title: Grant Heslov

text: Heslov was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in its Palos Verdes area. His father, Arthur Heslov, was a dentist, and his mother, Jerrie ("née" Rosen), a businesswoman. He has two older brothers, Steven and Michael. Heslov is Jewish.


title: Grant Heslov

text: He attended Palos Verdes High School, then the University of Southern California . He is a member of Phi Kappa Psi.


title: Grant Heslov

text: Heslov's acting credits include the films "True Lies", "Dante's Peak", "Enemy of the State", "The Scorpion King", "Good Night and Good Luck", "Congo", "Black Sheep", and "Catch Me If You Can". He has also appeared in such TV series as "Murder, She Wrote", "Happy Days", "Family Ties", "Spencer", "Mama's Family", "L.A. Law", "Matlock", "Sleeper Cell" and "The X-Files".


title: Grant Heslov

text: In August 2006, Heslov and George Clooney started Smokehouse Pictures and began writing screenplays for production. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (with Clooney) and as producer for Best Film for "Good Night, and Good Luck". Heslov also appears in the film as Don Hewitt, the director of the TV series "See It Now", around which the movie is centered. He directed a screen adaptation of "The Men Who Stare at Goats", starring Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey and co-produced "The American" starring Clooney in 2012. He also worked on 2011's "The Ides of March". In June 2012, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.


title: Grant Heslov

text: In 2013, Heslov, alongside Clooney and Ben Affleck, won the Academy Award for Best Picture for "Argo" (2012). The three men also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama and the BAFTA Award for Best Film.


title: Grant Heslov

text: Heslov directed the first episode of the 2019 miniseries "Catch-22", on which he was also executive producer.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Burnham and Taplow. The main house sits above the banks of the River Thames, and its grounds slope down to the river. There have been three houses on this site: the first, built in 1666, burned down in 1795 and the second house (1824) was also destroyed by fire, in 1849. The present Grade I listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden has been the home to a Prince of Wales, two Dukes, an Earl, and finally the Viscounts Astor. As the home of Nancy Astor, wife of the 2nd Viscount Astor, Cliveden was the meeting place of the Cliveden Set of the 1920s and 30s—a group of political intellectuals. Later, during the early 1960s when it was the home of the 3rd Viscount Astor, it became the setting for key events of the notorious Profumo affair. After the Astor family stopped living there, by the 1970s it was leased to Stanford University, which used it as an overseas campus. Today the house is leased to a company that runs it as a five-star hotel.


title: Cliveden

text: The gardens and woodlands are open to the public, together with parts of the house on certain days. Cliveden has become one of the National Trust's most popular pay-for-entry visitor attractions, hosting 524,807 visitors in 2019.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden means "valley among cliffs" and refers to the dene (valley) which cuts through part of the estate, east of the house. Cliveden has been spelled differently over the centuries, some of the variations being "Cliffden", "Clifden", "Cliefden" and "Clyveden".


title: Cliveden

text: Designed by Charles Barry in 1851 to replace a house previously destroyed by fire, the present house is a blend of the English Palladian style and the Roman Cinquecento. The Victorian three-storey mansion sits on a long, high brick terrace or viewing platform (visible only from the south side) which dates from the mid-17th century. The exterior of the house is rendered in Roman cement, with terracotta additions such as balusters, capitals, keystones and finials. The roof of the mansion is meant for walking on, and there is a circular view, above the tree-line, of parts of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire including Windsor Castle to the south.


title: Cliveden

text: Below the balustraded roofline is a Latin inscription which continues around the four sides of the house and recalls its history; it was composed by the then prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. On the west front it reads: "POSITA INGENIO OPERA CONSILIO CAROLI BARRY ARCHIT A MDCCCLI", which translated reads: "The work accomplished by the brilliant plan of architect Charles Barry in 1851." The main contractor for the work was Lucas Brothers.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1984–86 the exterior of the mansion was overhauled and a new lead roof installed by the National Trust, while interior repairs were carried out by Cliveden Hotel. In 2013, further exterior work was carried out including the restoration of 300 sash windows and 20 timber doors.


title: Cliveden

text: The interior of the house today is very different from its original appearance in 1851–52. This is mainly due to the 1st Lord Astor, who radically altered the interior layout and decoration c.1894–95. Whereas Barry's original interior for the Sutherlands had included a square entrance-hall, a morning room and a separate stairwell, Lord Astor wanted a more impressive entrance to Cliveden so he had all three rooms amalgamated to create the Great Hall.


title: Cliveden

text: Astor's aim was for the interior to resemble an Italian palazzo, thus complementing the exterior. The ceiling and walls were panelled in English oak, with Corinthian columns and swags of carved flowers for decoration, all by architect Frank Pearson. The staircase newel posts are ornamented with carved figures representing previous owners (e.g. Buckingham and Orkney) by W.S. Frith.


title: Cliveden

text: Astor installed a large 16th-century fireplace that was purchased from the Frederick Spitzer Sale (lot 1273) in June 1893. To the left of the fireplace is a portrait of Nancy, Lady Astor by the American portraitist John Singer Sargent. The room was and still is furnished with 18th-century tapestries and suits of armour.


title: Cliveden

text: Originally the floor was covered with Minton encaustic tiles (given to the Sutherlands by the factory) but Nancy Astor had them removed in 1906 and the present flagstones laid. Above the staircase is a painted ceiling by French artist Auguste Hervieu which depicts the Sutherlands' children painted as the four seasons, and is only surviving element of Barry's 1851–52 interior.


title: Cliveden

text: The French Dining Room is so-called because the 18th-century Rococo panelling (or boiseries) came from the Château d'Asnières near Paris, a château which was leased to Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour as a hunting lodge. The panelling was sold in 1897 by Jules Allard to the 1st Lord Astor, who had it installed at Cliveden. The gilded panelling on a turquoise ground contains carvings of hares, pheasants, hunting dogs and rifles. The console tables and buffet were made in 1900 to match the room.


title: Cliveden

text: The second largest room on the ground floor, after the Great Hall, was the original drawing room, which is used as the hotel's main dining room.


title: Cliveden

text: Also on the ground floor is the library, panelled in cedar wood, which the Astors used to call the "cigar box", and, next door, Nancy Astor's boudoir, which is used by the hotel as a meeting room.


title: Cliveden

text: Upstairs there are a total of 10 bedroom suites divided equally over two floors. The East wing was and still is guest accommodation, whereas the West wing was domestic offices that were converted into more bedrooms in 1994.


title: Cliveden

text: The nearby 100-foot (30m) clock tower was added in 1861 and is the work of the architect Henry Clutton. As a functioning water tower it still provides water for the house today. It is rendered in Roman cement like the rest of the house, and features four clock faces framed by gilded surrounds and a half open staircase on its north side. It was described by the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the epitome of Victorian flamboyance and assertiveness."


title: Cliveden

text: The tower is topped with a modern reproduction of Augustin Dumont's 19th-century winged male figure "Le Génie de la Liberté" (the Spirit of Liberty). The original is atop the July Column in the Place de la Bastille, Paris. This replaces two earlier versions, the first having fallen from the tower during a storm in the 1950s. The new statue is made of bronze and was created using Dumont's original mould from the 1860s found in a museum in Semur-en-Auxois, France. It measures 2.2 m in height, is covered in two layers of 23.5 carat gold leaf and cost a total of £68,000. It is an allegorical sculpture which holds the torch of civilization in its right hand and the broken chain of slavery in its left. It was affixed to the tower in spring 2012.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden stands on the site of a house built in 1666 designed by architect William Winde as the home of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. But before Buckingham's purchase the land was owned by the Mansfield family and before that to the de Clyveden family.


title: Cliveden

text: The details are recorded in a document compiled by William Waldorf Astor in 1894 called "The Historical Descent of Cliveden". Derived from several historical sources including Lipscombe's "History of the County of Buckingham," Lyson's "Magna Britannia," and Sheahan's "History of Buckinghamshire," it shows that in 1237 the land was owned by Geoffrey de Clyveden and by 1300 it had passed to his son, William, who owned fisheries and mills along the Cliveden Reach stretch of the Thames and at nearby Hedsor.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1569 a lodge existed on the site along with of land and was owned by Sir Henry Manfield; it was later owned by his son, Sir Edward. In 1573, there were two lodges on of treeless chalk escarpment above the Thames. It was on this impressively high but exposed site that Buckingham chose to build the first Cliveden house.


title: Cliveden

text: Buckingham pulled down the earlier buildings and chose William Winde as his architect. Winde designed a four-storey house above an arcaded terrace. Today, the terrace is the only feature of Buckingham's house to survive the 1795 fire. Although the Duke's intention was to use Cliveden as a "hunting box", it later housed Anna, Countess of Shrewsbury. In 1668 a duel between the Duke and his mistress's husband Lord Shrewsbury took place at Barn Elms near London and resulted in Shrewsbury dying of his wounds. A contemporary account of Buckingham's affair with Anna was written about by Samuel Pepys, in his diary of the period.


title: Cliveden

text: John Evelyn, another contemporary diarist, visited the Duke at Cliveden on 22 July 1679 and recorded the following impression in his Diary:


title: Cliveden

text: "I went to Clifden, that stupendous natural rock, wood, and prospect, of the Duke of Buckingham's, and buildings of extraordinary expense. The grots in the chalky rocks are pretty: it is a romantic object, and the place altogether answers the most poetical description that can be made of solitude, precipice, prospect, or whatever can contribute to a thing so very like their imaginations. The stand, somewhat like Frascati as to its front, and on the platform is a circular view to the utmost verge of the horizon, which, with the serpenting of the Thames, is admirable. The staircase is for its materials singular; the cloisters, descents, gardens, and avenue through the wood, august and stately; but the land all about wretchedly barren, and producing nothing but fern."


title: Cliveden

text: After Buckingham died in 1687, the house remained empty until the estate was purchased in 1696 by George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, a soldier and colonial official. The Earl employed the architect Thomas Archer to add two new "wings" to the house, connected by curved corridors. Although an almost identical arrangement exists today, these are later reconstructions, the originals having been destroyed in the fire of 1795. All that remains of Archer's work inside the house today is a staircase in the West wing.


title: Cliveden

text: Orkney's contributions to the gardens can still be seen today, most notably the Octagon Temple and the Blenheim Pavilion, both designed by the Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni. The landscape designer Charles Bridgeman was also commissioned to devise woodland walks and carve a rustic turf amphitheatre out of the cliff-side.


title: Cliveden

text: Orkney died in 1737, and Cliveden passed to his daughter Anne, 2nd Countess of Orkney in her own right. She immediately leased it to Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II and father of George III. After Frederick fell out with his father, Kew and Cliveden became his refuge from life at the royal court, becoming family homes for his wife Augusta and their children. During the Prince's tenure of the house, on 1 August 1740, "Rule, Britannia!" (an aria by the English composer Thomas Arne) was first performed in public in the cliff-side amphitheatre at Cliveden. It was played as part of the masque "Alfred" to celebrate the third birthday of the Prince's daughter Augusta.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden was also the location for the final illness of the Prince: it was believed that while playing cricket in the grounds at Cliveden in 1751 the Prince received a blow to the chest from a batted ball and that this had caused an infection which proved fatal; however, an alternative interpretation shows he died from a cold, followed by a pulmonary embolism. After his death, Frederick's family retained Kew and their town house, Leicester House, but gave up their lease on Cliveden. Anne and her family moved back into the house, passing it to her daughter and granddaughter, the 3rd and 4th Countesses, who also lived there. On the night of 20 May 1795, the house caught fire and burned down. The cause of the fire was thought to have been a servant knocking over a candle. The 4th Countess moved out after the fire but retained the site, only selling it in 1824.


title: Cliveden

text: After the fire of 1795, the house remained a ruin for the first quarter of the 19th century. In 1824, the estate was purchased by Sir George Warrender, 4th Baronet. To rebuild Cliveden, Warrender selected William Burn, a Scottish architect, and decided on a design for a two-storey mansion with entertaining on a grand scale in mind.


title: Cliveden

text: Warrender died in 1849 and the house was sold to the Sutherland family, headed by the second Duke. Sutherland had been in possession of the estate for only a few months when the house burned down for the second time in its history. The cause this time appears to have been negligence on the part of the decorators.


title: Cliveden

text: The Duke was prompt in commissioning the architect Charles Barry to rebuild Cliveden in the style of an Italianate villa. Barry, whose most famous project is arguably the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, was inspired by the outline of the two earlier houses for his design. The third (and present) house on the site was completed in 1851–52, and its exterior appearance has little changed since then.


title: Cliveden

text: The -tall clock tower, which is actually a water tower (still working to this day) was added in 1861 by the architect Henry Clutton. During this period other additions were made to the estate, which included half-timbered cottages, a dairy and a boathouse. Also around this time another architect, George Devey, was commissioned to build half-timbered cottages on the estate along with a dairy and boathouse.


title: Cliveden

text: After the duke's death in 1861, his widow Harriet continued to live at the house for part of the year until her death in 1868, after which it was sold to her son-in-law Hugh Lupus, Earl Grosvenor, later 1st Duke of Westminster.


title: Cliveden

text: Westminster was one of the wealthiest Englishmen of the period. During his ownership of the estate (1868–93), he contributed significant additions to the house and gardens, including the "porte cochère" on the north front of the mansion, a new stable block and the dovecote, all designed by Henry Clutton.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1893, the estate was purchased by an American millionaire, William Waldorf Astor (later 1st Viscount Astor), who made sweeping alterations to the gardens and the interior of the house. However, after the early death of his wife, he lived a reclusive life at Cliveden. He gave the house to his son Waldorf (later 2nd Viscount Astor) on the occasion of his marriage to Nancy Langhorne in 1906 and moved to Hever Castle.


title: Cliveden

text: The young Astors used Cliveden for entertaining on a lavish scale. The combination of the house, its setting and leisure facilities offered on the estate - boating on the Thames, horse riding, tennis, swimming, croquet and fishing - made Cliveden a destination for film stars, politicians, world-leaders, writers and artists. The heyday of entertaining at Cliveden was between the two World Wars when the Astors held regular weekend house parties. Guests at the time included: Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Joseph Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Amy Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, H. H. Asquith, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Arthur Balfour and the writers Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Edith Wharton.


title: Cliveden

text: During the inter-war period the entertainer Joyce Grenfell, who was Nancy Astor's niece, lived in a cottage on the estate. In the preface to her memoir, James Roose Evans stated that during the Second World War, Grenfell ran two wards of the hospital and worked as an informal welfare officer. This work included completing errands for patients, writing letters, shopping, teaching needlework, organising social events, and informal concerts.


title: Cliveden

text: At the outbreak of World War I, Waldorf Astor offered the use of some of the grounds to the Canadian Red Cross for the building of a hospital—the HRH Duchess of Connaught Hospital—which was dismantled at the end of the hostilities. In September 1939 with the outbreak of World War II Waldorf Astor again offered the use of the land at a rent of one shilling per year to the Canadian Red Cross and the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital was built to the designs of Robert Atkinson. After the war the hospital's main focus was as a nursing school, a maternity unit and a rheumatology unit.


title: Cliveden

text: The hospital closed and was abandoned in 1985. It lay derelict for two decades and was demolished in 2006 to make way for a housing development for people aged 55 and over.


title: Cliveden

text: Attached to the military hospital and within the grounds was established Cliveden War Cemetery. There are 42 Commonwealth war graves, 40 from World War I (mostly Canadians) and two from World War II, besides two American service war graves from the first war.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1942, the Astors gave Cliveden to the National Trust with the proviso that the family could continue to live in the house for as long as they wished. Should they cease to do so, they expressed the wish that the house be used "for promoting friendship and understanding between the peoples of the United States and Canada and the other dominions." With the gift of Cliveden, the National Trust also received from the Astor family one of their largest endowments: £250,000 in 1942, which, in 2016, was equivalent to £10,809,375.


title: Cliveden

text: After the death of the 2nd Viscount in 1952, his son William (Bill) Astor, the 3rd Viscount Astor took over the house until his death in 1966. Following the death of Bill Astor in 1966, the National Trust took over the management of the estate.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden has become one of the National Trust's most popular pay-for-entry visitor attractions, hosting 524,807 visitors in 2019. National Trust visitors to Cliveden can visit the parkland, and there is occasional limited access to a select area of the house.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1984, Blakeney Hotels (later Cliveden Hotel Ltd) acquired the lease to the house. Led by chairman John Lewis and managing director John Tham they restored and refurbished the interior.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1990, they added the indoor swimming pool and spa treatment rooms in the walled garden, complementing the existing outdoor pool. Also in 1990, a new 100-year lease was granted to run from 1984. In 1994 the conversion of the West wing from domestic offices to provide more bedrooms and two boardrooms (Churchill and Macmillan) was completed. There are 48 bedrooms and suites, all of which are named after previous owners and guests (e.g. Buckingham, Westminster). In addition to the Terrace Dining room, there are a further four private dining rooms. Three rooms are licensed for civil ceremonies and each year many couples are married at Cliveden. The hotel also leases Spring Cottage by the Thames, one of the key places in the Profumo affair, and offer it as self-contained accommodation.


title: Cliveden

text: The hotel was listed on the London Stock Exchange for a period of time in the 1990s (as Cliveden Plc). This company was bought in 1998 by Destination Europe, a consortium including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. In the early years of the 21st century the lease was acquired by von Essen Hotels.


title: Cliveden

text: In 2007, Cliveden House Hotel claimed to offer the "world's most expensive sandwich" at £100. The von Essen Platinum Club Sandwich was confirmed by Guinness World Records in 2007 to be the most expensive sandwich commercially available. Cliveden House was the "jewel in the crown" of Von Essen Hotels when the company collapsed in 2011.


title: Cliveden

text: The lease to Cliveden Hotel was then purchased in February 2012 by the property developers Richard and Ian Livingstone, owners of London & Regional Properties, (also the new owners of the next-door 220-acre estate called Dropmore Park) who placed it under the management of Andrew Stembridge from Chewton Glen. In 2015 Natalie Livingstone, the wife of Ian Livingstone, published "The Mistresses of Cliveden", a history of some of the female occupants of the house. In January 2015 the hotel closed for one month to carry out a refurbishment of the interior and for the National Trust to repair the roof.


title: Cliveden

text: The hotel's insignia is that of the Sutherland family and consists of a coronet with interlaced "S"s and acanthus leaves. Three-dimensional versions of this insignia can be found on panels and radiator grills in parts of the house. The hotel's motto is "Nothing ordinary ever happened here, nor could it."


title: Cliveden

text: In October 2021, the building was one of 142 sites across England to receive part of a £35-million injection into the government's Culture Recovery Fund.


title: Cliveden

text: The estate extends to of which about comprise the gardens, the rest being woodland and paddocks. The gardens are listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.


title: Cliveden

text: The formal parterre to the south of the house is one of the largest in Europe at . and is best viewed from the 20-foot (6.1m) high terrace on the south side of the mansion. This part of the garden has received the most attention over the centuries. The first arranging of the large plateau to the south of the house took place c.1723 during George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney's ownership. Although he had previously commissioned plans for elaborate parterre schemes from Claude Desgots, the nephew of André Le Nôtre (both designers had previously worked at Versailles), Orkney eventually chose a much simpler plan involving an open expanse of lawn surrounded by raised gravel walks and double rows of elm trees. At the far end there was (and still is) a sunken feature in the turf where Orkney's horses were exercised in a form of open-air manège.


title: Cliveden

text: Orkney referred to the garden as his "Quaker parterre" because of its simplicity. The parterre endured in this form until the mid 19th-century when the estate was owned by the Duke of Sutherland and by which time the garden had been neglected. It was described by the Duke's son Lord Ronald Gower as "a prairie...a huge field of grass and wild flowers." The Duke commissioned both Charles Barry (who had rebuilt the mansion after the second fire) and John Fleming (the head gardener) to produce designs for a complex parterre of flower beds. Fleming's design, which featured two sets of eight interlocking wedge-shaped beds, was chosen and is the template for what can be seen today. The beds were planted with a seasonal mix of bulbs, annuals and shrubs such as gladioli, hollyhocks, tulips, pansies and azaleas. Fleming pioneered this style of planting at Cliveden, which was later to be named "carpet-bedding."


title: Cliveden

text: The Cliveden scheme in the 19th-century is well documented in Fleming's handbook "Winter and Spring Flower Gardening" (1864). The Trust planted the present clipped yew pyramids at the corners of the beds in 1976. At this time (and for the next three decades) the beds contained a massed-planting effect of silver-evergreen Senecio "Sunshine" and Santolina. However, in 2010 the Trust decided to recreate Fleming's original 19th-century planting scheme.


title: Cliveden

text: The Italian-style Long Garden consists of topiary in the form of corkscrew-spirals, peacocks and seasonal planting within box hedges; it was created by garden designer Norah Lindsay in c.1900. The Japanese-style Water Garden was designed in c.1893 and is believed to be the first such East Asian inspired garden in the country. It features a pagoda, on an island, bought from the Bagatelle estate in Paris. The planting there is mostly spring-flowering: cherry trees, bush wisterias and giant gunneras. Both gardens were commissioned by the 1st Lord Astor.


title: Cliveden

text: The circular Rose Garden, designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe for the Astor family in the early 1960s subsequently suffered from rose disease and was replanted as a "secret" garden of herbaceous plants in the 2000s, but in 2014 the roses were reinstated. The planting in the herbaceous borders in the forecourt was designed in the 1970s by the National Trust advisor Graham Stuart Thomas. The west-facing border features 'fiery'-coloured flowers (red, yellow, orange) and the east-facing border is planted with more subdued colours.


title: Cliveden

text: In 2011, the Trust began an ambitious project to restore the 19th-century Round Garden near the eastern edge of the estate. Originally this is where fruit was grown for the house, but since the 1950s it had become overgrown. The circular garden has a diameter of 250 ft and restoration will include reinstating the paths and wrought iron arches as well as original fruit varieties where possible.


title: Cliveden

text: There is a lime tree avenue either side of the main drive to the house. Cliveden holds part of the National Plant Collection of Catalpa. In 1897 the 1st Lord Astor imported a section of a Californian redwood and had it installed in the woods. At across it is the largest section of a Sequoia gigantea in Britain.


title: Cliveden

text: The woodlands were first laid out by Lord Orkney in the 18th century. They were later much restocked by Bill Astor, however many of the trees fell in storms in the late twentieth-century.


title: Cliveden

text: The original Cliveden maze, commissioned by Lord Astor in 1894, has undergone major restoration after having lain overgrown and inaccessible since the 1950s. It was replanted with 1,100 six-foot-tall yew trees covering an area of one-third of an acre (0.13 hectares) and opened to the public in 2011.


title: Cliveden

text: The earliest known garden buildings at Cliveden were both designed by Giacomo Leoni for Lord Orkney; the Blenheim Pavilion (c.1727) was built to commemorate Orkney's victory as a general at the Battle of Blenheim.


title: Cliveden

text: The pagoda in the water garden was made for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867 and was purchased by the 1st Viscount Astor from the Bagatelle estate in Paris in 1900.


title: Cliveden

text: The Octagon Temple, situated 200 ft above the Thames, was originally designed by Giacomo Leoni in 1735 as a gazebo and grotto but was later converted by the 1st Viscount Astor to become the Astor family chapel.


title: Cliveden

text: In addition to its function as Astor family chapel, the Octagon Temple was adapted to serve as the family mausoleum in 1893. Today, three generations of Astors are buried here. The mausoleum contains the ashes of the 1st Viscount Astor, his son the 2nd Viscount, and of the latter's wife, Nancy Astor. The ashes of the 3rd Viscount and of Robert Gould Shaw III (Nancy Astor's son by her first marriage) are also buried here.


title: Cliveden

text: The mausoleum's interior and dome are decorated with colourful mosaics by Clayton and Bell representing religious scenes.


title: Cliveden

text: One of the features of the gardens is the large collection of sculpture, most of it acquired by the 1st Lord Astor from 1893 to 1906. The shell fountain, known as the Fountain of Love, greets visitors at the end of the lime tree avenue up to the house. It was sculpted by Thomas Waldo Story, (American, 1855–1915) in Rome in 1897 and was commissioned by Lord Astor for this site. It features a large Carrara marble shell supporting three life-size female figures attended by cupid. The "Tortoise" fountain near the parterre was also made by T.W. Story at around the same time.


title: Cliveden

text: In the forecourt there is a collection of eight marble Roman sarcophagi, some of which date from c.AD 100 and were bought by Lord Astor from Rome.


title: Cliveden

text: The Queen Anne Vase at the end of the Long Walk is said to have been given to Lord Orkney by Queen Anne in the 18th century. It consists of a tall urn on a plinth decorated with the Greek key pattern.


title: Cliveden

text: At the far-end of the parterre is a 20th-century copy of a bronze group entitled "The Rape of Proserpina" (Italian, c.1565), bought by W.W. Astor from Italy. The original is now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.


title: Cliveden

text: Sitting on modern plinths in the Long Garden are two ancient Egyptian baboon sculptures, thought to be 2,000 - 2,500 years old, that were purchased by William Waldorf Astor in Rome in 1898. It is believed that these sculptures represent Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom.


title: Cliveden

text: The largest sculpture in the grounds, technically in two parts, is the 17th-century Borghese Balustrade on the parterre. Purchased by Lord Astor in the late 19th century from the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome, it is crafted from Travertine stone and brick tiles by Giuseppe Di Giacomo and Paolo Massini in c.1618–19. It features seats and balustrading with fountain basins and carved eagles.


title: Cliveden

text: In 2004, a colony of small Mediterranean land snails of the species "Papillifera bidens" was discovered living on the Borghese Balustrade. Presumably this species, new to the English fauna, was accidentally imported along with the balustrade in the late 19th century, and managed to survive the intervening winters to the present day.


title: Cliveden

text: This is the largest and most complex of the four timber-framed cottages designed or altered by the architect George Devey along the banks of the River Thames on the Cliveden estate. The first structure on the site was a Gothic-style summerhouse with an octagonal vaulted plaster ceiling designed in 1813 by architect Peter Nicholson for Mary FitzMaurice, 4th Countess of Orkney. She was living in one wing of the burnt down mansion at the time of the commission. It was used as a tea house and spa for the many visitors attracted to the nearby mineral springs, which flowed from the chalk cliff above and ran down into the Thames.


title: Cliveden

text: Nicholson published his designs for the house in his "Architectural Dictionary" of 1813 in the form of a cross-section of the interior and ceiling projection. In auction particulars dated 1821, which list all structures on the estate, the building is described as a Banqueting house "at the much admired spring", while several decades later it was described as an "ornamental fishing villa."


title: Cliveden

text: In 1857, the Duke of Sutherland, who had owned Cliveden for eight years, commissioned George Devey to enlarge the existing building into a two-storey cottage. The subsequent alterations were in the vernacular style with brick and stucco walls, fish-scale pattern roof slates, a Gothick-style loggia and a turret above an exterior staircase leading to a balcony. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century the main purpose of the cottage was as a place of leisure, and it was frequently used by the Duke's wife Harriet to entertain guests, most notably her friend Queen Victoria.


title: Cliveden

text: In 1957, the cottage came to the attention of London osteopath Stephen Ward, who had been hired to treat Bill Astor. He leased the cottage from the Astors for a minimal rent for use as a weekend retreat. Among the guests invited to stay there were Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. A chance meeting in 1961 between Keeler and cabinet minister John Profumo (a guest of the Astors) at the Cliveden swimming pool led to the Profumo affair which so damaged the Macmillan government.


title: Cliveden

text: Spring Cottage was awarded Grade II listed status in 1986, and in 1997 the hotel company which leased Cliveden House from the National Trust also acquired the lease to the cottage. A reported £750,000 was spent restoring and refurbishing the dilapidated building before it reopened in 1998 as a self-contained luxury holiday let.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden Reach, between Cookham Lock and Boulter's Lock, is one of the most scenic stretches of the Thames. A section of the original Thames towpath extends from the boathouse, north to Cookham Lock. Cliveden House may be accessed by watercraft from the mooring on Cliveden Reach half a mile downstream from Cliveden boathouse. A series of eyots in the reach are owned by the National Trust, and allow for short periods of mooring for passing boats. Cliveden Reach is a popular spot for canoeing, kayaking, and angling. The National Trust offers self-hire boats and guided river cruises.


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden has been depicted in paintings, for example: "Cliveden", (c.1750–80), by William Tomkins, and "A Fallen Beech with a Prospect of Cliveden", (1988), by Carl Laubin.


title: Cliveden

text: The house has been used for filming on multiple occasions, including: "A Very British Country House" (2018);" Hampstead" (2017); "Paul Hollywood City Bakes" (2016); "Mr Selfridge" (2016); "Cinderella" (2015); "A Little Chaos" (2014);" Endless Night" (2013); "Sherlock Holmes" (2009); "Made of Honour" (2008); "Cards on the Table" (2005); "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (2005); "Thunderbirds" (2004); "Antiques Roadshow" (2000); "Carrington" (1995); "Chaplin" (1992); "Dead Man's Folly" (1986); "Operation Daybreak" (1975); "Don't Lose Your Head" (1966); "Help!" (1965); and "Yaadein" (2001).


title: Cliveden

text: Cliveden has been referenced in literature including: "Three Men in a Boat" (1889); "Boogie Up the River" (1989); Alexander Pope's "Moral Essays"; Daniel Defoe's "A Tour Through England and Wales" (1726) and Gore Vidal's novel "The City and the Pillar" (1948).


title: Cliveden

text: Both the house and the river have been suggested as inspiration for Kenneth Grahame's children's novel "The Wind in the Willows."


title: 2022 Ballon d'Or

text: The 2022 Ballon d'Or (French: "Ballon d'Or") was the 66th annual ceremony of the Ballon d'Or, presented by France Football, recognising the best footballers in the world in the 2021–22 season. For the first time in the history of the award, it was given based on the results of the season instead of the calendar year. The nominees for the ceremony were announced on 12 August 2022.


title: 2022 Ballon d'Or

text: The nominees for the award were announced on 12 August 2022. Seven-time and reigning winner Lionel Messi was not nominated for the award for the first time since 2005. For the first time since 2007, all three players who reached the podium did it for the first time.


title: 2022 Ballon d'Or

text: The award was previously known as the Striker of the Year. It was renamed as the Gerd Müller Trophy after German striker Gerd Müller died in August 2021.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Tollywood, also known as Cinema of West Bengal, is an Indian film industry of Bengali-language motion pictures. It is based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Ever since Satyajit Ray's "Pather Panchali" (1955) was awarded Best Human Document at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, Bengali films frequently appeared in international fora and film festivals for the next several decades. This allowed Bengali filmmakers to reach a global audience. The most influential among them was Satyajit Ray, whose films became successful among European, American and, Asian audiences. His work subsequently had a worldwide impact, with filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut, Carlos Saura, Isao Takahata, Wes Anderson and Danny Boyle being influenced by his cinematic style, and many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy". "Kanchenjungha" (1962) introduced a narrative structure that resembles later hyperlink cinema. Ray's 1967 script for a film to be called "The Alien", which was eventually cancelled, is widely believed to have been the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's "E.T." (1982). Ira Sachs' "Forty Shades of Blue" (2005) was a loose remake of "Charulata" (1964), and in Gregory Nava's "My Family" (1995), the final scene is duplicated from the final scene of "The World of Apu". Similar references to Ray films are found in recent works such as "Sacred Evil" (2006), the "Elements trilogy" of Deepa Mehta, and in films of Jean-Luc Godard.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Another prominent Bengali filmmaker is Mrinal Sen, whose films have been well known for their Marxist views. During his career, Mrinal Sen's films have received awards from major film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Montreal, Chicago, and Cairo. Retrospectives of his films have been shown in major cities of the world. Another Bengali filmmaker, Ritwik Ghatak, began reaching a global audience long after his death; beginning in the 1990s, a project to restore Ghatak's films was undertaken, and international exhibitions (and subsequent DVD releases) have belatedly generated an increasingly global audience. Some of his films have strong similarities to later famous international films, such as "Ajantrik" (1958) resembling the Herbie films (1967–2005), and "Bari Theke Paliye" (1958) resembling François Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (1959) and Another Bengali filmmaker is Tapan Sinha, whose films have been well known for Best literature Adaptation and Larger than life.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who made his debut with Ray's "The Apu Trilogy", also had an important influence on cinematography across the world. One of his most important techniques was bounce lighting, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets. He pioneered the technique while filming "Aparajito" (1956), the second part of "The Apu Trilogy". Some of the experimental techniques which Satyajit Ray pioneered include photo-negative flashbacks and X-ray digressions while filming "Pratidwandi" (1972).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Tollywood was the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the "American Cinematographer" by Wilford E. Deming, an American engineer who was involved in the production of the first Indian sound film. He gave the industry the name Tollywood because the Tollygunge district in which it was based rhymed with "Hollywood", and because Tollygunge was the centre of the cinema of India as a whole at the time much like Hollywood was in the cinema of the United States.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: In that same March 1932 article, Deming was also considering the name "Hollygunge" but decided to go with "Tollywood" as the nickname for the Tollygunge area due to "Tolly being a proper name and Gunge meaning locality" in the Bengali language. It was this "chance juxtaposition of two pairs of rhyming syllables," Holly and Tolly, that led to the name "Tollywood" being coined. The name "Tollywood" went on to be used as a nickname for the Bengali film industry by the popular Kolkata-based "Junior Statesman" youth magazine, establishing a precedent for other film industries to use similar-sounding names. Tollywood later went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" (as the Bombay-based industry overtook the one in Tollygunge), which in turn inspired many other similar names.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The history of cinema in Bengal dates to the 1920s when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres in Calcutta. Within a decade, Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows at the Star Theatre, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works, Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (known as D.G.) established the Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali-owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali feature film, "Billwamangal", was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. "Bilat Ferat" was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatre production of "Jamai Shashthi" was the first Bengali talkie. A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak,Tapan Sinha, Ajoy Kar and others earning international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Hiralal Sen, India is credited as one of Bengal's, and India's first directors. These were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature "Billwamangal", produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on 8 November 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, "Raja Harish Chandra", was released.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The early beginnings of the "talking film" industry go back to the early 1930s when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was "Jamai Shashthi", released in 1931. At this time the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed movies, exploring new dimensions in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed "Chandidas" in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found a solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The contribution of the Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. First Bengali talkies "Jamai Shashthi" (as a short film) was released on 11 April 1931 at Crown Cinema Hall in Calcutta and the first Bengali talkies as full-length feature film "Dena Paona" was released 30 December 1931 at Chitra Cinema Hall in Calcutta. The industry was based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal that is more elite and artistically inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Bengali cinema enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema during this period. They produced directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India's and France's greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Other prominent filmmakers in the Bengali film industry at the time included Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, Tapan Sinha, Ajoy Kar. The Bengali film industry has produced classics such as "Nagarik" (1952), "The Apu Trilogy" (1955–1959), "Jalsaghar" (1958), "Ajantrik" (1958), "Neel Akasher Neechey" (1959), "Devdas", "Devi" (1960), "Meghe Dhaka Tara" (1960), "Hatey Bazarey"(1967), the Calcutta trilogies (1971–1976), Malyadan (1971) etc. In particular, "The Apu Trilogy" is frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The most well-known Bengali actor to date has been Uttam Kumar while Suchitra Sen is regarded as the most beautiful and influential actress of Bengali cinema. Kumar and Sen were known as "The Eternal Pair" in the late 1950s. Apart from Sen, Sabitri Chatterjee and Sumitra Devi were very popular actresses of the 1950s. Soumitra Chatterjee is a notable actor, having acted in several Satyajit Ray films, and considered as a rival to Uttam Kumar in the 1960s. He is famous for the characterization of Feluda in "Sonar Kella" (1974) and "Joi Baba Felunath" (1978), written and directed by Ray. He also played the adult version of Apu in "The World of Apu" (1959), directed by Ray.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: In the 1960s, Bengal saw a host of talented actresses like Aparna Sen, Sharmila Tagore, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sandhya Roy and, Supriya Devi. Aparna Sen was one of the most successful actresses of the Golden Era. She became the leading heroine of the 1970s and since 1981 she has been directing films. One of the most well-known Bengali actresses was Sharmila Tagore, who debuted in Ray's "The World of Apu", and became a major actress in Bengali cinema as well as Bollywood. Despite Suchitra Sen being the greatest actress, Sharmila was the most commercially successful actress in history with films like "The World of Apu" (1959), "Devi" (1960), "Nayak" (1966), "Simabaddha" (1967), and "Aranyer Dinratri" (1970).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Utpal Dutt is internationally known for his acting in movies and plays, especially Shakespearean plays. Bhanu Bandopadhyay, Rabi Ghosh, and Anup Kumar were best known for their comic timing, and with their versatile acting talent they stunned the audience and critics.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick, and K. C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta. The greatest composers of the golden era included Robin Chatterjee, Sudhin Dasgupta, Nachiketa Ghosh, Hemant Kumar etc.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The revival in Bengali cinema dates from the rise of directors such as Shakti Samanta, Tarun Majumdar,


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Rituparno Ghosh, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Aparna Sen, Suman Ghosh (director) and Subrata Sen. Rituparno Ghosh made his first film "Hirer Angti" in 1992 and dominated Bengali cinema until his death in 2013, winning numerous national awards for films like "Unishe April", "Dahan" and "Utsab". Aparna Sen made her directorial debut in 1981 with the internationally lauded "36 Chowringhee Lane", which looked at the lives of Anglo-Indians living in Calcutta. Her later films have also been celebrated: "Paromitar Ek Din", "Mr and Mrs Iyer", "15 Park Avenue", "The Japanese Wife", "Goynar Baksho", etc. Buddhadeb Dasgupta is best known for award-winning films like "Uttara (film)", "Mondo Meyer Upakhyan", "Charachar", Janala.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: In turn, they have also turned the cinematic spotlight on Kolkata, acquainting the city with a much wider national and global audience ("Kahaani", "Piku", "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy"). Successful Bengali films are getting their Hindi remakes in Bollywood, Marathi Remakes in Marathi Films, Malayalam Remakes In Malayalam Films ("Hemlock Society (film)", "Ramdhanu", "Bhooter Bhabishyat" , "Praktan", "Rajkahini"). Bengali directors who have found artistic and commercial success in contemporary Hindi films are: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Neeraj Pandey, Sujit Mondal, Ayan Mukerji, Pradeep Sarkar, Shoojit Sircar and Sujoy Ghosh, Srijit Mukherjee .


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: In recent years, a younger generation of Bengali directors has come to the fore. Many work in the domestic film industry, while others have gone on to Bollywood. Successful films by directors from this generation include "Generation Ami", "Amazon Obhijaan", "Dracula Sir", "Nagarkirtan", "Praktan", "Bibaho Diaries", "Asur", "Golondaaj", and "Kidnap".


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: This era's notable filmmakers in the black comedy and crime genres include Srijit Mukherji, Arun Roy, Arindam Sil, Raj Chakraborty, Anjan Dutta, and Pratim D Gupta, Ishaan Ghose. Detective and superhero films have also been popular, owing to the work of directors like Feluda, Byomkesh, Sona Da, Eken Babu, Kakababu, Sankar, Mitin Mashi, Sabor Dasgupta, and Tenida. Dramatic filmmakers include Shiboprosad Mukherjee, Mainak Bhowmick, Indrasis Acharya, Atanu Ghosh, and Sujit Mondal, whereas filmmakers such as Anik Dutta and Aniket Chattopadhyay primarily work in comedy and satire. Other critically and commercially successful filmmakers include Raja Chanda and Haranath Chakraborty.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: During this period, actors such as Prosenjit Chatterjee, Dev, Jeet, Ankush Hazra, Jishu Sengupta, Abir Chatterjee and actresses such as Rituparna Sengupta, Koel Mallick, Subhashree Ganguly, Nusrat Jahan, Mimi Chakraborty, Ishaa Saha, Ritabhari Chakraborty have been active.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Movies that have made bounds and leaps to bring the Bengali movie industry to the forefront of people's minds in the modern era have included movies such as, ‘Amazon Obhijan’, ‘Chander Pahar’, ‘Belaseshe’, ‘Praktan’. Praktan ran a hundred days in theaters on its release, and was awarded the highest grossing movie of 2016 at the international film business Awards. Praktan was also acclaimed for making bengali people recognise the double standards in play within bengali society with double standards of being liberal bengali’s. The reason people resonated with the movie was not only due to great acting but also due to the larger ideas being brought to the silver screen for people to think about and also engage in discourse to. Amazon Obhijan did exceptionally well at theaters on release and received a best film nomination in 2017 Belaseshe and Chander Pahar, though not receiving awards, were movies that were widely celebrated and adored by the general public and fans. The bengali movie industry, like all else came to a stop with the pandemic in 2020, and continued into 2021, with covid restrictions on in person movie watching. This pushed the Bengali cinema industry to pivot and switch to over the internet streaming platforms (OTT) to release movies and shows onto. The increased adoption of movies being released on streaming platforms exclusively and in conjunction with theater movie releases. Bengali movies have seen a resurgence in viewership and popularity from local and global audiences. Source - Bengali actors gaining popularity on OTT platforms and in Bollywood. Actors such as Abir Chatterjee, Dev Adhikari, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Saswata Chatterjee, and Tota Roy Choudhury, among others have been reaching greater fame and acclaim than their predecessors due to bengali actors today being able to reach a wider audience through OTT platforms and sooner transitions into the Bollywood industry. Movie highlights from OTT streaming platforms include Bulbbul featuring Param and Paoli dam, which garnered a lot of viewers and was a great online success. Swastika Mukherjee also joined into the mix with her crime television show Paatal Lok, which was very well received by audiences and critics. The bengali cinema industry is able to continue going strong because of its rich history, acclaimed actors and actresses, especially the one in a generation of the late great Uttam Kumar and his partner in crime Suchitra Sen, who dominated the 1950s and 1960s and made the world take notice. The continued resilience of Tollywood through Covid-19 and the consequent waves, and pivoting to OTT and online streaming platforms a few steps behind Hollywood has allowed for Bengali movies to bloom onto a completely new platform and movie economy. Though in-person viewing is on the rise and is set to return in the near future, there is still work to be done until all movie commuters will return to theatres. Thus, though the future of in person Bengali movies might seem bleak, one thing is for certain this new economy has not only embraced Bengali movies but from recent results it seems that the global audience is hungry for more.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: 100-160 Bengali movies are released every year and are produced with a budget of Rs. 50,00,000 to Rs. 55  million per movie on average. Home Entertainment, Shree Venkatesh Films released some high budgeted movies like Amazon Obhijaan with a budget of 20 crores and was also successful in Box office by earning about 50 crores in Box office making it highest-earning movie in the history of Bengali movie ever, apart from Amazon Obhijaan other costly movies were Chander Pahar made in the budget of Rs 15 crore and with Rs 15 crore were some costly movies.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Many of the most critically acclaimed Bengali films were low-budget films, including Satyajit Ray's famous "The Apu Trilogy" (1955–1959). The first film in the trilogy, "Pather Panchali" (1955), was produced on a shoestring budget of Rs. 150,000 ($32000) using an amateur cast and crew. All his other films that followed also had low budgets, with his most expensive films since the 60's being "The Adventures of Goopy And Bagha" (1968) at Rs. 600,000 ($80,000) and "Shatranj Ke Khilari" (1977) at Rs. 6 million ($230,000).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The Bengali film industry, which had been a beacon for the country's film industry until the 1980s, is in a turnaround mode. At a time when Bollywood continues its roller-coaster ride, there are cheers in the Bengali film industry with several commercial successes. The dark period of the 1990s when Bengali tinsel town was on a steep decline seems like a nightmare that's best forgotten. And, with the money pouring in, producers from other States are now knocking on the doors of Bengali directors. Industry sources say that the best proof of the comeback is seen in the increasing number of cinema houses showing Bengali films. Even a few years ago, of the 800 cinemas in the State, no more than 350 were showing just Bengali films. The remaining had spread their risk showing a mix of either Hindi and English or Hindi and Bengali films. In 2008, nearly 700 theatres were showing Bengali films.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: "Bombaiyer Bombete", produced by Ramoji Films at a cost of Rs 8 million, recovered its costs within three weeks and earned 20 million in all. The movie has brought back the concept of family entertainment with Sandip Ray's gambit of contemporizing the plot paying him a rich dividend. Admitting that he did not expect this success, he told Life that he was now lining up another such film for release next year. Earlier, a film by award-winning director Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (The Tale of a Fallen Girl) produced by Arjoe Entertainments netted nearly Rs 7  million through the sale of overseas rights against a cost of Rs 0.6  million. Haranath Chakraborty His film Sathi (Companion) created a record by recouping over five times its production cost, although the film Chokher Bali, with big names like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Rituparno Ghosh and Tagore, failed to yield expected results. The movie, billed at Rs 16.5 million (the highest among Bengali films).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The total number of cinema theatres is approx 400. But there are films like 'Kaler rakhal'(2008)by Sekhar Das which created a huge controversy for its strong political comments on contemporary Bengal, despite its formal brilliance too, was not successful in the box office as the film was unceremoniously withdrawn from the theatres.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Loose and unorganized production activities, dominated and dictated by providers of capital led to the proliferation of sub-standard films, which were most often commercial failures. The recent successes have come through some concerted effort by Parallel Cinema which has tapped the domestic market, even while scouting the overseas ones, hitting the festival circuit somewhere in between. As such, celluloid creations of award-winning directors like Gautam Ghosh, Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen started bringing money for their producers. However, at around the same time, movies in the commercial circuit (directors like to call them mainstream cinema) also started doing well, supported strongly by the response from the semi-urban areas. The big Bollywood banners such as Mukta Arts and Rajshri films are now showing interest in funding Bengali films.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: Hollywood houses like Columbia TriStar have made their debut in distributing Bengali movies. According to industry experts, several issues need to be addressed to build on this resurgence and consolidate it. These include inadequate infrastructure, which often compels moviemakers to go outside the State for facilities pushing up costs, poor marketing and distribution, and increasing competition from Bangladeshi films.


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: A number of Satyajit Ray films appeared in the "Sight & Sound" Critics' Poll of all-time greatest films, including "The Apu Trilogy" (ranked No. 4 in 1992 if votes are combined), "The Music Room" (ranked No. 27 in 1992), "Charulata" (ranked No. 41 in 1992) and "Days and Nights in the Forest" (ranked No. 81 in 1982). The 2002 "Sight & Sound" critics' and directors' poll also included the Ritwik Ghatak films "Meghe Dhaka Tara" (ranked #231) and "Komal Gandhar" (ranked #346).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: In 1998, the critics' poll conducted by the Asian film magazine "Cinemaya" included "The Apu Trilogy" (ranked No. 1 if votes are combined), Ray's "Charulata" and "The Music Room" (both tied at #11), and Ghatak's "Subarnarekha" (also tied at #11). In 1999, "The Village Voice" top 250 "Best Film of the Century" critics' poll also included "The Apu Trilogy" (ranked No. 5 if votes are combined). In 2005, "The Apu Trilogy" was also included in "Time" All-Time 100 Movies list. In 1992, the "Sight & Sound" Critics' Poll ranked Ray at No. 7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, and "Days and Nights in the Forest" (ranked No. 81 in 1982).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the Directorate of Film Festivals, the organization set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus).


title: Cinema of West Bengal

text: The National Film Awards, established in 1954, are the most prominent film awards in India that merit the best of the Indian cinema. The ceremony also presents awards for films in various regional languages.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: The Samsung Galaxy A32 is a mid-range Android smartphone developed and manufactured by Samsung Electronics. It serves as the successor to the Galaxy A31. The phone is similar to its predecessor, but features an upgraded 64 MP main camera. The device also comes with a 5G variant with stripped-down camera and screen (48 MP main camera and PLS TFT display), but with a faster SoC.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: The Galaxy A32 5G was the first to be released on 22 January 2021 while the Galaxy A32 was released subsequently on 17 February 2021.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: The Galaxy A32 uses tempered glass for protecting the display, plastic frame and plastic back. There are 4 color options for both devices, titled Awesome Black, Awesome White, Awesome Blue and Awesome Violet.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: Galaxy A32 4G uses the MediaTek Helio G80 (12 nm) SoC with octa-core CPU (2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 + 6x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55) and Mali G52-MC2 GPU. It runs on Android 11 with One UI 3.1. It has 64GB or 128GB of internal memory (ROM) with 4GB - 8GB of RAM. It has removable external microSDXC memory card slot (dedicated slot, maximum 512 GB is supported). It has single or dual (dual stand-by) SIM slot (nano-SIM). It has 5000 mAh Li-Ion battery (non-removable) with 15W fast charging support. It supports GSM, HSPA and LTE networks. It also has a loudspeaker and 3.5 mm audio jack.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: Galaxy A32 5G uses MediaTek MT6853 Dimensity 720 5G (7 nm) SoC with octa-core CPU (2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A76 + 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55) and Mali G57-MC3 GPU. It runs on Android 11 with One UI 3.1. It has 64 GB or 128 GB of internal memory (ROM) with 4-8 GB of RAM. It has removable external microSDXC memory card slot (uses shared SIM slot, maximum 512 GB is supported). It has single or hybrid dual (dual stand-by) SIM slot (nano-SIM). It has 5000 mAh Li-Ion battery (non-removable) with 15W fast charging support. It supports GSM, CDMA, HSPA, LTE and 5G networks. It also has a loudspeaker and 3.5 mm audio jack.


title: Samsung Galaxy A32

text: The device was given a positive reception, but the camera, especially the 5G variant, was considered to be mediocre with Wired giving it an 8/10, The Verge giving it a 7.5/10.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: Edmund Stoppard (born 16 September 1974) is an English actor. He is the son of playwright Tom Stoppard and doctor Miriam, Lady Hogg.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: Stoppard was born on 16 September 1974 in London, England, the son of playwright Tom Stoppard and Miriam Stoppard (née Stern), an author and physician. Both of his parents are Jewish, but he was raised in a secular household. He attended Caldicott School, and Stowe School, a boarding school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. His parents divorced when he was 18, with his father entering into a long-term relationship with actress Felicity Kendal. He read French at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1997, and later trained at LAMDA.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: He is married to Amie Stoppard, a niece of Terence Stamp, whom he met working behind the scenes on the film "Rogue Trader". They have three daughters: Esmé, Maggie, and Evie.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: His first cousin is the former politician Oona King, Baroness King of Bow and his first cousin, once removed, was politician Ted Graham, Baron Graham of Edmonton.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: Stoppard's film credits include appearing as one of the main characters in "The Pianist", Henryk Szpilman. He also starred as the main character, Thomas, in "Joy Division" and as Lieutenant Addis in "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang".


title: Ed Stoppard

text: In 2007, he played the title role in the BBC's drama-documentary "Tchaikovsky: Fortune and Tragedy". In 2008 Stoppard returned to the stage in the Hampstead Theatre production of Amy Rosenthal's D. H. Lawrence biodrama "On the Rocks", alongside Nick Caldecott and Charlotte Emmerson.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: In 2010, he was cast in the role of Sir Hallam Holland in the 2010 BBC sequel to "Upstairs, Downstairs". He also appeared in "Any Human Heart", the Channel Four mini-series adaptation of William Boyd's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, alongside Matthew Macfadyen.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: Stoppard was cast as Adrien Deume, a Swiss diplomat, Ariane's husband, in a screen version of Albert Cohen's novel "Belle du Seigneur". He appeared in two television docudramas: playing Hans Litten in "The Man Who Crossed Hitler", and Alan Turing in "Britain's Greatest Codebreaker". Later that year Stoppard starred in British independent feature film "Papadopoulos & Sons" in which he played banking mogul Rob. The film was released in the UK through Cineworld on 5 April 2013. In 2013 he appeared alongside David Tennant and Emily Watson in the BBC miniseries, "The Politician's Husband". From 2017 he played King Philip IV of France in the historical fiction series, "Knightfall".


title: Ed Stoppard

text: He is in "Brave New World", a 2020 American sci-fi dystopian drama series on the streaming service Peacock. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Aldous Huxley.


title: Ed Stoppard

text: Stoppard's stage credits include the title role in English Touring Theatre's 2005 "Hamlet" alongside Anita Dobson (which also ran at the New Ambassadors Theatre) in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and Konstantin in Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2003. His West End credits include Tom Wingfield in a 2007 revival of "The Glass Menagerie" at the Apollo Theatre and the British premiere of "Wit". He appeared in a revival of "Arcadia", written by his father, at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in June 2009 alongside Samantha Bond and Neil Pearson. He played Valentine Coverly. In early 2012, he played the role of Peter in the Trafalgar Studios' production of the Francois Archambault play "The Leisure Society".


title: Ed Stoppard

text: In 2020, Stoppard appears in "Leopoldstadt", a new play by his father, Tom Stoppard. The Wyndham's Theatre production is set among the Jewish community of Vienna in the first half of the 20th century and follows the lives of "a prosperous Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East".


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company () or ADNOC is the State-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the world's 12th largest oil company by production.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: As of 2021, the company has an oil production capacity exceeding 4 million b/d with plans to increase to 5 million bpd by 2030. It is the United Arab Emirate's largest oil company.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC's output has been roughly flat at about 2.5 million barrels per day during the 1990s. It stood at 2.9 mbpd in 2008. Although its financial indicators are difficult to assess as the company has been described as secretive, it has also been described as efficient and well managed. ADNOC is one of few oil companies in the world to make a substantial investment to increase oil production amid growing pressure to reduce output due to climate change, which according to the company is necessary as oil and gas continues to power the world economy and to prevent price shocks in natural gas and oil caused by premature cuts in investment. In an effort to adapt to climate needs, ADNOC is planning the large scale production of hydrogen fuel as a clean energy fuel to replace oil exports.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In November 2019 ADNOC received approval from the emirate’s Supreme Petroleum Council to list its flagship Murban crude oil as a futures contract on an international stock exchange. Murban is a highly prized grade of crude oil that accounts for about half of the UAE’s total oil output of about 3 million barrels per day.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: A joint venture between ADNOC and holding company ADQ was launched in July 2020 to invest in chemicals projects in the planned Ruwais Derivatives Park. ADNOC will have a 60% stake while ADQ will hold a 40% share.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In December 2021, ADNOC and Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA) announced a $3.6 billion project to aim to reduce the carbon footprint of ADNOC's offshore production operations by more than 30%.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In January 2022, Houthi drones attacked three ADNOC oil petroleum trucks, killing three workers as well as injuring 6 others. A construction site at the nearby international airport was also attacked. In retaliation, the coalition in Yemen launched airstrikes on Sana'a and Houthi military installations in the city.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: As of November 2019, the UAE holds the sixth-largest proven reserves of oil in the world at 105 billion barrels. Most of these reserves are located in Abu Dhabi.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC is one of the world's largest energy companies measured by both reserves and production. ADNOC has 16 subsidiary companies in upstream, midstream, and downstream stages of production. ADNOC develops both onshore and offshore gas fields. The company operates two oil refineries, Ruwais and Umm Al Nar. ADNOC exports natural gas in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in addition to producing supplies for local electricity and water utilities, to other domestic industries including petrochemicals plants, and for re-injection into reservoirs.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Major investments were made to ADNOC in 2019 by US asset managers BlackRock and KKR Global and Italian investment firm Eni SpA. The US firms acquired about 40% of ADNOC's pipeline assets for about $4 billion while Eni SpA took a 20% stake in Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company for over $3 billion. Austria's OMV also invested about $2.8 billion, about 15% in ADNOC's refining business in partnership with Eni SpA.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC completed a deal with ADNOC in May 2019 that gives GIC a 6% share in ADNOC's pipeline infrastructure. The deal is valued at $600 million.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Headquarters is a skyscraper office complex located in Abu Dhabi. The building incorporates energy efficiency and sustainable engineering technologies, such as a double skin façade, photovoltaic glazing, LED exterior lighting. Designed by HOK, the overall building complex consists of more than 65 floors with an office tower, corniche club, crisis management center, a heritage museum, and other support facilities. It was opened a few years ago.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is Minister Industry and Advanced Technology in the United Arab Emirates, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the chairman of Masdar, a company located in Abu Dhabi specializing in clean technology, renewable energy, and sustainable development and the chairman of Abu Dhabi Ports. He was appointed the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Emirates Development Bank in September 2020. He serves as the UAE's special envoy for energy and climate change.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In 2013, Dr. Al Jaber was named Minister of State and joined the UAE cabinet. Dr. Al Jaber's appointment was approved by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's president. Speaking of the appointment of Dr. Al Jaber and other ministers, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE's vice president and prime minister and ruler of Dubai, said the new cabinet has "young faces with new ideas and energy to keep up with the rapid changes and to deal with our people's top priorities."


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Al Jaber holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California the United States and a Ph.D. in business and economics from Coventry University in the United Kingdom and an MBA from the California State University at Los Angeles.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: After his appointment, Al Jaber revealed a plan to modernize ADNOC and make its operations more profitable. The plan includes streamlining ADNOC's operations to improve profitability and working to create a more commercially minded culture among the firm's employees; the goal is to put the quality of ADNOC's operations on equal footing with large multinationals while ensuring that the firm continues to help the UAE diversify its economy. As part of this effort, a master plan is being implemented to better coordinate upstream and downstream gas operations among ADNOC's many subsidiaries in order to more effectively meet the UAE's rising demand for natural gas. Maximizing profitability in upstream operations is another key priority. Under this plan ADNOC is also looking for ways to better coordinate downstream activity and create new products. Executive compensation has now been tied to key performance indicators and commercial benchmarks, especially operating cost per barrel. Al Jaber's plan will be implemented over several years. It is a part of the government's plan for economic diversification embodied in Economic Vision 2030.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: The Supreme Petroleum Council is the highest governing body of oil, gas, and similar industry-related activities in the Abu Dhabi. The council was formed in 1988. The council is tasked with supervising all oil and gas companies that operate in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates and acts as the board of directors for ADNOC.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC operates numerous companies with different functions, including exploration and production; processing and refining; marketing and distribution.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Onshore works onshore and in shallow coastal water. It is previously known as Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations, ADCO. ADNOC Onshore operates primarily in Abu Dhabi. The company was originally known as Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast). It received its first concession on January 11, 1939, but did not begin geological operations until after World War II. The first commercially viable oil discovery was made at Bab in 1960. In 1962, the company was renamed the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company. Exports began to flow from the Jebel Dhanna terminal on December 14, 1963. Abu Dhabi's government acquired 25% equity in the company in 1973 and increased its stake to 60% in 1974. The company started using the name Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations, ADCO, in 1978. ADNOC Onshore's primary exports from the Jebel Dhanna and Fujairah terminals. ADNOC have a 60% share, the remaining 40% is split (CNPC (8%), BP (10%), Total (10%), Inpex (5%), CEFC (4%) and GS Energy of South Korea (3%)). In December 2018 ADNOC transferred China Energy’s stake in onshore to China ZhenHua Oil Company, awarding the company a 4% stake.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Offshore is the largest offshore oil producer in Abu Dhabi. It is ADNOC's dedicated offshore arm and is responsible for the development and delivery of oil and gas resources in Abu Dhabi waters. It was formed through the consolidation of two of ADNOC's upstream oil and gas companies: Abu Dhabi Marine Area Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) and Zakum Development Company (ZADCO). With reorganisation, and the expiry of the 65-year-old ADMA concessions, the offshore concessions are now split by fields. ADNOC 60% then the 40% is split into Upper Zakum (Exxon / INPEX), (minor fields Umm Al Dalk, Satah (Inpex 40%)), Lower Zakum (Total, ENI, ONGC, INPEX), Umm Shaif and Nasr (Total, ENI), Sarb and Umm Lulu (CEPSA, OMV).


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Drilling is ADNOC's oldest subsidiary. It was previously known as National Drilling Company, NDC. ADNOC Drilling is the largest drilling company in the Middle East. It drills for oil both onshore and offshore in Abu Dhabi. ADNOC currently has a 95% equity in ADNOC Drilling after energy services giant Baker Hughes, acquired a 5% stake (valued around $11 billion or AED40.4 billion) in 2018.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In September 2021, ADNOC Drilling announced its intention to list another 11% of shares in the company on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). On October 3, 2021, the company went public on the Abu Dhabi bourse, and became the most successful listing of all time in the emirate, jumping 30% on its first-ever day of trading.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Al Yasat Petroleum is ADNOC's youngest operating company. It is the first joint venture between ADNOC and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), established in 2014. Tayba Al Hashemi is the current CEO of Al Yasat Petroleum. Al Yasat's role is to explore oil and gas potential within the company's mandated concession areas and to develop prospective locations on behalf of the company's shareholders. ADNOC is the majority shareholder and owns 60% of the company, with CNPC owning the remaining 40%.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Al Dhafra Petroleum is an emerging upstream company that is focused on unlocking undeveloped oil and gas potential in the UAE. Al Dhafra Petroleum is a dynamic and efficient upstream company with a mandate to maximize the UAE's natural resources. Its shareholders are ADNOC, which owns 60% of the company, with Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) and GS Energy owning the remaining 40%.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Sour Gas is a joint $10 billion venture between ADNOC and Occidental Petroleum that is expected to extract at least one billion cubic feet of ultra-sour gas per day. On a daily basis, the project is also expected to produce 504 million cubic feet of natural gas, 33,000 barrels of condensates, and thousands of tons of natural gas liquids, and thousands of tons of sulphur granules. The Project is located in the Shah gas field about 210 kilometers west of Abu Dhabi. Half of this field's production will be used to service domestic demand in the UAE and minimize the need for gas imports. ADNOC Sour Gas is 60% owned by ADNOC with the remaining equity held by Occidental. It is previously known as Abu Dhabi Gas Development Company Limited (Al Hosn Gas).


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Gas Processing is a natural gas producer. It is formerly known as Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Limited (GASCO). ADNOC owns 68 percent equity in ADNOC Gas Processing. Other shareholders are Shell Abu Dhabi with 15 percent equity, Total also with 15 percent, and Partex with 2 percent. The company was established in 1975.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC LNG processes and distributes liquefied petroleum gas and liquified natural gas. ADNOC Gas Processing supplies products to ADNOC LNG at Das Island where it is processed and loaded on ships for export to East Asia, especially Japan. ADNOC is the majority shareholder. Minority shares are held by Mitsui, BP, and Total. It is formerly called Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Co. Limited (ADGAS).


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Refining was created in 1999 to takeover oil refining from ADNOC. ADNOC Refining refines crude oil and condensate, various petroleum products, and granulated sulphur. It operates the Ruwais and Abu Dhabi refineries. In 2015, it completed a major expansion of its Ruwais Refinery. The $10 billion project doubled the capacity of the facility. A large part of the increased output is dedicated to diesel production due to demand from Asia. Ruwais has the ability to refine 600,000 tonnes of high-quality base oils per year. These oils are used primarily for automotive lubricants. It is previously known as Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (TAKREER).


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In September 2019 Fertiglobe was formed as a result of the merger of ADNOC Fertilizers, (established in 1980) with Dutch firm OCI's Middle East nitrogen fertilizer business. ADNOC has a 42% stake in the new business.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Industrial Gas was founded in 2007. It manufactures industrial gas used in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. ADNOC Industrial Gas works very closely with ADNOC Gas Processing. The firm is a joint-venture between ADNOC and the Linde Group of Germany. ADNOC holds 51% equity with the remainder held by Linde. It is formerly known as ADNOC Linde Industrial Gases Company Limited (ELIXIER).


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: Borouge is a manufacturer of polyolefins. It is a joint venture of ADNOC and Borealis of Austria. It was founded in 1998, and has two divisions, one based in Abu Dhabi and another based in Singapore. The company supplies polyolefin plastics (polyethylene and polypropylene). They focus on differentiated high-end applications in the Middle East and Asia Pacific with Borstar Enhanced Polyethylene produced in Abu Dhabi and the Borealis range of specialty products.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Logistics & Services was formed by merging ESNAAD, IRSHAD, and ADNATCO. ADNOC Logistics & Services is 100% owned by ADNOC. The new company has a workforce of about 4,000 people.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: In August 2020, Chinese company Wanhua partnered with ADNOC Logistics and Services to create AW Shipping Ltd., which owns and operates product tankers and a flotilla of very large gas carriers (VLGCs). AW Shipping delivers liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from ADNOC and other global suppliers to Wanhua's sites in China and globally. In November 2018, a 10-year contract for (LPG) supply was forged between the companies.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADNOC Distribution (ADNOCDIS:UH) operates hundreds of service stations across the UAE, provides bunkering services at Zayed Port, aviation fuel services at most of the country's airports, and sells its own brand of lubricants throughout the Gulf region. In September 2020 ADNOC completed "the largest block placement of a publicly listed" company in the Gulf region valued at $1 billion. The placement, which was aimed at institutional investors, increased the subsidiary's free float to 20%.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: ADCOP owns approximately 406 km pipeline that carries crude oil from an ADNOC Onshore collection center in Abu Dhabi to the Fujairah oil export terminal, which provides access to international shipping routes.


title: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

text: The ADNOC Technical Academy (ATA) provides specialist training and education for UAE Nationals who want to become skilled oil and gas industry technicians.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is one of the oldest distance-vector routing protocols which employs the hop count as a routing metric. RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from source to destination. The largest number of hops allowed for RIP is 15, which limits the size of networks that RIP can support.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIP implements the split horizon, route poisoning, and holddown mechanisms to prevent incorrect routing information from being propagated.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: In RIPv1 routers broadcast updates with their routing table every 30 seconds. In the early deployments, routing tables were small enough that the traffic was not significant. As networks grew in size, however, it became evident there could be a massive traffic burst every 30 seconds, even if the routers had been initialized at random times.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: In most networking environments, RIP is not the preferred choice of routing protocol, as its time to converge and scalability are poor compared to EIGRP, OSPF, or IS-IS. However, it is easy to configure, because RIP does not require any parameters, unlike other protocols.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIP uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as its transport protocol, and is assigned the reserved port number 520.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: Based on the Bellman–Ford algorithm and the Ford–Fulkerson algorithm, distance-vector routing protocols started to be implemented from 1969 onwards in data networks such as the ARPANET and CYCLADES. The predecessor of RIP was the Gateway Information Protocol (GWINFO) which was developed by Xerox in the mid-1970s to route its experimental network. As part of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) protocol suite GWINFO transformed into the XNS Routing Information Protocol. This XNS RIP in turn became the basis for early routing protocols, such as Novell's IPX RIP, AppleTalk's Routing Table Maintenance Protocol (RTMP), and the IP RIP. The 1982 Berkley Software Distribution of the UNIX operating system implemented RIP in the "routed" daemon. The 4.2BSD release proved popular and became the basis for subsequent UNIX versions, which implemented RIP in the "routed" or "gated" daemon. Ultimately, RIP had been extensively deployed before the standard, written by Charles Hedrick, was passed as RIPv1 in 1988.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: The routing metric used by RIP counts the number of routers that need to be passed to reach a destination IP network. The hop count 0 denotes a network that is directly connected to the router. 16 hops denote a network that is unreachable, according to the RIP hop limit.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: There are three standardized versions of the Routing Information Protocol: "RIPv1" and "RIPv2" for IPv4, and "RIPng" for IPv6.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: The original specification of RIP was published in 1988. When starting up, and every 30 seconds thereafter, a router with RIPv1 implementation broadcasts to a request message through every RIPv1 enabled interface. Neighbouring routers receiving the request message respond with a RIPv1 segment, containing their routing table. The requesting router updates its own routing table, with the reachable IP network address, hop count and next hop, that is the router interface IP address from which the RIPv1 response was sent. As the requesting router receives updates from different neighbouring routers it will only update the reachable networks in its routing table, if it receives information about a reachable network it has not yet in its routing table or information that a network it has in its routing table is reachable with a lower hop count. Therefore, a RIPv1 router will in most cases only have one entry for a reachable network, the one with the lowest hop count. If a router receives information from two different neighbouring router that the same network is reachable with the same hop count but via two different routes, the network will be entered into the routing table two times with different next hop routers. The RIPv1 enabled router will then perform what is known as equal-cost load balancing for IP packets.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIPv1 enabled routers not only request the routing tables of other routers every 30 seconds, they also listen to incoming requests from neighbouring routers and send their own routing table in turn. RIPv1 routing tables are therefore updated every 25 to 35 seconds. The RIPv1 protocol adds a small random time variable to the update time, to avoid routing tables synchronizing across a LAN. It was thought, as a result of random initialization, the routing updates would spread out in time, but this was not true in practice. Sally Floyd and Van Jacobson showed in 1994 that, without slight randomization of the update timer, the timers synchronized over time.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIPv1 can be configured into silent mode, so that a router requests and processes neighbouring routing tables, and keeps its routing table and hop count for reachable networks up to date, but does not needlessly send its own routing table into the network. Silent mode is commonly implemented to hosts.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIPv1 uses classful routing. The periodic routing updates do not carry subnet information, lacking support for variable length subnet masks (VLSM). This limitation makes it impossible to have different-sized subnets inside of the same network class. In other words, all subnets in a network class must have the same size. There is also no support for router authentication, making RIP vulnerable to various attacks.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: Due to the deficiencies of the original RIP specification, RIP version 2 (RIPv2) was developed in 1993, published in 1994, and declared Internet Standard 56 in 1998. It included the ability to carry subnet information, thus supporting Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). To maintain backward compatibility, the hop count limit of 15 remained. RIPv2 has facilities to fully interoperate with the earlier specification if all "Must Be Zero" protocol fields in the RIPv1 messages are properly specified. In addition, a "compatibility switch" feature allows fine-grained interoperability adjustments.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: In an effort to avoid unnecessary load on hosts that do not participate in routing, RIPv2 "multicasts" the entire routing table to all adjacent routers at the address , as opposed to RIPv1 which uses broadcast. Unicast addressing is still allowed for special applications.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: Route tags were also added in RIP version 2. This functionality allows a distinction between routes learned from the RIP protocol and routes learned from other protocols.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIPng (RIP next generation) is an extension of RIPv2 for support of IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol. The main differences between RIPv2 and RIPng are:


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: RIP messages use the User Datagram Protocol on port 520 and all RIP messages exchanged between routers are encapsulated in a UDP segment.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: Cisco's proprietary Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) was a somewhat more capable protocol than RIP. It belongs to the same basic family of distance-vector routing protocols.


title: Routing Information Protocol

text: Cisco has ceased support and distribution of IGRP in their router software. It was replaced by the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) which is a completely new design. While EIGRP still uses a distance-vector model, it relates to IGRP only in using the same composite routing metric. Both IGRP and EIGRP calculated a single composite metric for each route, from a formula of five variables: bandwidth, delay, reliability, load, and MTU; though on Cisco routers, by default, only bandwidth and delay are used in this calculation.


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: Zechariah ( "Zəḵaryāh", "remember Yah"; ; Zacharias in KJV; Zachary in the Douay–Rheims Bible; Zakariyya () in Islamic tradition) is a figure in the New Testament and the Quran, and venerated in Christianity and Islam. In the Bible he is the father of John the Baptist, a priest of the sons of Aaron in the Gospel of Luke (), and the husband of Elizabeth who is a relative of the Virgin Mary ().


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: According to the Gospel of Luke, during the reign of king Herod, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the course of Abia, whose wife Elizabeth was also of the priestly family of Aaron. The evangelist states that both the parents were righteous before God, since they were "blameless" in observing the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. When the events related in Luke began, their marriage was still childless, because Elizabeth was "barren", and they were both "well advanced in years" ().


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The duties at the temple in Jerusalem alternated between each of the family lines that had descended from those appointed by king David (). Luke states that during the week when it was the duty of Zechariah's family line to serve at "the temple of the Lord", the lot for performing the incense offering had fallen to Zechariah ().


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The Gospel of Luke states that while Zechariah ministered at the altar of incense, an angel of the Lord appeared and announced to him that his wife would give birth to a son, whom he was to name John, and that this son would be the forerunner of the Lord (). Citing their advanced age, Zechariah asked with disbelief for a sign whereby he would know the truth of this prophecy. In reply, the angel identified himself as Gabriel, sent especially by God to make this announcement, and added that because of Zechariah's doubt he would be struck dumb and "not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed". Consequently, when he went out to the waiting worshippers in the temple's outer courts, he was unable to speak the customary blessing ().


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: After returning to his house in "Hebron, in the hill "country" of Judah", his wife Elizabeth conceived. After Elizabeth completed her fifth month of pregnancy, her relative Mary was visited by the same angel, Gabriel. While still a virgin, Gabriel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.'" Joseph, to whom Mary was betrothed, found out that she was pregnant, obviously disturbing news. Because he "was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.' 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife."


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: Mary then traveled to visit her relative Elizabeth, having been told by the angel that Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy. Mary remained about three months before she returned to her own house (;).


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: Elizabeth gave birth, and on the eighth day, when their son was to be circumcised according to the commandment, her neighbours and relatives assumed that he was to be named after his father. Elizabeth, however, insisted that his name was to be John; so the family then questioned her husband. As soon as Zechariah had written on a writing table: "His name is John", he regained the power of speech, and blessed "the Lord God of Israel" with a prophecy known as the "Benedictus" or "Song of Zechariah" ().


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The child grew up and "waxed strong in spirit", but remained in the deserts of Judæa until he assumed the ministry that was to earn him the name "John the Baptist" (; ; ).


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: Origen suggested that the Zechariah mentioned in as having been killed between the temple and the altar may be the father of John the Baptist.


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The Gospel of James, a 2nd-century apocryphal work, recounts that, at the time of the massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all males under the age of two in an attempt to prevent the prophesied Messiah from coming to Israel, Zechariah refused to divulge the whereabouts of his son (who was in hiding), and he was therefore murdered by Herod's soldiers. This account is also present in subsequent Eastern Orthodox tradition.


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The Catholic Church commemorates him as a saint, along with Elizabeth, on September 23rd as it is believed that his temple duty before John the Baptist's conception took place on the Day of Atonement. He is also venerated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 5 September. The Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrates the feast day of Zechariah on September 5, together with Elizabeth, who is considered a matriarch. Zechariah and Elizabeth are invoked in several prayers during the Orthodox Mystery of Crowning (Sacrament of Marriage), as the priest blesses the newly married couple, saying "Thou who didst... accept Zechariah and Elizabeth, and didst make their offspring the Forerunner..." and "...bless them, O Lord our God, as Thou didst Zechariah and Elizabeth...". In the Greek Orthodox calendar, Zechariah and Elizabeth are also commemorated on June 24.


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: The Church of San Zaccaria in Venice, Italy claims to house the relics of Zechariah, entombed alongside those of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Armenians believe that the Gandzasar Monastery in Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan contains his relics; however, his relics were also kept in the Great Church of Constantinople, where they were brought by the "praefectus urbi" Ursus on 4 September, 415.


title: Zechariah (New Testament figure)

text: His relics uncovering is commemorated by Greek Orthodox Church on 11 February, and translation of his relics is commemorated on 1 December.