulgar gossip about his Majesty and his ministers." In the 18th century, the famous Paris coffee house, Café Procope, had regular customers such as Mara,  Danton and Robespierre  who planned the revolution there during the French Revolution

Other websites

 Coffee & Conservation - Many resources on sustainable coffee, including reviews, especially shade coffee and biodiversity
Just About Coffee — General information webpage about the coffee tree subject.
 Coffea arabica by James A. Duke — detailed information about this species.

References

Rubiaceae
Coffee

Coffea


, lit. A Collection of Notable Tales Old and New, is a Kamakura-period collection of setsuwa. It was compiled by  and completed in 1254. The twenty volumes are divided by subject into thirty chapters: chapter 16 concerns art and painting and 17 kemari or "kickball". Of the 726 tales, nearly two-thirds are set in the Heian period. In a note between tales 721 and 722, Narisue states that "the original aim of this collection was to collect fine stories about music and poems, and depict them as if in paintings".

References

Setsuwa
Early Middle Japanese texts
1250s books

Kokon Chomonjū


Joseph Cotter Smith (born May 29, 1949) is an American stage, film, and television actor.

Early life
He was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Madeline (née Cotter) and John Lewis Smith, Jr., who was a federal judge. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1968. In 1972, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in literature  at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.

Smith's grandfather was an attorney, as are his brother and sister, and he said, "It was sort of assumed that I would be a lawyer, too." Instead, when he finished college, he became a teacher. After a few years, however, his interest turned to acting.

Career
He began his acting career in New York City in 1978, studying with Stella Adler and at the Actors Studio. His New York theater credits include the Broadway premiere productions of Next Fall, which was a 2010 Tony Award nominee for Best New Play, Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter) and Lanford Wilson's Burn This. He also co-starred with Judd Hirsch in the National Tour of the Tony Award-winning play Art. His numerous Off Broadway appearances include the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of "The Tempest' with Sam Waterston; Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive with Molly Ringwald; Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier's Play with Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson; Michael Weller's Side Effects with Joely Richardson; Athol Fugard's The Blood Knot with Danny Glover; Horton Foote's The Old Friends with Betty Buckley; and the American Premiere of the Olivier Award-winning Cockfight Play, among many others. He was also a ten-year member of the Circle Repertory Company in New York working exclusively on the premiere productions of new American plays.

He is a co-founder of The Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles, where he has appeared in The Seagull, The Homecoming, Endgame, Mad Forest, and Habeas Corpus. Other Los Angeles performances include Romeo and Juliet, Love Letters, and Raft of the Medusa, as well as the West Coast premieres of "A Soldier's Play' and How I Learned to Drive at the Mark Taper Forum.

With his wife, Heidi Mueller Smith, he co-founded and served as Artistic Director of the Cornerstone Theatre Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 2001 to 2007. Among his directing credits for the company are Edward Albee's The American Dream, Harold Pinter's Night School, and Lanford Wilson's The Gingham Dog.  His acting credits for the company include 12 Angry Men, Betrayal, Long Day's Journey into Night, and Educating Rita.

Smith has been nominated four times by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, receiving the Outstanding Performance Award in 1996 for George M. Cohan's "The Tavern". He has received four Drama-Logue Awards and two Ovation Award nominations.

His television and film work ranges from his debut co-starring as Robert Kennedy (opposite Robert Blake's Jimmy Hoffa) in the mini-series Blood Feud, to his role as the President of the United States in the 20th Century Fox film, X2: X-Men United. Over the years he has appeared in many television shows, from his regular roles on the ABC series Equal Justice and Night Stalker to his more recent appearances on The Americans, Madam Secretary, Person of Interest, Forever, and The Good Wife.

Smith is also an acting teacher, for the past six years at The New School for Drama in New York, where he also served as the Department Head of the MFA Acting Program from 2015 to 2017. Prior to that he taught for several years at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Personal life
Smith has been married to Heidi Mueller Smith since 2001. He was previously married to actress Mel Harris, with whom he has a daughter, Madeline, who is currently working on her PhD in history at the University of Chicago. He also has four stepchildren: Brianne, Christopher, Evan and Byron.

Filmography

References

External links
Cotter Smith Official Website (archived)

1949 births
Living people
American male stage actors
American male film actors
American male television actors
Male actors from Washington, D.C.
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
Lawrenceville School alumni
Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni

Cotter Smith


JibJab is a website created by Evan and Gregg Spiridellis in 1999. JibJab was noticed in the 2004 U.S. presidential election with their video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing "This Land is your Land" became so popular. The company creates original content. It has three main sections on the website: eCards; "Everyday Fun Sendables" such as funny videos; and "Originals," including "This Land," "Time for Some Campaignin'," and "Big Box Mart."

JibJab has also produced commercials for clients like Sony, Noggin, Disney and Cartoon Network.

Political comedy

Capitol III
JibJab made a flash movie for the 2000 United States presidential election in July 2000, which featured a rap battle between the two main candidates, Vice President Al Gore and Texas governor George W. Bush. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush also make cameos.

Ahnuld for Governor
In 2003, JibJab made a flash movie making fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger running for governor of California.

This Land
For the 2004 United States presidential election, JibJab made a flash movie entitled "This Land", which is a parody of This Land Is Your Land. The two main candidates, President George W. Bush and US Senator John Kerry are the main stars. The parody was very popular.

Good to Be in DC
JibJab followed up with another animation set to the tune of Dixie. In this video, animated versions of Bush, Kerry, and their running mates, Dick Cheney and John Edwards, singing about their hopes for the upcoming election.

Second Term
Immediately after Bush's election victory, JibJab released a third video, "Second Term", in the tune of She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain.

Time for Some Campaigning
For the 2008 United States presidential election, JibJab released another animation. It is in the tune of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin. Animated versions of the two main candidates, US Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, sing about their hopes for the election.

He's Barack Obama
Upon Obama's election victory and him taking power, JibJab released another animation, where they showed Obama as a superhero. The music is a rock version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home, and it is about Obama's promises as President.

2012 election
JibJab did not make another animation and instead focused on their e-card business. However, an election web-app released in October of that year.

Year in Review
JibJab started the tradition of making animations reviewing the events that happened each year, with an animation released between Christmas and New Year's Eve, sung to all classic melodies. The tradition originally lasted from 2005 to 2014, however JibJab revived the tradition in 2020 due to popular demand.

"2-0-5" (2005)
This is a parody of the songs Auld Lang Syne and Turkey in the Straw, and is sung in the perspective of George W. Bush. The events mentioned include:
 Kim Jong-il
 A space shuttle mission
 Israeli disengagement from Gaza
 The 2005 United States federal budget
 Decline of U.S. jobs
 Al-Qaeda insurgency
 Bush's declining popularity
 Plame affair grand jury investigation
 Karl Rove
 Energy Policy Act of 2005
 Michael D. Brown
 Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination
 United States housing bubble
 Gas prices
 Overseas job decline
 Hurricane Katrina
 Federal Emergency Management Agency
 Guantanamo Bay detention camp
 Avian influenza
 Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas protests
 Somalian piracy attack on the MV Seabourn Spirit
 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
 The increase in popularity of same-sex marriage in the United States and the 2005 Civil Marriage Act of Canada
 Stem cells
 Scooter Libby
 Tom DeLay

Nuckin' Futz (2006)
This is a parody of Jingle Bells sung in an elementary-school Christmas concert. Notable events mentioned include:
 Iraqi Civil War (2006-2008)
 War in Afghanistan
 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having a baby
 Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad
 Britney Spears undergoing rehab
 The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein
 Dick Cheney accidentally shooting friend Harry Whittington during a hunting trip
 The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot and subsequent liquid bans
 Hugo Chavez's UN Speech
 Tom Cruise's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show
 2006 Thai coup d'état
 Mel Gibson's DUI incident
 Ted Haggard's sex scandal
 Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
 Google buying YouTube
 Fidel Castro's failing health
 Ariel Sharon suffering a stroke
 The Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal
 Tom DeLay's trial
 The William J. Jefferson corruption case
 The Mark Foley scandal
 Paris Hilton swearing she never had sex
 Religious conflict in various parts of the world
 Kim Jong-il testing a bomb
 Kenneth Lay's death following his trial
 Lance Bass coming out as gay
 Donald Rumsfield resigning from being Secretary of Defense
 2006 Lebanon War
 Iran's nuclear program

In 2007 (2007)
This is a parody of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, portrayed by angels, who were afraid God would be upsetted by the year's tragic events and would rather sugar-coat it in the song. Notable events mentioned include:
 Global warming
 Terrorism, especially from Osama bin Laden
 Oil prices
 Michael Vick's role in the Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting investigation
 Al Gonzales resigning as attorney general
 Lindsay Lohan's cocaine bust
 Dennis Kucinich swearing that he saw a UFO
 The 2007 Chinese export recalls
 The campaigning of Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, John McCain, and Fred Thompson and Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama for the 2008 United States presidential election
 The War in Dafur
 The war in Iraq
 The Don Imus Rutgers University women's basketball team controversy
 The coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death
 Blackwater USA
 Britney Spears' performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards
 The Barry Bonds perjury case
 The Malibu forest fires
 The first flight of the Airbus A380
 Bob Barker retiring as host of The Price is Right
 Karl Rove dancing
 The O.J. Simpson robbery case
 President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf
 President of Syria Bashar al-Assad
 President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
 Caitlin Upton winning the Miss Team USA pageant
 Cargill's beef recalls
 The Larry Craig scandal
 The rise of Facebook
 2007 Boston Red Sox season
 The release of Halo 3 for Xbox 360
 The rise of the Nintendo Wii
 Martin Scorsese winning at the Academy Awards
 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopting another baby
 Knut the polar bear's debut to the public
 The initial release of the iPhone
 Sanjaya Malakar's performance on American Idol

The JibJab Year in Review 2008
This is a parody of Miss Suzie sang by Baby New Year 2008. Notable events mentioned include
 The 2007-08 financial crisis
 The federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
 The liquidity crisis of the American International Group
 The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
 The continuing War in Afghanistan
 The automotive industry crisis's impact on the Big Three automobile manufacturers
 Jesse Jackson threatening to castrate Obama
 Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton's YouTube video claiming to have seen Bigfoot's corpse in northern Georgia
 The Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal
 David Duchovny undergoing rehabilitation
 Dick Cheney having a heart attack
 Energy crisis
 Barack Obama defeating John McCain in the 2008 United States presidential election
 McCain forgetting how many houses he owned
 Sarah Palin being McCain's running mate, which shocked the press
 The Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing
 Bill Gates leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft
 Vladimir Putin's role in the Russo-Georgian War
 Hurricanes Ike and Gustav
 John Edwards cheating on his wife

Never a Year like '09 (2009)
This is a parody of The Entertainer. Notable events mentioned include
 Barack Obama's inauguration
Obama being the first African-American president in American history
 Fraud in Afghanistan during a presidential election
 Protests over the Iranian presidential election
 The Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy
 John and Kate Gosselin getting divorced
 The finger-biting incident at a pro-Obama healthcare rally in Thousand Oaks, California
 The public health insurance option
 Sarah Palin resigns from her post as Governor of Alaska
 Bill Clinton picks up Laura Ling and Euna Lee during his trip to North Korea
 The swine flu pandemic
 The David Letterman extortion attempt
 The General Motors Chapter 11 reorganization
 The "Miracle on the Hudson" water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 by captain Sully Sullenberger
 The Michael Phelps marijuana scandal
 "Octomom" makes headlines for giving birth to octuplets
 Chicago's failed Summer Olympics bid
 Michael Vick returning from his NFL suspension
 Brett Favre joining the Minnesota Vikings
 Joe Wilson yelling "You lie!" during Obama's speech to Congress
 The balloon boy hoax
 The California budget crisis
 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
 Carrie Prejean
 Mark Sanford going to Argentina and cheating on his wife
 David Souter
 Sonia Sotomayor becomes the first Latina to go into the Supreme Court
 Obama wins a Nobel Peace Prize
 Muammar Gaddafi's United Nations speech
 The "Three-Wolved Moon"
 The deaths of Billy Mays, Patrick Swayze, Walter Cronkite, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Ted Kennedy, and Michael Jackson
 Keyboard Cat
 Levi Johnston's Playboy cover magazine
 Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift

So Long to Ya 2010 (2010)
This is a parody of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze portrayed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Notable events mentioned include:
 Tea Party movement
 The foreclosure crisis
 Obamacare
 Joe Biden swearing on national television while introducing Obama during the signing ceremony
 An earthquake in Haiti
 The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, disrupting air travel across Europe
 Greece's debt crisis
 The Deepwater Horizon oil spill
 The Mosque at Ground Zero
 WikiLeaks
 The campaign finance reform in the United States
 Elena Kagan
 Obama's popularity declining
 Charles B. Rangel, Stanley A. McChrystal, and Hamid Karzai
 The war in Iraq
 Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010
 Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck on Fox News
 Colleen LaRose
 Michelle Obama going to Spain
 JetBlue flight attendant incident
 Rahm Emanuel's resignation
 Russian spies
 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt
 Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act
 California legalizing marijuana
 Inherited wars
 Debt
 Gridlocking politicians
 Iran's nuclear threats
 Presidential seal falls off podium during speech at women's conference

2011 Buh-Bye (2011)
This is a parody of My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. Notable events mentioned include:
 The introduction of Ben & Jerry's new ice cream flavor, "Schweddy Balls", inspired by Saturday Night Live
 Charlie Sheen
 Theft claims by Lindsay Lohan
 Charges of sexual assaults against Dominique Strauss-Kahn
 The campaigning of Republicans Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain for the 2012 United States presidential election
 The trial and conviction of Dr. Conrad Murray
 Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child scandal
 Standard & Poor lowering America's rating
 The high unemployment rate
 The United States debt-ceiling crisis
 Weinergate
 Taxation and Class War debates
 Rupert Murdoch getting hit with a pie
 The 2011 United States listeriosis outbreak
 Greek debt
 The Arab Spring (including the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the 2011 Libyan civil war)
 The death of Muhamar Gaddafi
 The removal of Don't ask, don't tell
 The claims and denials of homosexuality in Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie
 The death of Osama bin Laden
 An earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan
 Riots in Great Britain
 The 2011 end times prediction by Harold Camping
 The widespread 2012 phenomenon (also called the Mayan Prophecy or the Mayan Apocalypse)
 The short-lived marriage by Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries
 Jessica Simpson and Beyoncé have babies
 The bankruptcy of Borders Group
 Netflix policy changes lead people to unsubscribe, consequently losing over 75% brand value
 Justin Bieber's new hairstyle
 Rebecca Black's hit song "Friday"
 The Royal Wedding
 The Occupy Wall Street movement and the widespread of the Occupy movement
 The deaths of Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Ford, Randy Savage, Andy Rooney, Peter Falk, Ryan Dunn, and Amy Winehouse
 The Nyan Cat
 The last Space Shuttle mission
 The incident in Zanesville, Ohio when exotic animals, such as lions, tigers, and bears were released.

2012 The End is Near (2012)
This is a parody of Down By The Riverside portrayed by Mayans. Notable events mentioned include:
 Global warming causing Arctic ice to melt
 Felix Baumgartner jumping to solid ground from the edge of the atmosphere (Red Bull Stratos)
 The ongoing conflict in Libya
 The United States fiscal cliff
 Zumba
 Fifty Shades of Gray
 Sam Champion and Anderson Cooper coming out as gay
 Chick-Fil-A hating gay people
 Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson
 The divorce of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise
 Lance Armstrong blowing his career for using steroids
 The disappointing price plunge of Facebook stock once the company went public
 The record-breaking success of Marvel's Avengers movie, surpassing the same year's films The Dark Knight Rises; The Hunger Games and The Amazing Spider-Man
 Rush Limbaugh's sexist tirade against Sandra Fluke, calling her such names as a "slut"
 Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm
 Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
 Gangnam Style by Psy
 The failed restoration of Elías García Martínez's Ecce Homo by amateur restorer Cecilia Giménez
 Erhmagerd memes
 The Secret Service escort scandal
 The Petraeus scandal
 Obamacare
 The 2012 United States presidential election, Barack Obama defeating Mitt Romney
 The Olympics
 Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
 The deaths of Michael Clarke Duncan, Andy Griffith, Phyllis Diller, Sherman Hemsley, Dick Clark, Larry Hagman, Whitney Houston, Jerry Nelson, Donna Summer, Neil Armstrong, Hector Camacho, Alastair Burnet, Ernest Borgnine, Maurice Sendak, Dave Brubeck, and Ray Bradbury
 Hurricane Sandy
 Fail Mary, the controversial game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks that led to public outcry over NFL's replacement referees
 Israel and Palestine arguing
 Snooki having a baby

2013 What a Year (2013)
This is a parody of Give My Regards To Broadway. Notable events mentioned include:
 The 2012–13 Egyptian protests and the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi
 Drone warfare in Pakistan
 Edward Snowden exposing the NSA scandal
 Sequestering
 A government shutdown
 Obamacare
 Rob Ford smoking crack
 Weinergate again
 The movie Gravity
 The Pope quits
 The striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act and California Propisition 8
 Kanye West having a baby
 A royal baby
 The popularity of The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, as well as the latter's series finale
 The launch of the iPhone 5S and 5C
 Harlem Shake by Bauuer
 Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus
 Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post
 Paula Deen allegedly saying the N-word
 Blurred Lines
 The deaths of James Gandolfini, Lou Reed, Nelson Mandela, and Margaret Thatcher among others
 Blockbuster going out of business
 Batkid
 Grand Theft Auto V
 What Does the Fox Say by Ylvis
 Floods in Colorado
 A typhoon in the Philippines
 A tornado in Oklahoma
 Sharknado
 The Justin Bieber-Anne Frank controversy
 Marissa Mayer buying Tumblr
 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
 Jennifer Lawrence playing Katniss Everdeen
 Jason Collins coming out as gay

2014 You are History (2014)
This is a parody of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Notable events mentioned include:
 2014 Winter Olympics
 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
 The December 2014 Sony Pictures Entertainment hack and temporary cancellation of The Interview
 The How I Met Your Mother series finale
 Renée Zellweger's facial reconstruction
 The 2014 Omar J. Gonzalez White House intrusion
 Kim Kardiashian's butt
 ISIS
 Russia fighting against Ukraine
 The Republicans taking over Congress
 Barack Obama's executive orders
 Michael Brown and Eric Garner's deaths, and subsequent unrest
 Ebola
 Washington, D.C. and Colorado legalizing marijuana
 Jay Leno retiring from the Night Show, being replaced by Jimmy Fallon
 The ending of Colbert Report
 All About that Bass by Megan Trainor
 Shia LaBeouf no longer being relevant
 Roger Goodell terminating Ray Rice from the Baltimore Ravens and Adrian Peterson from the Minnesota Vikings over domestic violence cases
 The marriage of Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie and George Clooney to Amal Alamuddin
 The divorce of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow
 Justin Bieber's egg-throwing and DUI incidents, subsequent arrest, and continued career downfall
 The Solange Knowles-Jay-Z elevator brawl
 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson
 The Rosetta Spacecraft successfully landing on a comet
 The success of Guardians of the Galaxy and Interstellar
 4Chan
 "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and his giant mountie hat from the 56th Annual Grammy Awards
 "Weird Al" Yankovic
 Jane Foster becomes Marvel Comics' first ever female Thor
 The deaths of Casey Kasem, Norman Bridwell, Robin Williams, Sid Caesar, Pete Seeger, Richard Attenborough, Mickey Rooney, Maya Angelou, Jan Hooks, Harold Ramis, Joan Rivers, and Philip Seymour Hoffman
 The 2014 FIFA World Cup, specifically Germany's 7-1 thrashing of Brazil in the semifinals
 "Anaconda" by Nicki Minaj and Eaten Alive
 The iPhone 6
 Malaysia Airlines aircraft losses (The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17)
 Potato Salad Kickstarter
 Gamergate controversy
 The Chase Bank, Home Depot, and Sony data breaches
 Tracy Morgan's traffic accident and subsequent lawsuit against Walmart
 The Washington Redskins change their logo
 Malala Yousafzai winning a 2014 Nobel Peace Prize
 The discovery of Dreadnoughtus schrani, believed to be the largest dinosaur ever to exist
 Star Wars: The Force Awakens announcement
 Janet Yellen becomes Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
 The racist comments made by Donald Sterling, and the ensuing controversy

2020 You've Got to Go (2020)
This is an original song. Notable events mentioned include:
 Billie Eilish winning at the Grammys
 Parasite winning an Academy Award
 Brexit
 Donald Trump getting impeached
 The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns
 The usage of face masks
 The use of "Karen" as an insult
 The use of hand sanitizer during the pandemic
 The closing of barber shops during the pandemic, resulting in "pandemic hair"
 Panic buying of toilet paper during the pandemic
 The use of the app Zoom to communicate during the pandemic
 The closing of movie theaters during the pandemic, resulting in the rise of streaming service
 The killing of George Floyd and subsequent unrest
 Donald Trump's tweets
 Sweatpants
 Tiger King
 The murder hornet scare
 The rise of Tik Tok and Donald Trump's attempt to ban the service
 Jeff Bezos being rich
 Sports events held in empty stadiums due to the pandemic
 LeBron James wins his fourth NBA championship
 The deaths of Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among others
 Incidents during the 2020 United States presidential election, including Donald Trump interrupting Joe Biden and a fly landing on Mike Pence
 The delay of the final results of the election, due to mail-in voting caused by the pandemic
 Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump in the election, and Trump's accusitions of voting fraud and attempts to overturn the election in favor of Trump
 US West Coast fires
 The failing economy caused by the pandemic

References

American websites
1999 establishments in California

JibJab


The Festhalle Viersen (Festival Hall Viersen) is a performance space in Viersen, a town located in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. It is well known for its theater and concert programme and is also the annual venue of the UMB World Three-cushion Championship of national teams as well as of the annual international Jazz Festival.

History
The Festhalle was completed in 1913 to plans by the municipal architect Eugen Frielingsdorf. The industrialist Josef Kaiser, who had the headquarters of his locally founded company Kaiser's Kaffeegeschäft in Viersen, initiated the construction of the building by donating 130.000 Marks (ℳ) on the occasion of his appointment to royal Kommerzienrat (Councillor of Commerce). Up until 1925 the building was used as projected, as a multipurpose hall, that is as a ballroom and for gymnastics as well as for cultural events. But the gymnastics use was soon dropped. During World War II the festival hall, unlike many other venues in Germany, was luckily only slightly damaged and could soon be used again. It has been renovated and redesigned several times, including in 1939–40 for propaganda purposes of the NSDAP. In 1997, thanks to the efforts of the Festhallen-Förderverein (Friends of the Festival Hall) it was provided with, among other things, new seats and state-of-the-art stagecraft.

Building
The facade shows elements of classicism such as columns, pilasters and triangular pediments. The hall inside the building can seat about a thousand visitors. In 1955 the trade journal Baukunst und Werkform initiated an opinion poll among 20 well known conductors asking for the concert hall with the best acoustics worldwide. For Germany they named two houses, the Bremen concert hall Die Glocke and the Festival Hall Viersen.

Events
Between 1947 and 1949, due to the war damage to other concert halls and the splendid acoustics, the large radio station NWDR, later WDR, recorded and broadcast many symphony concerts in the hall with its own NWDR-Rundfunkorchester as well as radio shows such as Das ideale Brautpaar, legendary in the mid-fifties. The outstanding acoustics drew many internationally well known conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Thomas Beecham and Ferenc Fricsay, orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sergiu Celibidache or Herbert von Karajan and international star soloists such as Gidon Kremer, Lang Lang, Nigel Kennedy and David Garrett to the Festival Hall. Famous theatre companies also used the Festival Hall for their guest performances in the region, such as the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus with the famous actor and director Gustaf Gründgens.

Site
The Festival Hall is situated in the centre of the Old Town of Viersen on Hermann-Hülser-Platz.

Uses
 In addition to concerts and theatre performances the Festival Hall is often used for CD recordings because of the excellent acoustics.
 Since 1990 it has also been the venue of the annual UMB World Three-cushion Championship of national teams.
 The annual international Viersen Jazz Festival draws musicians such as Jan Akkerman, Chick Corea, Charlie Mariano, Joe Zawinul, Billy Cobham, Ron Carter, Chris Potter, Ahmad Jamal, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Till Brönner.
 The Festival Hall can be booked for private and professional use.

Further reading
 Albert Pauly. "Die Viersener Festhalle". In Viersen. Beiträge zu einer Stadt. Volume 6. Viersen, 1984. pp. 4–13.
 Gustav René Hocke. "Europa am Niederrhein". In Heimatbuch des Kreises Viersen. Viersen, 1988. pp. 21–35.
 Jöris/Pitzen: "Musik und Theater in Viersen von 1848 bis 1945". Viersen. Beiträge zu einer Stadt. Volume 30. Viersen, 2006.

Notes

External links
 Official Website

Concert halls in Germany
Music venues completed in 1913
Sports venues completed in 1913
Buildings and structures in Viersen (district)
1913 establishments in Germany

Festhalle Viersen


Kurt Martin Mislow (June 5, 1923 – October 5, 2017) was a German-born American organic chemist who specialized in stereochemistry.

Born in Berlin on June 5, 1923, Mislow had moved to London by 1938, after some time in Milan. With the help of his uncle Alfred Eisenstaedt, Mislow's family left London for New York City in 1940. Mislow earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Tulane University in 1944, and received a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, where he was supervised by Linus Pauling. Mislow first taught at New York University, then moved to Princeton University in 1964. While at Princeton, Mislow served as Hugh Stott Taylor Professor of Chemistry and led the chemistry department from 1968 to 1974. He became a professor emeritus in 1988.

Over the course of his career, Mislow was named a Guggenheim fellow twice, in 1956 and 1974. Between 1959 and 1963, Mislow was granted the Sloan Research Fellowship. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, followed by fellowships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, granted in 1974, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, bestowed in 1980. In 1999, Mislow was named a foreign member of the Accademia dei Lincei. The American Chemical Society honored Mislow with several awards, among them the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (1975), the William H. Nichols Medal Award (1987), and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1995).

References

1923 births
2017 deaths
Scientists from Berlin
Tulane University alumni
California Institute of Technology alumni
New York University faculty
Princeton University faculty
Sloan Research Fellows
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Members of the Lincean Academy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Emigrants from Nazi Germany
Immigrants to the United States
Stereochemists

Kurt Mislow


7 Women, also known as Seven Women, is a 1966 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Panavision drama film directed by John Ford and starring Anne Bancroft, Sue Lyon, Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee, Eddie Albert, Mike Mazurki and Woody Strode. It was produced by Ford and Bernard Smith from a screenplay by Janet Green and John McCormick, based on the short story "Chinese Finale" by Norah Lofts. The musical score was conducted by Elmer Bernstein and the cinematography was handled by Joseph LaShelle. This was the last feature film directed by Ford, ending a career that had spanned 53 years.

Plot
In rural China in 1935, all but one of the white residents of a remote Christian mission post are women. The strict Miss Agatha Andrews is the head of the mission, assisted by the meek Miss Argent. Charles Pether is a mission teacher who always wanted to be a pastor; his peevish, panicky, self-centered and domineering middle-aged wife Florrie is pregnant for the first time. Emma Clark is the only young staff member and Miss Andrews treats her Emma as if she were her daughter.

The mission is elated to learn that a much-needed doctor is arriving, but they are shocked to discover that Dr. Cartwright is a Chicago woman who smokes, drinks alcohol, swears, wears pants, has short hair, disdains religion and sits before grace. Miss Andrews and Dr. Cartwright are soon at odds. Emma, who has led a very sheltered life, is fascinated by the newcomer, much to Miss Andrews' dismay.

After she has settled in, Dr. Cartwright urges Miss Andrews to provide money to send Florrie to a modern facility to birth her baby, as Florrie's advanced age places her at high risk, but Andrews refuses.

Meanwhile, rumors arise of atrocities committed by the militia of Mongolian warlord Tunga Khan. Miss Andrews is certain that the mission will be safe, as they are American citizens. After a nearby, even poorer British mission is sacked by Tunga Khan, Miss Andrews reluctantly accepts survivors Miss Binns, Mrs. Russell and Miss Ling, but only for a short time, as she is unwilling to harbor those of any other denomination for long.

Immediately after the arrival of the survivors, a cholera outbreak erupts. Dr. Cartwright quickly takes command, treating all the Chinese of the area. Miss Andrews' initial hostility to her subsides when Emma becomes sick and she implores Dr. Cartwright to save her life. After the emergency has subsided and Emma is well again, the relationship between Andrews and Cartwright begins to soften, but it deteriorates when Cartwright appears in the dining room drunk with a bottle of whiskey and tries to convince all of the pious women to drink as well.

One night, Charles and Cartwright see a fire on the horizon and hear gunfire. The next morning, the Chinese soldiers of the nearby garrison evacuate in a hurry, as Tunga Khan and his men are believed to be approaching. Miss Andrews is still convinced that the mission is untouchable, but Charles is now determined to be assertive. Kim, an English-speaking male Chinese mission staff member, and Charles drive out to investigate the situation, while urging everyone else to be prepared to leave the mission, despite Miss Andrews' opposition. After a while, they hear the car's horn, but once the gate is opened, bandits on horseback charge through, firing their guns, and quickly take command of the mission. Before being executed by the bandits, Kim tells the women that Charles was murdered when he tried to rescue a woman being raped by Tunga Khan's men. Then Miss Ling, coming from a powerful Mandarin family, is taken away to act as servant to Tunga Khan's young wife, while the seven white women are herded into a shed.

The women watch as Tunga Khan has every Chinese in the mission executed. Tunga Khan then comes into the shed and tries to take Emma. Realizing that they are mostly American women, he decides to ask for a ransom instead.

With Miss Andrews panicking and Florrie in labor, Dr. Cartwright asks for her desperately needed medical bag. Tunga Khan offers to exchange it for her sexual submission to him. The doctor agrees, and helps Florrie give birth to a baby boy. After Cartwright goes to fulfill her end of the bargain, Andrews' pathological revulsion for anything to do with sex—even in marriage—causes her to become increasingly deranged. She vilifies her, repeatedly calling her "whore of Babylon." The others understand the sacrifice the doctor has made and why she has done so.

In the evening, the Mongols gather in a circle and take part in wrestling matches for entertainment. Dr. Cartwright watches the spectacle at Tunga Khan's side as his new concubine. When the lean warrior, who has been ogling Cartwright all evening, steps into the ring to face the winner of a bout, Tunga Khan insists on accepting the challenge himself and breaks the man's neck.

Cartwright convinces Tunga Khan to free the other women. Now dressed in embroidered silk robes, she comes to tell them. Miss Argent sees Dr. Cartwright hide a bottle that she had earlier called poison. She says "It's a sin." Cartwright replies, ".Then Pray for me." With the others safely away, Cartwright, goes to Tunga Khan's room and secretly poisons two drinks. Bowing, she offers a cup to Tunga Khan saying, "So long, ya bastard."  Tunga Khan drinks and immediately falls dead. Cartwright drinks from her  cup. Fade to black.

Cast
 Anne Bancroft as Dr. D. R. Cartwright
 Sue Lyon as Emma Clark, Mission Staff
 Margaret Leighton as Agatha Andrews, Head of Mission
 Flora Robson as Miss Binns, Head of British Mission
 Mildred Dunnock as Jane Argent, Andrews' Assistant
 Betty Field as Mrs. Florrie Pether, Charles' pregnant wife
 Anna Lee as Mrs. Russell, Mission Staff
 Eddie Albert as Charles Pether, Mission Teacher
 Mike Mazurki as Tunga Khan, Bandit Leader
 Woody Strode as Lean Warrior
 Jane Chang as Miss Ling, Mission Staff
 Hans William Lee as Kim, Mission Staff
 H.W. Gim as Coolie
 Irene Tsu as Chinese Girl

Accolades
The film has appeared in numerous lists:
 Most Misappreciated American Films of All Time (1977, Andrew Sarris)
 Most Misappreciated American Films of All Time (1977, Pascal Bonitzer)
 Most Misappreciated American Films of All Time (1977, Serge Daney)
 Most Important American Films (1977, Enno Patalas)
 Most Important American Films (1977, Luc Moullet)
 Genre Favorites: Adventure (1993)
 Alternative Choices to Sight and Sound's 360 Films Classics List (1998)
 100 Essential Films (2003–present, Slant Magazine)
 Favorite Films (1975, Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinema)

The Cahiers du cinéma voted the film the sixth-best of 1966 and Andrew Sarris rated it the third-best of the year (behind Blow-up and Gertrud).

The film is currently ranked number 784 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? list of the 1,000 greatest films of all time. The list is based on a poll of 1,825 film critics, scholars and cinephiles, as well as a culling of over 900 existing "greatest film" lists.

Production
The original story, "Chinese Finale," was presented as an episode of Alcoa Theatre in March 1960 with Hilda Plowright as Miss Andrews and Jan Sterling as Dr. Mary Cartwright.

John Ford considered both Katharine Hepburn and Jennifer Jones for the role of Dr. Cartwright, and Rosalind Russell lobbied for the part, but eventually Patricia Neal was cast. Ford began the film on February 8, 1965, on the MGM backlot, but Neal suffered a stroke after three days of filming. Anne Bancroft took the role of Dr. Cartwright, but Ford was unhappy with her and called her "the mistress of monotone." Ford originally considered Carol Lynley for the role of Emma Clark but MGM insisted on contract star Sue Lyon. Shooting finished on April 12, six days behind schedule.

To edit the film, Ford chose Otho Lovering, with whom he had worked on Stagecoach (1939). Lovering edited most of Ford's feature films in the 1960s.

The film was not released until 1966.

See also
 List of American films of 1966

References

External links

1966 films
1966 drama films
1960s English-language films
1960s Mandarin-language films
American drama films
Films scored by Elmer Bernstein
Films directed by John Ford
Films based on short fiction
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
Films set in 1935
Films set in China
1960s American films

7 Women


Charles Henry Parkhurst (April 17, 1842 – September 8, 1933) was an American clergyman and social reformer, born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Although scholarly and reserved, he preached two sermons in 1892 in which he attacked the political corruption of New York City government. Backed by the evidence he collected, his statements led to both the exposure of Tammany Hall and to subsequent social and political reforms.

Early years

He was born on a farm on April 17, 1842 in Framingham, Massachusetts. Parkhurst did not attend a formal school until he was twelve. Despite this, he showed a strong interest in education and graduated from Amherst College in 1866.  He became principal of the high school in Amherst in 1867. He married Ellen Bodman on November 23, 1870, she being one of his former students. Parkhurst studied theology at Halle in 1869, and became a professor at the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1870–1871.

After further studies in Leipzig in 1872–1873, he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.  He was pastor of a congregational church at Lenox, Massachusetts, from 1874 until 1880, when he was called to the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York City, where he served from 1880 to 1918.

Later life

Interested in municipal affairs, Parkhurst was elected president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime in 1891, and he challenged the methods of the city police department.  He inaugurated a campaign against the political and social corruption of Tammany Hall.  The hall had begun innocuously as just a social club, but had drifted into politics and graft. It acquired a lock on elections in the city, and its bosses protected crime and vice in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs. Grand jury investigations were ineffective, despite the appeals of social reformers.  Few in Parkhurst's congregation recognized that Tammany Hall, the police, and organized crime were interconnected.

On February 14, 1892, he challenged Tammany Hall from the pulpit.  Pointing to the hall's political influence and their connection with the police, he noted that men fed upon the city while pretending to protect it saying,

When the municipal grand jury asked him for hard evidence, Parkhurst personally hired a private detective and, with his friend John Erving, went to the streets in disguise to collect proof of the corruption.  From the pulpit on March 13, 1892, he preached a sermon backed with documentation and affidavits.  Parkhurst's campaign led to the appointment of the Lexow Committee to investigate conditions, and to the election of a reform mayor in 1894.  Although Tammany Hall did publicly clean house, it remained influential on both the political front and in organized crime until the 1950s.

Women's suffrage

Parkhurst was opposed to women voting. He wrote:

"That quality of feminine blatancy which is being at present so extensively advertised here and in England, that disposition toward self-exploitation indulged in by short-haired women and encouraged by long-haired men, is of a sort to chill and then freeze over those masculine impulses that seek restful and satisfying companionship in a member of the opposite sex."

Family
His first wife, Ellen Bodman, died on May 28, 1921. He married Eleanor Marx on April 18, 1927, in Los Angeles.

Death
Parkhurst died on September 8, 1933, by sleepwalking off the porch roof in his Ventnor City, New Jersey, home.

See also
 Lexow Committee 1894 to 1895, a major New York State Senate probe into police corruption

References

Further reading

External links

Political history of New York City
People from Framingham, Massachusetts
Activists from Massachusetts
1842 births
1933 deaths
19th-century American clergy
20th-century American Presbyterian ministers
American sermon writers
American Presbyterian ministers
American autobiographers
Accidental deaths in New Jersey
Sleepwalking
Accidental deaths from falls
People from Ventnor City, New Jersey
American social reformers
People from Lenox, Massachusetts
Anti-crime activists
American anti-corruption activists
Writers from Massachusetts
19th-century American male writers
20th-century American male writers

Charles Henry Parkhurst


Antiochus V Eupator (Greek: Αντίοχος Ε' Ευπάτωρ), whose epithet means "of a good father" (c. 172 BC – 161 BC)  was a ruler of the Greek Seleucid Empire who reigned from late 164 to 161 BC (based on dates from 1 Maccabees 6:16 and 7:1).

He was appointed as king by the Romans with his protector Lysias as regent.

Biography

Early life and succession
Antiochus V was only nine years old when he succeeded to the kingship, following the death in Persia of his father Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his mother Laodice IV. The general Lysias, who had been left in charge of Syria by Epiphanes, served as regent for the child, although he was challenged by other generals. The Roman Senate still kept Demetrius, son of Seleucus IV and the rightful heir to the throne, as hostage, refusing to release him because they considered it better to have Syria nominally ruled by a boy and his regent than the 22-year-old Demetrius.

Reign

At the outset of the reign of Antiochus V, there was an attempt by the Syrians to quell the Maccabean Revolt in Judea, but this ended in a weak compromise. After a military victory in the Battle of Beth-Zecharia and the killing of Eleazar Avaran, a brother of Judas Maccabeus, Lysias was informed that Philip (a confidant of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had accompanied this previous king to conquer Mesopotamia and had been entrusted prior to the death of the king with the upbringing of Antiochus V), was returning to the capital with the other half of the Seleucid army. Lysias felt threatened and advised Antiochus V to offer peace to the Jews. The Jews accepted; however, in order to ensure they would not rise against them again soon, the Syrian king and regent broke their promise and tore down the walls of Jerusalem before leaving. Upon reaching their own kingdom, Lysias and Antiochus V found Philip in control of the capital Antiochia, but they defeated him and retook the city and kingdom.

Downfall and death
When the Roman Senate heard that the Syrian kingdom kept more warships and elephants than allowed by the Treaty of Apamea made in 188 BC, they sent a Roman embassy to travel along the cities of Syria and attempted to cripple Seleucid military power by sinking the Syrians' warships and hamstringing their elephants. Lysias dared do nothing to oppose the Romans, but his subservience so enraged his Syrian subjects that the Roman envoy Gnaeus Octavius was assassinated in Laodicea in 162 BC.

At this juncture Demetrius escaped from Rome and was received in Syria as the true king. Antiochus V Eupator was soon put to death together with his protector Lysias.

See also

 List of Syrian monarchs

References

External links

Antiochus V Eupator entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith

|-

170s BC births
161 BC deaths
Year of birth uncertain
2nd-century BC Seleucid monarchs
Ancient child monarchs
People in the books of the Maccabees
2nd-century BC murdered monarchs
Monarchs who died as children
Children of Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Antiochus V Eupator


The Chronicles of Avantia is a series of books by Adam Blade, a spin-off series of Beast Quest. The series is a prequel of Beast Quest, being set in ancient Avantia.

Characters

Humans
Tanner is the main character of the Chronicles of Avantia series. He is the Chosen Rider of a phoenix-Beast called Firepos. His father died while his mother was kidnapped in a savage attack on his home village, Forton, by the malevolent warlord called Derthsin, when he was seven years old. When he is 14 he sets out across Avantia to try to stop Derthsin from taking over the land, and meets some new people along the way. His weapon of choice is a sword. In Call to War he drinks beast blood making him stronger.
Gwen is first encountered in Colweir, the nearest village to Forton, where Tanner goes after being told to "find the Mapmaker" by his grandmother, Esme, with her last breath. Gwen wields four throwing axes and a rapier that has the shape of a wolf head on the hilt. She is another Chosen Rider, of a wolf-Beast called Gulkien. She tags along with Tanner after Derthsin's armies destroy Colweir, but only because Gulkien, her beast, trusts Firepos, Tanner's beast.
Grandmother Esme is Tanner's very wise grandmother. She is very good at healing wounds with herbs – this is proven when a horserider, Drew, who works on the fields outside the village, is severely injured coming back from Harron, a nearby town, and Esme heals his wounds in hours. She tells Tanner with her last words to go to Colweir and find the Mapmaker who lives there.
Derthsin is the main antagonist of the Chronicles Of Avantia series. He is the warlord who destroys Forton in the prologue of the first book, with the control of the 4 Beasts of Avantia via the Mask Of Death. After years in the volcano he has learned how to control and create flames and lava making him immune to it. The warlord also has the ability to shoot black beams of energy.
General Gor is Derthsin's underling, who tries to kill Tanner and the other Riders before they can get to Derthsin's lair. He rides a Dark Beast called Varlot, a horse-Beast.
Castor is the Chosen Rider of Nera, a Beast that takes the shape of a puma. He is arrogant, and big-headed, but an expert swordsman, and decides to help Tanner and Gwen with their quest to defeat Derthsin. He is first encountered in the village of Colton, where the other two Riders end up after their Beasts discover Nera there.
Rufus is the Chosen Rider of Falkor, a Beast that takes the form of a large snake. Rufus has the ability to shoot extremely powerful blue beams of magic, but this uses up most of his energy, so he only does this sparingly. A dark secret is revealed about him in the last book.
Geffen is the twin brother of Gwen and betrayed the secrets of the map to general Gor.  After dying in the old mines by an avalanche he was brought back to life as a living corpse, forced to obey orders.
Vendrake is a dark wizard and a servant of Derthsin who rides in a vulture-drawn chariot and wields a cat-o-nine tails. He was tortured to death by Derthsin years ago and was turned into a living corpse, the same thing that he did to Geffen.
Captain Brutus works for Derthsin and commands the soldiers in the old mines. When the boys stop working he whips them with his whip. He is last seen in "Chasing Evil".

Beasts
Firepos is the young phoenix-Beast of whom Tanner is the Chosen Rider. She is ferocious, and can shoot fireballs from her talons at will. She heals her own wounds, however severe, by some of her flames enveloping the wound. She loses this ability after Tanner drinks her blood making her grow weaker. She trained Tanner after she first met him in the prologue of "First Hero" so that he was prepared to fight.
Gulkien is a wolf-Beast, whose Chosen Rider is Gwen, a girl of spirit. Gulkien attacks by means of his savage claws and razor-sharp fangs. Gulkien can also heal his wounds by sprouting fur over the area affected.
Nera is a puma-Beast, and Castor is her Chosen Rider. Nera's characteristic is superb speed - she can race across vast landscapes in minutes, much faster than the other Beasts. It is discovered that she was trained by Firepos.
Falkor is a snake-beast and his Chosen Rider is Rufus. Falkor can slither almost as fast as Nera runs. He fights by striking men and breaking their bones. The colour of his scales seems to reflect his mood.
Varlot is a Dark Beast who can reject a Chosen Rider, which is normally impossible. Varlot can transform from a normal horse into a ferocious stallion with super strength. He is Derthsin's Beast, but Gor is his Rider. Each time he appears he grows stronger, becoming taller, having armour over his face, being able to talk and getting a huge sword.
Troiden is a massive slug-like creature that digs the tunnels in the mines that Derthsin uses to make weapons. He has sensor orb the size of a head. Troiden was killed when the mines collapsed.
Anoret is an extremely powerful beast that was made stronger when the other beast blended their blood. Years ago Derthsin tricked her and Anoret's face became the Mask of Death making her appearance became disgusting, and she then must obey the wearer. She has been part of the volcano wall ever since. Anoret is described as having a skeletal-like face, her eyes on stalks, spikes down her back, a long tail, being three times as tall as Firepos and having three claws on each hand.
A giant vulture serves Vendrake that is almost as tall as Firepos and spits acid. It is unknown if it is actually a Beast or just something that Vendrake mutated. It pulls his flying chariot.

Novels

First Hero

Avantia stands on the edge of an abyss. Dark armies, led by a malevolent warlord, are mustering on its borders. But destiny has chosen an unlikely hero to fight the threat…  15-year-old Tanner is no ordinary boy. Son of a murdered father, and abducted mother, his life is steeped in tragedy. As the "Chosen Rider" of a ferocious young flame bird called Firepos, it is up to him to turn the tide of war that threatens to engulf the land.

Chasing Evil

Tanner and his Flame Bird, Firepos, have met a companion, another Chosen Rider, Gwen, to a ferocious wolf-Beast, Gulkien. Together they must race against Derthsin, his Dark Beast, Varlot, Derthsin's underling General Gor, and Gor's army to locate the missing pieces of the Mask of Death.  If evil Derthsin gets the mask first, Avantia will be destroyed in a reign of fire. Who will Tanner meet next on his journey? And what horrors lurk in the Hidden Mine's endless tunnels?  The Battle for Avantia is about to begin...

Call To War
Avantia burns in the fires of war. Derthsin's evil armies swarm the land, and Tanner and the Chosen Riders are all that stand in their way.  Will they encounter more Beasts on their treacherous journey to the Southern Caves? And will the dark forces that seek control of Tanner prevent the Riders from fulfilling their destiny...?

Fire and Fury

The war for Avantia has reached a terrifying climax. Tanner and his companions must face their nemesis, the warlord Derthsin, amongst the deadly flames of his volcanic lair. If they fail, Derthsin will wear the Mask of Death and Avantia will be destroyed. Can the companions brave the end together, or will Derthsin's evil tear them apart?

References

Series of children's books
2010s books
Fantasy novel series
Orchard Books books

The Chronicles of Avantia


Muppets Most Wanted is a 2014 American musical heist comedy film directed by James Bobin, produced by David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, and written by Bobin and Nicholas Stoller. Produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Mandeville Films, it is the eighth theatrical film featuring the Muppets, and serves as a sequel to The Muppets (2011). The film stars Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell and Tina Fey, alongside Muppet performers Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel and Peter Linz. It was also Tony Bennett's final film before his retirement in 2021 and later death two years later. The story tells how Muppets become involved in an international crime caper while on a world tour in Europe.

Aside from co-writer Jason Segel, the majority of the production team behind The Muppets returned for Muppets Most Wanted, including Bobin, Stoller, Hoberman, and Lieberman. Bret McKenzie and Christophe Beck also returned to compose the film's songs and musical score respectively. Principal photography commenced in January 2013 at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England.

Muppets Most Wanted had its world premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on March 11, 2014, and was released theatrically in North America on March 21, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film was not as successful as its predecessor, grossing $80.4 million worldwide on a budget of $51 million. It received positive reviews from critics who praised its humor, music, and emotion. The film was dedicated to longtime Muppet performer Jerry Nelson, who died during the film's development, and Jane Henson, who died two months into production.

Plot
The Muppets along with Walter as their new member find themselves at a loss as to what to do until Dominic Badguy suggests the Muppets go on a European tour with him as their tour manager. As the Muppets begin their tour, a criminal mastermind named Constantine, a near-exact double for Kermit in appearance, escapes from a Siberian Gulag and joins his subordinate Dominic to begin a plot to steal the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

Once the Muppets arrive in Berlin, Germany, Dominic secures them a show at a prestigious venue. Frustrated with the group's incessant requests and Miss Piggy's insistence they marry, Kermit goes for a walk at Dominic's suggestion. Constantine ambushes him and glues a fake mole onto his cheek before slipping away. Mistaken for Constantine, Kermit is sent to the Gulag. Taking Kermit's place, Constantine's blunders in imitating him are covered by Dominic; however, Animal knows the truth. After the Berlin performance opens with Constantine, who has a bad case of stage fright, freezing at the audience, Scooter has to introduce the show for him. Constantine and Dominic steal paintings from a museum while the Muppets perform. The next morning, Interpol agent Jean Pierre Napoleon and CIA agent Sam the Eagle grudgingly team up to apprehend the culprit whom Napoleon believes to be his nemesis "The Lemur" - the number-two criminal in the world.

Meanwhile, Kermit has attempted several times to escape the Gulag but is thwarted each time by prison guard Nadya, who is not only aware of his true identity but is as infatuated with him as Miss Piggy is. Nadya orders Kermit to help organize the prisoners' annual talent show.

Following hidden instructions on the stolen painting of Colonel Thomas Blood, who nearly stole the Crown Jewels, Constantine and Dominic divert the tour to Madrid, Spain. Constantine allows the Muppets to perform whatever they wish, much to Walter's confusion. During this show, Constantine and Dominic break into a museum and destroy a roomful of busts to find a key needed for their plan. Even though the performance is a disaster, the Muppets receive critical acclaim. Sam and Napoleon deduce that the connection between the crimes is the Muppet tour, and the pair interrogates the Muppets, only to find that they are too ill-equipped to be guilty. The instructions on the stolen key lead Constantine and Dominic to schedule the next show in Dublin, Ireland.

In Dublin, Walter discovers that Dominic has been giving away show tickets and bribing critics/journalists to ensure a packed house and rave reviews, while Fozzie notices Kermit's resemblance to Constantine. They both realize that Constantine has taken Kermit's place and brought in Dominic as his accomplice. Constantine attacks Walter and Fozzie, but Animal fends him off and the three escape from the train to rescue Kermit. During the Dublin performance, Dominic steals a locket from the Bank of Ireland and Constantine proposes to Miss Piggy onstage; Piggy accepts, and the pair plan a wedding ceremony to be held at the Tower of London in London, England, where the Crown Jewels are kept.

Fozzie, Walter, and Animal reach the Siberian Gulag on the night of the performance, and Kermit uses it as a front to allow them, himself, and all the prisoners to escape the Gulag. Kermit, Fozzie, Walter, and Animal infiltrate the Tower as the wedding begins, and Dominic (with the help of Bobby Benson's Baby Band) manages to steal the jewels.

Kermit interrupts the ceremony, revealing Constantine's ruse, but the crook takes Miss Piggy hostage and flees to a helicopter, where he is intercepted by Dominic, who is actually the Lemur and intends to double-cross him. Constantine blasts him out from the helicopter with a detonator and tries to take off with Piggy, but Kermit jumps aboard and the rest of the Muppets climb atop each other to stop the escape. Kermit and Piggy knock out Constantine, and both criminals are arrested by Sam and Napoleon. Nadya arrives in London to arrest Kermit for escaping despite the latter being innocent the whole time. The other Muppets tell her that if she arrests him, then she will have to take all of them as well; she relents, allowing Kermit to go free. The Muppets perform at the Gulag with Constantine and the prisoners participating.

Cast
 Ricky Gervais as Dominic Badguy/The Lemur, the world's second most wanted criminal and Constantine's accomplice who poses as the manager of a fictional international talent agency.
 Ty Burrell as Jean Pierre Napoleon, a French Interpol agent who works with Sam Eagle on finding Constantine.
 Tina Fey as Nadya, a high-ranking prison guard at Gulag 38B who is obsessed with Kermit the Frog.

Muppet performers
 Steve Whitmire as Kermit the Frog, Foo-Foo, Statler, Beaker, Lips, Rizzo the Rat, Link Hogthrob and the Newsman
 Eric Jacobson as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Sam Eagle and Animal
 Dave Goelz as The Great Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Zoot, Beauregard and Waldorf
 Bill Barretta as Pepe the King Prawn, Bobo the Bear, Big Mean Carl, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, The Swedish Chef, Baby Boss, Carlo Flamingo and Leprechaun Security Guard
 David Rudman as Scooter, Janice, Miss Poogy, Bobby Benson Wayne and Nigel
 Matt Vogel as Constantine, '80s Robot, Sweetums, Floyd Pepper, Pops, Robin the Frog, Lew Zealand, Crazy Harry, Camilla the Chicken and Uncle Deadly
 Peter Linz as Walter and Manolo Flamingo
 Louise Gold as Annie Sue and Wanda

Cameo guest stars
Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Salma Hayek, Saoirse Ronan and Christoph Waltz appear as themselves.

Jemaine Clement plays The Prison King and Danny Trejo, Dylan "Hornswoggle" Postl, Ray Liotta, Tom Hiddleston and Josh Groban appear as Gulag 38B inmates. Stanley Tucci plays Ivan, a Gulag 38B Watchtower Guard.

James McAvoy, Chloë Grace Moretz, Miranda Richardson, Russell Tovey, Mackenzie Crook, Toby Jones, Rob Corddry, Hugh Bonneville, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Celine Dion, Zach Galifianakis, Frank Langella, Ross Lynch, Til Schweiger and Usher also appear in minor cameos.

Some actors filmed scenes that were cut from the theatrical film release, but were later restored on the film's DVD and Blu-ray release. The actors include: Bridgit Mendler, Debby Ryan, Dexter Fletcher, Peter Serafinowicz, Jake Short, and Tyrel Jackson Williams.

Production

Development
In March 2012, after the critical and commercial success of The Muppets, Walt Disney Studios negotiated a deal with James Bobin and Nicholas Stoller to direct and write, respectively, an eighth installment. Disney green-lit the film on April 24, 2012. Along with Brian Henson, Bobin is the only other person to have directed two Muppet films.

Writing began in April 2012 after a couple of weeks of outlining. Jason Segel, co-writer and star of the previous film, declined any involvement with the eighth entry, citing that he had accomplished his ambition of bringing the characters to the forefront with the 2011 film. Despite this, Bobin and Stoller quickly began work on the film based on Disney's demand. Taking on the form of a caper, the film was inspired by both The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan as well as The Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair. Bobin said that the film was "a tip of the hat to the old-school crime capers of the '60s, but featuring a frog, a pig, a bear, and a dog—no panthers, even pink ones—along with the usual Muppet-y mix of mayhem, music and laughs".

The first actor to be attached to the film was Christoph Waltz in the role of an Interpol inspector. Waltz dropped out due to scheduling conflicts (though he would end up appearing in a cameo as himself) and was replaced by Ty Burrell. In December 2012, Ricky Gervais confirmed his casting. Tina Fey was later confirmed in January of the following year.

Filming
Originally commissioned under the title The Muppets ... Again!, principal photography began in July 2013, at London's Pinewood Studios in Iver, Buckinghamshire. Filming also took place at the Tower of London, a site where the Crown Estate rarely grants permission to do so. Additional filming locations in London included Leicester Square, Tower Hill, the Richmond Theatre, Wilton's Music Hall, Freemasons' Hall and The Historic Dockyard, Chatham. In addition to the United Kingdom, scenes were also shot at Union Station, the Walt Disney Studios lot, and on Hollywood Boulevard (to recreate the previous film's ending) in Los Angeles. On June 13, 2013, the title of the film was changed from The Muppets ... Again! to Muppets Most Wanted, although the original title is mentioned in the opening song.

The production design was done by Eve Stewart, who took a tongue-in-cheek approach to each country setting while also being influenced by the retro style of "crime capers of the '60s and '70s". Rahel Afiley returned as the costume designer, compiling the wardrobe for both Muppet and human characters. In addition to Afiley's own creations, English fashion designer Vivienne Westwood also contributed four outfits for Miss Piggy while United States retailer Brooks Brothers created more than 200 items for the male cast. Discussing Miss Piggy's wedding gown, Westwood said, "It's called the Court dress and is inspired by 17th-century English royalty and the court of King Charles II. It has been designed ... in a white pearl sequin fabric made from recycled water bottles."

Post-production

Visual effects were done primarily by The Senate Visual Effects. The effects studio worked on 425 shots that included CG builds and set extensions, matte paintings, particle and laser effects, animation, and rod removals. Additional visual effects work was done by Double Negative, Factory VFX, and Nvizible. As with the previous installment, the film required blue screen for scenes that required digital compositing. While green screen is more traditional for color keying, the screen's shade of green would clash with Kermit and therefore be unusable; Sam Eagle's shade of blue is suitable on blue screen.

Audio mixing and editorial services were done by Todd Soundelux and 424 Post. Based out of Todd-AO's Santa Monica facility, Kevin O'Connell and Beau Borders worked on the film as re-recording mixers alongside 424 Post's supervising sound editors Kami Asgar and Sean McCormack.

The first assembly cut of the film ran around two and a half hours.

Music

The musical score for Muppets Most Wanted was composed by Christophe Beck, with additional songs by Bret McKenzie. A soundtrack album was released by Walt Disney Records on March 18, 2014. It features six original songs by McKenzie as well as re-recordings of contemporary music and past Muppet songs, including "Blue Danube Waltz" from The Muppets Take Manhattan. A separate album entirely containing Beck's score (paired with the score for The Muppets, also composed by Beck) was released by Walt Disney Records and Intrada Records on April 15, 2014.

Release
Muppets Most Wanted held its world premiere on March 11, 2014, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California. The film was theatrically released in the United States on March 21 and in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2014. Theatrically, the film was accompanied by Pixar's Monsters University short Party Central.

Marketing
A teaser trailer was released on August 6, 2013, and was attached theatrically to screenings of Planes. On November 20, 2013, two different trailers were released, one for the United States and one for the United Kingdom.

In February 2014, the Muppets starred alongside Terry Crews in a commercial for Toyota that aired during the Super Bowl. Later that month, Disney partnered with Subway to promote healthy eating through an advertisement featuring the Muppets. In early March, the restaurant chain started giving away free Muppet-themed bags with kids meals. Spoof posters were released for the film, parodying Skyfall (called Frogfall), The World Is Not Enough (called The Pig Is Not Enough), Face/Off (called Fraud/Frog), and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (called Animal Piggy Frog Spy).

In February, the Android and iOS game My Muppets Show added content from the film, including a Big House stage, various props from the movie, and Constantine as a discoverable/purchasable character. From March 20 to April 1, Disney's online game Club Penguin hosted a special Muppets World Tour event. Players were able to visit nine country-themed rooms and perform alongside several Muppets.

Home media
Muppets Most Wanted was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and DVD on August 12, 2014. The Blu-ray bonus features include three cuts of the film: the original theatrical cut (107 minutes), a truncated Statler and Waldorf cut (2 minutes), and an extended cut featuring 12 minutes of scenes not shown in the theatrical version (124 minutes). Also included are a blooper reel, a featurette called "Rizzo's Biggest Fan," and a music video of "I'll Get You What You Want" featuring Bret McKenzie.

Reception

Box office
Muppets Most Wanted grossed $51.2 million in North America, and $29.2 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $80.4 million. The film earned $4.7 million on its opening day, and opened to number two in its first weekend, with $17 million, behind Divergent. Considering that pre-release tracking had forecast Muppets Most Wanted at opening with takings of more than $20 million, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distribution chief Dave Hollis said the film's opening was "definitely disappointing". Hollis said there was never a comparison between the previous film and its sequel, since Thanksgiving is a concentrated time for family moviegoing. Other reasons cited for the film's failure can be contributed to the then-recent events that occurred in Crimea and Ukraine as a significant chunk of the film takes place in a Russian gulag and its over-reliance on marketing. In its second weekend, the film dropped to number three, grossing $11.3 million, leading to a better second weekend than its predecessor. In its third weekend, the film dropped to number five, grossing $5.1 million. In its fourth weekend, the film dropped to number nine, grossing $2.3 million.

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 80% based on reviews from 197 critics, with a rating average of 6.7/10. The site's consensus stated: "While it may not reach the delirious heights of The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted still packs in enough clever gags, catchy songs, and celebrity cameos to satisfy fans of all ages." Metacritic gave the film a score of 61/100 based on 37 reviews indicating "generally favorable reviews". CinemaScore audiences gave Muppets Most Wanted a "B+" grade rating on an A+ to F scale.

Alonso Duralde of The Wrap compared the film favorably to the 2011 predecessor, elaborating, "Muppets Most Wanted remains sensational and celebrational, proving beyond a doubt that these beloved characters will continue to lead a plush life on the big screen for years to come." Despite reservations over the previous installment, Brian Henson called Most Wanted a great Muppets film, saying, "I think my dad would be thrilled the Muppets are continuing. That's a big deal." Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film three out of four stars, saying "It just feels like something the original Muppet creators might have done." John Hartl of The Seattle Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Most of the laughs come courtesy of Tina Fey, in the role of a Siberian prison guard who can't/won't stop dancing." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter had a mixed reaction; praising Bret McKenzie's songs and the film's humor, but labeling the film overall as "an oddly off-key follow-up". Justin Chang of Variety gave a negative review, stating that the film "looks and sounds eager to please but immediately feels like a more slapdash, aimless affair, trying—and mostly failing—to turn its stalled creativity into some sort of self-referential joke." Anna Smith of Time Out gave the film three out of five stars, saying "'Everybody knows that the sequel's never quite as good,' sing our fluffy friends during the opening number of a film with much to live up to after 2011's terrific reboot, The Muppets. The joke proves self-fulfilling." Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film four out of five stars, saying "Although this movie has lots of laughs and a willingness to poke fun at itself, it doesn't quite recapture the magic of the last movie. Close, but not quite."

Jake Coyle of the Associated Press gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "Muppets Most Wanted fails to whip up the kind of furry frenzy that makes the Muppets special." Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "The movie seems longer than it is, plus it's just plain too long. Ah, but those jokes are frequently brilliant." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "The breaking point of stretching this one joke is reached early. Luckily, Muppet good will helps get you through the rest." Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News gave the film three out of five stars, saying "The film's slightly overplotted feel is offset by the zippiest musical numbers since the Muppets' deservedly beloved 1979 film." J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader gave the film a negative review, saying "The verbal wit is fairly weak this time around, though as in the previous film there's an endless succession of three-second star cameos." Tom Russo of The Boston Globe gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The well-worn plot basics are dressed up nicely by the film's consistently clever humor, as well as a celebrity cameo roster that's stacked even by Muppet standards." Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The pacing is spot-on, and Fey's Russian guard and Ty Burrell's Interpol agent are wonderful human additions to this comedic romp." Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, saying "It all adds up to an eventful entry in the Muppet film library but not a classic one." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, calling the film "A breezy, mirthful caper enlivened by the comic talents of Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell and Tina Fey."

Frank Lovece of Newsday gave the film three out of four stars, saying "While it may not be sensational, it's still an inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational Muppet show." Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "You don't go to a Muppet movie looking for anything other than a few laughs with beloved puppet pals. Mission accomplished—ka-ching!—on that front." David Hiltbrand of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "Sunny and cheerful, Muppets Most Wanted is a cascade of epic silliness, good for a few fleeting and familiar chuckles." Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, saying "The songs are infectious, but the rest (despite turns by Tina Fey and Ty Burrell) lacks some of the gang's usual feel-good joy." Christopher Orr of The Atlantic gave the film a positive review, saying "Kids will enjoy it, and there are more than enough clever gags to keep parents amused. But the film lacks the tenderness and rich nostalgia that made The Muppets such an improbable delight." Erik Adams of The A.V. Club gave the film a B−, saying "The Muppets are creatures of indulgence, and their sense of humor is one of excess. Muppets Most Wanted is a mess of a movie, but anything tidier would be a poor fit." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, saying "Though there are many delicious little moments tucked inside, the action heads in so many directions it can be dizzying to keep up." Steve Persall of the Tampa Bay Times gave the film a B, saying "Muppets Most Wanted is pleasant enough to recommend as family entertainment. But the movie falls short of what immediately preceded it, musically and emotionally."

Dana Stevens of Slate gave the film a negative review, saying "There's something sour and strained about this movie that's at odds with the usual Muppet ethos of game, let's-put-on-a-show cheer. Maybe that's because of the inordinate amount of screen time spent on the rivalry between two villains who are as uninteresting as they are unpleasant." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two out of four stars, saying "Part of the problem here is one of proportion: The movie throws a misjudged majority of the material to the villains and lets the unfashionably sincere and sweet-natured Muppets fend for themselves." Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film two out of five stars, saying "Muppet film number eight is a resounding disappointment: it's uneven and often grating, with only a few moments of authentic delight, and almost none of the sticky-sweet, toast-and-honey crunch of its vastly enjoyable 2011 forerunner." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The inevitable sequel, arriving three years later, isn't as giddily entertaining as its predecessor but much of the charm remains, making this an ideal destination for a family excursion." Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Freed from the burden of starting anew, the film restores the Muppets' rightful place as stars of their own show." Steve Davis of The Austin Chronicle gave the film three out of five stars, saying "This re-energized franchise has found its second wind, bursting with a creative vitality and boisterous humor that makes everything seem new again."

Accolades

References

External links

  at Disney.com

2010s children's comedy films
2010s crime comedy films
2010s English-language films
2010s musical comedy films
2010s satirical films
2014 comedy films
2014 films
American children's adventure films
American children's comedy films
American children's musical films
American crime comedy films
American heist films
American musical comedy films
American satirical films
American sequel films
Backstage musicals
Films about the Central Intelligence Agency
Films based on television series
Films directed by James Bobin
Films produced by David Hoberman
Films produced by Todd Lieberman
Films scored by Christophe Beck
Films set in Berlin
Films set in Europe
Films set in Geneva
Films set in London
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set in Madrid
Films set in art museums and galleries
Films set in prison
Films set in Siberia
Films set in studio lots
Films set in Switzerland
Films set on trains
Films about theft
Films shot at Pinewood Studios
Films shot in Buckinghamshire
Films shot in London
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films with screenplays by Nicholas Stoller
Jukebox musical films
Mandeville Films films
Self-reflexive films
The Muppets films
Walt Disney Pictures films
2010s American films

Muppets Most Wanted


Kiveri () is a small village in the municipal unit of Lerna, Argolis, Greece. It is situated on the bay of Argos across from the tourist center of Nafplio.  It has a population of approximately 1000.  According to legend it was founded in 1600 BC by some of the first Dorian invaders of the Peloponnese.  Scholarly research finds that the village has been continuously occupied since antiquity, its ancient name being Apovathmi.  The recent unearthing of ancient graves (dates still to be determined) do lend at least a little credence to the legend. Kiveri has a predominantly agricultural economy revolving around the growth and distribution of oranges and olives.  There is also a small fishing industry.

At the villages southern border, where Kiveri's Orchards of  the rivers floodplain ends, a large submarine coastal Karst spring (Greek: Καρστική πηγή) was walled to catch the sweet water for irrigating its orchards and those of the very huge Coastal Plain of Argos. The sweet water (karst water) comes  from Lake Stymphalia, from Argon Pedion (a stand-alone side-basin of Arcadia's big "Tripoli Basin" next to village Nestani) and from the "Kapsas Ponor" in the Tripoli Basin (one of ca. 40 ponors in the basin!). The water descends gradually through katavothres (Greek: καταβόθρές) and is drained subsurface through several hydrotectonic structures towards the spring.

References

Populated places in Argolis
Argos-Mykines
Karst springs

Kiveri


The Longest Line is a 12" EP by the punk rock band NOFX, released in 1992. This was the first release on Fat Wreck Chords and the cover art was done by Dan Sites. The first 200 copies of this record were printed on dark-blue vinyl, some on grey vinyl, and all others on black vinyl. It was repressed in 2007 with 1,082 copies on "Peruvian" white vinyl. This coloured version sold out within a day.
The band denied all suggestions that the title referred to cocaine.

The pop punk band Blink (later Blink-182) covered "The Longest Line" on their demo tape Flyswatter.

All five songs were later released on The Longest EP.

Track listing
 "The Death of John Smith" – 3:51
 "The Longest Line" – 2:04
 "Stranded" – 2:09
 "Remnants" – 2:58
 "Kill All the White Man" – 2:48

Personnel
El Hefe – Guitar, Trumpet and Vocals on "Kill All The White Man" and "The Death of John Smith"
Eric Melvin – Guitar
Fat Mike – Bass, Lead Vocals
Erik Sandin – Drums

References

NOFX EPs
1992 EPs
Fat Wreck Chords EPs

The Longest Line