Land change science refers to the interdisciplinary study of changes in climate, land use, and land cover. Land change science specifically seeks to evaluate patterns, processes, and consequences in changes in land use and cover over time. The purpose of land change science is to contribute to existing knowledge of climate change and to the development of sustainable resource management and land use policy. The field is informed by a number of related disciplines, such as remote sensing, landscape ecology, and political ecology, and uses a broad range of methods to evaluate the patterns and processes that underlie land cover change. Land change science addresses land use as a coupled human-environment system to understand the impacts of interconnected environmental and social issues, including deforestation and urbanization.

History

Origin
Human changes to land surfaces have been documented for centuries as having significant impacts on both earth systems and human well-being. The reshaping of landscapes to serve human needs, such as the deforestation for farmland, can have long-term effects on earth systems and exacerbate the causes of climate change. Although the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of present-day climate change, prior to the Industrial Revolution, deforestation and irrigation were the largest sources of human-driven greenhouse gas emissions. Even today, 35% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide contributions can be attributed to land use or land cover changes. Currently, almost 50% of Earth's non-ice land surface has been transformed by human activities, with approximately 40% of that land used for agriculture, surpassing natural systems as the principal source of nitrogen emissions.Land change science is a recently developed field, which emerged in conjunction with the advancement of climate change and global environmental change research, and is important to the evolution of climate change science and adaptation. It is both problem-oriented and interdisciplinary. In the mid-20th century, human-environment relationships were emerging in areas of study such as anthropology and geography. Some scholars assert that the discipline of land change science is loosely derived from German concepts of landscape as the total amount of things within a given territory. In the latter half of the 20th century, scientists studying cultural ecology and risk-assessment ecology worked to develop land change science as a means of addressing land as a human-environment system that can be understood as a foundation of global environmental science.

Thus far, the purpose of land change science has been to:
 Observe and monitor land changes underway throughout the world
 Understand land change as a human-environmental system
 Model land change
 Assess system outcomes such as vulnerability, sustainability, and resilience

Influences
Land change science is an interdisciplinary field, and thus is influenced by a number of related areas of study, including remote sensing, political ecology, resource economics, landscape ecology, and biogeography. It is meant to supplement the study of climate change, and through the examination of land cover and land use changes in conjunction with climatic changes over the same period of time, scientists can better understand how human land use practices contribute to a changing climate. Given its close association with the study of climate change, land change science is inherently sustainability research and the scientific knowledge it produces is used to influence the development of sustainable agriculture, and sustainable land use practices and policies.

Dimensions
Land change science mainly operates within the international scientific research frameworks from which its fundamental questions were developed. Although the field has ties to social and cultural studies in its understanding of land and land change as a human-environment system, land change science also focuses on ecosystems and earth systems' structure, function, and effects on land change, independent of human activity. Land change science encompasses a broad scope of dimensions, ranging from quantifying the ecological effects of land cover change, to understanding the socio-environmental drivers for land-use decisions at an institutional level. As a result, land change science relies heavily on the synthesis of a wide range of data and a diverse range of data collection methods, some of which are detailed below.

Land cover monitoring and assessments
A primary function of land change science is to document and model long-term patterns of landscape change, which may result from both human activity and natural processes. In the course of monitoring and assessing land cover and land use changes, scientists look at several factors, including where land-cover and land-use are changing, the extent and timescale of changes, and how changes vary through time. To this end, scientists use a variety of tools, including satellite imagery and other sources of remotely sensed data (e.g., aircraft imagery), field observations, historical accounts, and reconstruction modeling. These tools, particularly satellite imagery, allow land change scientists to accurately monitor land-change rates and create a consistent, long-term record to quantify change variability over time. Through observing patterns in land cover changes, scientists can determine the consequences of these changes, predict the impact of future changes, and use this information to inform strategic land management.

Aral Sea
The rapid decline of the Aral Sea is an example how local-scale land use and land change can have compounded impacts on regional climate systems, particularly when human activities heavily disrupt natural climatic cycles, how land change science can be used to map and study such changes. In 1960, the Aral Sea, located in Central Asia, was the world's fourth largest lake. However, a water diversion project, undertaken by the Soviet Union to irrigate arid plains in what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, resulted in the Aral Sea losing 85% of its land cover and 90% of its volume. The loss of the Aral Sea has had a significant effect on human-environment interactions in the region, including the decimation of the sea's fishing industry and the salinization of agricultural lands by the wind-spread of dried sea salt beds. Additionally, scientists have been able to use technology such as NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to track changes to the Aral Sea and its surrounding climate over time. This use of modeling and satellite imagery to track human-caused land cover change is characteristic of the scope of land change science.

Risk and vulnerability
Modeling risk and vulnerability is also one of land change science's practical applications. Accurate predictions of how human activity will influence land cover change over time, as well as the impact that such changes have on the sustainability of ecological and human systems, can inform the creation of policy designed to address these changes.

Studying risk and vulnerability in the context of land change science entails the development of quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial models, methods, and support tools. The purpose of these tools is to communicate the vulnerability of both human communities and natural ecosystems to hazard events or long-term land change. Modeling risk and vulnerability requires analyses of community sensitivity to hazards, an understanding of geographic distributions of people and infrastructure, and accurate calculation of the probability of specific disturbances occurring.

Land change modeling
A key method for studying risk and vulnerability in the context of land change science is land change modeling (LCM), which can be used to simulate changes and land use and land cover. LCMs can be used to predict how land use and land cover may change under alternate circumstances, which is useful for risk assessment, in that it allows for the prediction of potential impacts and can be used to inform policy decisions, albeit with some uncertainty.

Human impact and land change science
Although land change science involves quantifying the location, extent, and variability of land change cover and the analysis of emergent patterns, it remains fundamentally interdisciplinary, including social and economic components. Human activity is not only the most significant cause of land cover change, but humans are also directly impacted by the environmental consequences of these changes. Collective land use and land cover changes have fundamentally altered the functioning of key Earth systems. For instance, human changes to land use and land cover have a profound impact climate at a local and regional level, which in turn contributes to global warming. More generally, maximizing natural resources and ecosystem services for short-term benefits often hinders the long-term resilience of ecosystems  and in turn, their ability to support human needs.

Given the important role that humans play in land cover change, and to understand land change patterns and their affect the climate, land change scientists must identify the social and economic drivers of historic land change. Below are some examples of land use and land cover change that play a key role in the social and economic dimensions of land change science.

Tropical deforestation

Deforestation, in the context of land change science, is the systematic and permanent conversion of previously forested land for other uses. It has historically been a primary facilitator of land use and land cover change, is a particular focus of land change science. Forests are a vital part of the global ecosystem and are essential to carbon capture, ecological processes, and biodiversity. However, since the invention of agriculture, global forest cover has diminished by 35%. Further, tropical forests in particular support at least two-thirds of the world's biodiversity, and sustained changes in land cover in these regions are believed to be contributing to a mass extinction. Given the severe ecological consequences resulting from human-driven forest land use conversion, as well as the continuing downward trend in forest cover, to effectively model and evaluate patterns of land use change, scientists must also study the social and economic drivers of deforestation itself.

Land use and land cover change resulting from deforestation is primarily the effect of large-scale socio-economic processes. Importantly, there is rarely one direct or underlying cause for deforestation. Rather, deforestation is the result of intertwining systemic forces working simultaneously or sequentially to change land cover. For instance, mass deforestation is often viewed as the product of industrial agriculture, yet a considerable portion old-growth forest deforestation is the result of small-scale migrant farming. As forest cover is removed, forest resources become exhausted and increasing populations lead to scarcity, which prompts people to move again to previously undisturbed forest, restarting the process of deforestation. This process is referred to as rural-to-rural migration. There are several reasons behind this continued migration: poverty-driven lack of available farmland and high costs may lead to an increase in farming intensity on existing farmland. This leads to the overexploitation of farmland, and down the line results in desertification, another land cover change, which renders soil unusable and unprofitable, requiring farmers to seek out untouched and unpopulated old-growth forests.

In addition to rural migration and subsistence farming, economic development can also play a substantial role in deforestation. For example, road and railway expansions designed to increase quality of life have resulted in significant deforestation in the Amazon and Central America. Moreover, the underlying drivers of economic development are often linked to global economic engagement, instead of to poverty, ranging from increased exports to a foreign debt. Deforestation occurs for many interconnected reasons, and thus it is important for land change scientists to track it in order to identify patterns that can shed light on why and when it happens. Phenomena such as economic insecurity and rural migration are not necessarily quantitative, but they nevertheless provide valuable information to land change science models that attempt to predict future land cover change and its consequences.

Urbanization

Broadly, urbanization is the increasing number of people who live in urban areas. In the context of land change science, urbanization refers to both urban population growth and the physical growth of urban areas. According to the United Nations, the global urban population has increased rapidly since 1950, from 751 million to 4.2 billion in 2018, and current trends predict this number will continue to grow. Accompanying this population shift are significant changes in economic flow, culture and lifestyle, and spatial population distribution. Although urbanized areas cover just 3% of the Earth's surface, they nevertheless have a significant impact on land use and land cover change.

Urbanization is important to land use and land cover change, and therefore land change science, for a variety of reasons. In particular, urbanization affects land change elsewhere through the shifting of urban-rural linkages, or the ecological footprint of the transfer of goods and services between urban and rural areas. Increases in urbanization lead to increases in consumption, which puts increased pressure on surrounding rural lands. The outward spread of urban areas can also take over adjacent land formerly used for crop cultivation.

Urban heat islands
Urbanization additionally affects land cover through the urban heat island effect. Heat islands occur when, due to high concentrations of structures, such as buildings and roads, that absorb and re-emit solar radiation, and low concentrations of vegetative cover, urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas. Heat islands can cause increased energy consumption, which results in higher rates of emission for greenhouse gases. The high temperatures associated with heat islands can also compromise human health, particularly in low-income areas. The effects of urban areas on climate indicate that urbanization may become a significant component of land change science.

Obstacles
Land change science as a discipline faces several challenges, many of the stemming from its interdisciplinary qualities or issues with developing inferences using aggregate data. For example, land change science is limited by constraints on data and lack of understanding of underlying issues of land change. Specifically, the spatial models frequently used to study land change may restricted by lack of access to public data on land change, faulty sensors, and high levels of variable uncertainty. Thus, models are often only able to make short-term projections, which severely limits the level of prediction they can provide. Additionally, it is difficult to synthesize and combine the case studies of social-environmental systems that are essential to the study of land change on a global scale. Thus, these setbacks pose fundamental challenges to the connection of communities and environment that land change science seeks to achieve.

See also

References

Earth sciences
Human impact on the environment

Land change science


A Lousy Ten Grand is a 2004 Vanguard Productions movie written by, directed and starring the stand-up comedian Kelly Monteith.

Plot summary
Ted Beckerwith (Monteith) is an unsuccessful family man who finds himself in severe debt to a loan shark (Joey Travolta). In attempt to pay off his $10,000, he becomes involved in a plan to marry a foreigner for a price.

External links
 Official website

2004 films
2004 comedy films
American comedy films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films

A Lousy Ten Grand


Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American  independent film  written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo and Jonathan Wang; the film incorporates elements from a number of genres and film mediums, including absurdist fiction, comedy-drama, surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, immigrant narrative, and animation. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, a Chinese-American immigrant who, while audited by the IRS, discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse. The film also stars Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., and James Hong in supporting roles.

Kwan and Scheinert began work on the project in 2010. Production was announced in 2018, and principal photography ran from January to March 2020. The filmmakers initially sought Jackie Chan for the lead role before the script was revised to feature a female protagonist as part of a wife-husband duo. The works of Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai, as well as the children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and the video game Everything, served as inspiration for several scenes. The soundtrack features compositions by Son Lux, including collaborations with Mitski, David Byrne, André 3000, John Hampson, and Randy Newman. The film explores philosophical themes such as existentialism, nihilism, surrealism, and absurdism, as well as themes such as neurodivergence, depression, generational trauma, and Asian American identity.

Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2022, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on March 25, 2022, before a wide release by A24 on April 8. The film grossed over $141 million worldwide, becoming A24's highest-grossing film. It garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a success at the 95th Academy Awards, winning a leading seven awards out of eleven nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress for Yeoh, Best Supporting Actor for Quan, Best Supporting Actress for Curtis, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Kwan and Scheinert, and Best Film Editing. It also won two Golden Globe Awards, five Critics' Choice Awards (including Best Picture), a BAFTA Award, a record four SAG Awards (including Best Ensemble), a record seven Independent Spirit Awards (including Best Feature), and swept the four major guild awards (DGA, PGA, SAG, and WGA). With 266 awards out of 405 nominations, Everything Everywhere All at Once is currently estimated to be the most awarded film of all time.

Plot

Evelyn Quan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond; two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy. In the present day, the laundromat is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Waymond is trying to serve Evelyn divorce papers in an attempt to get her attention so they can talk about their marriage, Evelyn's stern and demanding father (referred to as Gong Gong, Cantonese for "grandfather") is visiting for her Chinese New Year party, and Joy is dealing with depression and has a strained relationship with her mother, which also includes Evelyn's reluctance to accept Joy's lesbian relationship with her non-Chinese girlfriend Becky.

At a tense meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond's body is taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse." Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist because every life choice creates a new alternative universe. In the Alphaverse, the late Alpha-Evelyn developed "verse-jumping" technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely. The multiverse is threatened by Jobu Tupaki (Alpha-Joy), whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance; Jobu experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will. She has created a black hole-like "Everything Bagel" topped with everything, which appears as a toroid singularity that could destroy the multiverse.

Evelyn is given verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu's minions, who converge on the IRS building. She discovers other universes in which she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master and film star; she also learns of Waymond's plans with the divorce papers. Alpha-Waymond believes that Evelyn, as the greatest "failure" of all Evelyns in the multiverse, has the untapped potential to defeat Jobu. Gong Gong is taken over by Alpha-Gong Gong, who instructs Evelyn to kill Joy to stop Jobu from using her to enter Evelyn's universe. Evelyn refuses and decides to face Jobu by gaining powers through repeated verse-jumping. Alpha-Gong Gong, convinced that Evelyn's mind has been compromised like Jobu's, sends soldiers after Evelyn. While they fight, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in the Alphaverse. As Jobu confronts Evelyn in her universe, Evelyn's mind splinters, and she collapses.

Evelyn uncontrollably verse-jumps alongside Jobu across bizarre and diverse universes. Jobu reveals she does not want to fight at all, but that instead, she has been searching for an Evelyn who can see, as she does, that nothing matters, while killing the Evelyns that do not agree with her. She brings Evelyn to the Everything Bagel, explaining that she wants to use it to allow herself and Evelyn to truly die. Upon looking into the Bagel, Evelyn is initially persuaded, and behaves cruelly and nihilistically in her other universes, hurting those around her.

As Evelyn is about to enter the Bagel with Jobu, she pauses to listen to Waymond's pleas in her universe for everybody to stop fighting and to instead be kind, even when life does not make sense. Evelyn has an existentialist epiphany and decides to follow Waymond's absurdist and humanist advice, using her multiverse powers to fight with empathy and bring happiness to those around her; in doing so, she repairs her damage in the other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters. In her home universe, Evelyn reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky's relationship and tells Gong Gong of it, and talks with Deirdre after Waymond convinces Deirdre to let them redo their taxes. Jobu decides to enter the Bagel alone while, simultaneously in Evelyn's universe, Joy begs Evelyn to let her go. Evelyn tells Joy that even when nothing makes sense and even though she could be anywhere else in the multiverse, she would always want to be with Joy. Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the Bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace.

Some time later, with the family's relationships improved, they return to the IRS building to refile their taxes. As Deirdre talks, Evelyn's attention is momentarily drawn to her alternative selves, before she grounds herself back in her home universe.

Cast

 Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang, a dissatisfied and overwhelmed laundromat owner; and as several other versions of Evelyn in alternate universes.
 Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Evelyn's daughter; and Jobu Tupaki, Alpha-Evelyn's omnicidal daughter whose growing nihilism is a threat to the entire multiverse.
 Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang, Evelyn's meek and goofy husband whose humanist existentialism is the antidote to Jobu's nihilism; and as Alpha-Waymond, from the Alphaverse; and other versions of Waymond in alternate universes.
 Jenny Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom, a laundromat customer. Her original name of Big Nose was changed for the film's digital release because of its association with Jewish stereotypes.
 James Hong as Gong Gong (Cantonese for "grandfather"), Evelyn's demanding father; and Alpha-Gong Gong, Alpha-Evelyn's father in the Alphaverse who wants Evelyn to sacrifice Joy to impede Jobu.
 Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre, an IRS inspector; and as other versions of Deirdre in alternate universes.

Tallie Medel appears as Becky Sregor, Joy's girlfriend; Biff Wiff appears as Rick, a laundromat customer; Sunita Mani and Aaron Lazar appear as actors in a musical film Evelyn watches; Audrey Wasilewski and Peter Banifaz appear as Alpha RV Officers; Andy Le and Brian Le appear as Alpha Trophy Jumpers; Li Jing appears as Evelyn's kung-fu teacher, and Michiko Nishiwaki appears as Evelyn's kung-fu opponent and co-star. Harry Shum Jr. plays Chad, a teppanyaki chef working alongside an alternative Evelyn in another universe.

Randy Newman, who has scored nine Disney–Pixar films, appears as the voice of Raccacoonie, a reference to the Pixar-animated film Ratatouille (2007); he is credited as a featured artist on the soundtrack "Now We're Cookin. Cameos include Scheinert as District Manager, and Kwan uncredited as a man sucked into the bagel and as a mugger.

Production

Development

Co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known as the Daniels, began researching the concept of the multiverse as early as 2010, after being exposed to the concept of modal realism in the Ross McElwee documentary Sherman's March (1986). Kwan described the release of the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which also deals with a multiversal concept, as "a little upsetting because we were like, 'Oh shit, everyone's going to beat us to this thing we've been working on. He also stated "Watching the second season of Rick and Morty (2013-present) was really painful. I was like, 'They've already done all the ideas we thought were original!' It was a really frustrating experience. So I stopped watching Rick and Morty while we were writing this project".

In early drafts of the screenplay, the directors planned for the main character to be a professor and have undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); through his research for the project, Kwan learned that he had undiagnosed ADHD.

Scenes in which Evelyn trains in martial arts and becomes an action film star were visually and contextually inspired by the films of Wong Kar-wai. Chris Lee of Vulture writes that they "conjur[e] a mood of exquisite romantic yearning that will be instantly recognizable ... as touchstones" of Wong's works. The universe in which Evelyn and Joy are rocks was influenced by the children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and the video game Everything (2017).

Kwan has said the idea of the everything bagel "started as just a throwaway joke", a play on a type of American bagel called an "everything bagel", which is baked with a large variety of toppings. Scheinert said they spent time attempting to develop the religion of bagel followers, but encountered complications: "Jobu Tupaki's a nihilist; should there be dogma? Should there be a book? What should their practices be as a religion? The bagel stuck because it became such a useful, simple symbol that we could point to as filmmakers. And you don't have to explain it much beyond the joke."

Casting

The script was written for Jackie Chan until Kwan and Scheinert reconceived the protagonist as a woman, feeling it would make the husband–wife dynamic in the story more relatable.

The new script's lead character was initially named Michelle Wang, after the film's lead actress Michelle Yeoh, who said, "If you ask the Daniels, when they started on this draft, they focused on, 'Well, we are doing this for Michelle Yeoh.'" The character's name was eventually changed to Evelyn. With her resemblance to the version of Evelyn as a martial artist and film star, Yeoh opposed naming the character Michelle. "Evelyn deserves her own story to be told. This is a very ordinary mother [and] housewife who is trying her best to be a good mother to her daughter, a good daughter to her father, a wife that's trying to keep the family together [...] I don't like to integrate me, Michelle Yeoh, into the characters that I play, because they all deserve their own journey and their stories to be told".

It was announced in August 2018 that Yeoh and Awkwafina had been cast to star in what was described as an "interdimensional action film" from Kwan and Scheinert, with Anthony and Joe Russo attached to produce. Awkwafina left the project in January 2020 due to scheduling conflicts, and was replaced with Stephanie Hsu. James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis joined the cast. It marked Quan's return to film acting, from which he had retired after Second Time Around (2002) due to a lack of casting opportunities. Kwan and Scheinert were inspired to cast Quan after seeing a meme of former New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang being shown as a grown-up version of Short Round, Quan's character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). They were curious to learn what Quan had been doing, and learned that he was the right age to portray Waymond. Coincidentally, Quan had returned to acting, inspired by the success of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), soon before he was approached for the role. Jeff Cohen, Quan's former co-star from The Goonies (1985), was his attorney to negotiate his contract.

Filming
Principal photography began in January 2020, with A24 announcing that it would finance and distribute the film. Around this time, Kwan and Schneirt were invited by Marvel Studios to discuss the possibility of them developing the first season of the Disney+ series Loki, which also deals with a storyline involving the multiverse, but the duo, already not really interested in the project, declined as they were about to start shooting their own movie about the same concept. Shooting took 38 days, mostly in Simi Valley, California. Much of the film was shot overcranked at a very high frame rate to accommodate extensive time remapping in post production. The Daniels said the kung-fu fight scenes were shot unusually quickly; for example, the fanny-pack fight was shot in a day and a half. Filming wrapped in early March 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The first cut ran around 170 minutes.

Visual effects
Visual effects post-production for the film was done in-house, after the Daniels' negative experience with a dedicated post-production studio for their previous film Swiss Army Man. Instead, the filmmakers assembled a small team of five artists headed by Zak Stoltz, who produced all visual effects using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and used Resilio Sync to share the large amounts of data once the pandemic hit.

For Deirdre's appearance, Kwan discovered a picture of a real IRS agent he found online, which Curtis liked and wanted to emulate. Curtis wanted the character to be as "real" as possible and used her real belly for the film, as opposed to a prosthetic.

Themes
Everything Everywhere All at Once incorporates elements from a number of genres and film mediums, including surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films and animation. A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as a "swirl of genre anarchy", explaining that "while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren't really the point. [It is] a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love". Laura Zornosa from The New York Times elaborates its addressing of intergenerational trauma through healing relationships. Additionally, Emily St. James wrote on Vox that the film is part of a rising subgenre of "millennial parental apology fantasy", imagining worlds in which parents and children reconcile.

According to Charles Bramesco of The Guardian, "The bagel of doom and its tightening grip on Evelyn's daughter lend themselves to the climactic declaration that there's nothing worse than submitting to the nihilism so trendy with the next generation. Our lone hope of recourse is to embrace all the love and beauty surrounding us, if only we're present enough to see it." This nihilism is also incorporated into the film's exploration of Asian American identity. Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in The Washington Post, "It's not only that the multiverse acts as a metaphor for the immigrant Asian experience, or a convenient parable for the dislocations and personality splits suffered by hyphenated (that is, 'Asian-American') citizens, including LGBT culture. It also becomes a rather heady vehicle for confronting and negotiating Asian-pessimism", a term she uses in reference to Afro-pessimism.

Consequences Clint Worthington wrote that "for all its dadaist absurdism and blink-if-you-miss-it pace, Daniels weaves the chaotic possibilities into the multiverse into a cohesive story about the travails of the road not traveled, and the need to carve out your own meaning in a meaningless universe." Describing Jobu Tupaki's modus operandi, Worthington notes "the living contradiction that is the everything bagel: if you put everything on a bagel, what more is left? And if you've experienced everything that the multiverse can offer, what's the point of any of it?" Kwan said that the everything bagel concept "did two things. It allowed us to talk about nihilism without being too eye roll-y. And it creates a MacGuffin: a doomsday device. If, in the first half of the movie, people think that the bagel is here to destroy the world, and in the second half you realize it's a depressed person trying to destroy themselves, it just takes everything about action movies and turns it into something more personal." The writer George Gillett argues that the movie is "a coming-of-age film for the internet generation", with the multiverse resembling virtual environments which viewers increasingly exist within.

The film engages textually and metatextually with the "real world" of the viewer. Critics have noted that one version of Evelyn—a famous martial arts movie star—is a portrayal of Yeoh, that Ke Huy Quan's experience as a stunt coordinator is used diegetically in Waymond's fight scenes, and that James Hong's transformation into "a more sinister, English-fluent, Machiavellian strategist" parallels his character Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China (1986).

Music

The musical score was composed by Son Lux, whose members are Ryan Lott, Ian Chang, and Rafiq Bhatia. Daniels asked them to approach the score individually, and not as a band. Lott said, "I think that the complete picture of not only who we are as a band, but also who we are as individuals and what we have accomplished and the places we've gone creatively individually, meant for them that there was a possibility that many of these universes of sound could be within reach with this particular trio."

Son Lux took two to three years to compose the score, which includes more than a hundred musical cues. The soundtrack album consists of 49 tracks and runs for more than two hours. It features several prominent musicians, including Mitski, David Byrne, a flute-playing André 3000, Randy Newman, Moses Sumney, Hajnal Pivnick, and yMusic. Two songs—"This Is a Life" featuring Mitski and Byrne and "Fence" featuring Sumney—were released as singles on March 4 and 14, 2022. The album was released on March 25 to positive critical response.

The film features several instances, both in audio and in dialogue, of the 2000 Nine Days song "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)". When Daniels contacted Nine Days vocalist John Hampson about using the song, Hampson enthusiastically agreed to record three alternate versions of the song for use in the film.

Release

Theatrical
The world premiere was at the South by Southwest film festival on March 11, 2022. Its limited release in theaters was on March 25, 2022, and its nationwide release was on April 8, in the United States by A24. On March 30, 2022, the film was released in select IMAX theaters in the U.S. for one night only. Due to its popularity, the film returned to select IMAX theaters for one week starting on April 29, 2022. The film was not released in most parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, due to censorship of LGBT issues in those countries. The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2022. The film was re-released in U.S. theaters on July 29, 2022, unchanged but adding an introduction by Daniels and eight minutes of outtakes after the credits. It was re-released again in U.S. theaters on January 27, 2023, on 1,400 screens to celebrate its Oscar nominations.

Home media
The film was released on digital streaming platforms on June 7, 2022, and was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and Ultra HD Blu-ray on July 5, 2022, by Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

Reception

Box office
Everything Everywhere All at Once grossed $77.2 million in the United States and Canada and $64 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $141.2 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $32million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.

In the United States and Canada, the film earned $509,600 from ten venues in its opening weekend. Its debut had a theater average of $50,965, the second-best since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for a platform release (behind Licorice Pizza) and the then-best opening theater average in 2022. In its second weekend, the film grossed $1.1 million from 38 theaters, finishing ninth at the box office. It received a wide expansion in its third weekend, going from 38 to 1,250 theaters. It made $6.1 million, finishing sixth at the box office. Playing in 2,220 theaters the following weekend, it earned $6.2 million, finishing fourth. In its sixth weekend, it added $5.5 million, part of which was attributed to a wider IMAX release following its successful box office run until then. It added $3.5 million in its seventh weekend, and another $3.3 million in its eighth. By May 21, it had made over $51 million, surpassing Uncut Gems ($50 million) as A24's highest-grossing film domestically. By June 9, it had made over $80 million, surpassing Hereditary ($79 million) as A24's highest-grossing film of all time. It remained in the box office top ten until its sixteenth weekend, which ended on July 10. The film crossed the $100 million mark worldwide on July 31, making it the first independent film released during the pandemic (and in A24's history) to achieve this distinction.

Outside of the United States, other top-earning territories as of July 31 were the United Kingdom ($6.2 million), Canada ($5.1 million), Australia ($4.5 million), Russia ($2.4 million), Taiwan ($2.3 million), Mexico ($2 million), Hong Kong ($1.7 million), Germany ($1.5 million), and the Netherlands ($1.1 million).

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 405 critic reviews are positive for the film and the average rating is 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads, "Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% positive score, with 77% saying that they would definitely recommend it.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the film an "orgiastic work of slaphappy genius", praising the direction and performances, particularly Yeoh's, calling it the "greatest performance that Michelle Yeoh has ever given". The Hollywood Reporter'''s David Rooney called it a "frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven [that] is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun", complimenting the cast and score but found the handling of the story's underlying theme underwhelming. In her review for RogerEbert.com, Marya E. Gates lauded Yeoh's performance, writing, "Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion, often just from a glance or a reaction." Bramesco praised the Daniels for constructing a "large, elaborate, polished, and detailed expression of a vision," Amy Nicholson of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "Over its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, the movie's ambitions double, and double again, as though it's a petri dish teeming with Mr. Kwan and Mr. Scheinert's wildest ideas."

Some reviewers called Yeoh's performance as the best of her career. In her review for Vanity Fair, Maureen Ryan highlighted it, writing, "Yeoh imbues Evelyn with moving shades of melancholy, regret, resolve, and growing curiosity" and adding that she "makes her embrace of lead-character energy positively gripping." Adam Nayman of The Ringer referred to the film as "a love letter to Yeoh [and] extremely poignant, giving its 59-year-old star a chance to flex unexpected acting muscles while revisiting the high-flying fight choreography that made her a global icon back in the 1990s". In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Jake Coyle wrote that although it "can verge on overload, it's this liberating sense of limitless possibility that the movie leaves you filled with, both in its freewheeling anything-goes playfulness and in its surprisingly tender portrait of existential despair". Tasha Robinson of Polygon named the scene of Evelyn and Joy Wang as rocks with their dialogue appearing as on-screen subtitles, all while trying to find common ground, as one of the best movie scenes of 2022, saying "...it's a perfect moment. Like so many EEAAO sequences, it turns between emotions on a dime. But the quiet of the moment is essential. Out of context, it's just an odd moment between rocks. But within the context of the film, it's a breather the audience and characters both desperately need, and the emotions are so heightened that just the sight of rock-Joy and rock-Evelyn sharing a companionable laugh is remarkably heartening and hilarious."

Dissenting reviews include that of Richard Brody for The New Yorker, who dismissed it as a "sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie", and that of Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian who described it as "a formless splurge of Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time".

Armond White of National Review wrote: "Unschooled Marvel addicts who never heard of Kafka, Buñuel, or Chuck Jones easily fall for the entropy farce. The Daniels refuse narrative convention in order to represent our culture's gradual decline into disorder. Their millennial solipsism — Evelyn against the world, through various dimensions — celebrates autism as insight ... The film's ultimate message: "Be Kind," spoken by two rocks. It's a childish palliative, unlike the recent self-critical protest songs by Van Morrison and Bob Dylan that insist on responsible personal choices. Yeoh brings adult stability to the blackout-skit chaos and cast of "stupid human" clowns. But the Daniels reduce life to "just a statistical inevitability, it's nothing special.""The New York Times named the character Jobu Tupaki, played by Hsu, one of the 93 Most Stylish "People" of 2022.

Legacy
In 2023, Screen Rant ranked it as the "Best Movie of the 2020s (So Far)," calling it the "best, most exciting movie" on the subject matter of the multiverse and a "turning point after the box-office-slumping COVID-19 pandemic and superhero-centric 2010s." The site also included it on its list of films from the decade that are "Destined To Become Classics," calling it "both a massively entertaining sci-fi actioner and a deeply affecting family drama." It also ranked number 2 on MovieWebs list of the "Best LGBTQ+ Movies of the 2020s (So Far)" and number 13 on the its list of "20 Movies That Require Your Full Attention From Start to Finish." For the latter list, Taryn Flaherty wrote, "...there is not a second of this 139-minute eccentric film that does not demand your dedicated attention. With the multiverse driving the story's narrative forward, it should come as no surprise that every detail of this film will require its viewer to remain focused."https://movieweb.com/movies-that-require-your-full-attention/#everything-everywhere-all-at-once-2022 IndieWire ranked it at number 8 on its list of the "50 Best Action Movies of the 21st Century" and number 5 on its list of the "55 Best Science Fiction Films of the 21st Century."https://www.indiewire.com/feature/best-sci-fi-movies-science-fiction-film-1201817994/ It also ranked number 33 on Comic Book Resources list of "The Best Movies of All Time."

Accolades

Prior to the 95th Academy Awards, IGN reported that Everything Everywhere All at Once had already surpassed The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King (2003) as "the most awarded film of all time".

It won seven of its 11 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Curtis), Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. The film received 10 BAFTA nominations (winning one), 13 Critics' Choice Movie Awards nominations (winning five), eight Independent Spirit Awards nominations (winning a record-breaking seven), and six Golden Globe Awards nominations (winning two). It was named one of the top 10 films of 2022 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. The film also won top prizes from the Directors Guild of America Awards, Producers Guild of America Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards (the last of which it won a record-breaking four awards); the film became the 5th film to sweep all four top prizes from the major guilds (DGA, PGA, WGA, SAG), after American Beauty, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, and Argo (all 5 films ended up winning Best Picture at their respective Academy Awards).Everything Everywhere All at Once made Academy Awards history in several categories. Yeoh was the first woman of Chinese ethnicity to win Best Actress, the second woman of color after Halle Berry in 2002, and the first Malaysian to win any Academy Award. Stephanie Hsu's nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category, alongside Hong Chau's nomination for The Whale, marked the first time two actresses of Asian ethnicity were nominated in that category in the same year. Ke Huy Quan is the first Vietnam-born actor to win an Academy Award. It is also the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture, and the first science-fiction film to win five of the top six Academy Awards. While no film has ever won in all four acting categories, it was the third to win three out of four, after A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976), and the first to also win Best Picture.

The reaction to the film's Best Picture win was not without criticism, with Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times feeling that the Academy "chose the wrong best picture" and believed that now, as a result, "films that enter the race reeking too obviously of traditional Oscar quality — a group that includes not only The Fabelmans but also two earlier Spielberg pictures, The Post and West Side Story — run the risk of falling by the wayside," and compared its win to that of CODA'' at the previous ceremony. Cannes Film Festival president Thierry Frémaux was also happy with the result but felt mixed, saying: "I thought the ceremony was very good and I was happy to see Michelle Yeoh rewarded. And disappointed that Steven Spielberg wasn't, because his film is a love letter to cinema."

See also
 Asian Americans in arts and entertainment

References

External links

2020s action comedy-drama films
2020s American films
2020s Cantonese-language films
2020s English-language films
2020s Mandarin-language films
2020s martial arts comedy films
2020s science fiction comedy-drama films
2022 action comedy films
2022 black comedy films
2022 independent films
2022 films
2022 LGBT-related films
2022 science fiction films
A24 (company) films
Absurdist fiction
Alternate timeline films
American action comedy-drama films
American black comedy films
American films with live action and animation
American martial arts comedy films
American science fiction comedy-drama films
Best Picture Academy Award winners
Censored films
Chinese New Year films
Comedy films about Asian Americans
Existentialist films
Films about immigration to the United States
Films about mother–daughter relationships
Films about parallel universes
Films about parenting
Films featuring a Best Actress Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe winning performance
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe winning performance
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award-winning performance
Films set in California
Films set in offices
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films whose director won the Best Directing Academy Award
Films whose editor won the Best Film Editing Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form winning works
Judaism-related controversies
IMAX films
Lesbian-related films
LGBT-related black comedy films
LGBT-related films about Chinese Americans
LGBT-related science fiction comedy-drama films
Magic realism films
Metafictional works
Metaphysical fiction films
Midlife crisis films
Nebula Award-winning works
Philosophical fiction
Surreal comedy films
Surrealist films
Works about existentialism

Everything Everywhere All at Once


Balls of Steel is a pinball computer game developed by Wildfire Studios and released on December 12, 1997. It is the only game to be published under the Pinball Wizards label, a division of Apogee Software (today known as 3D Realms).

When the game was originally released, it was possible to upload high scores to the WorldScores server, for a global ranking. This feature has since been discontinued.

Tables
Balls of Steel features five original pinball tables:
Darkside: Set on a remote space station under attack by alien creatures.
Barbarian: A classic medieval fantasy quest with a huge dragon on the table.
Firestorm: Set in a crime-ridden US city, a mad bomber is on the loose.
Mutation: Set in an underground science lab where a bio-hazardous accident has occurred and a large, slimy monster has taken over the lab.
Duke Nukem: A special table featuring the Apogee video game character Duke Nukem.

Another table, Devil's Island, was dropped from the game when Wildfire was given the opportunity by Apogee to include a Duke Nukem table. Devil's Island was later released as a standalone game.

Duke Nukem tie-in
The game includes a table based on the Apogee/3D Realms video game Duke Nukem 3D including graphics from that game and original voice-overs by Nukem actor Jon St. John. Pinball missions include fighting monsters like octabrains and pig-cops, and using powerups such as jetpacks and the Holoduke, from the Duke Nukem 3D video game.

Graphics of a pinball game named Balls of Steel appear in Duke Nukem 3D itself, in the first level, "Hollywood Holocaust", when Duke encounters the table. Balls of Steel reappears in Duke Nukem Forever.

Development
Balls of Steel was in development since 1995. The game was showcased at E3 1997.

Reception
Balls of Steel was a finalist for Computer Games Strategy Pluss 1998 "Classic Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Centipede. The editors wrote that Balls of Steel "demonstrated that you can do the Bally table on the PC, and do it well."

References

External links
Official website
Balls of Steel on MobyGames

Classic Mac OS games
Windows games
Pinball video games
1997 video games
3D Realms games
Video games scored by Bobby Prince
Video games developed in Australia
Wildfire Studios games

Balls of Steel (video game)


César Ritz (23 February 1850 – 24 October 1918) was a Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels. He gave his name to the Hôtel Ritz Paris and The Ritz Hotel in London. His motto was "king of hoteliers, and hotelier to kings". His name is the origin of the word ritzy.

Biography
At fifteen Ritz was apprenticed as a somelier (wine waiter) at a hotel in Brig. Dismissed after a year as an unsuitable candidate for the hotel trade, he went to Paris at the time of the 1867 Universal Exhibition.

Ritz's formative five years in Paris, including the siege of 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, gave him sufficient polish and confidence to transform himself from a waiter and general factotum into a maître d'hôtel, manager, and eventually hotelier.

In 1872, Ritz became floor waiter of the Hôtel Splendide in Paris, meeting many rich, self-made Americans as guests. In 1873 he was a waiter in Vienna at the time of the International Exhibition. In the winter of that year his astonishing career in hotel management began when he undertook the direction of the restaurant at the Grand Hôtel in Nice. Regular moves then followed. He followed the migration of the international tourist set from the hotels of Nice or San Remo in winter to Swiss mountain resorts such as Rigi-Kulm and Lucerne in summer.

In 1878, he became the manager of the Grand Hôtel National in Lucerne and held the same position, in parallel, at the Grand Hôtel in Monaco until 1888. A pioneer in the development of luxury hoteliering, he knew how to entice wealthy customers and got a reputation for good taste and elegance. He was the first to say that "the customer is never wrong". His code was "See all without looking; hear all without listening; be attentive without being servile; anticipate without being presumptuous. If a diner complains about a dish or the wine, immediately remove it and replace it, no questions asked".

In 1888, he opened a restaurant with Auguste Escoffier in Baden-Baden, and the two were then invited to London by Richard D'Oyly Carte to become the first manager and chef of the Savoy Hotel, positions they held from 1889 until 1897. Ritz put together what he described as "a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London".  The Savoy under Ritz was an immediate success, attracting a distinguished and moneyed clientele, headed by the Prince of Wales. Aristocratic women, hitherto unaccustomed to dine in public, were now "seen in full regalia in the Savoy dining and supper rooms".

Fall from grace
In 1898, Ritz and Escoffier were both dismissed from the Savoy. Ritz was implicated in the disappearance of over £3,400 of wine and spirits, as well as kickbacks from suppliers. The following report is from the London Daily Telegraph:
"They were accused of nicking "£3,400 of wine and spirits in the first six months of 1897" and "wine and spirits consumed in the same period by the Managers, staff and employees amounting to £3,000" – more than half-a-million pounds in today's money.
"Escoffier, moreover, confessed to taking "commission", gifts or kickbacks from the Savoy's suppliers (a regular 5 per cent in the case of Messrs Hudson Brothers, grocers on the Strand) amounting to a whopping £1.4 million in today's values. The board first became suspicious in 1895 when, although overall receipts increased greatly, the profits from the kitchens fell. In 1897, the kitchen actually showed a loss...
"The board of the Savoy, led by Richard D'Oyly Carte, decided to deal with the matter privately".

Independent entrepreneur
Later in 1898, he opened the celebrated Hôtel Ritz in the  Place Vendôme, Paris. He went on to open The Ritz Hotel in London in 1906, which became one of the most popular meeting places of the era, for the rich and famous. The Hotel Ritz Madrid in Madrid, opened in 1910, inspired by King Alfonso XIII's desire to build a luxury hotel to rival the Ritz in Paris.  Ritz enjoyed a long partnership with Auguste Escoffier, the famous French chef and father of modern French cooking.  The partnership lasted until Ritz had to retire in 1907 because of deteriorating health.

Towards the end
Ritz himself withdrew progressively from the affairs of his various companies, selling out his interests in hotels at Frankfurt and Salsomaggiore in 1905 and retiring from the Ritz Hotel Development Company in 1907, from the Carlton Hotel Company in 1908, and from the Paris Ritz Company in 1911.

By 1912, according to Marie-Louise Ritz, to all intents and purposes his life had finished. In 1913 he was placed in a private hospital at Lausanne, and the following year he was moved to another on Lake Küssnacht in Canton Schwyz. He died at Küssnacht on 26 October 1918. Although from a humble Swiss background, César Ritz and his luxurious hotels became legendary, and his name entered the English language as an epitome of high-class cuisine and accommodation. He is buried in the village of his birth.

References

 Ritz, une histoire plus belle que la légende. - Claude Roulet - Editions Quai Voltaire - 1998
 Ritz, The King of Hoteliers and Host of Kings, Film by Frank Garbely, r-film Zurich 2007, ISAN 0000-0000-62E8-0000-U-0000-0000-L

Other websites

Site dedicated to the life of César Ritz
Hotel school in Switzerland

1850 births
1918 deaths
Swiss businesspeople
Goms District
Hotels
People from Valais

César Ritz


Mary Erskine (1629 – 2 June 1707) was a Scottish businesswoman and philanthropist, who donated money to set up the girls' school which is now known as The Mary Erskine School and also the Trades Maiden Hospital (now known as the Trades Maiden Fund).

Biography
Mary Erskine lived on a close off the High Street in Edinburgh, to the east of St Giles' Cathedral, and close to the Cowgate, then a fashionable suburb. She was born at Garlet House, Clackmannanshire, in 1629. Little is known of her early life, but in 1661 she married Robert Kennedie, a writer (i.e., a lawyer) and they had five children, three boys and two girls, all of whom appear to have died in infancy. Robert Kennedie died in 1671 leaving Mary with considerable debts, although she managed to pay these off through careful management. On 23 September 1675, Mary Erskine married her second husband, James Hair, in North Leith. James Hair was a chemist, and owned a chemist's shop on the High Street. He was considerably younger than Mary Erskine, but he too died in 1683. By the contract of marriage, Mary Erskine inherited most of what belonged to her husband. It seems that this was not a large sum of money, but she used the money to set up a private bank, and built up a considerable fortune.

She died on 2 June 1707 and was buried two days later in Greyfriars Kirkyard at the end of the section known as the Covenanters' Prison.

Mary Erskine's School
In 1694, Mary Erskine, by then known as Mrs Hair, donated 10,000 merks to the Merchant Company of Edinburgh for the maintenance of daughters of burgesses in the city of Edinburgh. The money was used to establish the Merchant Maiden Hospital, a girls' school, on the Cowgate. In 1706 Mrs Hair gave a further donation with which to buy a house and garden outside the city wall at Bristo. In 1707 she donated a further 4,000 merks to the Hospital, retaining the right to appoint two members of the Erskine family as governors. The memoirist Elisabeth West was a mistress at the school in 1708.

The Merchant Maiden Hospital was renamed and relocated several times, but in 1944 it was named The Mary Erskine School in honour of its founding benefactor. The school stood for many years at the west end of Queen Street but was demolished for redevelopment and is now located in the Ravelston area of Edinburgh.

In 1704 Mary Erskine founded the Trades Maiden Hospital with the Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh, to provide boarding and education for the daughters and granddaughters of "decayed" craftsmen and tradesmen. This was at first situated in the Horse Wynd (now West College Street) on the south side of what is now Chambers Street. In 1855 it moved to Rillbank at Sciennes. In 1892 it moved again, this time to Ashfield, 121 Grange Loan. Finally in 1971 it moved once more, to 61 Melville Street, on the corner with Manor Place, opposite the chapter house of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral.

References

History of Mary Erskine School, Erskine Stewart's Melville Schools

External links
"Lofty ceilings but down-to-earth ideals" Times Educational Supplement
Mary Erskine at National Records of Scotland

1629 births
1708 deaths
17th-century Scottish businesspeople
Businesspeople from Edinburgh
Founders of Scottish schools and colleges
Burials at Greyfriars Kirkyard
17th-century businesswomen
17th-century philanthropists
17th-century women philanthropists
Scottish women in business
Women founders
Scottish philanthropists

Mary Erskine


Lancaster is a city in and the county seat of Grant County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 3,907 at the 2020 census.

History
Lancaster originated as a planned community to serve as the county seat for Grant County. Anticipating the county's establishment in 1836, Major Glendower M. Price, a Cassville merchant and land speculator, purchased the site of Lancaster for its central location in the county. Major Price platted the town on a compass-aligned grid in 1837, reserving a large central square for the new county government. He was persuaded to name the city Lancaster by a relative who migrated from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Maj. Price and Daniel Banfill contracted to construct the first county courthouse, which stood on the square from 1838–1851. A second courthouse was constructed in 1852–1853 and enlarged in 1865. The present, third courthouse was constructed on the site in 1902.

Pleasant Ridge, one of the first African-American communities in Wisconsin, was founded just outside Lancaster by the Shepard family in 1849 and settled in the 1850s. Lancaster was the home of the first governor of Wisconsin, Nelson Dewey.

Geography
Lancaster is located at  (42.848505, −90.710430). Lancaster is located in the unglaciated "Driftless Area" of southwest Wisconsin whose topography is strikingly different from that of the rest of the state.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.

Demographics

2020 census
As of the census of 2020, the population was 3,907. The population density was . There were 1,800 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 95.3% White, 0.8% Black or African American, 0.5% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Ethnically, the population was 1.4% Hispanic or Latino of any race.

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 3,868 people, 1,659 households, and 1,037 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 1,805 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 98.3% White, 0.5% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 0.3% from other races, and 0.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.8% of the population.

There were 1,659 households, of which 28.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.1% were married couples living together, 9.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.0% had a male householder with no wife present, and 37.5% were non-families. 32.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.27 and the average family size was 2.87.

The median age in the city was 41.2 years. 23.6% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.1% were from 25 to 44; 26.1% were from 45 to 64; and 19.8% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 47.4% male and 52.6% female.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 4,070 people, 1,706 households, and 1,079 families living in the city. The population density was 1,441.1 people per square mile (557.2/km2). There were 1,799 housing units at an average density of 637.0 per square mile (246.3/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 99.24% White, 0.07% African American, 0.29% Asian, 0.10% from other races, and 0.29% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.42% of the population.

There were 1,706 households, out of which 28.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.8% were married couples living together, 8.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.7% were non-families. 31.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 18.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31 and the average family size was 2.93.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 23.5% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 25.1% from 25 to 44, 21.9% from 45 to 64, and 20.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.0 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $32,723, and the median income for a family was $47,500. Males had a median income of $30,683 versus $22,331 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,797. About 6.4% of families and 8.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.9% of those under age 18 and 9.7% of those age 65 or over.

Transportation

Airports
Lancaster Municipal Airport (73C) serves the city and surrounding communities.

Major highways
  U.S. Route 61 ("Madison Street"), passes north–south through the center of the city.
  Highway 29, bypasses the city to the east.
  County Trunk Highway A, passes east–west through the center of the city.

Education
Lancaster Community School District is the public school district for the community. The town also has a Catholic school.

Architecture

Lancaster calls itself "The City of the Dome" after the octagonal glass and copper-clad dome of its courthouse, which was designed by Armand Koch and built in 1905. In the spandrels of the courthouse dome are four allegorical murals painted by Franz Edward Rohrbeck.

The Municipal Building (1922) is an example of Prairie School early modern architecture, which, like the courthouse, has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The L. J. Arthur House, noted for its architecture, is also listed on the National Register.

The Lancaster Post Office contains a Depression-era mural, painted under the Works Progress Administration program in 1940.

The stone and wood Patrick and Margaret Kinney House in Lancaster was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of 45 Wright structures in Wisconsin.

Notable people

 J. Allen Barber – lawyer, U.S. Representative 1871–75; lived and died in Lancaster
 George Barnett – Commandant of the United States Marine Corps
 Charles H. Baxter – Wisconsin State Senator
 Lisle Blackbourn – NFL head coach
 Josh Burr - NFL player
 John Benton Callis – U.S. Representative from Alabama
 William Carter – Wisconsin State Representative
 John G. Clark (1825–1917) - Associate Justice of Oklahoma Territory Supreme Court (1898–1903), returned to Lancaster for the rest of his life
 Nelson Dewey – first Governor of Wisconsin; lived in Lancaster
 Hugh A. Harper – Wisconsin State Representative
 John Chandler Holloway – President Pro Tem of the Wisconsin State Senate
 A. H. Kemper – South Dakota politician
 William John McCoy – Wisconsin State Representative
 Thomas McDonald, Jr. – Wisconsin State Representative
 Joseph Trotter Mills – Wisconsin State Representative
 Roger P. Murphy – Wisconsin State Senator and jurist
 Carson Abel Roberts – U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General
 Dave Schreiner – member of the College Football Hall of Fame
 David Schreiner – Wisconsin State Representative
 Reuben B. Showalter – Wisconsin State Representative
 William Simon U'Ren – Oregon politician
 David Varnam - 2022 Lieutenant Governor Candidate
 Arthur W. Worth – Wisconsin State Representative

See also
 List of cities in Wisconsin

References

External links

 Sanborn fire insurance maps: 1894 1899 1905 1912

Cities in Wisconsin
Cities in Grant County, Wisconsin
County seats in Wisconsin
Populated places established in 1837
1837 establishments in Wisconsin Territory

Lancaster, Wisconsin


Dorothea Sally Eilers (or just Sally Eilers; December 11, 1908 – January 5, 1978) was an American actress. She was very popular in Hollywood during the 1930s. She appeared mostly in melodramatic and comedy movies. Toward the end of the 1930s, she became less popular. Her last appearance in a movie was in 1950.

In her final years, Eilers had poor health. She was born in New York City. She died after having a heart attack at age sixty-nine in Los Angeles.

American movie actors
Actors from New York (state)
1908 births
1978 deaths

Sally Eilers


FIFA Soccer 95 is a 1994 football simulation video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released for the Sega Megadrive in November 1994. It is a sequel to FIFA International Soccer and the second game in the FIFA series. It is the only FIFA title to not be released on PC.

Gameplay
FIFA Soccer 95 is a video game that simulates football. The game utilizes an isometric viewpoint. The player controls one of the eleven footballers on their team, with the ability to switch to control another footballer. The game allows up to four players at the same time, each controlling a different footballer. The players can choose to control a footballer on the same team or on opposing teams. The remaining footballers are controlled by the computer.

Club sides are included for the first time in the series, with clubs from six leagues across Europe; the Premier League in England, Ligue 1 in France, the Bundesliga in Germany, Serie A in Italy, the Eredivisie in the Netherlands and La Liga in Spain. Several clubs from the Campeonato Brasileiro leagues in Brazil and clubs named for cities in the American Professional Soccer League in the US are also included. The licenses did not cover the player names, so fictional names are used instead.

Other new features compared to the previous game include the implementation of the penalty shootout to resolve games that finish in a draw after extra time (FIFA International Soccer had instead used next-goal-wins at the end of extra time).

Reception
In their review, Mega Machines Sega noted the improvements made to three elements of the gameplay that they considered weak points of the previous game – passing, set-pieces and goalkeeping. Also drawing praise was that the developers had "improved that which didn't seem to need improving". They concluded by describing it as an "excellent update" and the best football game available.

GamePro was similarly approving; though they were disappointed that there was less chanting and singing than the previous game, they rated FIFA '95 to be "the best soccer game yet." They particularly praised the removal of one-touch passing, saying this makes the game play more realistically, and the retention of most of the elements that made the previous game great.

References

External links
FIFA Coins & FUT Coins

1994 video games
95
Electronic Arts games
EA Sports games
Association football video games
Sega Genesis games
Sega Genesis-only games
Video games scored by Jeff van Dyck
Video games developed in Canada
Video games set in 1994
Video games set in 1995
Video games set in Brazil
Sports video games set in the United States
Video games set in the Netherlands
Sports video games set in Germany
Sports video games set in Italy
Video games set in England
Video games set in Spain
Sports video games set in France

FIFA Soccer 95


Serbian is a South Slavic language spoken by Serbs, primarily in Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and some parts of neighboring countries. It is also spoken by many Serbs in diaspora, mainly in Central European countries, North America and Australia. The language is European and south Slavic. This language got a complete makeover in the mid-1800s by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić; when it was modernized from the times of Middle Ages, when "Old Serbian" was still spoken. Total number of speakers worldwide today is estimated to be more than 12 million.

References

Serbian language


The Concert in Central Park is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, released on February 16, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records. It was recorded on September 19, 1981, at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, where the pair performed in front of 500,000 people. A film of the event was shown on TV and released on video. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The concert and album marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

The concept of a benefit concert in Central Park had been proposed by Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis and promoter Ron Delsener. Television channel HBO agreed to carry the concert, and they worked with Delsener to decide on Simon and Garfunkel as the appropriate act for this event. Besides hits from their years as a duo, their 21-song set list included material from their solo careers, and covers. Amongst them were "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer" and Simon's "Late in the Evening", with the show concluding with a reprise of the latter. Ongoing personal tensions between the duo led them to decide against a permanent reunion, despite the success of the concert and a subsequent world tour.

The album and film were released the year after the concert. Simon and Garfunkel's performance was praised by music critics and the album was commercially successful, peaking No. 6 on the Billboard 200 album charts and being certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The video recordings were initially broadcast on HBO and were subsequently made available on Laserdisc, CED, VHS and DVD. A single was released of Simon and Garfunkel's live performance of The Everly Brothers's song "Wake Up Little Susie". It reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982 and is the duo's last Top 40 hit.

Idea and arrangement

A concert for the park

New York City's Central Park, an oasis that functions as the city's "green lung", was in a state of deterioration in the mid-1970s. Though Central Park had been designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, at the start of the 1980s, the city lacked the financial resources to spend an estimated US$3,000,000 to restore or even to maintain the park. The nonprofit Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980, and began a successful campaign to raise renovation funds.

In the early 1980s, Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis, responsible for New York City's green areas, and Ron Delsener, one of the city's most influential concert promoters, developed the idea of helping Central Park financially with a free open-air concert, under the legal guidance of Bob Donnelly. The city would use profits from merchandising, television, and video rights to renovate the park. Earlier park performances by Elton John and James Taylor showed that this concept could be a success. Davis authorized the project, and Delsener entered discussions with cable TV channel HBO to decide who would perform.

They decided on Simon & Garfunkel, a duo that had formed in New York City in the 1960s and had been one of the most successful folk rock groups through the late 60s/early 70s. Simon & Garfunkel had broken up at the height of their popularity and shortly after the release of their fifth studio album, Bridge over Troubled Water, which is deemed to be their artistic peak and which topped the 1970 Billboard charts for ten weeks; they had grown apart artistically and did not get along well with each other. In the following ten years, both continued musical careers as solo artists and worked together only sporadically on one-off projects. Garfunkel made brief guest appearances at Simon's concerts, which were always successful.

Delsener presented the plan to Paul Simon in the summer of 1981. Simon was enthusiastic about the idea, but questioned whether it could be financially successful, especially given the poor audience attendance of his last project, the autobiographical movie One-Trick Pony. Simon's confidence had declined and he had sought treatment for depression. He questioned whether he and Art Garfunkel could work together, but contacted Garfunkel, who was vacationing in Switzerland. Garfunkel was excited about the idea and immediately returned to the US.

From the promoter's viewpoint, Simon and Garfunkel were ideal choices. Not only were they likely to draw a large crowd to the concert, they also had roots in the city both had grown up and gone to school in Forest Hills, Queens. Music critic Stephen Holden pointed out that, unlike artists who had left in pursuit of lifestyles offered by other locales, the two had always been a part of New York City. Both gained inspiration from the cityscape and the cultural variety of New York, and they spoke of these influences in their songs.

Planning and rehearsals
Planning and rehearsals for the concert took about three weeks in a Manhattan theater. The rehearsals were characterized by past tensions that resurfaced between the performers under the intense time pressure. Paul Simon later said: "Well, the rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time." An early concept was for each singer to give a solo performance, with Simon allotted the greater amount of time, and to conclude with the duo performing their joint works. This idea was rejected because, according to Garfunkel, "It didn't seem right to either of us that Paul should be the opening act for Simon & Garfunkel, and for him to follow Simon & Garfunkel didn't make show-business sense".

The two decided to perform most of the show together, with room for each to showcase some solo material. Simon, who had resumed songwriting after a hiatus, interrupted a series of studio recording sessions for the concert preparations. He used the live show as an opportunity to test one of his new songs in front of an audience. Garfunkel also contributed a new song, "A Heart in New York", from his soon-to-be released album Scissors Cut.

The two differed on the presentation of the concert. Garfunkel wanted to recreate the duo's mid-1960s live performances, using only their voices backed by Simon's acoustic guitar. Simon felt that this was impossible, as an injury had rendered him incapable of playing guitar for the full length of a concert, and his newer material was typically arranged for larger ensembles that often included horns and amplified instruments such as electric piano and electric guitar. Garfunkel initially agreed to hire a second guitarist, but later rejected the idea. A group of eleven musicians was assembled for the concert, most of whom were experienced studio musicians and had played on albums involving Simon or Garfunkel and these included Billy Joel's guitarist David Brown, Muscle Shoals guitarist Pete Carr, Anthony Jackson (bass guitar), Rob Mounsey (synthesizer), John Eckert and John Gatchell (trumpets), Dave Tofani and Gerry Niewood (saxophones), Steve Gadd and Grady Tate (drums, percussion), and Richard Tee (piano).

The musical arrangements for the concert were written by Paul Simon and David Matthews. Some songs differed significantly from their original versions; for example, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" featured more prominent Latin elements and included a salsa break, while the folk rock "Kodachrome" was set as a harder rock song and played together with the Chuck Berry single "Maybellene" as a medley.

Garfunkel had difficulties in the rehearsals. Both men easily recalled their songs from the 1960s, but Garfunkel had to learn the harmonies and arrangements for Simon's solo songs, as modified for the reunion concert. He was also uncomfortable that Simon had rewritten some of the lyrics for their old songs. Despite the need to adapt to Simon and his style, Garfunkel enjoyed some of the songs, and was glad to perform Simon's "American Tune".

News reports and the Michael Doret-designed posters of the Central Park show named the musicians individually and did not bill them as "Simon & Garfunkel"; that the two singers would perform together on stage in a reunion was not officially announced until only a week before the concert when it was published in New York newspapers. The two stated in interviews that further collaboration was not planned.

Concert

The concert took place on Saturday, September 19, 1981, on the Great Lawn, the central open space of Central Park. The first spectators, many carrying chairs or picnic blankets, arrived at daybreak to secure a good spot. The Parks Department originally expected about 300,000 attendees. Although rain fell throughout the day and continued until the start of the concert, an estimated 500,000 audience members made this the seventh-largest concert attendance in United States history.

The stage backdrop depicted an urban rooftop with water tank and air outlet, symbolic of New York's skyline. At twilight, the backing band went onstage, followed by New York's mayor, Ed Koch, who announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Simon and Garfunkel!" The duo entered through a side stage door, took center stage amid audience applause, shook hands, and began the concert with their 1968 hit "Mrs. Robinson".

After the second song, "Homeward Bound", Simon delivered a short speech which began, "Well, it's great to do a neighborhood concert." He then thanked the police, the fire department, the park administration and finally Ed Koch. Some of the audience booed at the mention of Koch but applauded as Simon continued by tongue-in-cheek thanking "the guys who are selling loose joints [for] giving the city half of their income tonight."

Simon & Garfunkel played twenty-one songs in total: ten originally recorded by the duo, eight from Simon's solo career, one recorded by Garfunkel, a cover of The Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie", and the medley version of "Maybellene". Each performer sang three songs alone, including one new song apiece. Garfunkel sang the Simon & Garfunkel songs "Bridge over Troubled Water" and "April Come She Will", as well as "A Heart in New York", a song written by Gallagher and Lyle that appeared on his album Scissors Cut, which had been released the previous month. Simon's solo performances were the title song of his 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years, the number-one single "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", and the unreleased "The Late Great Johnny Ace", which would appear on his 1983 album Hearts and Bones.

"The Late Great Johnny Ace" was interrupted when an audience member ran to the stage and shouted at Simon: "I need to talk to you!" The man was carried away by security, and Simon finished the song. The incident provoked associations to the song's lyrics, in which Simon speaks of the deaths of Johnny Ace, John F. Kennedy, and John Lennon. Lennon's murder by an obsessed fan had taken place less than a year previously, not far from the concert site. Despite this association, Simon said that he was not afraid of any on-stage incidents. In May 1982 as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, he explained that while it is not unusual for fans to jump onto the stage with flowers, this action was new to him, but also felt that the man simply appeared intoxicated. His greater concern was that the song's premiere was ruined.

Lyrics referring to the New York area produced audience applause, such as Garfunkel's ode to his home city, "A Heart in New York", which describes from a New Yorker's point of view the first glimpse of the city when returning there by air:

New York, lookin' down on Central Park, where they say you should not wander after dark

Applause broke out during "The Sound of Silence", when the narrative voice refers to a large crowd of people in the dark:

And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people maybe more

After the 17th song, "The Boxer", which contained an additional stanza not included in the album version, Simon & Garfunkel thanked the audience and left the stage, but returned to deliver an encore of three songs – "Old Friends / Bookends Theme", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", and "The Sound of Silence". Simon then said that their planned use of pyrotechnics had been disallowed, and told the crowd, "Let's have our own fireworks!" Many spectators sparked lighters. The duo then introduced the members of the backing band and gave a final encore, a reprise of "Late in the Evening".

Set list
All songs composed by Paul Simon unless otherwise noted.

 "Mrs. Robinson"
 "Homeward Bound"
 "America"
 "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"
 "Scarborough Fair" (Traditional, arr. by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel)
 "April Come She Will"
 "Wake Up Little Susie" (The Everly Brothers (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant))
 "Still Crazy After All These Years"
 "American Tune"
 "Late in the Evening"

 "Slip Slidin' Away"
 "A Heart in New York" (Benny Gallagher, Graham Lyle)
 "The Late Great Johnny Ace"
 "Kodachrome/Maybellene" (Simon/Chuck Berry (Chuck Berry, Russ Fratto, Alan Freed))
 "Bridge over Troubled Water"
 "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"
 "The Boxer"
Encore
 "Old Friends / Bookends Theme"
 "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"
 "The Sound of Silence"
Encore
 "Late in the Evening" (Reprise)

Personnel
Paul Simon – vocals, guitar
Art Garfunkel – vocals
Pete Carr, David Brown – guitar
Anthony Jackson – bass guitar
Richard Tee – keyboards
Steve Gadd, Grady Tate – drums
Rob Mounsey – synthesizer
John Gatchell, John Eckert – trumpet
Dave Tofani, Gerry Niewood – saxophone

Album release
A recording of the concert was released five months later, on February 16, 1982. The audio tracks were processed in postproduction, but Rolling Stone magazine wrote that they were not completely polished, and preserved the roar and the fuzziness of live rock music heard through a loudspeaker. Two songs were not included on the album: the interrupted "Late Great Johnny Ace", and the encore reprise of "Late in the Evening". The album was an international success. It peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified 2×Multi-Platinum with sales of over 2 million copies in US.

The album sold more than 1,270,000 copies in France, where it was certified Diamond. It was also successful in seven other countries, including New Zealand. The album was released as a double LP and as a single Compact Cassette. In 1988 it was issued as a single CD; various reissues in different formats have occurred, including a 2-CD release containing the two missing songs from the original album.
The Concert was recorded by Roy Halee on the Record Plant NY Black Truck with David Hewitt Director, assisted by Phil Gitomer, Steve Barash and John Mathias.

Track listing
The song "The Late Great Johnny Ace" and the reprise of "Late in the Evening" were not included in the original release of the album but are on the DVD.

Video release
The concert was filmed for television broadcast and the home video market. It was produced by James Signorelli, and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, a specialist in music documentaries who had worked on The Beatles' film Let It Be, and executive produced by Lorne Michaels, who had recently departed the NBC-TV comedy/variety series Saturday Night Live. Simon himself financed the US$750,000 cost of the staging and the video recording. It is unknown how much HBO paid for the television and video rights of the recording - $1 million according to some sources, over $3 million according to others. The film includes the two songs that had not appeared on the album, and at 87 minutes, runs 12 minutes longer.

HBO televised the film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park, on February 21, 1982, five days after the album was released. The film was later released for sale in VHS, CED Videodisc, LaserDisc, and DVD formats. It sold more than 50,000 copies in the US, where it earned Gold certification for a music longform video. It was broadcast on PBS on August 22, 1988, and again on August 8, 2015.

Critical reception

The concert and recordings were positively received by music critics. Stephen Holden praised the performance in The New York Times the day after the concert; he subsequently praised the live album in Rolling Stone magazine. He wrote that Simon and Garfunkel were successful in reviving their sound, that the backing band was "one of the finest groups of musicians ever to play together at a New York rock concert", and the rearrangements of Simon's solo material were improvements over the originals. Despite the risks in performing so many acoustic ballads in an open-air concert on a cool night, the songs "were beautifully articulated, in near-perfect harmony."

An October 1981 review in Rolling Stone called the concert "one of the finest performances of [1981]", one that "vividly recaptured another time, an era when well-crafted, melodic pop bore meanings that stretched beyond the musical sphere and into the realms of culture and politics." This reviewer noted that Garfunkel's voice was noticeably restrained in high passages, though still harmonious, and that the evening's only weak spot was the "Kodachrome"/"Maybellene" medley, because neither singer could raise the right level of emotion for the rock songs.

A Billboard reviewer wrote in March 1982, "This 19 song, two record set gloriously recaptures the past with sterling renditions of most of the duo's classics as well as a few of Simon's solo compositions filled out by Garfunkel's harmony." However, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice dismissed the album as "a corporate boondoggle—a classy way for Warner Bros. artist Simon to rerecord, rerelease, and resell the catalogue CBS is sitting on." He felt Simon had been better off without Garfunkel since 1971 and, regarding the duo's interpretations of solo material and the band-format's reinterpretation of old material, "live doubles are live doubles, nostalgia is nostalgia, wimps are wimps, and who needs any of 'em?"

Aftermath
The duo was disappointed with their performance, particularly Garfunkel, who felt that he sang poorly. Simon said that he did not immediately realize the magnitude of the event: "I didn't get what had happened – how big it was – until I went home, turned on the television and saw it on all the news ... and later that night on the front pages of all the newspapers. Then I got it."

In May 1982, Simon & Garfunkel went on a world tour with legs in Japan, Europe, Oceania, and North America. The European leg of their tour began on May 28, 1982, at the Stadion am Bieberer Berg in Offenbach am Main. This was their first performance in Germany, and had an attendance of around 40,000 spectators.

When they were not on the road, the duo went into the studio to work on what was to be a reunion Simon & Garfunkel album, tentatively entitled Think Too Much, with Garfunkel adding harmony vocals to new songs for which Simon had already laid down some backing tracks. They set a release date of spring 1983 to coincide with their planned North American tour, but after increasingly acrimonious delays and disagreements, Simon told Warner Brothers he could no longer work with Garfunkel and that the project as a collaborative album was cancelled. Garfunkel dropped out of the project, which then became Simon's November 1983 solo album Hearts and Bones.

Several years would pass before Simon & Garfunkel worked together again. Their next joint public appearance was in 1990, when they performed for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Simon gave another free concert in Central Park on August 15, 1991, he rejected Garfunkel's offer to participate. However, they agreed to perform together in 1993 for 21 sold-out concerts in New York, with half of the show being Paul Simon solo with a band and the other half Simon & Garfunkel, opening the door to future reunion tours.

Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park raised around $51,000 for Central Park. Benefit concerts by other musicians followed, and helped to raise awareness of the park's state. With donations from the general public and with the help of wealthy benefactors, the park was restored during the 1980s and gained recognition as a major tourist attraction. As of 2011, donations still make up the majority of the park's budget. Today concerts and other benefits are regularly held on the Great Lawn.

Chart performance

Album

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

References

External links

About the live album

About the film editing

1982 live albums
1982 video albums
Albums produced by Paul Simon
Albums produced by Phil Ramone
Albums produced by Roy Halee
Albums recorded at Central Park
Concerts in the United States
Films directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Free festivals
Live video albums
Simon & Garfunkel live albums
Warner Records live albums

The Concert in Central Park