Cirsium muticum, also known as swamp thistle, marsh thistle, dunce-nettle, or horsetops, is a North American species of plants in the family Asteraceae, native to central and eastern Canada and the central and eastern United States.

Description
Cirsium muticum is a biennial plant that reaches a height of . Its taproot is fleshy and its stem is ridged with hairs toward the base. The leaves are alternate in position, pinnately lobed, and ovate in shape. The leaf lobes are often asymmetrical and forked irregularly with the angles containing fine trichomes (multicellular hairs). The leaves become progressively smaller towards the inflorescence; there are often a few trichomes on the underside. The peduncles are , each with an inflorescence made up of many tiny florets; the involucre has cobwebby white hairs, and it is often slightly sticky. The purple florets can be up to  long.

Taxonomy and naming
Cirsium muticum was described by the French naturalist André Michaux in 1803. It is one of many species in the thistle genus Cirsium. The epithet muticum, meaning blunt, refers to its phyllaries.

Distribution and habitat
Cirsium muticum has been found across every province of Canada from Labrador and Newfoundland to Saskatchewan. In the United States, it grows primarily in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and the Appalachians, with isolated populations scattered across the South from Texas to the Carolinas.

Cirsium muticum is found mostly in alkaline swamps, wetlands, marshes and low forests but some races have been known to grow in wet alpine climates.

Ecology
Cirsium muticum is as host for some species of butterflies and moths, including the swamp metalmark butterfly (Calephelis muticum), a species that is currently undergoing risk assessment in the United States. The butterfly lays its eggs on the swamp thistle, and when the eggs hatch, the flowers are the only food source for the caterpillars. It is also a larval host to the painted lady butterfly, and songbirds eat its seeds.
Species that grow with it include Aster umbellatus (flat-topped white aster), Solidago patula (rough-leaved goldenrod), Lysimachia quadrifolia (prairie loosestrife), and Gentiana procera (smaller fringed gentian).

Human importance
Swamp thistles can be used to make decorative arrangements. They are often planted in gardens because they are seen as more manageable than other thistles, while still potentially having some anti-herbivory properties.

Conservation
The plant is not endangered in Canada or the U.S. but it is threatened in the state of Arkansas, and vulnerable in the province of Saskatchewan. Cirsium muticum is at risk primarily because it is a wetland plant, and North American wetlands have been much reduced in extent over the last two centuries.

References

External sources

muticum
Flora of Canada
Flora of the Eastern United States
Flora of the United States
Plants described in 1803
Taxa named by André Michaux

Cirsium muticum


An octave is the distance between two musical notes that have the same letter name.

If a musician sings or plays a scale ('do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do') the first and last 'do' are an octave apart. It is called an 'octave' because there are eight notes in a scale ('octo' is Latin for 'eight').

If a musician sings or plays the first two notes of the song "Somewhere over the rainbow" (i.e. the word 'Somewhere') these two notes are an octave apart.

Two notes that are an octave apart sound very similar, almost like the same note. The scientific reason for this is that the top note vibrates twice as fast.  For example: if someone plays Middle C on a piano, a hammer hits the Middle C strings inside and makes them vibrate 256 times a second.  The C an octave higher will vibrate 512 times a second.

Young children who learn the piano will not be able to stretch an octave with one hand, if their hands are too small. Most adults can stretch an octave easily (playing one note with the thumb, and the other with the little finger).

Related pages
Interval (music)

Music theory

Octave


Fritz Heinrich Angerstein (January 3, 1891 – November 17, 1925) was a German mass murderer, who killed eight people at his home in Haiger, on December 1, 1924. The subject of a media spectacle, Angerstein, along with Fritz Haarmann and Peter Kürten, is considered one of the "three great mass murderer trials" of the Weimar Republic-era of Germany.

Angerstein was sentenced to death eight times, and was executed in 1925.

Biography
Fritz Heinrich Angerstein was born on January 3, 1891, in Dillenburg, German Reich, the seventh of ten children. His father, who worked as a carpenter and later as a steelworker, was also the mayor of Dillenburg. Angerstein suffered from health problems during his childhood, including regular tuberculosis infections and having a rib surgically removed, but at age 14 began working as a surveyor, before being employed by the Nassauische Bergbau AG. In 1917, he became procurator of a limestone mine in Haiger, which was taken over by the firm van der Zypen in 1920.

In 1911, Angerstein married Käthe Barth, a devout methodist, and the marriage was described as happy, with Angerstein giving the impression of a loving and caring husband. Despite this, Käthe was afflicted with severe hysteria and also fell ill with an unknown intestinal disease in 1920. His wife's illnesses mentally and physically exhausted Angerstein, who himself almost constantly suffered from various types of tuberculosis. The couple had no children, though Käthe had miscarried six times. The relationship with his mother-in-law was said to have been strained because they were unable to have any children and because of her poor treatment of his wife. Angerstein related that his mother-in-law often reduced Käthe's diet to soup, due to her ailments, though apparently she often burnt the meal, whereupon his wife would not eat anything at all. According to his own testimony, Angerstein once whipped his mother-in-law with a dog whip out of anger, because Käthe had run away from home due to another burnt meal. In the same instance, Angerstein also decided to shoot his mother-in-law and himself should his wife not return home.

In 1921, Käthe wrote a letter to her husband, telling him that due to her illnesses she could not be the wife he needed. After Angerstein had talked to her about the matter, they made the mutual decision to drown themselves, since they were both regularly sick at that time. However, when Angerstein was carrying his wife half-way into the water, they heard someone sing a song, which according to Angerstein brought them to their senses again, and aborted their suicide attempt. The same year, Angerstein, together with his wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law, moved to Haiger after he received free lodging in a villa belonging to his employer, van der Zypen. The ground floor consisted of five bureaus for Angerstein and his assistants, first floor living quarters for himself and his wife, his sister-in-law and mother-in-law, and the attic for their maidservant. His salary was 390 ℛℳ (Reichsmark) per month, although Angerstein claimed van der Zypen owed him 90,000 ℛℳ. Angerstein got into financial troubles, whereupon he began to embezzle money from his employer, which according to court records the total sum was 14,892 ℛℳ. The fraud was discovered by one of Angerstein's colleagues in November 1924. On the Friday before the murders, Angerstein witnessed his wife put away a notebook containing her last wishes, stating she was expecting to die soon. Angerstein, in the night from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1 found and read the notebook.

On the Saturday before the murders, Angerstein met with his manager named Nix for wage accounting and paid salaries, where Nix confronted him with the discrepancies in the accounting.  Startled by six shots during the night in front of the house, his wife began suffering from bloody diarrhea, vomiting, fainting and heart problems due to the agitation. Angerstein learned the next day that the shots had been fired during a birthday party, and he began to suffer from severe headaches.

Murders

On the night of November 30 to December 1, 1924, Angerstein had damaged a telephone wire and some water pipes. Between 12 and 1 a.m., Angerstein awoke as his wife suffered from severe heart pain. He wanted to call a doctor, but his wife held him back, instead fetching his mother-in-law.  After she returned to her bed, Angerstein sat beside his wife, who was lying in bed, where she read him a letter. Angerstein then changed the pillow case, stained by his wife's vomiting. He overheard his wife and mother-in-law talking about another letter written by his brother-in-law, stating that he had syphilis, and that the disease could spread to other family members, agitating him. He then talked with his wife about the letter, and remembered his wife once telling him that she wanted to die the same hour he died. Angerstein then decided to kill his wife and himself, and when his wife fainted Angerstein fetched his revolver from another room. When he returned to the room his wife was awake, where she grabbed his hand and took his revolver from him, saying  "His own wife, Lord forgive him!", before fainting again. Angerstein then fetched his hunting dagger and fatally stabbed his wife 18 times with it. He then ran downstairs to his study and attempted to shoot himself, but both revolvers failed to fire. He then ran down to the cellar, looking for something with which to kill himself. Finding a hand-axe, he intended to cut off his own hand, but hearing his mother-in-law scream he ran back upstairs and killed her because, as he later claimed, he was angry about her having treated his sick wife badly.

Angerstein realized that their maidservant, Minna Stoll, was standing in front of him. She ran away and up the stairs to the attic, but just before she reached the door to the attic, Angerstein caught up with her, grabbed her from behind and hit her over the head with the hand-axe, whereupon she collapsed. Angerstein later stated that he killed her because she burned meals, was unclean, and because he and his wife were generally displeased with her. Her body was later found burnt on the first floor. Angerstein then returned to his bedroom and again hacked at the bodies of his mother-in-law and wife, fearing they might get up again. His mother-in-law was still moaning, but Angerstein returned to the kitchen, washed the axe and his hands, sat down and slept for a few hours. When his 18-year-old sister-in-law Ella Barth returned during the night from a train journey, she went upstairs and into the bathroom. Angerstein followed her and killed her with the axe, then covered her up because he could not stand to look at her corpse.

At approximately 7 a.m. on Monday, a bookkeeper, Ditthart, and a clerk, Kiel, arrived at the villa to work. One after the other Angerstein called them into his study, locked the door and killed them with the axe. During the course of the day he also killed the son of the villa gardener, Geist, and another laborer working for him, Darr, with a hatchet, fearing that they both might have seen the dead bodies. Angerstein's German Shepherd was later found in the locked cellar with its head smashed in. A man named Ebert arrived and Angerstein handed him a letter for his brother, before sending him away. Responding to questions about his dishevelled state, Angerstein answered that he was sick.

Afterwards, Angerstein poured out petrol (maybe brought with a truck later found a few kilometres outside of the town) in his study on the ground floor and the rooms on the first floor. He then went shopping in the city, buying two chocolate bars, according to himself for his "dear wife", and a flashlight. After sunset, Angerstein went back home and set the petrol alight, though the ground floor did not catch fire. He then stabbed himself several times, causing severe but not life-threatening wounds, then called for help. When help arrived, Angerstein claimed he had been attacked by bandits, who had killed everyone in the house and left him for dead. Angerstein told his helpers and the police that he was assaulted in his villa after he returned from town, and some people claimed to have seen 15 to 25 bandits. Angerstein was taken to the hospital in Haiger, where he was operated on, while panic over the imaginary bandits spread across the Haiger, and extra policemen were sent for from Siegen and Wetzlar for protection, and militias were formed.

Georg Popp helped in the investigation of the murders, and the investigators raised doubts about Angerstein's story. The corpses had rigor mortis already set in, thus contradicting Angerstein's claims regarding when the killings had taken place. Angerstein's fingerprints were found on the dagger and on the dead bodies, and there were no signs of a robbery having taken place. During interrogation by the prosecutor, Angerstein denied having committed the killings himself, but often made contradictory statements regarding the deaths. Angerstein was arrested, though he remained in hospital. After the autopsies, he was accused of having committed the murders, and Angerstein finally confessed to his brother in the presence of a police officer.

Victims
 Käthe Angerstein, née Barth, Angerstein's wife
 Katharina Barth, Angerstein's mother-in-law
 Minna Stoll, Angerstein's maidservant
 Ella Barth, 18, Angerstein's sister-in-law
 Reinhold Diethardt, bookkeeper
 Heinrich Kiehl, clerk
 Alex Geiß, Angerstein's gardener
 Rudi Darr, gardener's assistant

Conviction and execution

Out of fear that the public could turn against Angerstein, he was taken to Limburg an der Lahn only two weeks before the trial started in July 1925. The trial was a media spectacle, gaining lots of publicity and coverage, and together with the trials of Fritz Haarmann and Peter Kürten, was considered one of the great mass murderer trials of the Weimar Republic. Angerstein was charged with 13 crimes, among them eight counts of murder, two counts of embezzlement, and one count each of forging documents, arson, and perjury. Angerstein claimed he did not embezzle money, but that van der Zypen had owed him money. A total of 153 witnesses and 27 experts were called. Angerstein admitted to committing bribery and later to embezzlement.

On July 13, after six days of trial, Angerstein was sentenced to death eight times, once for each of the eight murders, and deprived of his civil rights for the rest of his life, while the other charges against him were dismissed. Angerstein accepted the verdict, stating that he did not want mercy and that his deed could only be atoned for with his blood.

On November 17, 1925, at 8 a.m., Angerstein was executed by decapitation with an axe by executioner Carl Gröpler in the courtyard of the Central Prison Freiendiez in Diez an der Lahn.

Aftermath

Possible motives
There was much speculation surrounding the motive behind the murders. It was assumed that Angerstein had been gripped by paranoia due to his embezzlement, and that he was attempting to get rid of witnesses. Reference to this was made in this context to Angerstein's suicide attempt. Rumours circulated to the effect that Angerstein was inspired by the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, which state that by killing nine people a seal may be activated that provides great riches.

Optogram
The case has gained some notoriety for allegedly being one of the rare instances in which an optogram, a photograph taken from a dead person's retina, played a role in identifying and convicting a murderer. According to reports, one Professor Doehne of Cologne University photographed the retinas of two of Angerstein's victims, yielding one picture showing Angerstein's face, and a second one of Angerstein attacking his gardener with a hatchet. Substantial doubts have been raised about these claims though.

Bibliography
 Bender, Julie: Angerstein?; in Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 12, 1925.
 Kracauer, Siegfried: Tat ohne Täter - Zum Fall Angerstein; in Schriften 5.1: p. 318-322.
 Langensscheidt, Paul: Encyklopädie der modernen Kriminalistik, . pp. 417–420
 Popp, G.: Der Fall Angerstein I. Kriminalistische Betrachtungen zur Mordsache Angerstein, in: Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung 1925, Heft 16, pp. 1225–1229.
 Schlesinger, Paul: Richter und Gerichtete - Gerichtsreportagen aus den zwanziger Jahren; Munich, 1977. p. 103-106.

References

External links English
 Lethen, Helmut: The Case of Angerstein, in Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany, trans. Don Reneau; University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 2002.
 Band of Murderers Slays 8 in German Villa, Including Four Women, and Burn the House, The New York Times (December 3, 1924).
 Angerstein admits killing 8 in villa, The New York Times (December 4, 1924).
 Report man's image in dead victim's eye, The New York Times (December 8, 1924).
 Tells how he killed eight, The New York Times (July 7, 1925).
 Slayer of 8 sentenced, The New York Times (July 14, 1925).
 Slayer of 8 is executed, The New York Times (November 18, 1925).
 Bandits invade German village, Berkeley Daily Gazette (December 2, 1924).
 German confesses murders of eight, The Border Cities Star (December 3, 1924).
 Admits murder of 8, his wife among victims, The Morning Leader (December 4, 1924).
 A ghastly crime, The Age (December 4, 1924).
 Finger-prints trap murderer, Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian (December 4, 1924).
 Man confesses murdering 8 members of his household, Reading Eagle (December 4, 1924).
 German paralytic admits he killed eight in family, St. Petersburg Times (December 5, 1924).
 German tells how he put 8 to death, Portsmouth Daily Times (July 7, 1925).
 Gives Details of his Crimes, The Calgary Daily Herald (July 7, 1925).
 Berlin Slayer goes on trial, The Crawfordsville Review (July 7, 1925).
 German Admits Slaying Eight Of Household, The Atlanta Constitution (December 4, 1924).
 SLAIN MAN'S EYE SHOWS PICTURE OF MURDERER, Chicago Daily Tribune (December 8, 1924).
 Photos Show Killer's Face In Retina, Says Savant, The Baltimore Sun (December 8, 1924).
 8 Sentences To Die Given Berlin Slayer, The Atlanta Constitution (July 14, 1925).

External links German
, Die neue Zeitung (December 3, 1924).
, Die neue Zeitung (December 4, 1924).
, Freiburger Zeitung (December 3, 1924).
, Freiburger Zeitung (December 4, 1924).
, Coburger Zeitung (December 3, 1924).
, Coburger Zeitung (December 4, 1924).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 7, 1925).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 8, 1925).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 9, 1925).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 10, 1925).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 11, 1925).
, Coburger Zeitung (July 13, 1925).
, Flörsheimer Zeitung (December 3, 1924).
, Flörsheimer Zeitung (July 8, 1925).
, Flörsheimer Zeitung (July 11, 1925).
, Flörsheimer Zeitung (July 15, 1925).
, Hochheimer Stadtanzeiger (December 5, 1924).
, Hochheimer Stadtanzeiger (July 14, 1925).
, Hochheimer Stadtanzeiger (July 10, 1925).
, Hochheimer Stadtanzeiger (July 7, 1925).
Das Märchen von der Räuberbande, Vossische Zeitung (July 7, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Massenmörder Angerstein im Kreuzverhör, Vossische Zeitung (July 7, 1925) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Angersteins doppeltes Gesicht, Vossische Zeitung (July 8, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Der Mörder und seine Schuld, Vossische Zeitung (July 8, 1925) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Gericht über den Massenmörder, Vossische Zeitung (July 6, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
"Alle die meiner Frau Böses getan...", Vossische Zeitung (July 9, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Frau Angersteins Ahnungen, Vossische Zeitung (July 9, 1925) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Angersteins Familienleben, Vossische Zeitung (July 10, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Der Mörder und die Ärzte, Vossische Zeitung (July 11, 1925) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Angerstein zum Tode verurteilt, Vossische Zeitung (July 14, 1925) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Todesstrafe für Angerstein beantragt, Vossische Zeitung (July 13, 1925) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Angerstein als Mörder seiner Familie verhaftet, Vossische Zeitung (December 3, 1924) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Angerstein geständig, Vossische Zeitung (December 4, 1924) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Wie Angerstein seine Familie erschlug, Vossische Zeitung (December 4, 1924) (Abend-Ausgabe).
Der achtfache Mord, Vossische Zeitung (December 3, 1924) (Morgen-Ausgabe).
Acht Personen ermordet, Vossische Zeitung (December 2, 1924) (Abend-Ausgabe).

1891 births
1925 deaths
Executed German mass murderers
Executed people from Hesse
Familicides
German people convicted of murder
Massacres in 1924
Massacres in Germany
People convicted of murder by Germany
People executed by Germany by decapitation
People executed by the Weimar Republic
People from Dillenburg
Stabbing attacks in Germany

Fritz Angerstein


Ardozyga scytina is a species of moth in the family Gelechiidae. It was described by Edward Meyrick in 1904. It is found in Australia, where it has been recorded from New South Wales and South Australia.

The wingspan is . The forewings are ochreous, slightly reddish-tinged. The discal stigmata are small, blackish and there are some blackish scales on the termen. The hindwings are pale grey.

References

Ardozyga
Moths described in 1904
Taxa named by Edward Meyrick
Moths of Australia

Ardozyga scytina


Abu Ali Airport is a small airstrip in the Island of Abu Ali, part of Jubail area in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It is located about  north of the city and about  from the shores of the Persian Gulf, occupying a small land area of about 0.5 km2.

Overview
The airstrip is owned and was operated by Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia. It was used for the employees traveling between the island and other airports. However, during the last decade it has been idle for the reason that employees no longer need to travel for work while the nearby Jubail residential areas are growing.

Facilities
The airfield has very poor infrastructure; no terminal is available, only a 2,200 m2 area for aircraft movement and parking outside the runway, that is 1,511 meters long and 27.5 meters wide with no lights or ILS support.

Parking
A small area on the side of the road at the entrance is allocated for car parking.

See also
 List of airports in Saudi Arabia

Airports in Saudi Arabia

Abu Ali Airport


Wah-Wah is a 2005 comedy-drama film written and directed by Richard E. Grant in his directorial debut. Loosely based on his childhood in Swaziland, as depicted in Grant's memoir about the film, The Wah-Wah Diaries, it stars  Nicholas Hoult, Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Miranda Richardson and Julie Walters.

Filmed and set in Swaziland, the film was first shown at the Cannes Film Market on 13 May 2005 and premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 17 August 2005. It then toured to various festivals before receiving a limited release in the United States on 5 May 2006, followed by its release in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2006.

Plot
In this semi-autobiographical tale of his childhood in Swaziland during the last days of the British Empire in Africa in the 1960s, Grant relates the story of Ralph Compton, whose family's disintegration mirrors the end of British rule.  After witnessing his mother's adultery with his father's best friend, Ralph must survive not only boarding school but also his beloved father's remarriage to Ruby, a fast-talking American Airlines flight attendant, and his father's gradual descent into alcoholism.

History

Development and pre-production
Grant initially wrote the film loosely based on his own childhood experiences after a screenwriter recommended he write a screenplay after reading his memoirs of his Withnail and I experiences. The first meeting with a producer took place in 1999 and the film took almost seven years from then to complete.  Grant initially had trouble securing actors; Rachel Weisz, Toni Collette, Meg Ryan, Emmanuelle Béart, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irons all turned down roles.  Julie Walters was eventually the first actor to be signed.  Grant intended for the part of Ralph to be played by two actors but the casting director, Celestia Fox, insisted on one actor.  During the casting sessions, Grant noticed the similarity between Zac Fox and Nicholas Hoult and persuaded Celestia Fox to cast them.  The part of the father was meant to be younger but, as all the actors  asked in that age range passed on the role, an older actor (Gabriel Byrne) was chosen.  After the original producer left the project due to a career change, Grant was approached by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar to produce the project, a decision he later came to regret.

Production and aftermath
The film was the first to have been shot in Swaziland. Filming began in July 2004 and took place over seven weeks and post-production took place in England and France.

Wah-Wah received its premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and received a special Toronto International Film Festival screening in September 2005. Grant also kept a diary of his experiences of the film, later published as a book, (The Wah-Wah Diaries), which was met positively by the critics, many of whom were impressed at the honesty of the tale, especially in regard to his frictional relationship with the "inexperienced" producer.  Grant mentioned in subsequent interviews that she was a "control freak out of control" and that he would "never see her again as long as [he] lives". In a BBC interview, he again mentioned his "disastrous" relationship with Mention-Schaar, relating that he received just five emails in the last two months of pre-production from her, that she rarely turned up on the set, and that she failed to obtain clearance for either the song rights or to film in Swaziland (without the knowledge of Grant, who eventually was forced to meet the King of Swaziland to seek clemency).

Main cast

Critical reception
Critics were split on Wah-Wah. BBC Movies said it was "superbly performed and fluently shot", but lamented its uninteresting subject. David Hughes of Empire magazine said that the film was "an unforced, engaging and surprisingly incisive account of the disintegration of British rule in Africa". Time Out noted that "Gabriel Byrne gives a great performance as Ralph's troubled father, Harry, and Miranda Richardson and Emily Watson are enjoyable as Harry's wife and American lover".  Variety said that "above all, the film has a wonderful sense of ensemble in the portrayal of its inbred community, and the focus stays tight on the people rather than political events" and The Los Angeles Times said that "Grant opens up his life, not with embarrassment or explanation but with humanity and gratitude. Emotional, melodramatic and sentimental, the film unabashedly wears its heart on its sleeve, and is the better for it." Roger Ebert was less praising, noting that he "admired the movie and was happy to see it but can think of two other films about whites in Africa that do a better job of seeing their roles (Nowhere in Africa and White Mischief)." , the film holds a 54% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 69 reviews with an average rating of 5.91/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The ensemble cast is strong, but they get overpowered by the muddled stew of melodrama."

Box office
The film received a limited release and only grossed $2.8 million worldwide on a $7 million budget.

References

External links
 – official site

Richard E. Grant about Wah-Wah interview on ABC's Enough Rope

2005 films
2000s historical drama films
British historical drama films
Films set in Eswatini
Films set in the 1960s
Films set in the British Empire
Films scored by Patrick Doyle
Roadside Attractions films
Films shot in Eswatini
2005 directorial debut films
2005 drama films
2000s English-language films
2000s British films

Wah-Wah (film)


Khahotepre Sobekhotep VI (also known as Sobekhotep V) was an Egyptian king of the late 13th Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period.

Family
Khahotepre Sobekhotep VI's father was perhaps Sobekhotep IV, the best attested king of the entire second intermediate period. This hypothesis is based on an inscription found in the Wadi el-Hudi which attests that Sobekhotep IV had a son called 'Sobekhotep'. If this son is indeed Sobekhotep VI, then his mother would be possibly Tjan, wife of Sobekhotep IV. Sobekhotep VI's queen may have been named Khaenoub (also Khaesnebou) or Nubhotepti.

Attestations

Khahotepre Sobekhotep may have had four regnal years. Only a few objects attest to his reign. There exists a scarab seal from Abydos and a kneeling statuette of the king, possibly from Kerma.

At Abydos, a fragmentary funerary stela dedicated to the god Wepwawet mentions [Kha]hotepre. The stela has also been assigned to Merhotepre Ini.

At Elephantine? a kneeling statue with a dedication to Satis, Lady of Elephantine, found at Kerma Tumulus X.

In Jericho, a scarab bearing the prenomen Khahotepre was found in a tomb associated with pottery Group III (MB IIB/C). It could be evidence of trade relations between the 13th dynasty state and the Levant.

Items of unknown provenance include 6 scarab seals, a cylinder seal and a seal impression.

Non-Contemporary Attestations
The Karnak King List #41 dating to Thutmoses III mentions his prenomen Khahotepre.

The Turin canon 8:01 dating to Ramesses II mentions Khahotepre, credited with a reign of 4 years, 8 months and 29 days, He is considered a successor of Sobekhotep IV. However, one line is missing (lacuna) just below the line of Sobekhotep IV. Ryholt speculates that this line would preserve the name of Merhotepre Sobekhotep.

Theories
According to Egyptologist Kim Ryholt he was the thirty-first pharaoh of the dynasty, while Darrell Baker believes instead that he was its thirtieth ruler. Alternatively, Jürgen von Beckerath and Detlef Franke see him as the twenty-fifth king of the dynasty.

Ryholt dates Sobekhotep VI to 1719-1715 BC.

Identity
Until Ryholt's study of the Second Intermediate Period, it was believed that Sobekhotep VI's prenomen was Merhotepre. Reevaluating the archeological evidence, however, Ryholt attributed Merhotepre to Sobekhotep V and Khahotepre to Sobekhotep VI. Because of this change of prenomen, Merhotepre Sobekhotep and Khahotepre Sobekhotep are respectively called Sobekhotep VI and Sobekhotep V in older studies.

References

External links

 Sobekhotep VI from Digital Egypt (University College. London)

18th-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt

Khahotepre Sobekhotep VI


Girolamo di Tiziano (from having been a scholar of Titian and an assistant to him in some of his less important works), also known as Girolamo Dante or Girolamo Dente, flourished at Venice from 1550 to 1580. It is said that in copying the originals of his master, he attained so high a degree of excellence, that such of his pieces as were retouched by Titian, bid defiance often to the judgment of the most expert connoisseurs. He also produced works of his own design; the altar-piece attributed to him at San Giovanni Nuovo, representing SS. Cosmo and Damianus, reflects credit on the school to which he belonged.

He was born and died in Ceneda. An Adoration by the Magi is found in the Museo Civico of Feltri.

Notes

References

Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown
Italian Renaissance painters
16th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
Painters from Venice
Titian

Girolamo di Tiziano


Crundmáel Erbuilc mac Rónáin (died 656) was a King of Leinster from the Uí Cheinnselaig branch of the Laigin. He was the son of Rónán mac Colmáin (died 625), a previous king of the Sil Chormaic sept.

His accession to the thrones of Leinster and to the throne of the Ui Cheinnselaig cannot be dated with certainty. The problem begins with the question of whether his father Ronan was king of Leinster or whether this king was Rónán mac Colmáin Már of the Uí Dúnlainge. His namesake Crundmáel Bolg Luatha mac Áedo was  king of Uí Cheinnselaig when slain at the Battle of Duma Aichir in 628 by Fáelán mac Colmáin (died 666) of the Uí Dúnlainge who became king of Leinster in 634. Crundmáel Erbuilc became king of the Ui Chennselaig in 647 on the death of Colgu Bolg Luatha mac Crundmail.

The Book of Leinster gives Faelan a reign of 30 years and his death obit of 666 in the annals appears to be an interpolation based on the king lists. It is more probable that he died before 656 when Crundmáel Erbuilc mac Rónáin is called king of Leinster at his death obit. The Annals of Ulster refer to him as king of Leinster but the Annals of Tigernach call him king of south Leinster.

His son Áed Rón was ancestor of a branch which took over leadership of the Uí Dróna and his son Fiachra was ancestor of the later Leinster king Áed mac Colggen (died 738). By his wife Faílend ingen Suibne of the Déisi Muman he had a daughter Eithne who married Failbe mac Domnaill of the Uí Bairrche. He was succeeded as King of Uí Cheinnselaig by his brother Cummascach mac Rónáin.

Notes

See also
Kings of Leinster

References

 Annals of Ulster at CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork
 Annals of Tigernach at CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork
 Byrne, Francis John (2001), Irish Kings and High-Kings, Dublin: Four Courts Press,
 Charles-Edwards, T. M. (2000), Early Christian Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
 Book of Leinster,Rig Laigin and Rig Hua Cendselaig at CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork

External links
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork

Kings of Leinster
Kings of Uí Cheinnselaig
7th-century Irish monarchs
656 deaths
People from County Carlow
Year of birth unknown

Crundmáel Erbuilc


Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a 1989 American science fiction film directed by William Shatner and based on the television series Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry. It is the fifth installment in the Star Trek film series, and takes place shortly after the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). Its plot follows the crew of the USS Enterprise-A as they confront renegade Vulcan Sybok, who is searching for God at the center of the galaxy.

The film was directed by cast member William Shatner, following two films directed by his co-star Leonard Nimoy.  Shatner developed the initial storyline, in which Sybok searches for God but instead finds a devil; his primary inspiration was the phenomenon of televangelism and the high potential for fraud among its practitioners. Many involved objected to the script and plot. Series creator Gene Roddenberry disliked the original script, while Nimoy and DeForest Kelley objected to the premise that their characters, Spock and Leonard McCoy, would betray Shatner's James T. Kirk. The script went through multiple revisions to please the cast and Paramount Pictures, including cuts in the effects-laden climax of the film. Despite a Writers Guild strike cutting into the film's pre-production, Paramount commenced filming in October 1988. Many Star Trek veterans assisted in the film's production; art director Nilo Rodis developed the designs for many of the film's locales, shots, and characters, while Herman Zimmerman served as its production designer. Production problems plagued the film on set and during location shooting in Yosemite National Park and the Mojave Desert.  Because effects house Industrial Light & Magic's best crews were busy and would be too expensive, the production used Bran Ferren's company for the film's effects, which had to be revised several times to lower production costs. The film's ending was reworked because of poor test-audience reaction and the failure of some planned special effects. Jerry Goldsmith, composer for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, returned to score The Final Frontier.

The Final Frontier was released in North America on June 9, 1989. It had the highest opening gross of any Star Trek film at that point and was number one in its first week at the box office; however, its grosses quickly dropped in subsequent weeks. The film received generally mixed to negative reviews by critics on release, and, according to its producer, "nearly killed the franchise." The next entry in the series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), received a much more positive reception.

Plot
The crew of the newly commissioned  are enjoying shore leave after the starship's shakedown cruise, with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy camping at Yosemite National Park. Their leave is interrupted when the Enterprise is ordered by Starfleet Command to rescue a human, a Klingon, and a Romulan, all diplomats who have been taken hostage on Nimbus III, a planet set aside as a neutral location to advance dialogue between the Federation, Klingon Empire, and Romulan Star Empire. Learning of the Enterprise mission, the ambitious Klingon Captain Klaa decides to pursue Kirk for personal glory.

On Nimbus III, the Enterprise crew discovers that Sybok, a renegade Vulcan, is behind the hostage crisis, prompting Spock to admit that Sybok is his previously unmentioned half-brother. After the Enterprise crew saves the hostages, Sybok reveals that the hostage-taking was a ruse to lure a starship, which he plans to use to travel to the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree. Sybok believes that it lies behind the Great Barrier, a powerful energy field at the center of the galaxy, and that God is located there. To take control of the ship, Sybok uses his ability to reveal and heal the innermost pain of a person through the Vulcan mind meld, thus gaining the loyalty of most of the crew. McCoy's pain is that he had helped fulfill his terminally ill father's request to die only to later find that a cure could have saved his father's life, which has caused him years of guilt. Spock's pain is the knowledge that his father rejected him at birth for being "too human", though he is unmoved by the experience since he had since made peace with his father. Kirk refuses to let Sybok remove his pain, claiming that it is necessary to make him human. Sybok reluctantly declares a truce with Kirk, realizing that he needs his experience to navigate the ship to Sha Ka Ree.

The Enterprise successfully breaches the Great Barrier, unaware that they are being followed by Captain Klaa's warship, a Klingon bird-of-prey. They discover a lone barren planet, and Sybok, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy take a shuttlecraft down to the surface. It seems uninhabited, but after Sybok calls out, a glowing field appears which quickly morphs through many forms representing various religions before settling into the image of a bearded human face, to which Sybok explains that they have come for "your wisdom". The entity asks how they breached the barrier, and upon being told about the Enterprise, it declares that it will make use of the ship to carry its wisdom to every corner of the universe. A skeptical Kirk asks, "What does God need with a starship?", and when the entity asks who he is, Kirk expresses doubt that the actual supreme being would not already know. Irritated, the entity attacks him and then Spock as well, and they discover that it is a powerful and malicious being who had been entrapped to Sha Ka Ree in the distant past, with the Great Barrier put in place to keep it from escaping.

Realizing his earlier naiveté, Sybok apologizes and attempts to distract the entity with a mind-meld, allowing the others the opportunity to escape. Kirk orders the Enterprise to fire a barrage of photon torpedoes, but while Sybok is killed, the entity is only weakened. Spock and McCoy beam back to the ship right before the Klingon ship unexpectedly attacks and damages the Enterprise, stranding Kirk on the planet with the weakened and enraged entity. Right as he is about to be killed, the Klingon Bird of Prey swoops down and destroys the entity with a volley of disruptor fire.  Kirk is beamed aboard the Klingon ship where Spock is unexpectedly waiting. As Spock explains, he convinced the Klingon General Korrd (one of Sybok's hostages who had become a loyal follower) to order Captain Klaa to stand down and apologize for his actions, which Klaa grudgingly does. After returning to Earth, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy resume their camping trip at Yosemite.

Cast

 William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Shatner practiced aerobics and strength training daily to prepare for the role. The physical activity and directing duties meant he woke at 4 a.m. every day during filming, no matter what time he fell asleep.
 Leonard Nimoy as Spock, the Enterprises half-Vulcan, half-human science officer. Nimoy noted The Final Frontier was the most physical film in the series, which reflected Shatner's energetic sensibility and what he enjoyed doing most on the show—"running and jumping". Nimoy recalled Shatner's attempts to instruct him in riding a horse, although Nimoy had ridden many horses bareback when playing American Indian roles for Republic Pictures serials.
 DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy, chief medical officer. Kelley also noted the physicality required for the film and enjoyed doing things that he had not been asked to do in years. "I was very pleased to see that he [Shatner] brought it along in fine style," he said. Kelley noted that his own ambition to direct had deserted him after seeing difficulties Nimoy faced directing the previous two Star Trek films.
 Laurence Luckinbill plays Sybok. Sean Connery was originally contacted to star in the role, but was busy with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree was named in his honour. Shatner discovered Luckinbill by chance; channel surfing late one night, he saw him perform as Lyndon B. Johnson. When Shatner called to offer him the role, Luckinbill accepted immediately.

The other members of the USS Enterprise-A crew include chief engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), and communications officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Takei said that, despite studio pressure to complete the film on time, Shatner maintained a creative and enthusiastic atmosphere on set. "I have enormous admiration for his ability to block that kind of pressure from seeping on to the set."  Takei said that he found the biggest challenge of the film was learning to ride horses. Moreover, Takei acknowledged, "despite our sometimes strained personal history, I found working with Bill [Shatner] as a director to be surprisingly pleasant."

Casting director Bill Shepard was in charge of filling additional roles. He combed through initial auditions with promising actors, then presented his choices to Shatner. Both men called the actors back as many as two or three times before each role was cast. Additional players include Todd Bryant as Klingon Captain Klaa, with Spice Williams-Crosby as Vixis, Klaa's lieutenant. Bryant was playing ping pong at a beach party when a casting director offered him the role. Bryant performed his audition twice, as Shatner requested that he repeat his performance speaking in Klingon. Williams-Crosby thought Vixis was Kirk's girlfriend when she arrived for her audition, but recalled afterwards that it was "fun" to play a villain. David Warner, Charles Cooper, and Cynthia Gouw play the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ambassadors to Nimbus III. Warner did not audition, but agreed to the role after Shatner swore that his character would survive the film. The director originally intended George Murdock to play the Klingon diplomat Korrd, but changed his mind on seeing Cooper's performance. Murdock was recast as the "God" entity. Bill Quinn played McCoy's father in one of his last roles. Producer Harve Bennett made a cameo as a Starfleet admiral.

Production

Development

During the 1966–69 Star Trek television series, Shatner and Nimoy's lawyers drafted what Shatner termed a "favored nations clause", with the result that whatever Shatner received—e.g., a pay raise or script control—Nimoy also got and vice versa. Nimoy had directed Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Shatner had previously directed plays and television episodes; when he signed on for The Voyage Home following a pay dispute, Shatner was promised he could direct the next film.

Shatner conceived his idea for the film's story before he was officially given the director's job. His inspiration was televangelists; "They [the televangelists] were repulsive, strangely horrifying, and yet I became absolutely fascinated," he recalled. Shatner was intrigued that, not only did these personalities convince others God was speaking directly to them, but they became wealthy by what Shatner considered false messages. The televangelists formed the basis for the character Zar, later Sybok. Shatner's first outline was titled An Act of Love, and many of its elements—the Yosemite vacation, the abduction of Klingon, human and Romulan hostages on the failed paradise planet—survived to the final film. In Shatner's early draft, Kirk is overwhelmed by Zar's superior numbers of followers and Spock, McCoy and the rest of the Enterprise crew come to believe in Zar's divinity. Kirk feigns acceptance of Zar's beliefs to travel with him to the God planet, which, to Shatner, would be a desolate, fiery waste. When Kirk confronts "God", the image of the being transforms into that of Satan, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy split up in their escape. Kirk eludes capture but goes back to save his friends from being carried away to Hell.

Shatner had presented his idea to studio head Frank Mancuso while filming The Voyage Home. Mancuso liked Shatner's idea and agreed to hire a writer to draft a film treatment. Shatner wanted novelist Eric Van Lustbader, but negotiations between Lustbader and Paramount failed over the author's requested $1 million salary. Shatner dictated the story himself and gave it to Paramount's production president Ned Tanen for input.

Producer Harve Bennett was exhausted by his work on the previous three Star Trek films and wanted to move on, feeling that he was not part of the Star Trek "family" and that he had been mistreated by Nimoy. When Shatner tried to convince Bennett to reconsider, the producer insisted on a meeting at his home. After several hours of discussion Bennett agreed to return. Bennett disagreed with several elements of Shatner's story, feeling that, because no-one could assuredly answer the question of God's existence, the ending of the film would never be satisfying. Bennett also told Shatner that the film had the feeling of a tone poem rather than an adventure story. The studio agreed with Bennett, reasoning that the subject matter could be too weighty or offensive to theatergoers.

Shatner and Bennett began reworking the story. Concerned that knowing the renegade Sybok's motivation from the beginning of the story was anticlimactic, the team moved the revelation to later in the story. Shatner said that Bennett also suggested turning the God entity into an "evil alien pretending to be God for his own gain". Having satisfied themselves and Paramount with the adjustments, Shatner and Bennett approached Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer to pen the script, but he was unavailable. Bennett found a script by David Loughery and showed his work to Shatner, who agreed that he would be a good fit for the task of scripting Star Trek.

Not everyone was happy with the story. Star Trek creator Roddenberry objected to the characters' search for God in general, and, more particularly, the idea of a God as portrayed by Western religion. One of Roddenberry's employees suggested some of his employer's animosity towards the story stemmed back to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Roddenberry had wanted to approach that film with similar ideas that investigated the nature of God but was rejected by Paramount. Roddenberry, Nimoy and Kelley all disagreed that Spock and McCoy would betray Kirk, which Loughery explained was done to give a conflict in which "one man stands alone" from the rest.

Loughery stopped work on the script when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, and the production was further delayed when Nimoy began working on another project. During this time, Shatner reconsidered elements of the Star Trek V story; he made Sybok's character softer and more sympathetic. When the writers' strike ended, Loughery returned to work on the script, while Shatner flew to the Himalayas for a job. When he returned, he felt betrayed by Loughery's revisions, which he felt transformed the search for God into the search for the mythical paradise Sha Ka Ree—a word play on "Sean Connery", whom they wanted for Sybok's role. Though Shatner convinced Bennett and Loughery to revise much of the script, Sha Ka Ree remained; it was changed to a place of ultimate knowledge of which Sybok had received visions. The script was also rewritten to address Nimoy and Kelley's concerns.

While Roddenberry, Kelley and Nimoy gave their approval to the revised script, Paramount was concerned that the film would go over-budget as written and ordered cuts. Shatner's envisioned angels and demons at the film's climax were converted to rock monsters that the false god would animate from the earth. Shatner wanted six of the creatures, but was forced to accept just one. Concerned that the franchise's momentum following The Voyage Home had disappeared, Paramount rushed the film into production in late 1988, despite the writers' strike cutting into pre-production.

Design
Nilo Rodis, who had worked on two previous Star Trek features, was appointed as art director, and worked with Shatner to establish the film's visual design. Shatner sought a grittier and more realistic feel to the Star Trek universe, and so the two worked together to visualize the film from start to finish. After Shatner explained the entire story in a day-long session, Rodis went home and sketched out each scene from the script. Shatner was pleased with the results, especially with Rodis' designs for Shatner's most expansive or dramatic shots.

Rodis' input in developing the early character and costume designs was significant. Shatner praised his costume designs as being futuristic but plausible and in keeping with the continuity established in previous Star Trek films. After being disappointed by the costume designers approached to realize Rodis' ideas, Shatner suggested that Rodis become the costume designer as well. Bennett hired Dodie Shepard as the costume supervisor; Shepard's role was to oversee the costume fabrication and keep track of the clothes during filming. To save on costs, Shepard clothed extras with existing items from Western Costume's warehouses. The constrained budget meant Shatner could not completely redesign the Starfleet uniforms, but Rodis created new brown field uniforms for the film's location scenes as well as the leisure clothes the crew wears during shore leave.

Rodis and Shatner also drew up sketches of what the various aliens seen in the film would look like. Shatner picked Kenny Myers as the special-effects makeup artist. Myers discussed the sketches with Shatner and made casts of actors' faces using dental alginate. These casts were used for close-up, high-quality "A" makeups, as well as less complicated masks for far-away and background characters. Shatner hired Richard Snell as makeup supervisor, advising him to make each Klingon forehead distinct.

Shatner hired Herman Zimmerman as production designer. His decision was based on Zimmerman's work on the sets for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he felt that the designer could convey Shatner's futuristic yet grounded aesthetic. Zimmerman was immediately put in charge of designing all-new sets for the bridges of Enterprise and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, elevator and access shafts, and Nimbus III interiors.  At one point, he was building five sets at once. Art department head Michael Okuda created LCARS backlit controls on the Klingon ship and Enterprise. The corridors for the Enterprise were the same as those used in the Next Generation television series. The bridge set alone cost $250,000. The Nimbus III city of Paradise was one of the last locations to be designed and created, because its design relied on what exterior location and terrain was used. Zimmerman created a sketch of the town's layout over three days, drawing inspiration from a circular Moroccan fortress. Creation of the city cost $500,000 and took five weeks of construction in  heat.

Tim Downs scouted possible areas for location filming. He looked for a location that could stand in for three different venues without the production having to move or change hotels: the film's opening scene; the God planet's establishing shots; and the Nimbus III Paradise City. Downs was familiar with the Mojave desert and thought that locations near Ridgecrest, California, would serve the production's needs, so he took photos based on sketches Rodis had provided of what the locations might look like. Downs also shot photos with filters and tried to accomplish dust effects with his car to replicate ideas for how some sequences would be shot. When Downs returned with the photos, Shatner felt that the locations the scout found would be perfect for the film.

Filming

Principal photography began in October 1988, in and around Los Angeles, California. Shortly before the beginning of location shooting, Hollywood union truck drivers or teamsters went on strike to protest pay cuts and overtime changes. With deadlines looming, the production searched for non-union drivers, aware that the Teamsters might retaliate by sabotaging equipment or flying airplanes above the filming to ruin audio recordings. After one of the production's camera trucks exploded in the studio parking lot, the non-union drivers headed to Yosemite National Park under cover of darkness with a police escort.

The film's Yosemite scenes were all shot on location. Long shots of Kirk scaling the mountain were filmed with stunt doubles, while Shatner's closer shots had him on a fiberglass set positioned in front of the camera, with the real mountains visible in the background. Aided by two trainers, Shatner had spent weeks at the Paramount lot, learning to climb a wooden replica. Laszlo scouted out a tall peak on which the production created a rock face with safety net. The overhead shot gave the impression Kirk was climbing at a great height, while unnatural background features such as swimming pools were camouflaged. In the scene, Spock watches Kirk's ascent, levitates up behind him as a pest giving suggestions with the outcome that Kirk slips and Spock saves him using levitating boots. Most of the shots framed Nimoy from the waist up; in these scenes the actor was supported by a crane that gave the appropriate "float" to achieve the effect. Bluescreen footage of Shatner falling was shot later at Paramount and composited, while stuntman Ken Bates set a record for the highest American descender fall by plummeting off El Capitan—with a wire support rig—for long shots. In reviewing the dailies of the first two days of shooting, the production realized that a pine tree in the frame during Kirk and Spock's mountain dialogue ruined the illusion of height, while a shot of Shatner clinging to the face of El Capitan appeared muddy due to clouds obscuring the sun and ruining the depth of field. The scenes had to be reshot later.

After the Yosemite shots, location shooting moved to desert locales. Nimbus III and its town, Paradise City, were recreated in the Mojave. The town was created as a haphazard collection of spaceship parts and futuristic scrap. Shatner "cracked" during the filming in  heat, insulting the head electrician and ignoring Laszlo's request for additional setup time. When a driver failed to appear and stranded Shatner and a skeleton crew, a park ranger came to the rescue and the production managed to film scenes of Sybok's followers before they lost daylight. Shatner called the resulting half-jogging pace of the dehydrated extras "the Sybok shuffle". The production spent three more weeks filming the rest of the desert scenes, finishing the last night scene shortly before sunrise and the trip back to Los Angeles.

At Paramount, the crew filmed all the scenes that would take place on soundstages, including the Enterprise and Bird-of-Prey sets, the Paradise City interiors, and the campfire location. Production was smoother on set, and the crew shot scenes ahead of schedule. The crew fabricated a stand-in set for the God planet location, where additional scenes were filmed to combine with the location footage. Spock's catching of Kirk as the captain falls off El Capitan was filmed against a set that replicated the forest floor and was rotated ninety degrees.

Shatner scheduled the campfire scenes to be the last ones shot, after which the cast and crew had a small celebration before a traditional wrap party later. The cast celebrated the end of filming in the last week of December 1988, and gave a press conference on the set of the Enterprise bridge on December 28. Shatner returned to Paramount Studios a few days after principal photography had wrapped to organize the film's post-production schedule. This included showing a rough cut of the film—minus the special effects—to studio personnel. Shatner recalled that the film received praise and left the screening "reveling" in its reception; it turned out to be a "momentary victory" once he saw the special effects.

Effects
During the writers' strike, producer Ralph Winter confronted what writer Paul Mandell termed an "unenviable" effects situation. Industrial Light & Magic had provided the effects for the three previous Star Trek films, and Winter wanted them to work on The Final Frontier. However, all of the effects house's best technicians were busy working on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Ghostbusters II. With a stretched budget and short timeframe, Winter had to look elsewhere. To save time and money, he planned to create as many effects as he could either on stage, or through camera trickery. The producers solicited test footage from various effects houses to judge which was best able to create the film's main effects, including the planet Sha Ka Ree and the godlike being which resided there. Bran Ferren's effects company, Associates and Ferren, was chosen.  Ferren had worked on films such as Altered States and Little Shop of Horrors.

Associates and Ferren had three months to complete the effects work—around half the usual industry timeframe. Shatner insisted on viewing much test footage before he proceeded with each shot, requesting time-consuming changes if he did not like an effect. Ferren promoted a "low-tech" approach to realizing complicated effects, but his cost estimates were too expensive and interfered with the scope of other live-action sequences. Winter recalled that the production had budgeted $4 million for the film's effects, slightly more than The Voyage Home. "The first pass", he said, "with all the things [Shatner] wanted, was [$5 or $6] million". Combined with Ferren's figures, the film's budget climbed to $33 million. The studio called a meeting with executives and began cutting out effects shots.

To reduce the optical effects workload, Ferren rejected bluescreen compositing, opting instead for rear projection. This cheaper process, he reasoned, would save time, and would make sense for elements such as the Enterprises bridge viewer, where compositing would lack the softness of a real transmitted image. Designer Lynda Weinman used a Mac II to create the animatics cut into the film during production, which were eventually replaced by the film's finished effects.

The rock monster climax of the film was ultimately dropped due to difficulties during filming. The monster, dubbed the Rockman, was a large latex rubber suit that breathed fire on command. Effects personnel smoked cigarettes and blew smoke into the suit's tubing, loading it with smoke that it would slowly emit, obscuring some obvious rubber parts. On the last day of location shooting, the Rockman began suffering mechanical problems; the suit stopped breathing fire, and the desert wind dissipated the smoke. The result, Shatner wrote, was that "our guy in the silly rubber suit ultimately just looked like ... well, a guy in a silly rubber suit." With no time to return to the location, Shatner was forced to get wide shots and hope that the setting could be reproduced in the studio, but admitted that it was likely not going to work for the film.

Once back at the studio for non-location filming, Shatner and Ferren met to discuss how to replace the Rockman. The agreed-upon idea was an "amorphous blob of light and energy" that would rise up and chase after Kirk, shape-shifting while in pursuit. The visuals took weeks before they were ready to be shown after the completion of principal photography. When Shatner saw the effects, however, he was extremely disappointed with the low quality. Bennett and Shatner attempted to get money to reshoot the final scenes of the film, but Paramount turned them down.

ILM delivered the main Enterprise model, which was built by Magicam in 1978 for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, to Associates and Ferren. However, scenes which included the Enterprise in the Earth-orbiting Spacedock platform, as well as the Spacedock itself, were taken directly from ILM's previous work in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The Enterprise model had been damaged when it was loaned out for touring purposes, meaning the 30,000 panels on the model had to be repainted by hand. While production wrapped, Ferren continued work on the miniatures and other optical effects at his New Jersey studio. The opticals were completed in Manhattan before being sent west; for example, bluescreen footage of the motion controlled miniatures was filmed in Hoboken, New Jersey. In New York, the blue screen was replaced by a moving starfield—a single finished shot of a ship moving through space required as many as fifty pieces of film. The Great Barrier effects were created using chemicals, which were dropped into a large water tank to create swirls and other reactions. The "God column", in which the false god appeared, was created by a rapidly rotating cylinder through which light was shone; the result appeared on film as a column of light. Ferren used a beam splitter to project actor George Murdock's head into the cylinder, giving the appearance that the false god resided within the column.

Editing
Days after filming was completed, Shatner returned to Paramount to supervise the film's edit, soundscape creation and score, and integration of optical effects. Editor Peter E. Berger had already assembled rough cuts of various sequences, and with only weeks before the film's scheduled completion, the production team set about the task of salvaging the film's ending through editing. The false god's screen time was reduced, and Ferren's "god blob" effect was replaced with a closeup of the actor's face, along with shots of lightning and smoke. At the time, Shatner felt that the edits "pulled a rabbit out of a hat", solving many of the film's problems.

Shatner's cut ran slightly over two hours (not including end credits or the opticals), which Paramount thought was too long. Their target runtime was one hour forty-five minutes, which would guarantee twice-nightly theatrical screenings. Bennett was handed the task of shortening the film's running time, despite Shatner's view that nothing could possibly be removed. Shatner was horrified by Bennett's edit, and the two haggled over what parts to restore or cut.

In early test screenings, the film received negative reviews. Of the first test audience, only a small portion considered the film "excellent", a rating that most other Star Trek films had enjoyed. Segments of the film were re-edited for the theatrical release. Five minutes of footage was excised to improve the film's pacing, and an additional scene was included on the Bird-of-Prey to make the circumstances of Kirk's rescue clearer. The second screening, with the final effects and sound in place, received much better reviews.

Audio

Music
Music critic Jeff Bond wrote that Shatner made "at least two wise decisions" in making The Final Frontier; beyond choosing Luckinbill as Sybok, he hired Jerry Goldsmith to compose the film's score. Goldsmith had written the Academy Award-nominated score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the new Trek film was an opportunity to craft music with a similar level of ambition while adding action and character—two elements largely missing from The Motion Picture. Goldsmith did not want to accentuate the film's comedy with music, feeling it would "[take] drama to the point of silliness". He focused on the God planet as his most difficult task.

Goldsmith's main theme begins with the traditional opening notes from Alexander Courage's original television series theme; an ascending string and electronic bridge leads to a rendition of the march from The Motion Picture. According to Jeff Bond, Goldsmith's use of The Motion Pictures march led to some confusion among Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, as they were unfamiliar with the music's origins. Another theme from The Motion Picture to make a return appearance is the Klingon theme from the 1979 film's opening scene. Here, the theme is treated in what Bond termed a "Prokofiev-like style as opposed to the avant-garde counterpoint" as seen in The Motion Picture. Goldsmith also added a crying ram's horn.

The breadth of The Final Frontiers locations led Goldsmith to eschew the two-themed approach of The Motion Picture in favor of leitmotifs, recurring music used for locations and characters. Sybok is introduced with a synthesized motif in the opening scene of the film, while when Kirk and Spock discuss him en route to Nimbus III it is rendered in a more mysterious fashion. The motif also appears in the action cue as Kirk and company land on Nimbus III and try to free the hostages. When Sybok boards the Enterprise, a new four-note motif played by low brass highlights the character's obsession. The Sybok theme from then on is used in either a benevolent sense or a more percussive, dark rendition. Arriving at Sha Ka Ree, the planet's five-note theme bears resemblance to Goldsmith's unicorn theme from Legend; "the two melodies represent very similar ideas: lost innocence and the tragic impossibility of recapturing paradise," writes Bond. The music features cellos conveying a pious quality, while the appearance of "God" begins with string glissandos but turns to a dark rendition of Sybok's theme as its true nature is exposed. As the creature attacks Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the more aggressive Sybok theme takes on an attacking rhythm. When Spock appeals to the Klingons for help, the theme takes on a sensitive character before returning to a powerful sequence as the ship destroys the god-creature.

The original soundtrack for the film was originally released by Epic Records, and included nine score tracks (mostly out of film order) and the song "The Moon Is a Window to Heaven" by Hiroshima. On Tuesday November 30, 2010, La-La Land Records reissued the soundtrack in a two-CD edition featuring the film's complete score on the first disc and the original soundtrack album and some alternate cues on the second disc.

Sound effects
Mark Mangini served as The Final Frontiers sound designer; he had previously worked on The Voyage Home. Because Mangini was concerned about creating continuity within Star Treks sounds, he decided to reuse some effects rather than create new and different-sounding ones—as such, the Bird-of-Prey's cloak effect, beaming sounds, and the Enterprise engines sound similar to that of past movies. Mangini collaborated with Shatner to work out how the completely new effects would sound. For Sybok's mind melds, Shatner wanted the sounds of beating hearts and breathing.

Mangini was also responsible for the film's foley and dialogue replacement; foley editors created background audio in sync with actions on screen to enrich the soundscape. The sound of Klingons walking, for example, was conveyed with chains and leather for a "rough" sound.

Themes
The Final Frontier appeared amidst several other films that grappled with quests for God and spiritual meaning; author Peter Hansenberg regarded the film as part of an "almost fashionable" trend of 1980s science fiction movies with religious motifs. Regent's Park College professor and Baptist minister Larry Kreitzer argues the film was "deliberately constructed" to raise the issues of God and the Biblical concept of paradise, Eden. Dixie State College professor Ace Pilkington went further, saying that after the "theological preoccupations" of the television series and previous films, "where else can the Enterprise go ... but in quest of God?" Pilkington notes that The Final Frontier has roots in many plots from the series including "The Way to Eden" (which also deals with a brilliant man hijacking the Enterprise to find the place of creation), "The Apple", and "Shore Leave"; a common thread between the paradises described is that they are always "too good to be true". John S. Schultes agrees, pointing out that the idea of paradise has been seen many times in the series, but almost always illusory or deadened.

While many Star Trek episodes dealt with false deities, The Final Frontier is one of the few that, in the words of religious scholar Ross Shepard Kraemer, "intentionally confronted and explored theological questions, including the existence of God." Theologian Larry Kreitzer dubbed it the film most preoccupied with religious ideas. According to the film, centuries in the future, beliefs in Eden persist, even among other alien races such as the Klingons and Romulans. Moreover, the view of God is homogenized—no one disputes Sybok's references to God as a "he". Kreitzer finds that the film's theological interpretation is offered by Kirk's words: "Maybe He [God] is not out there, Bones. Maybe He's right here, in the human heart."

Release
The Final Frontier was expected to be one of the summer's biggest movies and a sure hit, despite its appearing in a market crowded with other sequels and blockbusters such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, and Batman. Never before had so many sequels been released at the same time. Analysts expected The Final Frontier to make nearly $200 million.

Marketing included an MS-DOS computer game Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, part of an increasing trend of game tie-ins to movies. J. M. Dillard wrote the film's novelization, which was on The New York Times Best Seller list for four weeks. Paramount sold Star Trek-branded apparel through catalogues, and Kraft made a Star Trek-branded marshmallow dispenser. While Star Trek had a built-in fan market, marketing tie-ins were risky at the time and even high-grossing films could not guarantee success of related merchandise. Unlike other summer blockbusters, Star Trek had no mass-market appeal and no major food or beverage promotions, but sold pins and posters in theaters, bypassing retailers; other merchandise included pins and a pewter statue of Enterprise, designed to appeal to Star Treks relatively small but loyal group of collectors. Paramount released teaser posters for Star Trek V depicting a cinema seat in outer space with the tagline "Why are they putting seatbelts in theaters this summer?"

In its first week, The Final Frontier was number one at the domestic box office. Its $17.4 million opening on 2,202 screens beat the $16.8 million total of The Voyage Home and made it the best Star Trek opening weekend to that point. The Voyage Home, however, had played in only 1,349 theaters at a time with lower ticket prices. In its second week The Final Frontier tumbled 58% to make $7.1 million; in its third week it grossed only $3.7 million. It had a wide release of ten weeks, shorter than that of any Star Trek film before it.

The Final Frontier grossed $49,566,330 in the domestic box office for a global total of $63 million. The season proved to be another record-breaker for the film industry, with domestic summer box-office revenues of $2.05 billion. The Final Frontier was the season's tenth-best-grossing film, although it failed to make expected returns. It and Pink Cadillac were the early summer's biggest box-office disappointments.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 22% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 3.90/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "Filled with dull action sequences and an underdeveloped storyline, this fifth Trek movie is probably the worst of the series." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 16 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.

Rob Lowing of The Sun Herald called the film "likeable but average". The Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert and The Washington Posts Rita Kempley gave the film negative reviews, calling the film "a mess" and "a shambles", respectively. The New York Times Caryn James considered the film to be disappointing to fans and non-fans alike, while Chris Hicks of the Deseret News disagreed feeling that the film approached issues in the same vein as the television series and that fans would enjoy it. Ansen and Lowing considered Shatner's direction during action sequences weak with Lowing adding that the second half of the film felt directionless. Hicks wrote that the film's broad humor gave the film an inconsistent tone. In contrast, Chris Dafoe of the Toronto The Globe and Mail called it "the most intentionally funny" episode of the film series. The Christian Science Monitors David Sterritt stated that at its best, The Final Frontier showed "flashes" of the humor that propelled The Voyage Home, and Lowing deemed Shatner's direction at its best during comedic moments.

Critics such as Newsweeks David Ansen judged the principal characters' performances satisfactory; "these veterans know each other's moves so well they've found a neat comic shorthand that gets more laughs out of the lines than they deserve", Ansen wrote. Stan James of The Advertiser wrote that Warner was wasted in his role and most characters lacked any "drive and motivation". In comparison, Luckinbill's Sybok received praise from critics such as USA Todays Mike Clark who wrote that "he has the voice and stature of the golden screen's most scintillating intellectual villains", although he felt that he never seemed threatening or suspenseful. James considered Sybok the most "distinctive, compelling villain" of the series since Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The special effects were generally considered poor. Murphy wrote that the film fell apart after the arrival at Sha Ka Ree, where the "great special effects that graced parts I through IV are nowhere to be seen." Ebert's review agreed saying that the visuals managed to inspire awe ever so briefly before dissolving into "an anticlimactic special effects show with a touch of The Wizard of Oz thrown in for good measure". Kempley wrote the Enterprises objective was "to pass through an impenetrable (Ha!) swirl of what appears to be cosmic Windex, beyond which is the planet Shockara [sic], home of God, or perhaps California shot through a purple filter".

Bennett blamed part of The Final Frontiers failure on the change from a traditional Thanksgiving-season Star Trek opening to the sequel-stuffed summer release period and the diffusion of Star Trek fan viewership following the premiere of The Next Generation. Winter felt they should have recognized the film's plot was too reminiscent of V'ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and that the search for God was a mistake; while he felt many parts of the film were good, they "smoked [their] own press releases" and nearly killed the franchise. Initially, Shatner believed that the film would get a positive response. In the morning after the opening night, he woke Nimoy up to tell him that the Los Angeles Times had given The Final Frontier a positive review. Soon after a local television reporter also gave the film a good review and Shatner recalled that he incorrectly "began sensing a [positive] trend." He later agreed that the film nearly ended the film series and looking back on the film called it a "failed but glorious attempt" at a thought-provoking film that did not come together. Star Trek creator Roddenberry considered elements of this film to be "apocryphal at best", and particularly disliked the idea that Sarek had fathered a child (Sybok) with a Vulcan before Amanda. Nevertheless, the film is considered canon. Even George Takei expected the film to be a disappointment because "the script seemed rather a muddle...as if three separately interesting stories force-sealed together into one" which "made for a confusing and ultimately tiresome two hours."

Considered a critical and commercial failure, the poor performance of The Final Frontier jeopardized the production of further Star Trek features. Bennett was given the go-ahead to begin work on his own prequel concept that would have cast new actors to play the main cast at Starfleet Academy. Loughery worked with Bennett on a story inspired by Santa Fe Trail.  When Paramount president Ned Tanen resigned, support for Bennett's prequel idea evaporated.  Paramount instead wanted another film with the original cast and Bennett decided to leave the franchise.  Winter remained with the production and The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer returned to direct Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last movie starring the entire original cast.

At the 10th Golden Raspberry Awards, The Final Frontier was nominated for six Razzie Awards (Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor for Shatner, Worst Supporting Actor for Kelley, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Picture of the Decade), winning three (Picture, Director, and Actor).

Home media
The film was released on VHS, pan-and-scan LaserDisc, and Betamax on December 21, 1989. The video was among the top-selling videocassettes for weeks after its release, and it enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the months leading to the release of its sequel; it was Paramount's top-selling title in the third quarter of 1991. A LaserDisc version of the film was released by Pioneer LDCA; The Final Frontier was the 21st-best-selling title for the platform in 1990.

The film was released on DVD-Video on April 20, 1999, as a bare-bones edition with no bonus extras. It was re-released on DVD as a 2-Disc Special Collector's Edition on October 14, 2003, with extras added, including footage of the principal photography wrap press conference, an interview with Shatner the day before filming began, a retrospective documentary and a commentary track by Shatner and his daughter Liz.

Paramount released The Final Frontier Blu-ray Disc in May 2009 to coincide with the release of J. J. Abrams' Star Trek, along with the other five films featuring the original crew, packaged as Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection. The Final Frontier was remastered in 1080p high definition from the 2000 high-definition master prepared for the DVD. All six films in the set have the (then) new 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio. The disc features a new commentary track by renowned Star Trek authors and contributors Michael and Denise Okuda, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Daren Dochterman, as well as the previously recorded commentary track by Shatner and his daughter. Shatner wanted to produce a director's cut of the movie similar to that of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—Director's Cut with improved special effects and scenes omitted from the original release; however, he stated in an interview that Paramount would not support the venture.

See also
 Star Trek film series
 List of films featuring space stations

References

Bibliography

External links

1989 science fiction films
1989 directorial debut films
1980s science fiction action films
American science fiction action films
American sequel films
American space adventure films
Final Frontier
Films directed by William Shatner
Films produced by Harve Bennett
Films scored by Jerry Goldsmith
Films set in California
Films set in the 23rd century
Films shot in Lone Pine, California
Films with screenplays by David Loughery
Films with screenplays by Harve Bennett
Films with screenplays by William Shatner
Fiction about God
Golden Raspberry Award winning films
Paramount Pictures films
Religion in science fiction
Sequel films to television series
1980s English-language films
1980s American films

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier


Koketso Moeti is a civic activist based in South Africa known for creating the text message-based civic engagement tool Amandla.mobi.

Career

In 2014, Moeti founded Amandla.mobi, a mobile phone civic engagement tool that connects community organizers with formal campaign-building tools. The app's users connect through text message and WhatsApp and organize on issues including gender violence, data costs, and eviction. Moeti decided to pursue the app based on her experience using her cell phone to organize against evictions in her northwest South African community of Rooigrond. She found that those impacted by decisions would participate in public consultation periods when given the tools to organize. One of Moeti's campaigns led the South African government to fully subsidize the cost of the mandatory transition from analog to digital television for the poor. By late 2019, the app had around 300,000 users. Amandla.mobi received its original seed funding from venture capitalists and has since received grants from several foundations. Moeti wants to become member-funded. OkayAfrica wrote that her app had affected millions through its resource and support network. Moeti was named an Obama Fellow for her work with the app and was selected for the 2019 Tech for Global Good cohort, both of which provided business resources for the app's expansion.

References

External links

 Amandla.mobi

South African activists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)

Koketso Moeti


Choi Woo Hyuk (, born October 28, 1985) is a former South Korean actor. He is best known for his role in the 2000 hit drama series Autumn in My Heart.

Biography
Choi Woo Hyuk began acting at the age of eight, debuting in the movie "I Want To Go To The Island". Choi has also appeared in several dramas, but made his big breakthrough in the popular drama Endless Love 1 Autumn in My Heart, with many other Korean stars, such as: Song Seung-heon, Won Bin, Song Hye-kyo and Moon Geun-young. Woo Hyuk was only 15 years old when he played the role of young Yoon Joon-suh.

After his first success, Choi Woo Hyuk went on to appear in the drama Glass Slippers (2002) playing the character of young Jang Jae-hyuk). He also appeared in the movie No Manners (Conduct Zero)(2002) in the same year.

Choi Woo Hyuk took a hiatus from acting for seven years in 2002. Choi stated in an interview that he wanted to continue his studies and fulfill his mandatory two-year military service. Despite his absence from the entertainment scene, Choi continued to have many loyal fans, called "Woo Hyukolics".

Six years later (September 2008), Bel Actors Entertainment revealed current pictures of Choi, creating a buzz across Korean websites. It was said that Bel Actors Entertainment revealed the pictures because Choi was slated to play the role of young Seongjong in the historical drama Empress Chun Chu (2009). Notably, Choi performed his first ever love scene with actress Kim Min-ji in that drama.

In August 2009, a "Woo Hyukolic" made a fan video on YouTube with his co-star from Autumn in My Heart, Moon Geun-young in an attempt get them cast in a drama together once again. On August 5, 2009 the fan video became the "#3 – Most Responded (Today) – in South Korea". Choi and Moon fan's are still waiting with high hopes.

Education
Choi graduated from Seoul Yongdong Elementary School (용동초등학교), Hagye Middle School (하계중학교), Eonnam High School (언남고등학교). He received a  film and theater degree from Chung-Ang University in 2012.

Filmography
2009 - KBS2 Empress Cheonchu
2002 - SBS Glass Slippers
2000 - KBS The King and the Queen
2000 - KBS Autumn in My Heart
1999 - MBC Did We Really Love?
1998 - MBC Drop 2
1997 - SBS Happiness in Our Heart
1997 - MBC Mimang
1996 - MBC Temptation
1996 - SBS A Full Heart

Movies
2002 - No Manners
1998 - An Affair
1996 - Seven Rascals
1993 - To the Starry Island

CF
2000 - CheilJedang Cupcake
2000 - Dongwon F&B Oh-gok-eum-ryo
1998 - Nongshim Capri Sone
1998 - Haitai Yeon Yang Gaeng

External links
Bel Actors Entertainment

References

1985 births
Living people
South Korean male film actors
Chung-Ang University alumni
South Korean male television actors
South Korean television personalities
South Korean male models
Male actors from Seoul

Choi Woo-hyuk (actor, born 1985)


In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence. This generally includes only those aspects of information that "respond to the temporary state of the addressee's mind", and excludes other aspects of linguistic information such as references to background (encyclopedic/common) knowledge, choice of style, politeness, and so forth. For example, the difference between an active clause (e.g., the police want him) and a corresponding passive (e.g., he is wanted by police) is a syntactic difference, but one motivated by information structuring considerations. Other structures motivated by information structure include preposing (e.g., that one I don't like) and inversion (e.g., "the end", said the man).

The basic notions of information structure are focus, givenness, and topic, as well as their complementary notions of background, newness, and comment respectively. Focus "indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expressions", givenness indicates that "the denotation of an expression is present" in the immediate context of the utterance, and topic is "the entity that a speaker identifies, about which then information, the comment, is given". Additional notions in information structure may include contrast and exhaustivity, but there is no general agreement in the linguistic literature about extensions of the basic three notions. There are many different approaches, such as cognitive, generative or functional architectures, to information structure. The concept has also been used in studies measuring information density in cognitive linguistics.

Terminology
The term  is due to Halliday (1967). In 1976, Chafe introduced the term .

Mechanisms in various languages
Information structure can be realized through a wide variety of linguistic mechanisms. In the spoken form of English Language, one of the primary methods of indicating information structure is through intonation, whereby pitch is modified from some default pattern. Other languages use syntactic mechanisms like dislocation, anaphora, and gapping; morphological mechanisms like specialized focus or topic-marking affixes; and specialized discourse particles.
Cross-linguistically, word order variation (the so-called "inverted sentences") is one of the main syntactic devices used to convey specific information structure configurations, namely the presentational focus.
English in fact uses more than intonation for expressing information structure, so that clefts are used for exhaustive focus, and grammatical particles like only also induce contrastive focus readings.

Cross-linguistically, there are clear tendencies that relate notions of information structure to particular linguistic phenomena. For instance, focus tends to be prosodically prominent, and there do not seem to be any languages that express focus by deaccenting or destressing.

The following German sentences exhibit three different kinds of syntactic 'fronting' that correlate with topic.

 a. _Diesen Mann_ habe ich noch nie gesehen.
 'This man have I not yet seen.' (movement)
 b. _Diesen Mann_, den habe ich noch nie gesehen.
 'This man, that I have not yet seen.' (left dislocation)
 c. _Diesen Mann_, ich habe ihn noch nie gesehen.
 'This man, I have not yet seen him.' (hanging topic)

It is often assumed that answers to questions are focused elements. Question and answer pairs are often used as diagnostics for focus, as in the following English examples.

Q: What did John do with the book yesterday?
A: He SOLD the book yesterday.
A: *He sold the book YESTERDAY.

Q: When did Jane sell the book?
A: She sold the book YESTERDAY.
A: *She SOLD the book yesterday.

Concepts

Focus and background

Focus is a grammatical category or attribute that determines indicating that part of an utterance contributes new, non-derivable, or contrastive information. Some theories (in line with work by Mats Rooth) link focus to the presence of alternatives (see ). An alternative theory of focus would account for the stress pattern in the example from the previous section (When did Jane sell the book? She sold the book YESTERDAY), saying that YESTERDAY receives focus because it could be substituted with alternative time periods (TODAY or LAST WEEK) and still serve to answer the question the first speaker asked.

Background is a more difficult concept to define; it's not simply the complement of focus. Daniel P. Hole gives the following framework: "'Focus' is a relational notion, and the entity a focus relates to is called its background, or presupposition."

Topic and comment

The topic (or theme) of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (or rheme, or sometimes focus) is what is being said about the topic. That the information structure of a clause is divided in this way is generally agreed on, but the boundary between topic/theme depends on grammatical theory. Topic is grammaticalized in languages like Japanese and Korean, which have a designated topic-marker morpheme affixed to the topic.

Some diagnostics have been proposed for languages that lack grammatical topic-markers, like English; they attempt to distinguish between different kinds of topics (such as "aboutness" topics and "contrastive" topics). The diagnostics consist of judging how felicitous it is to follow a discourse with either questions (What about x?) or sentences beginning with certain phrases (About x, ... Speaking of x, ... As for x, ...) to determine how "topical" x is in that context.

Given and new
Intuitively, givenness classifies words and information in a discourse that are already known (or given) by virtue of being common knowledge, or by having been discussed previously in the same discourse ("anaphorically recoverable"). Certain theories (such as Roger Schwarzschild's GIVENness Constraint) require all non-focus-marked constituents to be given.

Words/information that are not given, or are "textually and situationally non-derivable" are by definition new.

See also
 Succinctness

References

Linguistics
Semantics
Formal semantics (natural language)

Information structure


Robert Peck (23 August 1945 – 4 April 1999) was an English actor who played Ronald Craven in the television serial Edge of Darkness, for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor. He was also known for his role as game warden Robert Muldoon in the film Jurassic Park.

Early life
Robert Peck was born into a working-class family in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 23 August 1945. He attended Leeds Modern School in Lawnswood, and performed with the National Youth Theatre for six weeks when he was 15. He then studied at Leeds College of Art, where he received a Diploma in Art and Design, and where he was involved in student amateur dramatics.

Career

Stage career
Before breaking into film and television work, Peck was a regular actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) alongside Ian McKellen, Donald Sinden and Judi Dench. Between 1979 and 1980 he played Iago alongside Donald Sinden in Othello, in both Stratford and London. He made a memorable appearance on stage in the RSC production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, originally by Charles Dickens, playing two characters: the boisterous Yorkshireman John Browdie and the predatory Sir Mulberry Hawk, and repeated these roles on Broadway and when the production was filmed for television in 1982. He played the character of Macduff in Trevor Nunn's acclaimed 1976 stage and television versions of Macbeth, and re-appeared in another production of the play in 1982, this time playing Macbeth himself. According to Peck's fellow RSC performer and veteran McKellen, Peck is the actor he considers he "learned the most from".

Edge of Darkness
Peck's television career began in the 1970s, with his first television roles being in the BBC's Thirty-Minute Theatre anthology series in 1972, in which he appeared in the episode "Bypass". He also appeared in various other successful television productions such as Z-Cars and Play for Today. He also appeared in the films Royal Flash and Parker.

In 1985 television writer Troy Kennedy Martin - who had previously written the screenplay for the film The Italian Job and created the popular police procedural television series Z-Cars (in which Peck had appeared during the 1970s) - cast Peck in the starring role of policeman Ronald Craven in his television miniseries Edge of Darkness. This crime drama/political thriller follows Peck's character as he attempts to unravel the truth behind the brutal murder of his daughter, portrayed in the series by Joanne Whalley. Another of Peck's co-stars in the series was American actor Joe Don Baker, along with fellow British actors Charles Kay and Ian McNeice.

The series was broadcast on BBC Two in six episodes from 4 November to 9 December 1985. During its run the show attracted four million viewers and spiralled Peck to fame, winning him a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. After the series ended, Peck had become a figure of popularity and a national favourite.

Film success
After gaining popularity for his starring role in Edge of Darkness, Peck began appearing in films. After a few theatre appearances, Peck made his first appearance as a main character in a film again playing a policeman, John Graham, based in Kenya in 1950, who takes under his wing the son of a murdered black priest in the 1987 film The Kitchen Toto. He also appeared in the 1987 film On the Black Hill, adapted from the 1982 novel of the same name by Bruce Chatwin. The role which really launched his career as a film actor was his portrayal of the android Byron, in the  post-apocalyptic science-fiction adventure film Slipstream (1989), in which he appeared alongside  Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton, F. Murray Abraham, Ben Kingsley and Robbie Coltrane. During the late-1980s, he also appeared in television shows including The Storyteller, The Jim Henson Hour and Screen One.

Peck also voiced all the male characters in the children's live action TV series combined with stop motion animation, Forget Me Not Farm on the BBC in 1990.

Peck's image and popularity increased with appearances in films including the 1990 film Lord of the Flies as the (unnamed) marine officer. He also appeared in  Screen Two, Screenplay and A TV Dante,  as well as in the television films, The Black Velvet Gown and An Ungentlemanly Act. In 1993, Peck made his biggest film appearance, when he was cast as park gamekeeper Robert Muldoon in the blockbuster smash hit Jurassic Park.

After appearing in Jurassic Park, Peck appeared in the television show The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles  (1993) playing General Targo in one episode. He also played Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi in Verdi, a television film documenting the life of the composer.

Later years
In the later years of his life and career, Peck appeared in more films, portraying the roles of Captain Sebastian Belger in Merisairas, Françoise's father in Surviving Picasso, Ravn in Smilla's Sense of Snow, Harry Briggs in FairyTale: A True Story and Denton (based on Lancelot Dent) in the film The Opium War (Chinese: 鸦片战争; pinyin: yapian zhanzheng). He also appeared in the direct-to-TV film The Scold's Bridle (1998).

In 2000, a year after Peck's death from cancer, the stop-motion animated film The Miracle Maker, was released, in which Peck voiced the character of Joseph of Arimathea. The film was dedicated to Peck's memory.

Awards
Peck won the Award for Best Actor at the British Academy Television Awards in 1986 for his portrayal of maverick policeman Ronald Craven in the television miniseries Edge of Darkness.

Personal life
Peck and actress Jill Baker were married for 17 years, from 1982 until his death, in 1999. They had three children: Hannah (born 1983), George (born 1986), and Milly (born 1990).

Death
In November 1994, Peck was diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer. He was said to be undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy and his agent claimed that he was making a recovery, but he died at his home in Kingston-upon-Thames, London, on 4 April 1999, at the age of 53. His funeral took place in London, and his close friend and Edge of Darkness co-star Ian McNeice read a eulogy at the service. He was cremated in London and his ashes were given to his family.

Filmography

References

External links

1945 births
1999 deaths
20th-century English male actors
Alumni of Leeds Arts University
Deaths from cancer in England
English male film actors
English male stage actors
English male television actors
Male actors from Leeds
Male actors from Yorkshire
National Youth Theatre members
People educated at Leeds Modern School
Royal Shakespeare Company members
Best Actor BAFTA Award (television) winners

Bob Peck