title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: After that, RK-Bro (Randy Orton and Riddle) defended the Raw Tag Team Championship against AJ Styles and Omos. In the end, Orton countered a Phenomenal Forearm attempt into an RKO on Styles followed by Riddle performing the Floating Bro on Styles to retain the title.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: In the fourth match, Raw's Doudrop faced SmackDown's Zelina Vega in the finals of the Queen's Crown tournament. In the end, Vega performed a Code Red on Doudrop to win the match and the tournament.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: Next, Goldberg faced Bobby Lashley in a No Holds Barred Falls Count Anywhere match. During the match, Lashley dominated Goldberg and targeted Goldberg's leg by placing it in a chair and stomping on it. As Lashley attempted a spear on Goldberg, Goldberg moved out of the way and Lashley crashed through a table positioned in the corner of the ring. Goldberg performed a Jackhammer on Lashley, but instead of pinning Lashley, Goldberg decided he was not finished. Outside the ring, Goldberg performed a spear on Lashley into the timekeepers' area. Goldberg attempted to attack Lashley using the steel steps, however, Lashley moved out of the way. Goldberg followed Lashley to the entrance stage where Goldberg made quick work of Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin. In the end, Goldberg performed a spear on Lashley off the entrance stage and through tables positioned by the stage and pinned him to win the match.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: After that, Raw's Xavier Woods faced SmackDown's Finn Bálor in finals of the King of the Ring tournament. During the match, as Woods attempted a Tornado DDT in Bálor, Bálor countered into a Double Stomp to the chest of Woods. Woods performed a Superkick on Bálor for a nearfall. Woods performed Superplex on Bálor for a nearfall. As Woods performed the Tightrope Walk Diving Elbow, Bálor raised his knees to counter. In the end, Woods performed a Diving Elbow Drop on Bàlor to become the King of the Ring.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: Following this, Big E defended the WWE Championship against Drew McIntyre. McIntyre performed a Spinebuster on Big E for a nearfall. Big E performed three Belly-to-Belly Suplexs on McIntyre. Big E performed the Warrior Splash on McIntyre for a nearfall. As Big E attempted the Big Ending, McIntyre countered with a Michinoku Driver for a nearfall. McIntyre performed a Glasgow Kiss and a Future Shock DDT on Big E for a nearfall. Big E performed the Big Ending on McIntyre for a nearfall. McIntyre then performed the Claymore Kick on Big E for a nearfall. As McIntyre went for a second Claymore, Big E avoided and performed a second Big Ending on McIntyre to retain the title.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: In the penultimate match, Becky Lynch defended the SmackDown Women's Championship against Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks. In the end, as Belair performed the Kiss Of Death on Lynch, Banks then threw Belair out of the ring and attempted to pin Lynch, however, Lynch caught Banks with an Inside Cradle while holding the ropes for leverage to retain the title.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: In the main event, Roman Reigns (accompanied by Paul Heyman) defended the Universal Championship against Brock Lesnar. During the early half of the match, Lesnar constantly tried to perform a Suplex on Reigns, however, Reigns held the top rope. Lesnar eventually performed multiple German Suplexes and an F-5 on Reigns for a nearfall. As Lesnar attempted a second F-5, Reigns countered into a Guillotine Choke who fought out with a Spinebuster. In the end, Lesnar then performed an F-5 on Reigns who fell onto the referee, incapacitating him. Heyman then tossed the title in the middle of the ring, between both wrestlers, although it was unclear as towards whom Heyman intended to throw the title. This led to Reigns and Lesnar engaging into a tug-of-war with the title. Although Lesnar gained control of the title, The Usos came out and attacked Lesnar with a Double Superkick. Reigns then struck Lesnar over the head with the title. A second referee then came out and Reigns pinned Lesnar to retain the title.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: The 2021 Crown Jewel received generally positive reviews from fans and critics alike. The Hell in a Cell match between Edge and Seth Rollins received praise, with CBS Sports saying it stole the show, John Canton from TJR Wrestling grading it 5 stars and Bleacher Report calling it match of the night. Additionally Bleacher Report went on to praise the entire event, giving both the Hell in a Cell match and the triple threat match for the SmackDown Women's Championship a grade of A, while the only poorly received match was Doudrop vs. Zelina Vega, which was graded C+.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: The 2021 WWE Draft took place on the October 1 and 4 episodes of "SmackDown" and "Raw", respectively; however, the new rosters did not go into effect until the October 22 episode of "SmackDown", the night after Crown Jewel. This in turn meant that some rivalries, such as the one between WWE Champion Big E and Drew McIntyre, ended at Crown Jewel, as Big E remained on Raw while McIntyre went to SmackDown. The draft also impacted the King of the Ring and Queen's Crown tournaments as going into Crown Jewel, King of the Ring winner Xavier Woods had represented Raw but joined the SmackDown roster the following night, while Queen's Crown winner Zelina Vega had represented SmackDown, but moved to Raw. Also, Becky Lynch, who was drafted to Raw and had retained the SmackDown Women's Championship at Crown Jewel, exchanged championships with Raw Women's Champion Charlotte Flair, who was drafted to SmackDown. This was done to keep the titles on their respective brands.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: On the following episode of "Raw", Becky Lynch boasted about becoming Raw Women's Champion again as well as for her victory at Crown Jewel. Bianca Belair, who was also drafted to Raw, interrupted and pointed out the fact that Lynch did not beat her at Crown Jewel, as Lynch had pinned Sasha Banks in the triple threat match. Belair also made the point that she had defeated former Raw Women's Champion Charlotte Flair the previous week and deserved a title match. A brawl ensued between the two. Following the brawl, Lynch stated that Belair would get a title shot, but not that night. The match was scheduled for the following week, where Lynch retained. Liv Morgan would be the next challenger for the title, while Belair would be the lone survivor for her team at Survivor Series.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: Also on the following episode of "Raw", a coronation was held for Zelina Vega who won the inaugural Queen's Crown tournament. Now adopting the name of Queen Zelina, she was adorned with the crown, cape, and queen's scepter. Zelina then defeated Doudrop in a rematch.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: On the October 25 episode of "Raw", Seth Rollins won a Fatal 4-Way Ladder match to become the No. 1 contender for Big E's WWE Championship. The match would later be scheduled for Day 1. However, it turned into a triple threat match when Rollins attacked Kevin Owens during the latter's match against Big E. As a result, Owens was added to the title match.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: After Crown Jewel, it was reported that Brock Lesnar said he would be at the following night's "SmackDown" and would beat Roman Reigns senseless for what transpired at the event. Reigns opened "SmackDown", and questioned Paul Heyman's allegiance before calling out Lesnar. After several minutes of taunting Lesnar, he finally came out and brawled with Reigns. The Usos attempted to save Reigns only for Lesnar to take them out, who continued attacking Reigns. WWE official Adam Pearce called for several members of SmackDown's roster, as well as security, to restrain Lesnar, who took out the majority of them. Lesnar then taunted Reigns and posed in the ring with the Universal Championship as Reigns retreated backstage. Following this, Pearce announced that Lesnar was suspended indefinitely for his actions. Lesnar responded by performing two F-5s on Pearce. In addition to the suspension, Pearce fined Lesnar $1 million. Lesnar's suspension was lifted a month later after paying his fine, and he returned on the December 3 episode where he convinced Sami Zayn, who had become the number one contender the previous week, to face Reigns for the title that night. WWE official Sonya Deville made it official and that the winner would defend the Universal Championship against Lesnar at Day 1. Just before the match, Lesnar attacked Zayn, which allowed Reigns to quickly defeat Zayn and retain the title, officially scheduling Reigns to defend the championship against Lesnar at Day 1.


title: Crown Jewel (2021)

text: Also on "SmackDown", The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) had a coronation for Woods' King of the Ring victory. Kingston introduced the 2021 King of the Ring winner, now adopting the name of King Woods, who was adorned with the crown, cape, and king's scepter. The following week, King Woods knighted Kingston as Sir Kofi Kingstonan, the Hand of the King.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Funny Games is a 1997 Austrian psychological horror film written and directed by Michael Haneke, and starring Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, and Arno Frisch. The plot involves two young men who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games in their vacation home. The film was entered into the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. A shot-for-shot remake, filmed and set in the United States, was released in 2007, also directed by Haneke, this time with an English-speaking cast and a mostly American crew.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Georg Schober, his wife Anna, their son Georgie, and their dog Rolfi arrive at their holiday home beside a lake in Austria. On the drive over, they spot their next-door neighbors Fred and Eva Berlinger accompanied by two young Viennese men whom they do not recognize. The Schobers notice the strange behavior displayed by the Berlingers and the apparent absence of their daughter Sissi. Fred visits minutes later with one of the men, whom he introduces as Paul, the son of a friend.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Shortly after the family settles in, and while Georg is still setting up the boat, the other young unidentified man comes to Anna's kitchen to borrow eggs on Eva's behalf. This man, later named as Peter, gradually overstays his welcome by breaking successive batches of eggs and submerging the family's phone into the kitchen sink water, all seemingly done by accident.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Paul arrives shortly thereafter and decides to try one of Georg's golf clubs, taking Anna's permission for granted. While Paul is outside with the club, Georg hears Rolfi's constant barking suddenly come to a whining halt. When it is clear that Peter and Paul are insidiously imposing themselves on Anna's courtesy, she demands that the men leave. Georg arrives and tries to eject them from the premises as well. Peter then breaks Georg's leg with the latter's golf club. Paul reveals he has killed Rolfi, and taunts Anna with a cruel searching game (during which he turns around and winks at the camera) until she finds the dog's corpse. It soon becomes evident that the two men have taken the family hostage.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Neighbors Gerda and Robert arrive at the family's dock on a boat. Paul escorts Anna to greet them. Anna finds herself forced to introduce Paul as a family friend and to provide false excuses for Georg's absence, but she also tells Gerda that they may come over after dinner.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Over the following hours, Peter and Paul subject the family to sadistic games. Paul, the more eloquent of the two, punctuates the torture with frequent breaks in the fourth wall and warped role-playing wherein he relates contradictory stories of Peter's past and ridicules his weight and apparent lack of intelligence. No explanation of the men's origins or motives is offered, and even their names may be pseudonyms since they also call each other Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butt-Head on occasion.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Paul places a bet that the family won’t survive until 9:00 in the morning. He then puts a pillowcase over Georgie’s head and pressures Georg to ask Anna to undress. She complies, only to be told to put her clothes back on. Georgie eventually flees to Fred's house, where he finds Sissi's corpse. He is cornered in the house and attempts to shoot Paul but the shotgun is unloaded. Paul returns Georgie to the home, bringing the shotgun and ammunition with him. Peter plays a counting-out game between family members while Paul makes sandwiches in the kitchen. Georgie panics and runs, which results in Peter shooting him dead. Paul berates Peter for being trigger-happy, and the two men decide to leave.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Georg and Anna grieve their loss but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to repair the malfunctioning phone. Anna strives to find help, but ominously flags down the wrong car. Peter and Paul capture her and return to the house. During another sadistic game, Anna grabs the shotgun and kills Peter; however, Paul finds and uses a remote control to rewind "Funny Games" itself, effectively "reversing" the events that just happened, preventing Peter's death from happening. Paul then shoots Georg and both men take Anna out on the family's boat early the next morning. Around 8:00, Paul nonchalantly pushes the bound Anna into the water to drown, thus winning their bet. The two men casually continue a conversation, started offscreen, about a science fiction plot mainly known to Peter and seemingly relevant to both; the degree to which said plot is fictional to the two men, rather than coincident with their level of reality, is left unexplained. They arrive at Gerda's house and knock on the door, asking for some eggs. Paul turns around and throws a knowing glance towards the audience.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: The film frequently blurs the line between fiction and reality, especially highlighting the act of observation. The character Paul breaks the fourth wall throughout the film and addresses the camera in various ways. As he directs Anna to look for her dead dog, he turns, winks, and smirks at the camera. When he asks the family to bet on their survival, he turns to the camera and asks the audience whether they will bet as well. At the end of the film, when requesting eggs from the next family, he looks into the camera and smirks again. Only Paul breaks the fourth wall in the film, while Peter makes references to the formulaic suspense rules of traditional cinema throughout the film.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Paul also frequently states his intentions to follow the standards of film plot development. When he asks the audience to bet, he guesses that the audience wants the family to win. After the killers vanish in the third act, Paul later explains that he had to give the victims a last chance to escape or else it would not be dramatic. Toward the end of the film, he postpones killing the rest of the family because the film has not yet reached feature length. Throughout the film, Paul shows awareness of the audience's expectations.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: However, Paul also causes the film to go against convention on a number of occasions. In thrillers, one protagonist that the audience can sympathize with usually survives, but here all three family members die. When Anna successfully shoots Peter, as a possible start to a heroic escape for the family, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film itself and prevent her action. After Peter shoots Georgie, Paul scolds him for killing the child first because it goes against convention and limits the suspense for the rest of the film. At the end of the film, the murderers prevent Anna from using a knife in the boat to cut her bonds. An earlier close-up had pointed out the knife's location as a possible set-up for a final-act escape, but this becomes a red herring. At the end of the film, Paul again smirks triumphantly at the audience. As a self-aware character, he is able to go against the viewers' wishes and make himself the winner of the film.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: After killing Anna, Peter and Paul argue about the line between reality and fiction. Paul believes that a fiction that is observed is just as real as anything else, but Peter dismisses this idea. Unlike Paul, Peter never shows an awareness that he is in a film.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Haneke states that the entire film was not intended to be a horror film. He says he wanted to make a message about violence in the media by making an incredibly violent, but otherwise pointless film. He had written a short essay revealing how he felt on the issue, called "Violence + Media." The essay is included as a chapter in the book "A Companion to Michael Haneke."


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Film scholar Brigitte Peucker argues that the film functions to "assault the spectator," adding: "On the surface, "Funny Games" appears to exemplify what Stephen Prince's idea of responsibly filmmaking...  but, by means of modernist strategies such as the direct look out of the frame, it establishes a complicity between the film's spectators and the murderers depicted in its narrative. It takes, therefore, an aggressive—not to say sadistic—posture toward its audience."


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: Haneke wanted to make a film set in the United States, but for practical reasons he had to set it in Austria.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: After the 2007 American remake directed by Haneke used the same house including props and tones, Robert Koehler of "Cineaste" wrote that this "proves for certain that—whether he uses the great cinematographer Jürgen Jürges (for the 1997 version) or the great Darius Khondji (for the new film)—Haneke is fundamentally his own cinematographer exercising considerable control over the entire look of his films."


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: European and English-language critics, according to Robert Koehler of "Cineaste", "generally set their criticism against the backdrop of the American slasher film that the film was subverting" and "expressed mild forms of outrage along with admiration". In an interview, the film director and critic Jacques Rivette made his displeasure with the movie clear, calling it "a disgrace", "vile", and "a complete piece of shit." When first shown at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival one-third of the audience had walked out by the end of the film.


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 71% based reviews from 38 critics, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The site's critical consensus states: "Violent images and blunt audience provocation make up this nihilistic experiment from one of cinema's more difficult filmmakers". On Metacritic the film has a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: "Variety"s David Rooney wrote: "the film is shocking and upsetting, but never truly gets under the skin the way this kind of material often can. Whatever reservations are prompted by Haneke’s approach, his direction is controlled and edgy." Rooney criticized the length of the film, saying it "outstays its welcome and is more than a little too knowing in its manipulation of standard audience expectations for the genre."


title: Funny Games (1997 film)

text: An American remake of the same name was released in 2007. It stars Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, and Naomi Watts, and is also written and directed by Michael Haneke.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea () is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel and the Arabian Peninsula, on the southeast by the Laccadive Sea and the Maldives, on the southwest by Somalia, and on the east by India. Its total area is 3,862,000 km (1,491,000 sq mi) and its maximum depth is 4,652 meters (15,262 ft). The Gulf of Aden in the west connects the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Oman is in the northwest, connecting it to the Persian Gulf.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The sea is named after Arabia, the historic name of the region to the west of the sea. The Arabian Sea's name in Arabic is ; in Persian it is دریای عرب; in Urdu it is بحیرہ عرب; in Hindi it is अरब सागर; in Gujarati it is અરબી સમુદ્ર; in Marathi it is अरबी समुद्र; in Malayalam it is അറബിക്കടൽ (Arabi Kadal) and in Somali it is Bada Carbeed.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea's surface area is about . The maximum width of the sea is approximately , and its maximum depth is . The biggest river flowing into the sea is the Indus River.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea has two important branches — the Gulf of Aden in the southwest, connecting with the Red Sea through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb; and the Gulf of Oman to the northwest, connecting with the Persian Gulf. There are also the gulfs of Khambhat and Kutch on the Indian Coast.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea has been crossed by many important marine trade routes since the 3rd or 2nd millennium BCE. Major seaports include Kandla Port, Mundra Port, Pipavav Port, Dahej Port, Hazira Port, Mumbai Port, Nhava Sheva Port (Navi Mumbai), Mormugão Port (Goa), New Mangalore Port and Kochi Port in India, the Port of Karachi, Port Qasim, and the Gwadar Port in Pakistan, Chabahar Port in Iran and the Port of Salalah in Salalah, Oman. The largest islands in the Arabian Sea include Socotra (Yemen), Masirah Island (Oman), Lakshadweep (India) and Astola Island (Pakistan).


title: Arabian Sea

text: The countries with coastlines on the Arabian Sea are Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, Iran, India and the Maldives.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea historically and geographically has been referred to with different names by Arabian and European geographers and travelers, including Erythraean Sea, Indian Sea, Oman sea, Erythraean, Persian Sea in para No 34-35 of the Voyage. In Indian folklore, it is referred to as Darya, Sindhu Sagar, and Arab Samudra.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Arab geographers, sailors and nomads used to call this sea by different names, including the Akhzar (Green) Sea, Bahre Fars (Persian Sea), the Ocean Sea, the Hindu sea, the Makran Sea, the sea of Oman, among them the Zakariya al-Qazwini, Al-Masudi, Ibn Hawqal and (Hafiz-i Abru) They wrote: "The green sea and Indian sea and Persian sea are all one sea and in this sea there are strange creatures." in Iran and Turkey people call it Oman sea.


title: Arabian Sea

text: In the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, as well as in some ancient maps, Erythraean Sea refers to the whole area of the northwestern Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea has been an important marine trade route since the era of the "coastal sailing vessels" from possibly as early as the 3rd millennium BCE, certainly the late 2nd millennium BCE through the later days known as the Age of Sail. By the time of Julius Caesar, several well-established combined land-sea trade routes depended upon water transport through the sea around the rough inland terrain features to its north.


title: Arabian Sea

text: These routes usually began in the Far East or down river from Madhya Pradesh, India with transshipment via historic Bharuch (Bharakuccha), traversed past the inhospitable coast of modern-day Iran, then split around Hadhramaut, Yemen into two streams north into the Gulf of Aden and thence into the Levant, or south into Alexandria via Red Sea ports such as Axum. Each major route involved transhipping to pack animal caravan, travel through desert country and risk of bandits and extortionate tolls by local potentates.


title: Arabian Sea

text: This southern coastal route past the rough country in the southern Arabian Peninsula was significant, and the Egyptian Pharaohs built several shallow canals to service the trade, one more or less along the route of today's Suez Canal, and another from the Red Sea to the Nile River, both shallow works that were swallowed up by huge sand storms in antiquity. Later the kingdom of Axum arose in Ethiopia to rule a mercantile empire rooted in the trade with Europe via Alexandria.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai is the largest port in the Arabian Sea, and the largest container port in India.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Major Indian ports in the Arabian Sea are Mundra Port, Kandla Port, Nava Sheva, Kochi Port, Mumbai Port, and Mormugão.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Port of Karachi, Pakistan's largest and busiest seaport lies on the coast of the sea. It is located between the Karachi towns of Kiamari and Saddar.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Gwadar Port of Pakistan is a warm-water, deep-sea port situated at Gwadar in Balochistan at the apex of the Arabian Sea and at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, about 460 km west of Karachi and approximately 75 km (47 mi) east of Pakistan's border with Iran. The port is located on the eastern bay of a natural hammerhead-shaped peninsula jutting out into the Arabian Sea from the coastline.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Port of Salalah in Salalah, Oman is also a major port in the area. The International Task Force often uses the port as a base. There is a significant number of warships of all nations coming in and out of the port, which makes it a very safe bubble. The port handled just under 3.5m teu in 2009.


title: Arabian Sea

text: There are several islands in the Arabian Sea, with the most important ones being Lakshadweep Islands (India), Socotra (Yemen), Masirah (Oman) and Astola Island (Pakistan).


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Lakshadweep Islands (formerly known as the Laccadive, Minicoy, and Aminidivi Islands) is a group of islands in the Laccadive Sea region of Arabian Sea, 200 to 440 km (120 to 270 mi) off the southwestern coast of India. The archipelago is a union territory and is governed by the Union Government of India. The islands form the smallest union territory of India with their total surface area being just . Next to these islands are the Maldives islands. These islands islands are all part of the Lakshadweep-Maldives-Chagos group of islands.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Zalzala Koh was an island which was around for only a few years. After the 2013 earthquake in Pakistan, the mud island was formed. By 2016 the island was finished.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Astola Island, also known as "Jezira Haft Talar" in Balochi, or 'Island of the Seven Hills', is a small, uninhabited island in the northern tip of the Arabian Sea in Pakistan's territorial waters.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Socotra, also spelled "Soqotra", is the largest island, being part of a small archipelago of four islands. It lies some east of the Horn of Africa and south of the Arabian Peninsula.


title: Arabian Sea

text: There are many major cities and towns in the coast of Arabian Sea. Some of the major cities are Mumbai, Muscat, Karachi, Aden, Salalah, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode, Kollam, Mangalore, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Mogadishu, Gwadar, Abu Dhabi, Mundra, Dubai, Kannur, Panaji, Karwar, Udupi, Ratnagiri, Murdeshwar, Colombo, Takamaka, and Dhiffushi.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The Arabian Sea has one of the world's three largest oceanic oxygen minimum zones (OMZ), or “dead zones,” along with the eastern tropical North Pacific and the eastern tropical South Pacific. OMZs have very low levels of oxygen, sometimes undetectable by standard equipment. The Arabian Sea's OMZ has the lowest levels of oxygen in the world, especially in the Gulf of Oman. Causes of the OMZ may include untreated sewage as well as high temperatures on the Indian subcontinent, which increase winds blowing towards India, bringing up nutrients and reducing oxygen in the Arabian Sea's waters. In winter, phytoplankton suited to low-oxygen conditions turn the OMZ bright green.


title: Arabian Sea

text: The wildlife of the Arabian sea is diverse, and entirely unique because of the geographic distribution.


title: Arabian Sea

text: Recent studies by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology confirmed that the Arabian Sea is warming monotonously; it possibly is due to by global warming.


title: Arabian Sea

text: A rail tunnel under the sea is planned. It will link the UAE with the western coast of India. The tunnel will be supported by pontoons and will be nearly 2000 kilometres in length.


title: Draugr

text: The draugr or draug (, plural ; modern , and Danish, Swedish, and ) is an undead creature from the Scandinavian saga literature and folktale.


title: Draugr

text: Commentators extend the term "draugr" to the undead in medieval literature, even if it is never explicitly referred to as such in the text, and designated them rather as a ("barrow-dweller") or an , literally "again-walker" ().


title: Draugr

text: Draugar live in their graves or royal palaces, often guarding treasure buried with them in their burial mound. They are revenants, or animated corpses with a corporeal body, rather than ghosts which possess intangible spiritual bodies.


title: Draugr

text: Old Norse "" is defined as "a ghost, spirit, esp. the dead inhabitant of a cairn". Often the "draugr" is regarded not so much as a ghost but a revenant, i.e., the reanimated of the deceased inside the burial mound (as in the example of Kárr inn gamli in "Grettis saga").


title: Draugr

text: The "draugr" was referred to as "barrow-wight" in the 1869 translation of "Grettis saga", long before J. R. R. Tolkien employed this term in his novels, though "barrow-wight" is actually a rendering of (literally the ‘howe-dweller’), otherwise translated as "barrow-dweller".


title: Draugr

text: In Swedish, "draug" is a modern loanword from West Norse, as the native Swedish form "drög" has acquired the meaning of "a pale, ineffectual, and slow-minded person that drags himself along".


title: Draugr

text: The word is hypothetically traced to Proto-Indo European stem "*" "phantom", from "*" "deceive" (see also Avestan "druj").


title: Draugr

text: Unlike Kárr inn gamli (Kar the Old) in "Grettis saga", who is specifically called a "draugr", Glámr the ghost in the same saga is never explicitly called a "draugr" in the text, though called a "troll" in it. Yet Glámr is still routinely referred to as a "draugr".


title: Draugr

text: Beings not specifically called , but actually only referred to as (‘revenants’, pl. of ) and (‘haunting’) in these medieval sagas are still commonly discussed as a in various scholarly works, or the "draugar" and the haugbúar are lumped into one.


title: Draugr

text: A further caveat is that the application of the term "draugr" may not necessarily follow what the term might have meant in the strict sense during medieval times, but rather follow a modern definition or notion of "draugr", specifically such ghostly beings (by whatever names they are called) that occur in Icelandic folktales categorized as "Draugasögur" in Jón Árnason's collection, based on the classification groundwork laid by Konrad Maurer.


title: Draugr

text: The draugr is a "corporeal ghost" with a physical tangible body and not an "imago", and in tales it is often delivered a "second death" by destruction of the enlivened corpse.


title: Draugr

text: The draugr has also been conceived of as a type of "vampire" by folktale anthologist Andrew Lang in late 1897, with the idea further pursued by more modern commentators. The focus here is not on blood-sucking, which is not attested for the "draugr", but rather, contagiousness or transmittable nature of vampirism, that is to say, how a vampire begets another by turning his or her attack victim into one of his own kind. Sometimes the chain of contagion becomes an outbreak, e.g., the case of Þórólfr bægifótr (Thorolf Lame-foot or Twist-Foot), and even called an "epidemic" regarding Þórgunna (Thorgunna).


title: Draugr

text: Draugar usually possessed superhuman strength, and were "generally hideous to look at", bearing a necrotic black or blue color, and were associated with a "reek of decay" or more precisely inhabited haunts that often issued foul stench.


title: Draugr

text: The draugar were said to be either "hel-blár" ("death-blue") or "nár-fölr" ("corpse-pale"). Glámr when found dead was described as ""blár sem Hel en digr sem naut" (black as hell and bloated to the size of a bull)". Þórólfr Lame-foot, when lying dormant, looked "uncorrupted" and also "was black as death [i.e., bruised black and blue] and swollen to the size of an ox". The close similarity of these descriptions have been noted. "Laxdæla saga" describes how bones were dug up belonging to a dead sorceress who had appeared in dreams, and they were "blue and evil looking".


title: Draugr

text: Þráinn (Thrain) the berserker of Valland "turned himself into a troll" in "Hrómundar saga Gripssonar" was a fiend ("dólgr") which was "black and huge.. roaring loudly and blowing fire", and moreover, possessed long scratching claws, and the claws stuck in the neck, prompting the hero Hrómundr to refer to the "dragur" as a sort of cat ().


title: Draugr

text: The mound where Kárr the Old was entombed reeked horribly. In "Harðar saga" Hörðr Grímkelsson’s two underlings die even before entering Sóti the Viking's mound, due to the "gust and stink ()" wafting out of it.


title: Draugr

text: Draugar are noted for having numerous magical abilities (referred to as "trollskap") resembling those of living witches and wizards, such as shape-shifting, controlling the weather, and seeing into the future.


title: Draugr

text: The undead Víga-Hrappr Sumarliðason (Killer-Hrapp) of "Laxdaela saga", unlike the typical guardian of a treasure hoard, does not stay put in his burial place but roams around his farmstead of Hrappstaðir, menacing the living. Víga-Hrappr's ghost, it has been suggested, was capable of transforming into the seal with human-like eyes which appeared before Þorsteinn svarti/surt (Thorsteinn the Black) sailing by ship, and was responsible for the sinking of the ship to prevent the family from reaching Hrappstaðir. The ability to shape-shift has been ascribed to Icelandic ghosts generally, particularly into the shape of a seal.


title: Draugr

text: A draugr in Icelandic folktales collected in the modern age can also change into a great flayed bull, a grey horse with a broken back but no ears or tail, and a cat that would sit upon a sleeper's chest and grow steadily heavier until their victim suffocated.


title: Draugr

text: Draugar have the ability to enter into the dreams of the living, and they will frequently leave a gift behind so that "the living person may be assured of the tangible nature of the visit". Draugar also have the ability to curse a victim, as shown in the Grettis saga, where Grettir is cursed to be unable to become any stronger. Draugar also brought disease to a village and could create temporary darkness in daylight hours. They preferred to be active during the night, although they did not appear to be vulnerable to sunlight like some other revenants. Draugr can also kill people with bad luck.


title: Draugr

text: A draugr's presence might be shown by a great light that glowed from the mound like foxfire. This fire would form a barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead.


title: Draugr

text: The undead Víga-Hrappr exhibited the ability to sink into the ground to escape from Óláfr Hǫskuldsson the Peacock.


title: Draugr

text: Some draugar are immune to weapons, and only a hero has the strength and courage needed to stand up to so formidable an opponent. In legends, the hero would often have to wrestle the draugr back to his grave, thereby defeating him, since weapons would do no good. A good example of this is found in "Hrómundar saga Gripssonar". Iron could injure a draugr, as is the case with many supernatural creatures, although it would not be sufficient to stop it. Sometimes the hero is required to dispose of the body in unconventional ways. The preferred method is to cut off the draugr's head, burn the body, and dump the ashes in the sea—the emphasis being on making absolutely sure that the draugr was dead and gone.


title: Draugr

text: Any mean, nasty, or greedy person can become a draugr. As Ármann Jakobsson notes, "most medieval Icelandic ghosts are evil or marginal people. If not dissatisfied or evil, they are unpopular".


title: Draugr

text: The draugr's motivation was primarily envy and greed. Greed causes it to viciously attack any would-be grave robbers, but the draugr also expresses an innate envy of the living stemming from a longing for the things of life which it once had. They also exhibit an immense and nearly insatiable appetite, as shown in the encounter of Aran and Asmund, sword brothers who made an oath that, if one should die, the other would sit vigil with him for three days inside the burial mound. When Aran died, Asmund brought his own possessions into the barrow—banners, armor, hawk, hound, and horse—then set himself to wait the three days:


title: Draugr

text: The draugr's victims were not limited to trespassers in its home. The roaming undead devastated livestock by running the animals to death either by riding them or pursuing them in some hideous, half-flayed form. Shepherds' duties kept them outdoors at night, and they were particular targets for the hunger and hatred of the undead:


title: Draugr

text: Animals feeding near the grave of a draugr might be driven mad by the creature's influence. They may also die from being driven mad. Thorolf, for example, caused birds to drop dead when they flew over his bowl barrow.


title: Draugr

text: The main indication that a deceased person will become a draugr is that the corpse is not in a horizontal position but is found standing upright (Víga-Hrappr), or in a sitting position (Þórólfr), indicating that the dead might return. Ármann Jakobsson suggests further that breaking the draugr's posture is a necessary or helpful step in destroying the "draugr", but this is fraught with the risk of being inflicted with the evil eye, whether this is explictly told in the case of Grettir who receives the curse from Glámr, or only implied in the case of Þórólfr, whose son warns the others to beware while they unbend Þórólfr's seated posture.


title: Draugr

text: The revenant "draugr" needing to be decapitated in order to incapacitate them from further hauntings is a common theme in the family sagas.


title: Draugr

text: Traditionally, a pair of open iron scissors was placed on the chest of the recently deceased, and straws or twigs might be hidden among their clothes. The big toes were tied together or needles were driven through the soles of the feet in order to keep the dead from being able to walk. Tradition also held that the coffin should be lifted and lowered in three different directions as it was carried from the house to confuse a possible draugr's sense of direction.


title: Draugr

text: The most effective means of preventing the return of the dead was believed to be a corpse door, a special door through which the corpse was carried feet-first with people surrounding it so that the corpse couldn't see where it was going. The door was then bricked up to prevent a return. It is speculated that this belief began in Denmark and spread throughout the Norse culture, founded on the idea that the dead could only leave through the way they entered.


title: Draugr

text: In "Eyrbyggja saga", draugar are driven off by holding a "door-doom". One by one, they are summoned to the door-doom and given judgment and forced out of the home by this legal method. The home was then purified with holy water to ensure that they never came back.


title: Draugr

text: A variation of the draugr is the "haugbui" (from Old Norse "haugr"' "howe, barrow, tumulus") which was a mound-dweller, the dead body living on within its tomb. The notable difference between the two was that the haugbui is unable to leave its grave site and only attacks those who trespass upon their territory.


title: Draugr

text: The haugbui was rarely found far from its burial place and is a type of undead commonly found in Norse sagas. The creature is said to either swim alongside boats or sail around them in a partially submerged vessel, always on their own. In some accounts, witnesses portray them as shapeshifters who take on the appearance of seaweed or moss-covered stones on the shoreline.


title: Draugr

text: One of the best-known draugar is Glámr, who is defeated by the hero in "Grettis saga". After Glámr dies on Christmas Eve, "people became aware that Glámr was not resting in peace. He wrought such havoc that some people fainted at the sight of him, while others went out of their minds". After a battle, Grettir eventually gets Glámr on his back. Just before Grettir kills him, Glámr curses Grettir because "Glámr was endowed with more evil force than most other ghosts", and thus he was able to speak and leave Grettir with his curse after his death.


title: Draugr

text: A somewhat ambivalent, alternative view of the draugr is presented by the example of Gunnar Hámundarson in "Njáls saga": "It seemed as though the howe was agape, and that Gunnar had turned within the howe to look upwards at the moon. They thought that they saw four lights within the howe, but not a shadow to be seen. Then they saw that Gunnar was merry, with a joyful face."


title: Draugr

text: In the "Eyrbyggja saga", a shepherd is assaulted by a blue-black draugr. The shepherd's neck is broken during the ensuing scuffle. The shepherd rises the next night as a draugr.


title: Draugr

text: In more recent Scandinavian folklore, the draug (the modern spelling used in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) is a supernatural being that occurs in legends along the coast of Norway. Draugen was originally a dead person who either lived in the mound (in Norse called haugbúi) or went out to haunt the living. In later folklore, it became common to limit the figure to a ghost of a dead fisherman who had drifted at sea, and who was not buried in Christian soil. It was said that he wore a leather jacket or was dressed in oilskin, but had a seaweed vase for his head. He sailed in a half-boat with blocked sails (the Norwegian municipality of Bø, Nordland has the half-boat in its coat-of-arms) and announced death for those who saw him or even wanted to pull them down. This trait is common in the northernmost part of Norway, where life and culture was based on fishing more than anywhere else. The reason for this may be that the fishermen often drowned in great numbers, and the stories of restless dead coming in from sea were more common in the north than any other region of the country.


title: Draugr

text: A recorded legend from Trøndelag tells how a cadaver lying on a beach became the object of a quarrel between the two types of draug (headless and seaweed-headed). A similar source even tells of a third type, the "gleip", known to hitch themselves to sailors walking ashore and make them slip on the wet rocks.


title: Draugr

text: But, though the draug usually presages death, there is an amusing account in Northern Norway of a northerner who managed to outwit him:


title: Draugr

text: The modern and popular connection between the draug and the sea can be traced back to authors like Jonas Lie and Regine Nordmann, whose works include several books of fairy tales, as well as the drawings of Theodor Kittelsen, who spent some years living in Svolvær. Up north, the tradition of sea-draugs is especially vivid.


title: Draugr

text: Arne Garborg describes land-draugs coming fresh from the graveyards, and the term "draug" is even used of vampires. The notion of draugs who live in the mountains is present in the poetic works of Henrik Ibsen ("Peer Gynt"), and Aasmund Olavsson Vinje. The Nynorsk translation of "The Lord of the Rings" used the term for both Nazgûl and the dead men of Dunharrow. Tolkien's Barrow-Wights bear obvious similarity to, and were inspired by the haugbúi.


title: Draugr

text: In "The Elder Scrolls" video game series, draugr are the undead mummified corpses of fallen warriors that inhabit the ancient burial sites of a Nordic-inspired race of man. These draugr behave more like haugbúi than traditional draugr. They first appeared in the Bloodmoon expansion to "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind", and would later go on to appear all throughout "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". Draugr are a common enemy, the first encountered by the player, in the 2018 video game "God of War", with a variety of different powers and abilities. In 2019, a spaceship named "Draugur" was added to the game "Eve Online", as the command destroyer of the Triglavian faction. Draugr appear as an enemies in the 2021 early access game "Valheim", where they take the more recent, seaweed version of the Draug.


title: Draugr

text: Season 2 Episode 2 of "Hilda", entitled "The Draugen," involved draugen as the ghosts of sailors who died at sea. While their form was ghostly, the captain was able to wear a coat, and had a shock of seaweed for hair.


title: American Vandal

text: American Vandal is an American mockumentary television series created by Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda that premiered on September 15, 2017, on Netflix. The series is a parody of true crime documentaries such as "Making a Murderer" and "Serial". On October 26, 2018, it was announced that Netflix had canceled the series after two seasons; however, it was also reported that producers intend to shop the program to other venues.


title: American Vandal

text: It received mostly positive critical reviews, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, and won a Peabody Award.


title: American Vandal

text: The first season follows the aftermath of a costly high school prank that left 27 faculty cars vandalized with phallic images. Senior class clown Dylan Maxwell is accused of the crime by the school. He is expelled, but an investigation into the incident is launched by sophomore Peter Maldonado, with help from his friend Sam Ecklund, to uncover whether Dylan was the one truly behind the crime.


title: American Vandal

text: The second season follows Peter and Sam as they investigate a new crime at a Catholic private high school after their cafeteria's lemonade is contaminated with maltitol by someone calling themselves "The Turd Burglar."


title: American Vandal

text: Creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault sought to create a satire of true crime documentaries such as "Serial", "Making a Murderer", and "The Jinx". Yacenda and Perrault came up with the idea for the show in early 2016 and subsequently pitched it to Netflix, which agreed to distribute the show after being assured that the show would be "more than just a dick joke sketch." Yacenda and Perrault, who had previously worked on short-form videos for outlets such as Funny or Die and CollegeHumor, were joined by showrunner Dan Lagana, who had most recently worked on the television series "Deadbeat". Lagana took charge of hiring writers for the show, choosing individuals with relatively little experience in writing for television.


title: American Vandal

text: The creators developed the central mystery in the course of writing the show, and sought to strike a balance between humor and the creation of an engrossing mystery.


title: American Vandal

text: On August 3, 2017, it was announced that Netflix had ordered and produced a new mockumentary series entitled "American Vandal" and that it was set to premiere on September 15, 2017. The series was created by Tony Yacenda and Daniel Perrault who were set to executive produce alongside Dan Lagana, Joe Farrell, Ari Lubet, Josh Lieberman, and Michael Rotenberg. Lagana was expected to act as showrunner on the series as well. Production companies involved with the series include CBS Television Studios, Funny or Die and 3 Arts Entertainment.


title: American Vandal

text: Shortly after the release of the first season, Yacenda and Perrault discussed the possibility of a second season, with the same documentary crew creating a documentary on a different crime. On October 26, 2017, it was announced that Netflix had renewed the series for a second season. On August 21, 2018, it was announced that the second season would premiere on September 14, 2018. On October 26, 2018, it was announced that Netflix had canceled the series after two seasons, however it was also reported that producers intend to shop the program to other venues.


title: American Vandal

text: In casting the show, the creators avoided stunt casting, instead seeking actors who best fit the roles and had the ability to improvise. Alongside the initial series announcement, it was reported that the series' cast would include Tyler Alvarez, Jimmy Tatro, Griffin Gluck, Camille Hyde, Eduardo Franco, Jessica Juarez, Lou Wilson, Camille Ramsey, Calum Worthy, Lukas Gage and G Hannelius.


title: American Vandal

text: On March 14, 2018, it was announced that Travis Tope and Melvin Gregg had been cast in the series' lead roles for season two. On April 4, 2018, it was announced that Adam Ray had joined the cast in a recurring capacity. On June 14, 2018, Tony Yacenda, Dan Lagana, and Dan Perrault confirmed that Alvarez and Gluck would return as Peter and Sam, investigating a new crime in a Catholic high school. On August 21, 2018, it was announced that Taylor Dearden and DeRon Horton had joined the main cast of season two.


title: American Vandal

text: On August 3, 2017, the official trailer for season one was released. On August 21, 2018, the official trailer for season two was released.


title: American Vandal

text: The first season of the series was met with critical acclaim upon release. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds an approval rating of 98% based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 8.34/10. The site's consensus reads, ""American Vandal" pays satirical dividends while also working as a genuinely absorbing mystery that offers thought-provoking commentary on modern entertainment." On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on reviews from 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: American Vandal

text: Writing for "The Ringer", Mark Titus praised the show's subtle humor, engrossing plot, and realistic representation of high school. Robert Lloyd of the "Los Angeles Times" described "American Vandal" as a "perfectly proportioned pastiche" of true crime documentaries. Steve Greene of "IndieWire" praised the "incredible sense of authenticity" in the performances and the series's exploration of the popularity of the true crime genre.


title: American Vandal

text: The series has also been praised for its attention to detail when depicting social media interactions. Writing for VICE, Shailee Koranne described "American Vandal"'s portrayal of social media as "absolutely accurate and incredibly nuanced."


title: American Vandal

text: "American Vandal" was honored with a Peabody Award for its first season on April 19, 2018. Calling it a "surprisingly insightful rumination on contemporary life... the show also offers a look at how the ethical questions of the true crime genre intersect with the harsh realities of being a teenager in the age of social media."


title: American Vandal

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season holds an approval rating of 98% on an average rating of 8.07 out of 10, based on 47 reviews. The site's consensus reads, ""American Vandal" trades one type of potty humor for another in an ambitious second season that manages to double down on the explicit gags while subtly addressing serious social issues." On Metacritic, the season received a weighted average score of 76 out of 100, based on reviews from 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: The Three Stooges (promoted as The Three Stooges: The Movie) is a 2012 American slapstick comedy film based on the film shorts from 1934 to 1959 starring the comedy trio of the same name. It was produced, written and directed by the Farrelly brothers and co-written by Mike Cerrone. It stars Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso, re-creating the eponymous characters played by Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: The story places the Stooges in a then-modern setting. After over a decade of casting problems, principal photography took place from May to July 2011. The film was released on April 13, 2012 by 20th Century Fox.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: The film has three acts, referred to as episodes (a reference to how the original "Three Stooges" short films were packaged for television by Columbia Pictures).


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: 35 years in the past, the children at the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage are playing soccer with an old soda can in the frontyard. Sister Mary-Mengele, the meanest and strictest nun in the orphanage, tells them to go inside and do their chores. They try singing "Everybody is Special", but she tells them to shut up and go work. Later, three destructive infants, Moe, Larry and Curly, are thrown in a duffel bag onto the orphanage's doorstep from an unknown person's car. The trio subsequently wreaks havoc in the place, terrifying the nuns—especially Sister Mary-Mengele, who has always hated them.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Ten years later, desperate to be rid of the three, the nuns tell a prospectively adoptive couple that the trio are the only three children available. They're then forced to add a fourth for consideration when a boy named Teddy wanders into the room. The couple, the Harters, decides to pick Moe; but when he requests that Larry and Curly join him, they take him back to the orphanage and choose Teddy instead. Hiding his true motives, Moe tells Larry and Curly that he came back because the Harters were only going to make him do chores.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: 25 years later, in the present, the trio are adults, still living at the orphanage and working as maintenance men. Monsignor Ratliffe arrives and tells Mother Superior that the orphanage must be closed, and she tells Sister Mary-Mengele to fetch the trio. The three are trying to fix the malfunctioning bell on the roof; but when Larry removes the bell's ""DO NOT REMOVE"" tag (misreading it as "Donut Remover"), it falls and injures Sister Mary-Mengele just as she arrives. When they go to the Mother Superior, another accident causes Monsignor Ratliffe to fall on top of the nuns. Moe, Larry and Curly, thinking he is "getting fresh" with the nuns, attack him, until Mother Superior stops them. Ratliffe will not adopt them either as he is on official business.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Mother Superior tells everyone that the orphanage must close at the end of the month. Ratliffe tells the nuns they will be spread around the diocese and the children will be sent to foster homes unless they can raise $830,000 in 30 days. The trio volunteers to try to raise the money. Some of the nuns think they can't succeed, as they know only nuns and kids, but Mother Superior thinks otherwise.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: A subplot involves a woman named Lydia, who wants to kill her husband so she can be with her lover, Mac, and inherit her husband's considerable fortune. She finds the trio and offers to pay them the money they need to take care of the hit job, pretending that Mac is her terminally ill husband that wants to be put out of his misery and have him switch with her real husband when the moment comes. They botch the job by promptly letting Curly push Mac in front of a bus and leave Mac in traction in the hospital. When they try to visit Mac in the hospital to finish the job (failing to do so as Mac tells them that the incident cured his illness), they are chased by two police officers throughout the hospital and escape by jumping off the roof using a fire hose. They end up running into a now grown-up Teddy, who invites them to his anniversary party and an opportunity to settle at Teddy's home, but Moe refuses.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: It is then revealed that Teddy is actually Lydia's husband. The trio's next scheme for raising the money is selling farm-raised salmon, with them scattering live salmon on a golf range and watering them like produce. But the same police officers from the hospital arrive at the golf course to arrest them and the trio gets chased off the golf course and they hide in an old building (getting in by using Curly as a battering ram to bust down the door). Inside, after having a slapstick fight, Larry and Curly scold Moe for rejecting Teddy's invitation and his father's earlier adoption attempt; they could have used his adoptive parents' wealth to help save the orphanage. Hurt, Moe tells them to leave, saying that he is tired of being with them. After deciding to split up, they leave the old building, with Moe left inside alone. Then it turns out that they were all on stage in front of an audition crew who select Moe to be the newest cast member of "Jersey Shore" as "Dyna-Moe".


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Larry and Curly are getting along well without Moe, but then they start to worry about him, and decide to return to the orphanage to find him. There, they find out a girl named Murph is very ill but has not been taken to the hospital because the orphanage has no medical insurance. Sister Mary-Mengele angrily tells them that no one will insure the orphanage due to the trio's numerous accidents and injuries over the years, and the $830,000 is needed in order to cover medical bills that accumulated over the years.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Larry and Curly later meet up with Teddy's adopted father at his office to talk about what happened with the orphanage. Teddy's father confesses that Moe wanted him to go back for his friends to adopt them, and he thought three kids would be too many to handle, so he gave Moe back and took Teddy in his place. Then Larry and Curly discover a picture of Teddy and Mr. Harter with Lydia and Mac, and realize that Teddy is the husband that Lydia wanted to murder. In addition to this, they feel guilty for rebuking Moe in not accepting the Harter's adoption and decide to go find him.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Meanwhile, Moe has been causing a lot of havoc on "Jersey Shore" by slapping, eye-poking and head-bopping the cast members and not putting up with their spoiled antics. The cast goes to the producer and tells him to kick Moe off of the show or they will sue him. The producer then informs them that the show is all about the ratings and not them. Larry and Curly finally go to the set of "Jersey Shore" to reunite with Moe and they all head to the anniversary party where they show up to thwart the murder plot, getting in as balloon men.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: When they get inside, Curly gives all the balloons to a little girl and she floats up into the air. Later, they get chased by the angry Lydia and Mac after the same girl's balloons are popped and she falls onto the wedding cake, destroying it. Moe, Larry, and Curly are chased into Teddy's bedroom, finding Teddy on the bed, drowsy. Mac then draws a gun on the trio, but Mr. Harter appears and tells Mac to put his gun down. Mac then confesses that Lydia was "calling the shots", but Mr. Harter admits that he was the real mastermind and Lydia was working for him. He married into the money and was incensed to find out the money was left to Teddy and not him when Teddy's mother died years earlier.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: They are taken for a ride, but the car crashes into a lake when Curly's pet rat Nippy digs into Lydia’s breasts. They all escape when Curly farted, and Moe ignites it with some "easy-light, waterproof safety matches" that Larry had, causing enough of an explosion to blow out the windows. Once they are back on land, Mr. Harter, Lydia, and Mac are arrested, and Teddy thanks the trio for saving him. When the trio requests the $830,000 from Teddy, he declines, stating he refuses to help the same orphanage that gave him up to a father that tried to kill him.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: A couple of months later, the trio return to the now-condemned/abandoned orphanage. They feel bad for feeling like failures, but then they hear kids laughing, swimming and playing. When they investigate, they find out a brand new orphanage was built next door, complete with a swimming pool, a basketball court, and a tennis court. They soon learn that the money came from the "Jersey Shore"'s producers who consider this as an advance payment in relation to a new reality show, "Nuns vs. Nitwits", in which the entire trio will take part.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Murph is revealed to be perfectly fine and her illness was due to metal poisoning (with Larry saying he has always suspected there was too much iron in the water). Then she, along with her friend Peezer and his brother Weezer (the latter thought to have been lost forever to a foster home), will be adopted by Teddy and his new fiancée, Ling, who was Teddy's father's secretary. In the end, after Curly accidentally knocks Sister Mary-Mengele into the pool with a folded-up diving board as the orphange celebrates the adoption, the trio run away, bounce off some trampolines over the hedge and onto some mules, on which they clumsily ride away into the distance.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: An epilogue consists of two actors playing Bobby and Peter Farrelly, explaining that the stunts were all done by professionals, showing the foam rubber props used in the film for the trio to hit one another, demonstrating the fake eye-poke trick (to the eyebrows), and advising children not to try any of the stunts at home.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: During the end credits, a music video plays showing the Stooges and Sister Rosemary performing "It's a Shame", originally recorded by The Spinners in 1970, interspersed with excerpts from deleted scenes and a couple of brief outtakes. Though credited to "The Spinners and The Three Stooges", Hudson's own distinctive vocals can also be heard.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: A Three Stooges film set in the modern day had been in development during the show's 60th anniversary; "Mad About You" creator Danny Jacobson wrote and developed a version in 1997 that had Phil Hartman attached to play Moe. Conundrum Entertainment's Bradley Thomas became attached to "The Three Stooges" around 2000 with Columbia Pictures. In March 2001, Warner Bros. bought the feature rights from C3 Entertainment and Peter and Bobby Farrelly became involved. They along with co-writer Mike Cerrone completed the script in mid-to-late 2002 and began shopping it. In 2004, with no talent being attached to the project, their rights expired and it was acquired by First Look Studios and C3 Entertainment. In November 2008, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the Farrelly's Warner Bros. scripts and the rights from C3 Entertainment, and was given a budget of $40 million with a release date of November 20, 2009. In March 2009, after struggling with casting delays, the release date was pushed to 2010, but the filmmakers still did not have a cast set. In November 2010, MGM filed bankruptcy and the following month the project was taken over by 20th Century Fox in hopes to have released the film in 2011.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: The Farrellys said that they were not going to do a biopic or remake, but instead new "Three Stooges" episodes set in the present day. The film was divided into three segments, each with a stand-alone story, and each being 27 minutes long. The Farrellys aimed to receive a PG rating from the MPAA, while still incorporating physical comedy. In Britain several images were cut before the film achieved the equivalent rating. The Farrellys have also said it would have "non-stop slapping, more in the tone of "Dumb and Dumber" than we've done. Our goal is 85 minutes of laughs in a film that will be very respectful of who the Stooges were. It's by far the riskiest project we've ever done, without question, but it is also the one closest to our hearts."


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: In March 2009, Benicio del Toro and Hank Azaria were in consideration to play the lead role of Moe Howard. The role of Moe went to Chris Diamantopoulos. Diamantopoulos revealed that he showed up to the audition in full costume, only to see a sign out front asking to "not show up in character". Over six months, he was called back fourteen times. Afterwards, he got a call from the Farrellys asking him if he was going to do the movie with them. Confused, he called his agent, who revealed that he had gotten the part, but that the agent (who, Diamantopoulos had stated previously, was against the role) was waiting on telling him. Angered, he fired his agent on the spot and accepted the role.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Sean Penn was already set to play Larry Fine but dropped out to concentrate on his charitable efforts in Haiti. Sean Hayes was chosen to play Larry. Jim Carrey was set to play Curly Howard and gained 40 pounds for the role but ultimately dropped out because of not wanting to endanger his health gaining 60 to 70 pounds. The role went to Will Sasso. Johnny Knoxville, Andy Samberg and Shane Jacobson were all on the short list to play Moe, Larry and Curly, respectively, with Knoxville supposedly having turned it down as he refused to commit to doing an impersonation. As the Farrellys note in the DVD/Blu-ray featurette on casting the picture, Sasso was cast as Curly despite being considerably taller than the other Stooges (the original Curly was roughly the same height as Moe and Larry).


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: In December 2010, Richard Jenkins was in talks to play Mother Superior in the film. In February 2011, Cher was considered but Jane Lynch secured the role. Larry David plays another nun in the film called Sister Mary-Mengele, a character named after the infamous Nazi doctor. Sofía Vergara was cast as Lydia. Stephen Collins was cast as Mr. Harter and Carly Craig as his wife, Mrs. Harter. The cast of "Jersey Shore" (Nicole Polizzi, Michael Sorrentino, Sammi Giancola, Jennifer Farley, and Ronnie Ortiz-Magro) have cameos in the film.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: On a reported budget of $30 million, principal photography started on May 9, 2011, in downtown Atlanta, Georgia and wrapped on July 20, 2011. Scenes were shot at the Fairlie-Poplar Historic District around 5 Points Sports Building on the corner of Peachtree St., Edgewood Ave., and Decatur St. on the evening and night of May 13 and wrapped the next day. Other locations included Piedmont Park, Emory Saint Joseph's Hospital, Zoo Atlanta, and Colony Square. In June, production moved to Cartersville and shot scenes near Woodland High School. After the cast of the "Jersey Shore" arrived on July 18, 2011, they shot scenes at the Atlanta Civic Center. During the last two days of filming, scenes were shot at an Ansley Park home. Filming concluded on July 22, 2011, at the Miami Seaquarium, a popular marine life park in Florida, capturing a scene in their dolphin tank.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: To promote the film, Diamantopoulos, Hayes, and Sasso appeared as the Stooges on "WWE Raw" on April 9, 2012. They acted in several scenes, the first with Santino Marella, before later taking to the ring where they were booed by an infuriated crowd before Sasso, dressed as Hulk Hogan, received a chokeslam by Kane.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: On its opening weekend in US, "The Three Stooges" earned $17.1 million and debuted second behind "The Hunger Games". The film grossed $54,819,301 in the box office, and at least $25,013,185 through US home video sales.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 51% based on reviews from 150 critics; the average rating is 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "While nowhere near as painful as it could have been, "The Three Stooges" fails to add fresh laughs to the Stooges' inestimable cinematic legacy." Metacritic gives the film a score of 56 out of 100, based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale. Despite the mixed reviews, Diamantopoulos, Hayes, and Sasso were praised for their performances as Moe, Larry, and Curly.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" described it as "[A] funny, good-hearted resuscitation of Hollywood's beloved lowbrow lunkheads", while Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" lauded the film as a "thoroughly enjoyable paean to Moe, Larry and Curly and the art of the eye poke". Spill.com gave the movie a fairly good review, insisting that the movie is great for families, and hardcore Stooge-fans will not be disappointed. They also went on to praise the actors for their portrayal of the Stooges, saying the likeness was uncanny, and perhaps even Oscar-worthy. Roger Ebert gave the movie two-and-a-half out of four stars, stating "The Farrelly brothers have made probably the best Three Stooges movie it's possible to make in 2012, and perhaps ever since the Stooges stopped making them themselves." Some critics, however, complained about the forced pop culture references such as cameos by "Jersey Shore" cast members which were presumably done to ensure the movie would have youth appeal and not simply be a nostalgia trip for older audiences.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Betsy Sherman of "The Boston Phoenix" gave it three out of four stars, saying it was "funny and faithful", and added that the film contains "stories that could have graced [the Stooges]' 1930s shorts (raise money to save an orphanage, stumble into a greedy wife's plot) onto the present and imagine how they'd interpret modern concepts (farm-raised salmon)".


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" magazine gave it two stars out of four, commenting that "the movie is a mixed bag. The gags don't blossom with repetition. The Stooges were always better in short doses. And 90 minutes of PG nyuk-nyuk-nyuk can seem like an eternity. For the Farrellys, "The Three Stooges" is a labor of love. For non-believers, it's merely a labor." Travers also praised the cast, stating "The actors deserve a full-throated woo-woo-woo!" adding that "Hayes, Sasso, and Diamantopoulos do themselves and the Stooges proud." James White of "Empire Magazine" gave the film a two out of five stars, saying, "The mooted Stooges - Sean Penn, Jim Carrey, Benicio del Toro - dodged a bullet judging by this muddle of creaky slapstick and laugh-free plotting."


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Bill Wine of KYW Newsradio 1060 in Philadelphia commented that "no one's going to confuse "The Three Stooges" with a transcendent movie anytime soon, but the Farrellys do capture and reproduce the anarchic spirit and uninhibited essence of the Stooges—soitenly and poifectly, as the Stooges would put it—and remind us why they had such a hold on some of us in decades past. The three leads are expert mimics—especially Hayes...they acquit themselves admirably..."


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League anti-defamation organization, released a statement condemning the movie on the grounds of disrespectful portrayals of Catholics, specifically nuns. Donohue claims that the movie is evidence of increasing hostility towards religion and Catholics in Hollywood, commenting "In the 1950s, Hollywood generally avoided crude fare and was respectful of religion. Today, it specializes in crudity and trashes Christianity, especially Catholicism." Donohue added that the movie "is not just another remake: it is a cultural marker of sociological significance, and what it says about the way we've changed is not encouraging."


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: Donohue pinpoints one scene in which the film pushes the envelope with its portrayals of two unusual nuns, respectively portrayed by model Kate Upton, and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star/creator Larry David. Both are potential causes for the offense for different reasons, as Moviefone reports:


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: To resolve the issue, the Farelly brothers reshot the scene with Larry pointing out Sister Bernice, still wearing the "nun-kini" while on lifeguard duty at the new orphanage's pool. Close-up footage of Upton exiting the pool in front of a group of children appears in the film's trailer, but not in the movie itself nor DVD/Blu-ray deleted scenes; in the final film, she is only seen sitting in a chair and briefly in the background of a group shot while in her swimsuit (in her other scenes, she is dressed in standard nun attire).


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: "The Three Stooges" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 17, 2012. The release includes behind-the-scenes featurettes, a screen test featuring the three lead actors testing out a scene later reshot for the movie, and a selection of deleted scenes. Of note is the inclusion of the theatrical trailer, which, as mentioned above, contains numerous differences compared to the final film.


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: One song, while heard in the movie, is not included in the accompanying soundtrack - Jessica - The Allman Brothers Band


title: The Three Stooges (2012 film)

text: On May 7, 2015, a sequel was announced, with Hayes, Diamantopoulos and Sasso all reprising their roles. Cameron Fay was hired to write the script. Production was set to begin in 2018 but plans for the sequel were abandoned.


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque (, ; , , or ) is a sport that falls into the category of boules sports, along with raffa, bocce, boule lyonnaise, lawn bowls, and crown green bowling. In all of these sports, players or teams play their boules/balls towards a target ball.


title: Pétanque

text: In pétanque the objective is to score points by having boules closer to the target than the opponent after all boules have been thrown. This is achieved by throwing or rolling boules closer to the small target ball, officially called a "jack" "(fr: cochonnet)", or by hitting the opponents' boules away from the target, while standing inside a circle with both feet on the ground.


title: Pétanque

text: The game is normally and best played on hard dirt or gravel. It can be played in public areas in parks or in dedicated facilities called "boulodromes".


title: Pétanque

text: The current form of the game was codified in 1907 or 1910 in La Ciotat, in Provence, France. The French name "pétanque" (borrowed into English, with or without the acute accent) comes from "petanca" in the Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression "pè tancat" , meaning 'foot fixed' or 'foot planted' (on the ground).


title: Pétanque

text: Boules games have a very long history, dating back through the Middle Ages to ancient Rome, and before that to ancient Greece and Egypt.


title: Pétanque

text: In France in the second half of the 19th century, a form of boules known as "jeu provençal" (or "boule lyonnaise") was extremely popular. In this form of the game, players rolled their boules or ran three steps before throwing a boule. Pétanque originally developed as an offshoot or variant of "jeu provençal" in 1910, in what is now called the "Jules Lenoir Boulodrome" in the town of La Ciotat near Marseilles. A former "jeu provençal" player named Jules Lenoir was afflicted by rheumatism so severe that he could no longer run before throwing a boule. In fact, he could barely stand. A good friend named Ernest Pitiot was a local café owner. In order to accommodate his friend Lenoir, Pitiot developed a variant form of the game in which the length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and a player, instead of running to throw a boule, stood, stationary, in a circle. They called the game "pieds tanqués", "feet planted" (on the ground), a name that eventually evolved into the game's current name, "pétanque".


title: Pétanque

text: The first pétanque tournament was organized by Ernest Pitiot, along with his brother Joseph Pitiot, in 1910 in La Ciotat. The game spread quickly and soon became the most popular form of boules in France.


title: Pétanque

text: Before the mid-1800s, European boules games were played with solid wooden balls, usually made from boxwood root, a very hard wood. The late 1800s saw the introduction of cheap mass-manufactured nails, and wooden boules gradually began to be covered with nails, producing "boules cloutées" ("nailed boules"). After World War I, cannonball manufacturing technology was adapted to allow the manufacture of hollow, all-metal boules. The first all-metal boule, "la Boule Intégrale", was introduced in the mid-1920s by Paul Courtieu. The "Intégrale" was cast in a single piece from a bronze-aluminum alloy. Shortly thereafter, Jean Blanc invented a process of manufacturing steel boules by stamping two steel blanks into hemispheres and then welding the two hemispheres together to create a boule. With this technological advance, hollow all-metal balls rapidly became the norm.


title: Pétanque

text: After the development of the all-metal boule, pétanque spread rapidly from Provence to the rest of France, then to the rest of Europe, and then to Francophone colonies and countries around the globe. Today, many countries have their own national governing bodies.


title: Pétanque

text: In France, the "Fédération Française de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal" (FFPJP) has over 300,000 licensed members.


title: Pétanque

text: There are strong national federations in Germany, Spain and England. Pétanque is actively played in many nations with histories of French colonial influence, especially in Southeast Asia, including Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Puducherry in India, as well as some parts of Africa. The sport is also popular in Madagascar and Thailand.


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque was featured at the 2015 All-Africa Games hosted by the Republic of the Congo, a former French colony.


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque is not widely played in the Americas. There is a Canadian pétanque federation based in Québec. In the United States, the Federation of Pétanque USA (FPUSA) reports that about 30,000 play nationwide. As of 1 December 2015, FPUSA counted 2141 members in the US, in 52 affiliated clubs.


title: Pétanque

text: On the international level, the governing body of pétanque is the "Fédération Internationale de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal" (FIPJP). It was founded in 1958 in Marseille and has almost 800,000 members as of 2022.


title: Pétanque

text: The game made an appearance in the 1966 French crime film "Le deuxieme souffle". Pétanque also appeared in Season 4 Episode 20 (Pétanque) of the American sitcom "The Cosby Show" in 1988. In the 1981 film adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery Evil Under The Sun, a suspect played by James Mason is questioned about his alibi while playing a game. The fourth episode of "The Amazing Race 30" featured a pétanque competition at Place des Lices in Saint-Tropez. Asterix Versus Caesar features the Gauls playing a pétanque-esque game with rocks.


title: Pétanque

text: The FIPJP world championships take place every two years. Men's championships are held in even-numbered years, while Women's and Youth championships are held in odd-numbered years.


title: Pétanque

text: Perhaps the best-known international championship is the "Mondial la Marseillaise à Pétanque", which takes place every year in Marseille, France, with more than 10,000 participants and more than 150,000 spectators.


title: Pétanque

text: The largest annual tournament in the United States is the Petanque Amelia Island Open (formerly the Petanque America Open), held in each year in November at Amelia Island, Florida.


title: Pétanque

text: La British Open is a major Pétanque tournament held in the North of England which attracts players from across the United Kingdom and Europe.


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque is not currently an Olympic sport, although the Confédération Mondiale des Sports de Boules—which was created in 1985 by several international boules organizations specifically for this purpose—has been lobbying the Olympic committee since 1985 to make it part of the summer Olympics. Pétanque has appeared in every edition of The World Games from 1985 onward. The 2022 World Games in the United States will include women’s pétanque, the first time that only women's events will be held as part of the boules sports programme at The World Games.


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque is played by two teams, each comprising one, two, or three players. In the singles and doubles games, each player plays with three metal boules. In triples, each player uses only two.


title: Pétanque

text: The area where a game of pétanque is played is called a "terrain". A game can be played in an open area such as a public park, where the boundaries of the terrain are not marked, or more formally on a "marked terrain" where the terrain boundaries are marked (traditionally, by strings tightly strung between nails driven into the ground).


title: Pétanque

text: In pétanque, players throw while standing in a circle ("cercle"). Traditionally, this was simply scratched in the dirt. From around 2005, red plastic "prefabricated" circles were introduced and are now widely used in formal games. A circle drawn on the ground must be in diameter, while a plastic circle must have an inside diameter of .


title: Pétanque

text: A game consists of several "ends" ("mènes"). An end consists of the throwing out of the jack ("cochonnet", the little wooden target ball), followed by the two teams throwing their boules. After both teams have thrown all of their boules, the team with the boule closest to the jack wins the end. The winning team scores one point for each of its boules that is closer than the opposing team's closest boule. That means that the winning team could in theory score as many as six points in an end, although a score of one or two points is more typical. As the game progresses, each team accumulates points until one of the teams reaches 13, the winning number of points.


title: Pétanque

text: A game begins with a coin toss to determine which team plays first. The team that wins the toss begins the game by placing the circle, then standing in the circle and throwing the jack to a distance of . A player from the team that threw the jack throws the first boule. Then a player from the opposing team throws a boule. From that point on, the team with the boule that is closest to the jack is said to "have the point". The team that does not have the point throws the next boule. That team continues to throw boules until it either gains the point, or runs out of boules.


title: Pétanque

text: If at any point the closest boules from each team are equidistant from the jack, then the team that threw the last boule throws again. If the boules are still equidistant then the teams play alternately until the tie is broken. If the boules are still equidistant at the end of the "mène" then neither team scores any points.


title: Pétanque

text: The team that won the end starts the next end. A player from the winning team places (or draws) a circle around the jack. The player then picks up the jack, stands in the circle, and throws the jack to start the next end.


title: Pétanque

text: An end is complete when both teams have played all of their boules, or when the jack is knocked out of play (goes "dead").


title: Pétanque

text: If the end finishes in the usual way—with the jack still live and one team with the closest boule—then the team with the closest boule wins the end and scores one point for each of its boules that is closer to the jack than other team's closest boule.


title: Pétanque

text: If the jack is live but there is an "equidistant boules" situation at the end of the "mène", then neither team scores any points. If the jack is dead at the finish of the end, then if one (and only one) team still has boules left to play, that team scores one point for each boule that it still has in hand. Otherwise neither team scores any points in the end (like an inning in baseball in which neither team scores any runs).


title: Pétanque

text: Leisure boules are boules that do not meet the FIPJP standards for competition boules, but are less expensive than competition boules and completely adequate for "backyard" games. Unlike competition boules, leisure boules are a "one size fits all" affair—they come in one weight and size.


title: Pétanque

text: Competition boules must meet specifications set by the FIPJP. They must be hollow and made of metal (usually steel) with a diameter between and a weight between . When purchasing competition boules, a purchaser has a choice of a number of characteristics, including the size, weight, and hardness of the boules, as well as the striations (patterned grooves on the surface of the boules).


title: Pétanque

text: The jack, or target ball, is a small ball made of wood, traditionally boxwood or beechwood, in diameter. In the past, jacks were often left "natural"—unfinished or with a clear finish—but nowadays they are often painted in bright colours. In French, the jack is known by a variety of names, including "but" (goal or target), "cochonnet" (piglet), "bouchon" ("little ball" in provençal language, not related to the French word "bouchon" that designates a bottle stopper), "le petit" (the little one), and "gari" ("rat", also in provençal language).


title: Pétanque

text: Pétanque can be played on almost any flat, open space. The ground may be irregular and interrupted by trees or rocks, and the surface is likely to be uneven, with some areas hard and smooth and other areas rough and stony. When an area is constructed specifically for the purposes of playing pétanque, the playing surface is typically loose gravel, decomposed granite, brick grog or crushed sea shell. Sandy beaches are not suitable, although light plastic boules are sometimes used to adapt the game for the beach. There is no requirement for backboards or sideboards (as in bocce), but dedicated playing areas are often enclosed in boards or some other structural barrier.


title: Pétanque

text: In France, village squares and park pathways are often used as pétanque playing areas. In addition, many towns have recreational facilities ("boulodromes") constructed specifically for playing pétanque.


title: Pétanque

text: An area where a single pétanque game is played is called a "terrain". A "playing area" ("aire de jeu") is an area containing one or more terrains. For tournaments, a large playing area is subdivided and marked off (typically using nails and string) into rectangular "marked terrains" (also known as "lanes" ("cadres") or "pistes") so that multiple games may be carried on simultaneously. For tournament play, a marked terrain is a rectangle at least wide and long.


title: Pétanque

text: The best throw is called a "carreau". It is a shot that knocks away the opponent's boule, leaving the thrown boule exactly in its place.


title: Pétanque

text: Players who are skilful enough to shoot effectively are called 'shooters' ("tireurs"); players who usually point are called 'pointers' ("pointeurs") As a matter of strategy, pointers play first and shooters are held in reserve in case the opponents place well. Good pointing is what scores points, but national and international championships are usually dominated by skilful shooters, who target any opposing boule that comes close to scoring.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Bride of Chucky is a 1998 American black comedy slasher film written by Don Mancini and directed by Ronny Yu. The fourth installment in the "Child's Play" franchise, it stars Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, John Ritter, Katherine Heigl, and Nick Stabile. Unlike the first three films, "Bride of Chucky" takes a markedly humorous turn towards self-referential parody. It also departs from the Andy Barclay storyline of the first three films, focusing mainly on series villain Chucky, a doll possessed by a serial killer, and his former lover and accomplice Tiffany, whose soul is also transferred into a doll.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: "Bride of Chucky" was released on October 16, 1998. The film grossed over $50 million worldwide on a budget of $25 million, and received mixed reviews from critics. A sequel, "Seed of Chucky", was released in 2004.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Tiffany Valentine, a former lover and accomplice of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, bribes a police officer into giving her the dismembered parts of a children's doll—which Ray's soul inhabited—from an evidence locker before murdering him. Believing that Ray's soul still inhabits the doll, Tiffany stitches and staples Chucky back together and reenacts the voodoo ritual which had instilled Ray's soul inside the doll ten years prior.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Though her incantations appear to fail, Chucky comes alive and smothers Tiffany's goth admirer Damien to death with a pillow as Tiffany watches in excitement. Tiffany presents Chucky with a ring he had left behind the night he was killed, which she believed to be an engagement ring. When Chucky explains he never intended on marrying Tiffany, she locks him in a playpen and taunts him with a bride doll. Chucky escapes the playpen and murders Tiffany by electrocuting her in a bathtub.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: He then transports her soul into the bride doll, and says they must retrieve a magical amulet that was buried with his human body in order to transfer their souls into the bodies of Tiffany's neighbor Jesse and his girlfriend Jade. Tiffany calls Jesse and asks him to take the two dolls to Hackensack, New Jersey, where Ray's body is buried, in exchange for money. Eager to elope with Jade, Jesse accepts the offer. Jade's strict uncle, police chief Warren Kincaid, plants a bag of marijuana in Jesse's van to frame him. Chucky and Tiffany rig a trap which embeds several nails into Warren's face, then hide his body within the van. Jesse and Jade begin their trip. The two are pulled over by Officer Norton, who finds the marijuana in Jesse's van. After Norton returns to his patrol car to report it, Chucky stuffs a shirt into the car's gas tank and lights it on fire. The car explodes with Norton inside, and Jesse and Jade flee the scene.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: They both begin to suspect that one of them might have caused the incident and begin to distrust each other. Despite their issues, Jesse and Jade get married. While at a hotel, another couple steals Jesse's money. As the couple have sex in their room, Tiffany murders them by causing them to be impaled by glass shards. Seeing this, Chucky proposes to Tiffany and the two have sex. The following morning, Jesse and Jade flee with their friend David, who came to the hotel after they both called him separately the previous night, worried the other might be the killer. David informs Jesse and Jade that they are the prime suspects for the deaths, but says he believes them to both be innocent. Upon finding Warren's dead body, David holds them at gunpoint and alerts a police officer. The dolls come alive, causing David to back onto the highway, where he is run over. Jesse and Jade drive away with the dolls, who reveal their plan.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: They steal an RV to evade the police, where Jesse and Jade instigate a fight between Chucky and Tiffany; in the commotion, Jade locks Tiffany into an oven, Jesse pushes Chucky out the window, and the RV crashes into a ditch. Chucky forces Jade to take him to his gravesite while Jesse follows with Tiffany. Obeying Chucky's orders, Jade retrieves the amulet from the casket. Jesse then appears with Tiffany and they trade hostages, but Chucky throws a knife into Jesse's back and ties up the couple for the ritual. As Chucky begins the incantation, Tiffany kisses him and stabs him with his knife. A battle ensues, and Tiffany collapses after being stabbed in the heart by Chucky. Jesse knocks Chucky into his own grave with a shovel. Private investigator Lt. Preston arrives and sees Chucky, walking and talking in the grave. Jade grabs Preston's gun and shoots Chucky several times in the chest, killing him.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: After contacting the police and declaring the teens innocent, Preston sends the couple on their way home. As he inspects Tiffany's body, she springs awake and starts screaming, giving birth to a baby doll which attacks Preston.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: After the release of "Child's Play 3", Don Mancini and David Kirschner decided that the series required a new direction, and decided against returning the character of Andy Barclay. Work on the film began in 1996, with the working title "Child's Play 4: Bride of Chucky", inspired by the release of "Scream". Mancini said, "Like most genres, the horror genre goes in cycles and I think we can thank Kevin Williamson and "Scream" for reinvigorating the market. Over the years, I had been imagining new scenarios for this series. With his previous successes, we knew it was just a matter of time before we'd be bringing Chucky back and David Kirschner and I both felt that it was important to bring him back in a new way -- we wanted to elevate the series and re-invent it, go beyond what we'd done before. And what we've ended up with is—incredibly—part horror, part comedy, part romance and part road movie. It's a really cool blend of the genuinely creepy and the really funny." Ronny Yu was hired to direct the film after Kirschner and Mancini were "amazed" by his film "The Bride with White Hair", and was allowed to use his creative freedom and the ability to hire his collaborators Peter Pau and David Wu from Hong Kong. The inspiration to create a girlfriend for Chucky came from David Kirschner after he saw a copy of the classic "Bride of Frankenstein" in a video store. Mancini loved the idea and created Tiffany. He said, "After all, two dolls running around the country together and killing people a la "Natural Born Killer Dolls" or "Barbie and Clyde" is really pretty funny." Mancini chose Tilly as his first choice to play Tiffany, after being impressed with her in "Bound" and "Bullets Over Broadway". Gina Gershon, Tilly's co-star in "Bound", encouraged her to take the role. In retrospect, Mancini commented: "Once we introduced Jennifer Tilly's character [...] that brought a certain comedic camp vibe [to the franchise], which I think is kind of historically a hallmark of gay culture," referring to the increasing use of LGBTQ+ characters in later Chucky films and TV series. Several months before production actually began on the film, Kevin Yagher and his team began to create animatronic puppets for Chucky and Tiffany. For Chucky alone, nine different puppets were used.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Jennifer Tilly provided Tiffany's voice-over dialogue during a three-day recording session held in tandem with Brad Dourif just prior to the start of principal photography. "Bride of Chucky" was filmed over a twelve week period in and around Toronto, Canada. Over half of the film was shot on the sound stage. Exterior locations that were utilized included the Clifton Hill strip in Niagara Falls, an art deco motel complex on Toronto's waterfront, an old army camp in Oshawa, and numerous rural areas.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Each doll required seven puppeteers to manipulate, a computer playback operator, and a puppet coordinator to act as liaison between the operators and the director. Three puppeteers handled the movement of each doll's facial features which were relayed through the use of a radio-controlled transmitter. All of the dolls' other below-the-head movements were cable-operated by the rest of the puppeteers. The dolls' skin featured a combination of silicone and foam latex, unlike the previous "Child's Play" films, where the dolls were only made of foam latex, a material that had to be painted in a way that made it very difficult to light.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Brock Winkless, who is among the 17 puppeteers who worked on this film, returned as the puppeteer of Chucky for the last time. Ed Gale and Debbie Lee Carrington performed in-suit as Chucky and Tiffany (credited as Chucky Double and Tiffany Double) respectively during the graveyard scene.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: "Bride of Chucky" was released in North America on October 16, 1998, and grossed $11.8 million on its opening weekend. It has a total North American gross of $32.4 million and another $18.3 million internationally. It is the highest grossing film of the "Chucky" franchise and the second most financially successful "Chucky" film in the US.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: To promote the film, Chucky made an appearance on the October 12, 1998 episode of "WCW Monday Nitro" as a heel. He interrupted a promo between Gene Okerlund and Rick Steiner and, in addition to asking viewers to watch the film, mentioned that he was hoping for Scott Steiner to win an upcoming match between the brothers.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads, ""Bride of Chucky" is devoid of any fright and the franchise has become tiresomely self-parodic, although horror fans may find some pleasure in this fourth entry's camp factor." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Bride of Chucky

text: Lawrence Van Gelder, writing for "The New York Times", gave the film a mostly negative review, writing that "the novelty of a bloody horror film built around a malevolent doll carrying the soul of a serial killer has worn thin." Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a grade of "D", calling it an "upchucking of cartoonish gore" that "leans heavily on self-referential gags". Xan Brooks of "The Independent" gave the film a score of two out of five, writing: ""Bride of Chucky" strings together a series of humorous asides and knee-jerk shock tactics."