La La Land is a 2016 American romantic musical film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress, respectively, who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons appear in supporting roles.

Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together. After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle penned the script but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. After the success of his film Whiplash (2014), the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment. Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally slated to star, but after both dropped out, Gosling and Stone were cast. Filming took place in Los Angeles between August and September 2015, with the film's score composed by Hurwitz and the dance choreography by Mandy Moore.

La La Land had its premiere at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2016, and was released in the United States on December 9, by Lionsgate. The film was a commercial success, grossing $448 million worldwide on a budget of $30 million, and received widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise given to Chazelle's screenplay and direction, the performances of Gosling and Stone, the score, musical numbers, cinematography, and production design. It went on to receive numerous accolades, including winning a record seven awards at the 74th Golden Globe Awards and received eleven nominations at the 70th British Academy Film Awards, winning five, including Best Film. The film also received a record-tying fourteen nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, winning in six categories including Best Director and Best Actress (Stone). In the former category, Chazelle became the youngest winner at age 32. It has since been considered to be one of the best films of the 2010s, the 21st century and of all time.

A stage musical adaptation is currently in the works.

Plot

While stuck in Los Angeles traffic, Sebastian "Seb" Wilder, a jazz pianist, has a moment of road rage directed at aspiring actress Mia Dolan. After a hard day at work, Mia's subsequent audition goes awry when the casting director takes a phone call during an emotional scene. That night, her roommates take her to a lavish party in the Hollywood Hills, promising her that someone in the crowd could jump-start her career. After her car is towed, she walks home in disappointment.

During a gig at a restaurant, Seb slips into jazz improvisation, despite the owner's warning to only play traditional Christmas pieces. Mia overhears him playing as she passes by. Moved, she enters the restaurant and observes Seb being fired for his disobedience. As he storms out, Mia attempts to compliment him, but he brushes her off. Months later, she runs into Seb at a party where he plays in a 1980s pop cover band. After the gig, they walk to their cars and lament wasting a lovely night together despite their clear chemistry.

Seb arrives at Mia's workplace, and she shows him around the Warner Bros. backlot, where she works as a barista, while expressing her passion for acting. He takes her to a jazz club, describing his passion for jazz and his desire to open his own club. Seb invites Mia to a screening of Rebel Without a Cause and she accepts, forgetting a date with her boyfriend Greg. Bored with the latter date, she goes to the theater and finds Seb as the film begins. When the screening is interrupted due to a projector malfunction, Seb and Mia spend the rest of the evening together with a romantic visit to the Griffith Observatory.

After more failed auditions, Mia decides, with Seb's encouragement, to write a one-woman play. He begins to perform regularly at a jazz club, and they eventually move in together. Seb's former bandmate Keith invites him to be the keyboardist in his new jazz fusion band, which will give him a steady income. Although dismayed by the band's pop style, Seb signs on because of overhearing Mia trying to convince her mother that he is working on his career. The band finds success, but Mia knows the band's music is not the type of music Seb wants to perform.

During the band's first tour, Seb and Mia have an argument; she accuses him of abandoning his dreams, while he claims that she liked him more when he was unsuccessful because it made her look better. Two weeks later, Seb misses Mia's play due to a photoshoot he had forgotten about. The play does not go as successfully as hoped; few people attend, and Mia overhears dismissive comments about her performance. Unable to forgive him for missing her play and their previous argument, Mia breaks up with Seb and moves back to her hometown of Boulder City, Nevada.

Seb receives a phone call from a prominent casting director who attended Mia's play and invites her to audition for an upcoming film. He drives to Boulder City and persuades her to attend which she reluctantly does. During the audition, Mia is asked to tell a story. In response, she sings about how her aunt, a former stage actress who eventually died from alcoholism, inspired her to chase her dreams. Seb, confident the audition was a success, encourages her to devote herself to acting.

Five years later, Mia is a famous actress and married to a different man, with whom she has a daughter. One night, the couple stumble upon a jazz bar. Recognizing the logo she had once designed, Mia realizes that Seb has opened his own jazz club. When he notices Mia in the crowd, Seb begins to play their love theme on the piano. A dream sequence unfolds in which the two imagine what might have been had their relationship thrived along with their careers. Seb and Mia acknowledge each other with a silent exchange of smiles before she leaves.

Cast

Production

Pre-production

As a drummer, Chazelle has a predilection for musical films. He wrote the screenplay for La La Land in 2010, when the film industry seemed out of reach for him. His idea was "to take the old musical but ground it in real life where things don't always exactly work out," and to salute creative people who move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams. He conceived the film when he was a student at Harvard University with his classmate Justin Hurwitz. The two explored the concept in their senior thesis through a low-budget musical about a Boston jazz musician, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Chazelle was moved by the tradition of 1920s city-symphony films, such as Manhatta (1921) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929), that paid tribute to cities. After graduating, both moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and continued writing the script, but made a few modifications, such as altering the location to Los Angeles instead of Boston.

Rather than trying to match L.A. to the charms of Paris or San Francisco, he focused on the qualities that make the city distinctive: the traffic, the sprawl, and the skylines. The style and tone of the film were inspired by Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, especially the latter, which was more dance and jazz-oriented. The film also makes visual allusions to Hollywood classics such as Broadway Melody of 1940, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. About An American in Paris, Chazelle commented: "That's a movie that we just pillaged.  It's an awesome example of how daring some of those old musicals really were." It shares some character development and themes with Chazelle's previous musical work, Whiplash; Chazelle said:
 "They're both about the struggle of being an artist and reconciling your dreams with the need to be human. La La Land is just much less angry about it."

He said that both films reflect his own experiences as a filmmaker working his way up the Hollywood ladder. La La Land in particular is inspired by his experience of moving from the East Coast with preconceived notions of what L.A. would be like, "that it was all just strip malls and freeways".

Chazelle was unable to produce the film for years as no studio was willing to finance an original contemporary musical with no familiar songs. It is also a jazz musical, which The Hollywood Reporter called an "extinct genre". He believed that since he and Hurwitz were unknown at that time, it might have made financiers dubious about the project's potential. Gosling's character Sebastian holds a view of the jazz of the past being superior. According to an article by Anthony Carew, Chazelle wrote this character trait as a reflection of "[his] own relationship with the past and with jazz, too".   Chazelle found producers through friends who introduced him to Fred Berger and Jordan Horowitz. With the two producers on board, the script went to Focus Features at a budget of around $1 million. The studio demanded alterations: the male lead was asked to be changed from a jazz pianist to a rock musician, the complicated opening number had to be altered, and the story's bittersweet ending needed to be dropped. Chazelle scrapped the project and moved on.

Chazelle later wrote Whiplash, which was an easier concept to sell and a less risky investment. After Whiplash was well received by critics upon its premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in January, Chazelle continued his efforts to bring La La Land to the big screen. A year later, when Whiplash earned five Oscar nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and grossed nearly $50 million worldwide off a $3.3 million production budget, Chazelle and his project began to attract attention from studios.

Five years after Chazelle wrote the script, Summit Entertainment and Black Label Media, along with producer Marc Platt, agreed to invest in La La Land and distribute it. They had been impressed by the critical and commercial success of Whiplash. Lionsgate's Patrick Wachsberger, who previously had worked on the Step Up franchise, pushed Chazelle to increase the film's budget since he felt high-quality musicals could not be made cheaply.

Casting
Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally slated to star in the leading roles. Watson dropped out due to her commitments to Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast remake (2017), while Teller exited via long contract negotiations. Coincidentally, Gosling turned down the Beast role in Beauty and the Beast in favor of La La Land. Chazelle subsequently decided to make his characters somewhat older, with experience in struggling to make their dreams, rather than younger newcomers just arriving in Los Angeles.

Emma Stone plays Mia, an aspiring actress in Los Angeles. Stone has loved musicals since she saw Les Misérables when she was eight years old. She said "bursting into song has always been a real dream of mine", and her favorite film is the 1931 Charlie Chaplin romantic comedy City Lights. She studied pom dancing as a child, with a year of ballet. She moved to Hollywood with her mother at age fifteen to pursue a career, and struggled constantly to get an audition during her first year. When she did, she often was turned away after singing or saying just one line. Stone drew from her own experiences for her character of Mia, and some were added into the film.

She met Chazelle in 2014 while she was making her Broadway debut in Cabaret. Chazelle and Hurwitz saw her perform on a night when the actress had a cold. She met with Chazelle at Brooklyn Diner in New York City, where the director outlined his vision for the planned film. Stone gained confidence from performing in Cabaret to handle the demands of the film. In preparation for her role, Stone watched some of the musical movies that inspired Chazelle, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers collaborations. Stone accepted the offer because Chazelle was so passionate about the project.

Ryan Gosling plays Sebastian, a jazz pianist. Like Stone, Gosling drew from his own experiences as an aspiring artist. One incident was used for Mia. Gosling was performing a crying scene in an audition and the casting director took a phone call during it, talking about her lunch plans while he was emoting. Chazelle met with Gosling when he was about to begin filming for The Big Short.

Chazelle cast Gosling and Stone immediately after Summit bought the film. He stated that the duo "feel like the closest thing that we have right now to an old Hollywood couple" as akin to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and Myrna Loy and William Powell. The film marked the third collaboration between Gosling and Stone, following Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and Gangster Squad (2013). Chazelle asked the two about their audition disasters when they were both trying to make it. Both learned to sing and dance for the film's six original tunes.

The rest of the cast – J. K. Simmons, Sonoya Mizuno, Jessica Rothe, Callie Hernandez, Finn Wittrock, Rosemarie DeWitt, John Legend, Jason Fuchs, Meagen Fay – were announced between July and August 2015.

The film was choreographed by Mandy Moore. Rehearsals took place at a production office in Atwater Village, Los Angeles over the span of three to four months, beginning in May 2015. Gosling practiced piano in one room, Stone worked with Moore in another, and costume designer Mary Zophres had her own corner of the complex. Gosling, with no previous experience, had to learn how to play the piano; no hand models were used. Moore emphasized working on emotion rather than technique, which Stone said was key when they filmed the Prius car scene. To help his cast and crew get their creative mode flowing, Chazelle held screenings on the soundstages every Friday night of classical films that had inspired him for the film, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Singin' in the Rain, Top Hat, and Boogie Nights.

Filming

From the beginning, Chazelle wanted the film's musical numbers to be filmed "head to toe" and performed in a single take, like those of the 1930s works of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He also wanted the film to emulate the widescreen, CinemaScope look of 1950s musicals such as It's Always Fair Weather. Consequently, the movie was shot on celluloid 4-perf Super 35mm film (not digitally) with Panavision anamorphic lenses in CinemaScope's 2.55:1 aspect ratio, but not in true CinemaScope as that technology is no longer available.

Chazelle wanted Los Angeles to be the primary setting for his film, commenting that "there is something very poetic about the city I think, about a city that is built by people with these unrealistic dreams and people who kind of just put it all on the line for that." Principal photography on the film officially began in the city on August 10, 2015, and filming took place in more than 60 locations both in and near Los Angeles, including the Angels Flight trolley in downtown, houses in the Hollywood Hills, the Colorado Street Bridge, the Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena, the Warner Bros. studio lot, the Grand Central Market, Hermosa Beach's Lighthouse Café, Griffith Observatory, Griffith Park, Chateau Marmont, the Watts Towers, and Long Beach, with many scenes shot in one take. It took 40 days to complete shooting, finishing in mid-September 2015.

The opening pre-credits sequence was the first to be shot, and was filmed on a closed-off portion of two carpool direct connector ramps of the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange, connecting the I-105 Carpool Lane to the I-110 Express Lanes, leading to Downtown Los Angeles. It was filmed in a span of two days, and required more than 100 dancers. For this particular scene, Chazelle wanted to give a sense of how vast the city is. The scene was originally planned for a stretch of ground-level highway, until Chazelle decided to shoot it in the 105–110 interchange, which arcs  in the air. Production designer David Wasco said, "I thought somebody was going to fall off and get killed." Not every portion of the highway was blocked. Chazelle compared the scene to the yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Chazelle scouted for "old L.A." locations that were in ruins, or were perhaps razed. One such example was the use of the Angels Flight trolley, built in 1901. The funicular had been closed in 2013 after a derailment. Attempts were made to repair and re-open the railway, but to no avail. However, the production team was able to secure permission to use it for a day. Chazelle and his crew then arranged to have it run for shooting (it was re-opened to the public in 2017). Mia works at a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. studio lot; Chazelle considered studio lots to be "monuments" of Hollywood. Production designer Wasco created numerous fake old film posters. Chazelle occasionally created names for them, deciding to use the title of his first feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) for one poster, which reimagines it as a 1930s musical.

The six-minute-long Prius car scene had to be completed during the brief "magic hour" moment at sunset. It took eight takes and two days to shoot it. When Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone finally nailed it, "everybody just exploded," Stone said. Since Gosling and Stone were not primarily dancers, the two made a number of mistakes, especially during long uninterrupted single-take musical numbers. However, Chazelle was very sympathetic towards them, understanding their lack of experience and not minding their errors. While shooting Sebastian and Mia's first dance together, Stone stumbled over the back of a bench, but picked right up and kept on going with the scene.

Chazelle said that the romantic dinner that Sebastian prepared for Mia was "one of the scenes that I think I wrote and rewrote and rewrote more than any other in the script". Gosling and Stone also helped create the dialogue of the scene to get it to be one of the more realistic scenes in a film filled with fantasy and fantastical elements.

Chazelle spent nearly a year editing the film with editor Tom Cross, as the two were primarily concerned with getting the tone right.

Soundtrack

The songs and score for La La Land were composed and orchestrated by Justin Hurwitz, Chazelle's Harvard University classmate, who also worked on his two prior films. The lyrics were written by Pasek and Paul, except for "Start a Fire", which was written by John Legend, Hurwitz, Marius de Vries and Angelique Cinelu. A soundtrack album was released on December 9, 2016, by Interscope Records, featuring selections from Hurwitz's score and songs performed by the cast.

The film's opening number, "Another Day of Sun", shot as a single tracking shot on an L.A. freeway, received praise for its choreography. The songs "City of Stars" and "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" received numerous awards.

Release
La La Land had its world premiere as the Venice Film Festival's opening night film on August 31, 2016. The film also screened at the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, beginning September 12, 2016, the BFI London Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival in late October 2016, the Virginia Film Festival, held at the University of Virginia on November 6, 2016, and the AFI Fest on November 15, 2016.

The film was originally set for a July 15, 2016, release; however, in March 2016, it was announced the film would be given a limited release starting December 2, 2016, before expanding on December 16, 2016. Chazelle stated that the change was because he felt that the release date was not right for the context of the film, and because he wanted to have a slow rollout beginning with the early fall film festivals. The limited release was later moved back a week to December 9, 2016, with the wide release still being planned for December 16, 2016. Lionsgate opened the film in five locations on December 9, 2016, and expanded it to about 200 theaters on December 16, 2016, before going nationwide on December 25, 2016. The film went fully wide on January 6, 2017, with a release into select IMAX theaters a week later.

La La Land was released in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2017. The film was released in the Netherlands on December 22, 2016, and in Australia on December 26, with the rest of the territories planned for a release from mid-January 2017.

Home media
Lionsgate released La La Land on Digital HD on April 11, 2017, and Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray and DVD on April 25, 2017.

Reception

Box office
La La Land grossed $151.1 million in the United States and Canada and $320.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $472 million, against a production budget of $30 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $68.25 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it one of the top 20 most profitable releases of 2016. This would be Ryan Gosling's highest-grossing film until it was displaced by Barbie in 2023.

La La Land began its theatrical release with a limited release in five theaters in Los Angeles and New York City on December 9. It made $881,107 in its opening weekend, giving the film a per-theater average of $176,221, the best average of the year. In its second week of limited release, the film expanded to 200 theaters and grossed $4.1 million, finishing seventh at the box office. It was an increase of 366% from the previous week and good for a per-theater of $20,510. The following week, the film had its wide expansion to 734 theaters, grossing $5.8 million for the weekend (including $4 million on Christmas Day and $9.2 million over the four days), and finishing eighth at the box office. On January 6, 2017, the weekend of the Golden Globes, the film expanded to 1,515 theaters and grossed $10 million over the weekend, finishing fifth at the box office. In its sixth week of release, the film grossed $14.5 million (a total of $16.9 million over the four-day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day), finishing second at the box office behind Hidden Figures. After receiving its 14 Oscar nominations, the film expanded to 3,136 theaters on January 27, 2017 (an increase of 1,271 from the week before) and grossed $12.1 million (up 43% from its previous week's $8.4 million). During the weekend of February 24–26 (the weekend of the Academy Awards) the film grossed $4.6 million, exactly the same amount it grossed the previous weekend. The next week, following its six Oscar wins, the film grossed $3 million.

Critical response

La La Land received widespread critical acclaim, with praise going toward Chazelle's screenplay and direction, cinematography, music, the performances of Gosling and Stone and their chemistry. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 91% based on 470 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "La La Land breathes new life into a bygone genre with thrillingly assured direction, powerful performances, and an irresistible excess of heart." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 94 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It was the third- and sixth-highest scoring film released in 2016 on each respective site. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported audiences gave an 81% overall positive score and a 93% "definite recommend".

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave La La Land four stars out of four, describing it as "a hot miracle" and complimenting its musical numbers, particularly the opening scene. He went on to name it his favorite movie of the year. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune similarly lauded the opening sequence, in addition to highlighting Stone's performance, stating "she's reason enough to see La La Land." Despite being less enthusiastic about Gosling's dancing and the film's middle section, Phillips nevertheless gave the film four out of four stars, declaring it "the year's most seriously pleasurable entertainment". A.O. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, stating that it "succeeds both as a fizzy fantasy and a hard-headed fable, a romantic comedy and a showbiz melodrama, a work of sublime artifice and touching authenticity". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the film five out of five stars, describing it as "a sun-drenched musical masterpiece." Tom Charity of Sight & Sound stated, "Chazelle has crafted that rare thing, a genuinely romantic comedy, and as well, a rhapsody in blue, red, yellow and green." Writing for The Boston Globe, Ty Burr summarized the effectiveness of the film to relate to audiences stating: "...the movie traffics in the bittersweet happiness of treasuring things that are vanishing, like the unrealized future imagined in the climactic dance number, or those inky, star-filled dance floors that go on forever in old movies, or Hollywood musicals themselves. Or jazz: Sebastian has an early moment at a nightclub where he passionately sticks up for the music he loves. 'It's dying on the vine,' he says. 'And the world says 'Let it die. It had its time.' Well, not on my watch.' In that scene, he speaks for the director. By the end of 'La La Land,' he's speaking for all of us."

La La Land's competition for awards and critical attention with the African-American film Moonlight shortly after the election of Donald Trump sharpened the attention on questions of racial sensitivity and unexamined white privilege in the characters of film. While accolades from audiences and critics grew, the film received backlash due to what some considered a disproportional amount of praise. Saturday Night Live lampooned the fervor over the film with a sketch about a man arrested for thinking it was "decent... but also boring." The film was criticized by some for its treatment of race and jazz. Kelly Lawler of USA Today noted that Gosling's character has been referred to as a "white savior" by some critics, due to "his quest (and eventual success) to save the traditionally black musical genre from extinction, seemingly the only person who can accomplish such a goal." The sentiment was also expressed by Ruby Lott-Lavigna of Wired, Anna Silman of New York, and Ira Madison III of MTV News. Rex Reed of the New York Observer also took aim at the film's intention to emulate the MGM musical classics, writing that "the old-fashioned screenplay, by the ambitious writer-director Damien Chazelle, reeks of mothballs", and that "the movie sags badly in the middle, like a worn-out mattress that needs new springs". The South China Morning Post remarked that aside from its racial treatment of jazz, much of the public criticism was towards the film being "a little dull", the two leads' singing and dancing being considered unexceptional, and the lack of nuance in Stone's character, with Gosling's occasionally seen as insufferable.

Legacy and cultural impact
Since its release, the film continues to receive acclaim and it is regarded as a modern classic and one of the best films of all time, mainly for being a story set in 21st century Hollywood stylized as a 1950s musical film and for its distinctive visual style. In 2021, Helena Trauger of The Beacon called it the best film of the 2010s, noting that it is "one of the most creative and well-executed films that every person should attempt to watch at least once." In 2019, CBC Radio included it on its list of "the greatest romantic movies of all time." In 2022, Time Out ranked it number 79 on its list of the "100 Best Films of the 21st Century," writing "Loaded with jazzy tracks and vintage dance moves, Chazelle's romantic romp – the winner of the Best Picture Oscar for about four seconds – is indebted to both Jacques Demy and MGM's legendary Freed Unit, but has a signature all of its own, stopping traffic in the first glorious sequence. A tonic for 2016's political unsightliness, the movie now feels ageless." In 2022, MovieWeb ranked it number 2 on its list of the "Best Movie Musicals of the 21st Century So Far" and in 2023 ranked it number 3 on its list of the "15 Greatest Movies About Jazz." In 2023, it ranked number 15 on Colliders list of the "30 Best Musicals of All Time," with Jeremy Urquhart writing "It's really, really simple, at its core, but also really, really effective. It works as a modern update/homage to classic Hollywood musicals that were popular in the 1950s without ever feeling derivative or mocking, and Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the lead roles both give great performances that are up there with the best of their respective careers." It also ranked number 8 on Parades list of the "67 Best Movie Musicals of All Time," with Samuel R. Murrian writing that the film is "many things, thusly its own creation: deftly blending a modern showbiz melodrama, a giddy throwback, a striking love story." Screen Rant also ranked it at number 10 on its list of the "The 35 Best Musicals of All Time," while IndieWire ranked it at number 12 on its list of "The 60 Best Movie Musicals of All Time," with Wilson Chapman writing that the film "wears its influences and the genre's history proudly on its sleeve" and that "Chazelle's story finds the exact right mix of romance and melancholy which makes great musicals really sing, and the numbers he stages - like the breathless highway traffic opener "Another Day in the Sun" or the toe-tapping "A Lovely Night" — are unforgettable. And Justin Hurwitz's score and songs, like the Oscar-winning "City of Stars," are some of the finest written for any movie this century."

Many elements of the film, including the visual style, use of colors, staging of the musical numbers and costume designs have been referenced numerous times in popular culture since its release. These include the entire opening segment of the 74th Golden Globe Awards, featuring parodies of "Another Day of Sun," "City of Stars" and the planetarium sequence with host Jimmy Fallon, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance, Sterling K. Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, Rami Malek, and Kit Harington participating, an independently-produced short film parody set in New York City titled NY NY Land, a skit on season 42 of Saturday Night Live where host Aziz Ansari plays a character who is interrogated over calling the film "overrated" because of its Oscar nominations, and a television commercial for the prescription Jardiance. The 2021 Disney animated short film, Us Again, was also said to have been influenced by the film. In the closing of The Simpsons episode "Haw-Haw Land" it is stated that the episode was supposed to be a parody of Moonlight rather than La La Land (itself parodying the mistake at the 89th Academy Awards.)

Accolades

Emma Stone won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

La La Land received eleven nominations at the 70th British Academy Film Awards, more than any other film of 2016. The film won in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Stone), Best Cinematography, and Best Film Music.

At the 74th Golden Globe Awards, La La Land received a leading seven nominations. The film won in all seven categories for which it was nominated, setting a record for the most Golden Globes won by a single film, namely Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Director, Best Actor – Comedy or Musical (for Gosling), Best Actress – Comedy or Musical (for Stone), Best Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song ("City of Stars") breaking the record One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest set for the most wins.

At the 89th Academy Awards, La La Land received a leading six awards, namely Best Director, Best Actress (for Stone), Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song ("City of Stars"), and Best Production Design. The film received a total of 14 nominations, tying the record for most nominations by a single film with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997). Its other nominations were Best Picture, Best Actor (for Gosling), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, a second nomination for Best Original Song ("Audition (The Fools Who Dream)"), Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.

Best Picture Oscar gaffe

During the Oscars ceremony, presenter Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced that La La Land had won Best Picture, reading from the card Warren Beatty opened, which was actually a duplicate of the Best Actress card for Emma Stone. After the cast and crew of La La Land took the stage, it took the show's producers more than two minutes (during which nearly three speeches were made) to fix the mistake. The actual winner was Moonlight.

German television prank
In March 2017, La La Land was at the center of a prank involving Goldene Kamera, an annual German film and television award. German comedians Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf arranged for a Ryan Gosling impersonator to be awarded the "Best International Film" prize for La La Land. Following the event, a speaker for television broadcaster ZDF asked for the trophy to be given back, stating that La La Land had won the prize and that the trophy would be given to the real Ryan Gosling. The incident, which became known as "GoslingGate", sparked criticism of the event's concept. Media critics argued that the "Best International Film" award had only been created in an effort to get Ryan Gosling on the show, with no regards for the film's quality. The incident played a major role in the cancellation of the Goldene Kamera in 2019. In 2018, Winterscheidt and Heufer-Umlauf were awarded the Grimme Award for their media criticism.

Stage adaptations
On February 7, 2023, it was announced that the film would be adapted into a Broadway musical by Platt and Lionsgate. Hurwitz, Pasek & Paul will return to write additional songs for the show. Bartlett Sher will direct from a book by Ayad Akhtar and Matthew Decker.

A theatrical spin-off, So Long Boulder City, was also created in 2017 by comedians Jimmy Fowlie and Jordan Black. The show was a full-length parody of Mia Dolan's one-woman show from the movie, and featured Fowlie in drag as Mia. So Long Boulder City debuted in Los Angeles before enjoying a six-month run at the SubCulture Off-Broadway theater in New York City.

See also
 List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest winners for Best Director

Notes

References

External links

 La La Land posters

 Official screenplay

2016 films
2010s dance films
2010s musical comedy-drama films
2016 romantic comedy-drama films
2010s romantic musical films
American dance films
American musical comedy films
American musical drama films
American romantic comedy-drama films
American romantic musical films
BAFTA winners (films)
Best Film BAFTA Award winners
Culture of Los Angeles
Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award winners
Best Musical or Comedy Picture Golden Globe winners
Black Label Media films
Films about actors
Films about Hollywood, Los Angeles
Films about mass media people
Films about pianos and pianists
Films directed by Damien Chazelle
Films featuring a Best Actress Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe winning performance
Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe winning performance
Films produced by Marc E. Platt
Films scored by Justin Hurwitz
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set in Nevada
Films set in studio lots
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films that won the Best Original Score Academy Award
Films that won the Best Original Song Academy Award
Films whose art director won the Best Art Direction Academy Award
Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Directing Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Direction BAFTA Award
Films whose director won the Best Director Golden Globe
IMAX films
Jazz films
Films with screenplays by Damien Chazelle
Summit Entertainment films
2016 drama films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
Postmodern films

La La Land


Jaime Teixidor (or Texidor) Dalmau (;  ) was born in Barcelona on April 16, 1884, and died in Barakaldo on February 23, 1957.  He was a Spanish musician, conductor, publisher, and composer.

After studying composition and conducting in Barcelona he joined the army in 1906 as a musician, performing on the saxophone.  He became the director of the 68th "Africa" Regiment band (Banda Música del regimiento 68) in the autonomous Spanish city of Melilla on the Moroccan coast.  He retired from military service in 1920 after thirteen years with this band.

In 1924, he directed the Banda de Música Primitiva in Carlet and also taught piano and violin.  He resided in Carlet only a couple of years and then moved to Manises, Valencia to lead the Banda del Círculo Instructivo Musical. In 1928 he won a competition to direct the municipal band of Barakaldo which he did until the end of his life.  One source indicates he gave up the direction of the band for political reasons during the Spanish Civil War. In Barakaldo he also set up a music publishing firm, which published his compositions and others.

His daughter, María Teresa Tico Texidor (1907–1993), was also a composer, including "Paz Eterna" and "Rosa Evangélica".

Compositions

He composed over 500 works.  These include marches and pasodobles as well as boleros, foxtrots, jotas, sambas, tangos, schottisches, and waltzes for band.

His best-known composition is Amparito Roca, written in 1925 and first performed in September 1925 at the Teatro del Siglo in Carlet.  The score was published in Madrid in 1925 by Música Moderna, and in Barcelona by Joaquín Mora in 1928.  Boosey & Hawkes published this in 1935 in an arrangement by Aubrey Winter (1870–1955).

Other compositions include:

El Arbuyo (jota basque dedicated to Sociedad Deportiva Arbuyo, a local football club)
Auxilium Christianorum (processional march)
Bar Cocodrilo
Boas Festas
Brisa de la Pampa (Pampa Breeze)
Caridad (Charity, fox trot)
Carmen Rieria (pasodoble)
Carrascosa (pasodoble)
Chumbalajero
De Andalucía a Aragón (pasodoble)
Diosa Venus (mazurka)
Domus Aurea (processional march)
Elocuencias Tango
El Jaranes Vals Jota
En Vanguardia (pasodoble)
Fiesta en la Caleta (pasodoble)
Gloria al Trabajo (Glory to Labor, pasodoble)
Una Jornada Militar (descriptive piece)
Lazos de Amistad (pasodoble)
Luz Divina (Divine Light, funeral march)
Mano Generosa (bolero)
María (schottische)
María Auxiliadora (processional march)
El Moncayesa Jota
Moriles Carbonell (pasodoble)
El Nino de la Estrella (pasodoble)
Nuevo Mundo (schottische)
Piedad Señor y Sueño Eterno (funeral marches)
La Pilarica (processional march)
Placentero (pasadoble)
Sabor de Espana (potpourri)
Sacris (la marcha al Santísimo sobre motivos del Tantum ergo, co-authored with María Teresa Tico Texidor)
Sangre de Artista (pasodoble)
Silvetas Cubanas Rhumba
Sombras en la Senda Vals
Sueño Eterno (funeral march)
Valencia, Tierra de Flores (pasodoble)
La Virgen de la Roca (co-authored with María Teresa Tico Texidor)
La Virgen Milagrosa (The Miraculous Virgin; processional march)
Yolita (rumba)
Zinia-Diana (pasodoble)

References

Rehrig, William H. The Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music.  Volume 2 & 3.  Integrity Press, 1991 & 1996.

Spanish classical composers
Spanish male classical composers
Composers from Catalonia
20th-century classical composers
1884 births
1957 deaths
20th-century Spanish musicians
20th-century Spanish male musicians

Jaime Teixidor


"On the Halonnesus" () is a political oration attributed to the prominent Athenian statesman and orator Demosthenes.

The speech constitutes an Athenian response to a letter of Philip II of Macedon, with which the King of Macedon proposed the amendment of the most important term of the Peace of Philocrates ("each side should keep the territory possessed at the moment of the official conclusion of the peace treaty"). In exchange he offered to the Athenians the island of Halonnesus. The orator rejects Philip's demands and proposes instead the mediation of arbitrator, in order to settle their differences. Libanius, who wrote 57 hypotheses or introductions to Demosthenes' orations predicates that On the Halonnesus does not belong to Demosthenes, but to Hegesippus, another prominent member of the anti-Macedonian faction. A. Galinos supports Libanius' position, pointing that this speech differs in terms of style and argumentation from the other orations of Demosthenes.

References

External links
Text of the speech at the Perseus Digital Library

Works by Demosthenes
Ancient Greek orations

On the Halonnesus


Harrah's Hoosier Park Racing & Casino is a racino including a standardbred racetrack located in Anderson, Indiana, approximately 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis. It is owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment. The facility features live harness racing from April through November, casino gaming, restaurants, a gift shop, and entertainment.

The $300,000 Dan Patch Stakes was established at Hoosier Park in 1994 and has become a tradition that highlights some of the best athletes in the sport of harness racing. The 2017 Breeders Crown, harness racing's annual series of 12 championship events valued at $6 million, was contested at Hoosier Park on October 27 & 28. The 2020 edition of the Breeders Crown occurred Oct. 30 & 31, while the 2023 edition is scheduled to be held at Harrah's Hoosier Park once again.

Hoosier Park offers off-track betting (OTB) at three locations in Indiana: Clarksville, Indianapolis, and New Haven. Hoosier Park also offers simulcast wagering year-round.

Hoosier Park has hosted musicians such as The B-52's, The Go-Go's, Willie Nelson, REO Speedwagon, and The Beach Boys.

History
In 1990, Virgil E. Cook, a prominent local businessman and longtime resident of Anderson, Indiana, donated  of commercial real estate to the city for the sole purpose of developing a pari-mutuel racing facility. In 1992, Churchill Downs Incorporated announced plans to purchase Indiana's only pari-mutuel license from The Anderson Park Group headed by Louis Carlo and open a racetrack on the site of the land donated by Cook. It was the first racetrack outside Kentucky owned by Churchill Downs since 1939. In February 1994 a contract was signed for the construction of Hoosier Park. The construction of the facility cost approximately $13 million. On September 1, 1994, the track finally opened. A crowd of 7,633 came to the grand opening of the standardbred season. The track announces plans to open four off-track betting facilities in Indiana. On October 7, 1995, the first Indiana Derby was run.

Churchill Downs sold Hoosier Park in April 2007 for $8.2 million to Centaur Group.

Legislation was passed shortly after April 2007 to permit slot machines at both tracks, converting them to racinos. Both tracks were legislated to get a 55 percent share of the estimated $325 million the 2,000 slots at each of the state's two tracks were expected to generate annually. This would also increase the purse sizes of the races.

Hoosier Park Casino opened to the public on June 2, 2008.

In 2001, Indiana Downs became the second horse racing track in the state. Initially located in Fairland, Indiana; it was later annexed into nearby Shelbyville, Indiana.

The Indiana Derby was once held at Hoosier Park but is now held at Indiana Grand Racing & Casino.

In 2018, Caesars Entertainment bought Hoosier Park from Centaur Holdings, along with Indiana Grand. The company stated that it might rebrand the property as Harrah's Hoosier Park.

Physical attributes
The track is a seven-eighths of a mile dirt oval. There is no turf course.

Racing
Stakes races at Hoosier Park include:
 The Dan Patch Stakes
 The Nadia Lobell
 Kentuckiana Stallion Management
 Centaur Trotting Classic
 The Hoosier Park Pacing Derby
 The Elevation
 The Jenna's Beachboy
 The Moni Maker
 The Circle City
 The Madison County
 The Pegasus
 The Monument Circle
 The Carl Erskine
 The USS Indianapolis Mem.
 The Crossroads of America

See also
 List of casinos in Indiana

References

External links

Horse racing venues in Indiana
Buildings and structures in Anderson, Indiana
Casinos in Indiana
Tourist attractions in Anderson, Indiana
1994 establishments in Indiana
Caesars Entertainment

Hoosier Park


Seventy Two Changes was a fashion brand by New York-based fashion company Truth & Pride and Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai. The brand was founded in 2009 in New York City, United States and manufactured apparel and fashion accessories. The brand has been closed down in 2011 due to the differences in vision between shareholders in mainland China and United States.

History
As CEO and founder of New York-based fashion company Truth & Pride, Ken Erman continued to evolve and expand global reach through his collaboration with Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai. Erman grew up around fashion. His family owns a large apparel company based out of Pennsylvania called Notations, and he spent several years cultivating an in-depth knowledge of the apparel business. In 2003, he collaborated with American singer Gwen Stefani and created the fashion brand L.A.M.B. In 2008, Erman and Brenda Lin, the president of Truth & Pride, met with Jolin Tsai in Taiwan and they shared the same creative vision.

In February 2009, Tsai and Erman announced the release of a new fashion brand named after Tsai's 2003 album, Magic (also known as See My 72 Changes literally in Chinese), at SoHo Showroom in Manhattan, New York City. The brand was debuted in July 2009 at Nordstrom of 12 cities in the United States, including New York City, San Francisco, and Scottsdale. In July 2009, Tsai made a guest appearance in connection with the Fall 2009 collection of her fashion brand at Nordstrom at the Westfield San Francisco Centre. In August 2009, the brand was introduced by Taiwanese department store Level 6ix into Taiwan, and the brand planned to introduced the brand into other areas, including China, Singapore, and Malaysia.

In February 2010, Tsai made a second public appearance in collection with the Fall 2010 collection of the brand at SoHo Showroom in Manhattan. In the same month, the brand opened its first boutique at Times Square in Shanghai, China, and it was sold in over 30 stores in North America and Asia. Seventy Two Changes sales have expanded from $100 million in 2009 to a predicted $400 million in 2010. In the following year, Tsai's contract with Truth & Pride ended, but Tsai had no intention to renew the agreement. Due to the differences in vision between shareholders of mainland China and United States, Tsai chose to quit the business and would like to start an online fashion store.

References

External links
  (closed)

Clothing brands of the United States
Defunct brands
Jolin Tsai
Products introduced in 2009
Street fashion

Seventy Two Changes


Richard Lee McNair (born December 19, 1958) is an American criminal. He escaped from prison many times, but was taken back after he was spotted by a police officer in a very expensive van with homemade tinted windows.

1987 arrest
In 1987, a month before his 30th birthday, McNair broke into and stole from a grain storage facility in Minot, North Dakota. He shot two men when stealing from another place that same year, and one of the men who McNair shot was killed. He was eventually arrested for the crimes, but when being questioned by police, he took lip balm out of his pocket and slipped his hands out of the cuffs the police had restrained him with during the arrest. He escaped the police station with the officers pursuing him from behind. McNair managed to hide inside a building when police officers came in to take him back to the police station. McNair jumped out of a window and crashed into a tree, but was injured when the branch he landed on snapped. After time in the hospital, McNair was housed at Ward County Jail in Minot, North Dakota. While serving time there, he broke through part of a wall in his cell, but police officers who worked there found out about it. After being moved to the North Dakota State Penitentiary, McNair and two other inmates escaped by crawling through the ventilation shaft. He went around the United States for ten months, but was arrested again and the officers marked him as a bad inmate, and moved him to the Oak Park Heights prison.

Moving to other prisons
McNair eventually joined a sit down plea that led to him being moved to Florence High Security Prison in Minneapolis. After serving time, he joined another plea that led to him being moved to a high security prison in Denver. After serving time in there, he was moved to a high security federal prison in Louisiana. There, his job was to fix damaged mail bags so they could be sent back to the post office. On April 5, 2006, McNair decided to create an escape pod and hide inside one of the mail bags in a pallet. The pallet was later shrink wrapped but McNair managed to use a tube that he could breathe through once he had secretly pushed through the packaging. When police took the mail bag outside, McNair escaped the prison.

Police experiences
Later that same day, he was running near train tracks when a police officer saw him. McNair told the officer that he did not escape prison, and that he was doing exercise in the area. McNair told the officer that he and his brother were staying at a hotel when he was actually escaping from prison. In 2007 after over a year, he was stopped by police in Canada when they had seen him driving a stolen car. While being questioned by an officer, McNair escaped from them again. During his time protecting himself from capture, McNair had been making fake identification cards, and used computer technology to create driver's licenses and monitor what the press was saying about him. He also appeared on Canada's 15 Most Wanted list multiple times. In November that same year, a police officer noticed a van that seemed to have homemade tinted windows. McNair had made the tints himself, but the officer was suspicious because the van looked like it was a lot of money. The officer took the plate number and called it in. The day after, another officer spotted the van. A chase started, and when McNair drove the van into a parking lot, he ran off, but was stopped by the officer.

Final prison sentence
McNair now resides in ADX Florence, a supermax prison where inmates are locked down twenty-three hours a day, and they leave their cells with police by their side, who make sure they cannot escape the prison.

American criminals

Richard Lee McNair


An almanac is a type of reference that is published yearly. It includes information about weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates and tide tables. Information about astronomy are also found in almanacs, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches, terms of courts, lists of all types, timelines, sports, and more. It can also be used to tell time, and is pocket sized. The first almanac was invented in 1457.

Reference works

Almanac


is a Japanese manga series by Yu Kinutani, based on the Devilman manga originally created by Go Nagai. The first volume (tankōbon) was published on January 21, 2000, and the final volume was released on April 24, 2004.

Plot
Fear runs rampant throughout Tokyo with the revelation that demons in fact exist amongst us. Paranoia and the darker side of humanity boils onto the streets as people turn on one another, suspecting that anyone could in fact be a demon hiding in human appearance. Amidst the growing tensions, tragedy strikes Akira causing his mind to snap. Retreating into his subconsciousness, this allows his devilish alter-ego Amon to break free from Akira's cage of flesh and wreak havoc on both humans and demons alike.

Amon: The Darkside of the Devilman is an alternate setting to the last chapters of the original Devilman manga. Where in the original, Devilman faces Satan after seeing his slain lover Miki Makimura's severed head, Amon sees Akira lose control of himself, and due to his sadness and depression from not being able to protect Miki, allows Amon to gain control of Akira and his powers again.

In Volume 2, we start to see the origins of both Amon, and Sirène, and see more of Earth under the demons' rule.

Characters
 Amon: Known as the Lord of War, is one of the most powerful demons known, and considered one of the greatest warriors of Hell. Lover to the demon, Sirene. Originally "trapped" within Akira Fudo, when Amon attempted to possess Akira, but due to Akira's pure heart, Amon loses control and remains sealed within Akira, giving Akira complete control over Amon's powers. He appears in the anime as a tall and red humanoid demon with black fur and chiropteran wings on his head and back (possibly to symbolize the rivalry between Amon and Satan). He is defeated and re-merged by Akira in one-on-one combat after being savagely beaten by a flurry of right-hand punches.
 Akira Fudo: The main protagonist of Devilman. He maintains the same role as he did in the original Devilman, but his appearance is more intimidating than in the original. After witnessing the brutal murder of his lover Miki, Akira snaps and allows Amon to take control of him. Akira later defeats Amon in combat and rejects Satan by walking past him instead of fighting him.
 Sirène: Amon's lover and the main protagonist of the Cretaceous Era arc.
 Ryo Asuka (Satan): Leader of all demons. Wields incredible psychic powers, among other abilities. Satan is in love with Akira Fudo (based on the friendship gained as Ryo Asuka, Satan's human form). He appears as a twelve winged seraph. The story ends with the two meeting face to face, with Akira walking past him while Ryo looks back at him sadly.

Media

Manga
The manga was originally published in the Kodansha's Magazine Z, from  issue to  issue.

Devilman Mokushiroku: Strange Days
A sequel, titled , was also published in the same magazine in 2005.

OVA adaptation
On May 24, 2000, a loose adaptation of the first volume of Amon: The Darkside of the Devilman was released. Being based on volume 1 of the manga (no other volumes were released at the time), it is much shorter than the manga, and branches off in an entirely different direction shortly after Amon gains control of Akira Fudo at the end of volume 1.

In the OVA, fear runs rampant throughout Tokyo as paranoia grips the population who believe that demons exist among them. Akira is seen coming to the aid of Miko and Yumi, two female members of his team of demon hunters. Later, at Miki's home, her brother Tare watches a live broadcast video footage of Akira transforming into Devilman. Before he can tell Miki, a group of vigilante demon hunters corner and kill him. When Miki comes down the stairs, she is attacked and decapitated. Ryo Asuka goes on TV and stirs unrest and violence by warning people to be vigilant against demons. Later, Akira sees the group of vigilantes with Miki's head. He then loses control and transforms into Devilman and kills them all in a sea of blood. Akira is later informed by Yumi that the Devilman Army scout troops are combating a squadron of demons led by Seylos.

When Akira arrives, Selos gives Akira the option to join his army or die. Having lost control, Akira releases a wave of energy which destroys the building, with Amon left in his place. Selos' demons attack him, but Amon's overwhelming strength immediately grants him the upper hand, and he effortlessly defeats them one after the other. During a pause in the fight, Amon finds Yumi trapped under a piece of masonry. After seemingly rescuing her from the wreckage, he then suddenly takes a bite in her, eating on her and leaves her body in half while Seylos' remaining demons and Miko look on in terror. He then confronts Selos. The two demons engage in a citywide titanic battle but Amon is far too strong and kills Seylos after punching through his body. Amon then finds and attacks Satan who tells him that Akira still exists. Amon later confronts Akira in a wasteland. Akira then transforms into Devilman and they fight, but Amon seems far stronger and savagely beats Devilman. Semi-conscious, Devilman's mind drifts back to his life as Akira and time with Miki which gives him the strength to retaliate and defeat Amon. Devilman then fights back and delivers a rapid-fire barrage of right-hand punches which finally subdues Amon and ultimately finishing him off with a final blow, resulting in Akira successfully regaining control. The OVA ends with Akira Fudo and Ryo Asuka (who is Satan in his human form) facing each other before Akira begins to slowly walk past him.

Staff of Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman (2000)
 Creature Design: Yasushi Nirasawa
 Ending Theme Song Performance: Me no Mae no Tsuzuki (目のまえのつづき) by MANGAHEAD
 Voice Cast: Shinji Takeda (Akira Fudo/Devilman), Atsuko Enomoto (Miki Makimura), Tomokazu Seki (Ryo Asuka/Satan), Akio Ōtsuka (Amon), Kazuki Yao (Seylos), Mitsuki Saiga (Psycho Jenny), Motoko Kumai (Tare Makimura), Rie Tanaka (Miko), Tomoko Kawakami (Yumi), Hirotaka Suzuoki (Zubo)

References

External links

2000 anime OVAs
Apocalyptic anime and manga
Demons in anime and manga
Devilman
Go Nagai
Kodansha manga
Post-apocalyptic anime and manga
Seinen manga

Amon: The Darkside of the Devilman


Europeanisation (or Europeanization, see spelling differences) refers to a number of related phenomena and patterns of change:
The process in which a notionally non-European subject (be it a culture, a language, a city or a nation) adopts a number of European features (often related to Westernization).
Outside the social sciences, it commonly refers to the growth of a European continental identity or polity over and above national identities and polities on the continent.
Europeanisation may also refer to the process through which European Union political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy-making.

Definitions
Europeanisation in political science has been referred to very generally as 'becoming more European like'. More specifically than this, it has been defined in a number of ways. One of the earliest conceptualisations of the term is by Ladrech (1994, 69), who defines Europeanisation simply as 'an incremental process of re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the extent that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy making.'

This emphasises what is known as the 'top-down approach' to Europeanisation, in which change emanates from the impact of the Union on the national policy. The state is viewed as reactive to actions of the Union. Another definition that needs to be taken into account is from Radaelli, who describes Europeanisation as "a process involving a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, 'ways of doing things' and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and subnational) discourse, political structures and public choices." More recently, Moumoutzis (2011: 612) has revised Radaelli's definition, arguing that Europeanisation should be defined as 'a process of incorporation in the logic of domestic (national and sub-national) discourse, political structures and public policies of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, "ways of doing things" and shared beliefs and norms that are first defined in the EU policy processes'.

From a 'bottom-up' approach Europeanisation occurs when states begin to affect the policy of the European Union in a given area. A more nuanced analysis posits that the institutional interaction of policy actors at the various levels of European governance leads to the re-definition of national, regional and other identities within a European context, where the multiple levels of governance in Europe are not seen as necessarily in opposition to one another. An elected representative can, for example, see his loyalties and responsibilities as lying with Barcelona, Spain, and Europe, or with Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Europe, for unitary states. Some scholars, including Samuel Huntington, argue that citizens of European states increasingly identify themselves as such, rather than Portuguese, British, French, German, Italian, etc. An obvious area of change is in the institutions of Europe; the enlargement of the European Union and the gradual acquisition of authority over the national member governments in numerous areas is creating a centralised European polity. The Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union would be an example of this; in this case, the nations using the euro have passed control of their monetary policy to the European Central Bank.

Another perspective of Europeanisation is the 'horizontal approach.' This approach takes into account the transfer of politics, policies and policy making between member states of the European Union. The transfer is based on a form of 'soft law' — it is not enforceable but based on 'best practice' and mutual recognition.

Whether Europeanisation is a continuing process that will eventually lead to a full European government or whether centralisation will be unable to overcome persisting national identities and/or increasing interest in localism is a matter of some debate.

See also
European integration
Eurosphere
Pan-European identity
Pro-Europeanism
Globalisation
Accession of Turkey to the European Union
Ukraine–European Union relations
Euro-Slavism

References

Further reading
 Börzel, T and Risse (2003) Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe: In K. Featherstone and C Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 57–80
 Cernat, L. (2006) Europeanization, Varieties of Capitalism and Economic Performance in Central and Eastern Europe, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 Howell, K. E. (2004) Developing Conceptualisations of Europeanization: Synthesising Methodological Approaches Queens University Belfast Working Papers
 Howell, K. E. (2004) Europeanization, European Integration and Financial Services. Palgrave.

 Johan Olsen, The Many Faces of Europeanization, ARENA Working Papers, 2002.
 Schmale, Wolfgang (2011): Processes of Europeanization, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, retrieved: November 16, 2011.
 Headley, John M. (2007) The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

External links
Europeanisation Papers - Queen's University, Belfast.
European Research Papers Archive

Cultural assimilation
European integration
European studies
Political science terminology
Western culture

Europeanisation


Hugh Francis Durrant-Whyte  (born 6 February 1961) is a British-Australian engineer and academic. He is known for his pioneering work on probabilistic methods for robotics. The algorithms developed in his group since the early 1990s permit autonomous vehicles to deal with uncertainty and to localize themselves despite noisy sensor readings using simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).

Early life and education
Durrant-Whyte was born on 6 February 1961 in London, England. He was educated at Richard Hale School, then a state grammar school in Hertford, Hertfordshire. He studied engineering at the University of London, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1983. He then moved to the United States where he studied systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania: he graduated with a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) degree in 1985 and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1986. He was a Thouron Scholar in 1983.

Career and research
From 1986 to 1987, Durrant-Whyte was a BP research fellow in the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Then, from 1987 to 1995, he was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and a university lecturer in engineering science.

In 1995, he accepted a chair at the University of Sydney as Professor of Mechatronic Engineering. He was also director of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) from 1999 to 2002. From 2002 until 2010 he held the position of Research Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS), a joint venture between the ACFR and mechatronics groups at the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of New South Wales. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010. Hugh has published more than 350 research papers, graduated more than 70 PhD students, and won numerous awards and prizes for his work. He played a critical role in raising the visibility of Australian robotics internationally and was named "Professional Engineer of the year" (2008) by the Institute of Engineers Australia Sydney Division and NSW "Scientist of the Year" (2010).

Durrant-Whyte is one of the early pioneers of SLAM with John J. Leonard. Durrant-Whyte became the CEO of NICTA on 13 December 2010. He resigned as NICTA CEO on 28 November 2014 citing differences with the Board over future funding arrangements.

He was appointed as the Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Ministry of Defence on 27 February 2017. As a dual citizen with Australian and British citizenship, Durrant-Whyte was barred from overseeing the UK's nuclear weapons programme.

In May 2018 Durrant-Whyte was appointed NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer by Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Premier. He took up his appointment on 3 September 2018.

Honours and awards
His awards include
FRS - Fellow of the Royal Society
FAA - Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
FIEEE - Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
FTSE - Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
HonFIEAus - Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia
M A Sargent Medal (2017)
NSW Scientist of the Year (2010)
IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Award (2009)
ATSE Clunies Ross Award (2009)
Professional Engineer of the year (2008) Institute of Engineers Australia, Sydney
IFR/IEEE Invention and Entrepreneurship Award (2007)
New South Wales Pearcy Award (2004)
Harry Lees Award (2004) Institute of Marine Engineers
Warren Centre Innovation Hero (2003)
BAE Systems Chairman's Gold Award (2003)
Four IEEE Best Paper prizes (IROS 1994 and 2006, Data Fusion1997, Robotics 2004)

Offices held

References

External links
Personal page at ACFR (outdated)
Personal page at CAS
ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems
Chief Executive Officer - People webpage at NICTA
 Biography on Royal Society Website

Australian roboticists
Living people
Fellows of the Royal Society
Australian Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Chief Scientific Advisers to the Ministry of Defence
1961 births
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
Engineers from London
Alumni of the University of London
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Fellows of St Cross College, Oxford
Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford
Academic staff of the University of Sydney
Recipients of the M. A. Sargent Medal

Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte


The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) is an autonomous public institute that was established in May 1997 through a Legal Notice and commenced operations in June 1999. In January 2007 the President of Kenya signed the KIPPRA Bill into law and the KIPPRA Act No. 15 of 2006 commenced on 1 February 2007.

Activities
The Institute undertakes the following activities:
 Conducts objective research and analysis on public policy issues with the goal of providing advice to policy makers.
 Provides advisory and technical services on public policy issues to the Government, government agencies, and other stakeholders.
 Collects and analyses relevant data on public policy and disseminates its research findings to a wide range of stakeholders through workshops/conferences, internal seminars, research papers, policy briefs, a newsletter, and the Kenya Economic Report.
 Develops and maintains research resources and databases on public policy and related issues, and avails these to the Government, the private sector and academic institutions.
 Undertakes contracted public policy research and analysis for the government and clients from the private sector.
 Undertakes capacity building activities for government and private sector officers.
 Serves as a point of contact and encourages exchange of views between the Government, private sector and other civil society.

Divisions

The Institute has five research divisions: Macroeconomics, Productive Sector, Social Sector, Infrastructure and Economic Services, Private Sector Development, Trade and Foreign Policy and Governance Division.

The research divisions are coordinated through the office of the Programmes Coordinator. The research divisions are supported by Knowledge Management and Communications Division, Finance and Investments Division, and Human Resource and Administration Division.

References

External links

Think tanks based in Kenya


Ion Gudju (14 July 1897 – 1988) was a Romanian chess master.

Gudju represented Romania in 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad at Paris, where he became one of 15 founders of Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE). He played thrice in Chess Olympiads at The Hague 1928, Hamburg 1930, and Prague 1931.

He took 4th at Hastings 1926/27 (B tournament, Georges Koltanowski won), took 2nd, behind Wechsler, at Bucharest 1927, took 4th at Bucharest 1928 (Sigmund Herland and Wechsler won), shared 2nd, behind Alexandru Tyroler, at Jassy 1929 (Romanian Chess Championship), took 5th and won at Bucharest 1929, and tied for 2nd-5th at Bucharest 1930 (Iosif Mendelssohn won).

He was the Honorary Vice President of FIDE in 1982–1988.

References

External links
Ion Gudju at 365Chess.com

1897 births
1988 deaths
Romanian chess players
Chess Olympiad competitors
Chess officials
20th-century chess players

Ion Gudju


Otto II (died 17 March 1220), sometimes called Otto von Berg, was the 24th Bishop of Freising from 1184 and, like his predecessor, Otto I, a supporter of the Hohenstaufen monarchs. Around 1200, he composed the "Laubacher Barlaam", a Middle High German translation of a 12th-century Middle Latin version of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat. His version is not to be confused with the verse romance Barlaam und Josaphat (c.1220) of Rudolf von Ems.

Otto was the son of Diepold II, Count of Berg-Schelklingen, and Gisela of the House of Andechs. His brothers Diepold, Manegold and Henry were also bishops. Otto was a canon at the cathedral of Magdeburg before his election as bishop. In 1189 he obtained juridical rights, market rights and Burgrecht in the possessions of his diocese in the Duchy of Austria. After the disputed imperial election of 1198, he initially sided with Philip of Swabia, but is later found in the following of Otto IV. In 1215 he paid homage to Frederick II.

Otto's Barlaam is 16,500 lines of poetry, one third of which concerns the religious and baptismal instruction, usually in dialogue form, of Josaphat by Barlaam. Otto often compares Barlaam to Saint Anthony the Great for their shared asceticism. Josaphat gives long speeches to his angry father, the king, and to the people. The most interesting aspect to the modern reader is Otto's description of different religions: Chaldaean "astrology and occult arts", Greek anthropomorphism, Egyptian cults of plants and animals, and euhemerism. In this, he relies on earlier Christian writings, notably John of Damascus and perhaps also Lactantius (an influential Christian euhemerist).

Notes

1220 deaths
Middle High German literature
Roman Catholic bishops of Freising
Year of birth unknown
13th-century German poets
13th-century translators

Otto II (bishop of Freising)


The 1874 Warmond train accident was a train collision between a passenger train and a freight train at the Amsterdam–Haarlem–Rotterdam railway near  between Leiden and Warmond, in the Netherlands on 14 August 1874. A passenger and one of the drivers were killed, and over 30 passengers were injured. The wife of the train driver died of shock after hearing her husband was killed.

It was at the time the train accident with highest number of victims, and the second deadliest train accident after the 1856 Schiedam train accident.

After the disaster, there was a demand for improving safety measures and for more safety tools on the train. A communication system was developed for the railways to prevent future accidents from occurring.

Event
Passenger train No 32 departed at 9:15 from Rotterdam on the Amsterdam–Haarlem–Rotterdam railway to Amsterdam. After 10:14pm, at Warmond train station there was a red signal indicating danger, but the train driver continued. After this station, there was only a single track available due to construction work at one of the bridges. Shortly after, at Warmond train station before the railroad switch, the passenger train collided with a military freight train that was on route from Den Helder to Rotterdam on the same track in the opposite direction. Due to the collision the locomotives were pointed upwards and several carriage were damaged, with all interior power being lost. The middle wagon had the most damage.

Rescue work
Although the passenger train had a first aid kit and stretchers, the train staff did not know where they were located on the train. After the first aid kit was located, it was noted it contained solely some linen and a bottle of vinegar: no bandages, scissors, or other items that were needed. There were two health officers on the train: J. van Koetsveld and F. Daniels from Amsterdam who were both unharmed. They began performing first aid on the victims. A local doctor from Warmond also arrived to assist, as well as local pastors. No doctors were sent from Haarlem.  became a temporary emergency hospital for the victims. During the night, a train from Haarlem arrived at around 3:00am to transport the wounded to Amsterdam, though some victims were too badly injured to be transported and remained in Warmond.

Victims
Train driver (No. 13)  J.F. Heudikhuijzen of the freight train was thrown against the glass of the locomotive. The health officers van Koetsveld and Daniels tried to revive him, but Heudikhuijzen died shortly after the crash from the effects of glass shards. Passenger Schmedding had severe leg and head injuries and also died shortly after the collision. The wife of the train driver Hedikhuizen died a few day after the accident from the shock of hearing that her husband was killed.

Approximately thirty passengers sustained serious injuries, while many others had minor ones. Among the severely injured were individuals with deep lacerations to the head. A pregnant woman required immediate stitches at the scene. A man from Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, who was traveling with his 14-year-old daughter, suffered a complicated rib fracture. Due to the severity of his injuries, he was treated in Warmond and couldn't be transported back to Amsterdam. His daughter was unharmed.

The train driver and the stoker of the passenger train were able to jump from the train before the collision. Traumatized by the accident, the stoker chose to leave his role and became the stoker for the ship "Admiraal Tengbergen I". The following year on the night of 4 May 1875, during the week of the court appeal, he drowned in Doesburg. Despite an extensive search, his body wasn't located until more than a day later. The cause was indicated as "presumably to be sleepwalking into the water".

Some damaged carriages were transported to Leiden in the week after the accident. The locomotive and other carriages were moved to the workshop in Haarlem.

In August 1874 the two health officers van Koetsveld and Daniels were awarded a lifetime free railway ticket for all lines of the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij. In October 1874, Daniels also received an official statement of satisfaction from the Minister of War for his services during the accident.

Reactions
After the collision, some passengers were trapped inside the train. Realizing there were no tools on board to assist in their rescue, a public demand emerged through the media for trains to be equipped with necessary escape tools. Additionally, questions arose about whether a switchman should be the sole individual responsible for such a crucial task, given the significant consequences of a single mistake.

Investigation and lawsuit
On 15 and 16 January 1875 there were witness hearings at the district court of Leiden. Of the 32 people that were called up 20 people were heard, including witnesses, engineers as experts, and railway company employees. The witness hearing was mainly about the signals at the station and the actions of the train driver D.G.J. Roesink and the stoker. The train driver stated that he had seen a red light, but that due to a failure of the brakes he was not able to stop. On 18 January 1875 a prison sentence of 10 months was demanded. On 25 January 1875 the district court of Leiden sentenced the train driver of the passenger train to six months in prison for "unintentionally creating a danger to a railway train". On 2 May 1875 an appeal was taken into consideration, but was declared inadmissible on 9 May 1875.

Measures
In December 1874, a few months after the accident, C. E. Plugge of Middelburg invented a method, which also worked in darkness, whereby train drivers could be warned if they became inattentive. It was specifically stated that this invention could have prevented the Warmond accident. Plugge created a working miniature prototype and offered this invention to the Dutch Government. The prototype was further developed and could be installed in trains by April 1875.

The invention worked as follows: A line hung from the train cab through the entire train. Pull lines with handles were attached in each carriage to the line, which were within reach of passengers. When the line was pulled a flag appears at that carriage and a hammer is released that strikes a bell next to the train driver. The costs for the system was low, at 15 Dutch Guilder for the bell plus 25 per carriage for installing the warning signal.

References

Train collisions in the Netherlands
Railway accidents in 1874
1874 in the Netherlands
1874 disasters
1870s disasters in Europe
August 1874 events
Teylingen
History of South Holland

1874 Warmond train accident


Aeneas McDonell Dawson (30 July 1810 – 29 December 1894) was a Scottish-Canadian Roman Catholic priest and writer.

Life

Dawson studied at the seminary of Paris and was ordained a priest in 1835. Until 1840 he laboured on the mission of Dumfries, Scotland, and subsequently in Edinburgh. He was in Dunfermline in 1846.  Before immigrating to Canada in 1855, he had successive charge of the counties of Fife, Kinross, and Clackmannan.

On his arrival in Canada he was given the parish of St. Andrew's, Ottawa, and later became preacher at the cathedral. Dawson was a lecturer of repute and a frequent contributor to the provincial press.

He was the brother of two politicians: William McDonell Dawson and Simon James Dawson.

Works

He is the author of

The Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope (Ottawa and London, 1860), the first book printed and published in Ottawa
St. Vincent de Paul: A Biography (London, 1865)
Seven Letters together with a Lecture on the Colonies of Great Britain (Ottawa, 1870)
The Late Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee. A Funeral Oration (Ottawa, 1870)
Our Strength and Their Strength: The Northwest Territory and Other Papers, Chiefly Relating to the Dominion of Canada (Ottawa, 1870) - the first title heads a refutation of Goldwin Smith's anti-clerical views; under the last comes a series of poems, discourses, lectures, critical reviews
Pius IX and his Time (London, 1880)

He translated from the French:

Maître Pierre. Conversations on Morality, by M. Delcasott (Paris, 1836)
The Parish Priest and His Parishioners, or Answer to Popular Prejudices against Religion, by M. B. D'Exauvillez (Glasgow, 1842), reviewed in The Tablet, London, 12 Feb., 1842
Letters of same author on the Spanish Inquisition (London, 1848)
Count Joseph de Maistre's celebrated work on the Pope (London, 1850)
Soirées de S. Pétersbourg (London, 1851)

A list of his poems and other works is in the "Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada" (1894, XII, 23), of which he was a member.

References

Morgan, Bibliotheca Canadensis, or Manual of Canadian Literature (Ottawa, 1867);
James, Bibliography of Canadian Poetry (Toronto, 1899);
Public Testimonial to the Rev. Æ. McD. Dawson (Ottawa, 1890);
Tanguay, Répertoire Général du Clergé Canadien (Quebec, 1868) (Tanguay inaccurately gives the date of Father Dawson's birth as 1830)

Notes

References

External links

Marianopolis College page
Bibliography
Archive page
 Généalogie Quebec

1810 births
1894 deaths
19th-century Canadian Roman Catholic priests
Canadian non-fiction writers
19th-century Scottish Roman Catholic priests

Aeneas Dawson


Aldo Marcos Miyashiro Ribeiro (Lima, Peru, February 9, 1976) is a Peruvian actor, screenwriter, playwright, film director and presenter. Known mainly for his roles as Caradura in the Misterio series and Tony Blades in the series La gran sangre, and also for leading his TV show La Banda del Chino. In addition, he is the director of the films Attacked: The Theory of Pain (2015), Once machos (2017), Bleed. Scream. Beat! (2017), Once machos 2 (2019) & Wake Show (2020)

Biography
Aldo Miyashiro is of Peruvian and Japanese descent; studied at Colegio Champagnat (Lima, Peru). He was a student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, after journalism at the Jaime Bausate y Meza School (where he began his theatrical activity) and acting at the ENSAD and the playwright's workshop Roberto Ángeles He is also a barrista for Club Universitario de Deportes.

In 2003, he premiered the play "A mystery, a passion", which he brought to television in 2004 as the miniseries "" Misterio "', where he performed to "Lock". The following year he starred in the miniseries  Lobos de Mar .

In March 2005 he married the actress and singer Érika Villalobos, with whom they have two children.

His next television job as an actor and screenwriter was the series  The Great Blood  where he played Tony Blades. The series lasted four seasons (from 2006 to 2007) for Frecuencia Latina. In 2007 the miniseries film was released: "The great blood: the film" '. In 2008 he debuted as a presenter of the late show "Enemigos Intimos" with Beto Ortiz by Frecuencia Latina. Two years later, the program moved to Panamericana Televisión under the name "'Enemigos Públicos"' '.

At the Festival FIL-Lima 2009, his book "'A mystery, a passion"' was the best seller with approximately 1000 copies.

Along with his work as a presenter, he acted and wrote the script for two miniseries, he competed in the dance reality show  El gran show , hosted by Gisela Valcárcel, where he obtained the fourth put after two months of competition.

He is currently working on the television program La Banda del Chino, directed by América Televisión.

Television

Mini series
He acted and wrote the script for the following productions:
 Mystery (2005) as "Caradura" - Frecuencia Latina
 Sea wolf (2005) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina
 The Great Blood (2006) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina
 "The great blood 2: against the cursed goddesses" (2006) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina.
 "The great blood 3: the final meeting" (2006) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina.
 "Blow by blow" (2007) (special participation in the 1st episode) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina.
 The Great Blood 4 (2007) as Tony Blades - Frecuencia Latina.
 Boy from my Neighborhood (series) (2010) as "Caradura" - Panamericana Televisión
 La Fuerza (2011) as Mayor Zero - Panamericana Televisión.
 Lords Papis (March 27 - July 23, 2019) as Ignacio Moreno - América Televisión.

Programs
  Intimate enemies  (2008-2010), driving with Beto Ortiz -
  Public Enemies  (2010-2014), driving initially with Beto Ortiz, then with Sandra Vergara, and finally with Mónica Cabrejos - Panamericana Televisión.
  The great show: first season  (2011), participant "Hero" / 4th place - América Televisión.
  Spoiled  (2011), producer - Panamericana Televisión.
  Todos los bravos  (2012), producer - Panamericana Televisión.
  The Battery  (January 19, 2015 - April 1, 2016), driving with Viviana Rivasplata - Panamericana Televisión.
 The Chinese band (since January 23, 2017), driving - América Televisión.

References

Peruvian people of Japanese descent
Peruvian dramatists and playwrights
Peruvian screenwriters
Male screenwriters
Peruvian male film actors
Peruvian male stage actors
Peruvian male television actors
1976 births
Living people

Aldo Miyashiro


Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. (May 11, 1938 – June 9, 2003) was an American lawyer and judge. He served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, as well as serving on the Florida Third District Court of Appeal and the 11th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.

Early life

Ferguson was born in Miami, Florida, to Bahamian immigrants. He grew up in the Liberty Square public housing project in Miami, attending segregated public schools. He was a member of the first graduating class of Miami Northwestern High School in 1956.

Education and career
Ferguson graduated from the Florida A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration in 1960.
At FAMU he met his wife, Betty, who later became a member of the Miami-Dade County Commission. After graduation, Ferguson enlisted in the United States Army and served from 1960 to 1964. He attained the rank of second lieutenant, serving as a paratrooper and infantry units at Fort Benning in 1961. Ferguson was discharged from active duty in 1964 but remained in the Army Reserve as a captain from 1964 to 1968. Ferguson worked as an accountant in Philadelphia and took graduate courses at Drexel University before entering Howard University School of Law. Ferguson served as associate editor of The Barrister, the Howard University School of Law newspaper. He received his Juris Doctor in 1968.

Ferguson served as a staff attorney of Legal Services of Greater Miami from 1968 to 1970, and from the Liberty City-Brownsville Legal Services office from 1969 to 1971. Ferguson was a member of the panel that investigated the 1968 Liberty City riots. He was in private practice in Miami from 1970 to 1973, and co-founded the firm of McCrary, Ferguson and Lee in 1971. Ferguson was a staff attorney of the Dade County School Board from 1972 to 1973.

State judicial service
Between 1973 and 1977, Ferguson served on the Industrial Claims Court. In 1976, Governor Rubin Askew appointed Ferguson to the 11th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida (Dade County Circuit Court) from 1977 to 1981; he was the first black judge appointed to that court. Ferguson was appointed the Florida Third District Court of Appeal in December 1980 and served on that court from 1981 to 1993; he was the first black judge on that court.

Federal judicial service
Ferguson was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on October 25, 1993, to the seat vacated by William Hoeveler. Confirmed by the Senate on November 20, 1993, he received commission on November 22, 1993. Ferguson served on the court until he died of leukemia in Miami in 2003. He was succeeded by Judge Marcia G. Cooke.

Honors

Just ten days after his death the Florida Black Lawyers Association voted unanimously to rename itself the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. Bar Association in his honor. The Wilkie D. Ferguson Courthouse in downtown Miami, designed by Arquitectonica, as well as the nearby Metromover station (formerly the Arena/State Plaza station as of February 2012), are also named for Ferguson.

See also
 List of African-American federal judges
 List of African-American jurists
 List of first minority male lawyers and judges in Florida

References

External links

Profile from the Florida Third District Court of Appeal
Article on the new Wilkie D. Ferguson Courthouse
Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association

1938 births
2003 deaths
Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida
United States district court judges appointed by Bill Clinton
Judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal
African-American judges
American people of Bahamian descent
Florida A&M University alumni
Howard University School of Law alumni
United States Army officers
Deaths from leukemia
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Lawyers from Miami
20th-century American judges
21st-century American judges

Wilkie D. Ferguson


Pong: The Next Level (known simply as Pong) is a remake of the 1972 Atari game of the same name developed by Supersonic Software and published by Hasbro Interactive.

Gameplay
Pong: The Next Level consists of many levels that are either traditional Pong matches against a computer-controlled opponent in special three-dimensional arenas with special power-ups and environmental gimmicks that affect the way the game is played, or solo challenges that require the player to keep the ball in play and call for precise and skilled moves to win. An example of the former is "Rock and Roll", where the player must win a Pong match against an opponent on an arena that can tilt or deform, and an example of the latter is "Seal Juggle", where the player must "juggle" a ball on a slanted iceberg and use a special power-up to launch it high up the slope so that a seal can pick it up. Matches use the "deuce" rule, in which if both contestants are one point away from winning, the player who takes a two-point lead is declared the winner.

Each level has three variations of increasing difficulty: an initial easy variation that awards the player three golden bars, a slightly more difficult one that awards two gold bars and a challenging one that grants one golden bar. Golden bars are used to unlock other levels and advance to new zones, and players are encouraged to go back and play harder versions of earlier levels if they are unable to get past a newly discovered level. Collecting golden bars will also cause an in-game crystal Atari logo to slowly change to gold. Filling in one of each of the three bars in the logo by completing one particular variation of every level will grant players access to an emulation of the original Pong game, and two other variants.

All "match" levels support multiplayer, with a special mode for more than two players, named "Last Pong Standing". In this mode, each player will be randomly assigned to guard a certain part of the arena edge from balls in each round and attempt to "eliminate" opponents by scoring goals against them. Eliminated players will have their goal areas blocked off.  Once one player remains, the round ends and scoring is awarded as follows: the first eliminated player earns no points, subsequently eliminated players are awarded a limited number of points and the last player standing receives full scoring. Subsequent rounds are played until one player reaches the target score.

Reception

The PC and PlayStation versions received mixed or average reviews, while the Game Boy Color version received unfavorable reviews. Blake Fischer of NextGen, however, called the PlayStation version "Good dumb fun that will keep you hooked for hours at a time. Just don't tell anybody." GamePro said that the PC version "is fun--but not the kind of elaborate fun that will last you six months. It's more like a nifty stocking stuffer than a full-fledged present--one that will keep you warm and nostalgic into January."

Notes

References

External links

1999 video games
Atari games
Cancelled Nintendo 64 games
Classic Mac OS games
Game Boy Color games
Head-to-head arcade video games
MacSoft games
Morning Star Multimedia games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Paddle-and-ball video games
PlayStation (console) games
Pong variations
Supersonic Software games
Table tennis video games
Video game remakes
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
Windows games

Pong: The Next Level


Frederick Sheppard "Fred" Grimwade (12 September 1933 – 23 February 1989) was an Australian politician.

Grimwade was born in Melbourne, the son of Erick Grimwade (whose grandfather was a state politician) and Gwendolen Ada Carnegie. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and Melbourne University, where he was a resident student at Trinity College. He graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science, and then undertook further study at Iowa State College in the United States. He subsequently farmed at Glenaroua Homestead in Broadford. On 3 May 1956 he married Joan Elizabeth Rich, State Commissioner of the Victorian Girl Guides Association from 1973 to 1978. Grimwade was involved in several beef farming societies as well as the agriculture faculty of Melbourne University, and was on the council of the Bendigo Institute of Technology and the state Liberal Party. He was a member of Pyalong Shire Council from 1961 to 1980, serving as president from 1962 to 1963 and 1972 to 1972. In 1967 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council representing Bendigo Province, transferring to Central Highlands in 1979. He served as President of the Victorian Legislative Council from 1979 to 1985. He retired from politics in 1987.

Grimwade initiated the idea of creating a portrait gallery for former Premiers of Victoria, with Grimwade arranging for paintings to be commissioned from photographs of former non-living Premiers and life studies of living former Premiers. Originally displayed in the corridor leading to the Members Dining Room, the portrait gallery is now located in Queens Hall in Parliament House.

References

1933 births
1989 deaths
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Victoria
Members of the Victorian Legislative Council
University of Melbourne alumni
People educated at Trinity College (University of Melbourne)
Iowa State University alumni
Politicians from Melbourne
20th-century Australian politicians

Fred Grimwade


Middlebrook Historic District is a national historic district located at Middlebrook, Augusta County, Virginia. It encompasses 50 contributing buildings and 52 contributing sites in the rural village of Middlebrook. Most of the buildings along the main street date to the 19th century. It primarily consists of vernacular houses and commercial buildings.  Non-residential buildings include five stores, a frame school building, two churches, an Odd Fellows Hall, and a shoemaker's (now beauty) shop.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

References

Historic districts in Augusta County, Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Augusta County, Virginia
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia

Middlebrook Historic District


was a town located in Kamiminochi District, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

As of 2003, the town had an estimated population of 10,090 and a density of 507.04 persons per km2. The total area was 19.90 km2.

On January 1, 2005, Toyono, along with the village of Ōoka (from Sarashina District), and the villages of Kinasa and Togakushi (all from Kamiminochi District), was merged into the expanded city of Nagano.

Dissolved municipalities of Nagano Prefecture
Nagano (city)

Toyono, Nagano