1.
Philadelphia
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In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia was one of the capitals in the Revolutionary War. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became an industrial center. It became a destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration. The areas many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational, with a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the center of activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States. The 67 National Historic Landmarks in the city helped account for the $10 billion generated by tourism, Philadelphia is the only World Heritage City in the United States. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon, the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are also called Delaware Indians and their territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people occasionally fought the Lenape, surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and United States independence pushed them further west, in the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the US state of Oklahoma, with communities living also in Wisconsin, Ontario. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony, in 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their defeat of the English colony of Maryland
2.
Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
3.
Yale University
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Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony to train Congregationalist ministers, it is the third-oldest institution of education in the United States. The Collegiate School moved to New Haven in 1716, and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century the school introduced graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, the undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each schools faculty oversees its curriculum, the universitys assets include an endowment valued at $25.4 billion as of June 2016, the second largest of any U. S. educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States, Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents,19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices,20 living billionaires, and many heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress,57 Nobel laureates,5 Fields Medalists,247 Rhodes Scholars, and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University. Yale traces its beginnings to An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9,1701, the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, the group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as The Founders. Originally known as the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, the school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College, meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and it had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Lockes works and developed his original theology known as the new divinity
4.
Harvard Law School
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Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is considered to be one of the most prestigious in the world. The school is ranked third by the U. S. News & World and its acceptance rate was 15. 4% in the 2013–14 admissions cycle, and its yield rate of 66. 2% was the second-highest of any law school in the United States. It is ranked first in the 2016 QS World University Rankings, Harvard Law admitted 16. 5% of applicants in its most recent class, compared to 9. 2% at Yale and 11. 2% at Stanford. With a current enrollment of 1,990, HLS has about as many students as its three closest-ranked peer institutions, first-ranked Yale, second-ranked Stanford, and fourth-ranked Chicago, combined. The first-year class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students, Harvards uniquely large class size and its prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary, government, and the business world. According to Harvard Laws 2015 ABA-required disclosures,95. 33% of the Class of 2014 passed the Bar exam. Harvard Law Schools founding is linked to the funding of Harvards first professorship in law, paid for from a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall. Today, it is home to the largest academic law library in the world, the current dean of Harvard Law School is Martha Minow, who assumed the role on July 1,2009. The law school has 328 faculty members, Harvard Law Schools founding is traced to the establishment of a law department at Harvard in 1817. Dating the founding to the year of the creation of the law department makes Harvard Law the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation, William & Mary Law School opened first in 1779, but closed due to the American Civil War, reopening in 1920. The University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816, but did not begin classes until 1824, and also closed during the Civil War. Or a Professor of Physick and Anatomy, whichever the said overseers and Corporation shall judge to be best. ”The value of the land, when fully liquidated in 1809, was $2,938, the Harvard Corporation allocated $400 from the income generated by those funds to create the Royall Professorship of Law in 1815. The dean of the law school traditionally held the Royall chair, deans Elena Kagan, royalls Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum which features the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States. The Royall family coat-of-arms, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves, was adopted as the school crest in 1936, topped with the university motto, in March 2016, following requests by students, the school decided to remove the emblem because of its association with slavery. By 1827, the school, with one faculty member, was struggling, nathan Dane, a prominent alumnus of the college, then endowed the Dane Professorship of Law, insisting that it be given to then Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. For a while, the school was called Dane Law School, in 1829, John H. Ashmun, son of Eli Porter Ashmun and brother of George Ashmun, accepted a professorship and closed his Northampton Law School, with many of his students following him to Harvard. Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice, at Harvard, Langdell also developed the case method of teaching law, now the dominant pedagogical model at U. S. law schools
5.
Television program
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It may be a single production, or more commonly, a series of related productions. A limited number of episodes of a show may be called a miniseries or a serial or limited series. Television series are without a fixed length and are divided into seasons or series. While there is no defined length, U. S. industry practice has traditionally favored longer television seasons than those of other countries, a one-time broadcast may be called a special, or particularly in the UK a special episode. A television film is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video, a program can be either recorded, as on video tape, other various electronic media forms, played with an on-demand player or viewed on live television. Television programs may be fictional, or non-fictional and it may be topical, or historical. They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy, a drama program usually features a set of actors playing characters in a historical or contemporary setting. The program follows their lives and adventures, except for soap opera-type serials, many shows especially before the 1980s, remained static without story arcs, and the main characters and premise changed little. If some change happened to the characters lives during the episode, because of this, the episodes could be broadcast in any order. Since the 1980s, there are series that feature progressive change to the plot. For instance, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere were two of the first American prime time television series to have this kind of dramatic structure. While the later series, Babylon 5 is an example of such production that had a predetermined story running over its intended five-season run. In 2012, it was reported that television was growing into a component of major media companies revenues than film. Some also noted the increase in quality of television programs. When a person or company decides to create a new series, they develop the elements, consisting of the concept, the characters, the crew. Then they offer it to the networks in an attempt to find one interested enough to order a prototype first episode of the series. They want very much to get the word out on what types of shows they’re looking for, to create the pilot, the structure and team of the whole series must be put together. If the network likes the pilot, they pick up the show to air it the next season, sometimes they save it for mid-season, or request rewrites and further review
6.
Sesame Street
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Sesame Street is a long-running American childrens television series, produced by Sesame Workshop and created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its content, and images communicated through the use of Jim Hensons Muppets, animation, short films, humor. The show has undergone significant changes throughout its history, with the creation of Sesame Street, producers and writers of a childrens television show used, for the first time, educational goals and a curriculum to shape its content. It was also the first time a shows educational effects were studied, the show was initially funded by government and private foundations but has become somewhat self-supporting due to revenues from licensing arrangements, international sales, and other media. By 2006, there were independently produced versions, or co-productions, in 2001 there were over 120 million viewers of various international versions of Sesame Street, and by the shows 40th anniversary in 2009, it was broadcast in more than 140 countries. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was the childrens television show in the United States. A1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old, in 2008, it was estimated that 77 million Americans had watched the series as children. As of 2014, Sesame Street has won 167 Emmy Awards and 8 Grammy Awards—more than any other childrens show, Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a television show that would master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them. The program premiered on television stations on November 10,1969. It was the first preschool educational television program to base its contents and production values on laboratory, initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy, and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, Sesame Street has evolved from its initial inception. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become an American institution, the cast and crew expanded during this time, with emphasis on the hiring of women crew members and the addition of minorities to the cast. The shows success continued into the 1980s, Sesame Streets curriculum has expanded to include more affective topics such as relationships, ethics, and emotions. After the turn of the 21st century, Sesame Street made major structural changes, for example, starting in 2002, its format became more narrative and included ongoing storylines. After its thirtieth anniversary in 1999 and due to the popularity of the Muppet Elmo, upon its fortieth anniversary in 2009, the show received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy at the 36th Daytime Emmy Awards. In April 2017, Sesame Street will introduce a new puppet called Julia with Autism to the show, and will be voiced by Stacey Gordon, who started Puppet Pie and has a son on the autism spectrum. From its first episode, Sesame Street has structured its format by using a visual style, fast-moving action, humor
7.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
8.
Preston Sturges
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Preston Sturges was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film The Great McGinty and it is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. A tender love scene between Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve was enlivened by a horse, which repeatedly poked its nose into Fondas head. Sturges famously sold the story for The Great McGinty to Paramount Pictures for $1, in return for being allowed to direct the film, Sturges was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Mary Estelle Dempsey and travelling salesman Edmund C. His maternal grandparents, Catherine Campbell Smyth and Dominick dEste Dempsey, were immigrants from Ireland, when Sturges was three years old, his eccentric mother left America to pursue a singing career in Paris, where she annulled her marriage with Prestons father. Returning to America, Dempsey met her husband, the wealthy stockbroker Solomon Sturges. According to biographers, Solomon Sturges was diametrically opposite to Mary and this included her close friendship with Isadora Duncan, as the young Sturges would sometimes travel from country to country with Duncans dance company. Mary also carried on an affair with Aleister Crowley and collaborated with him on his magnum opus Magick. As a young man, Sturges bounced back and forth between Europe and the United States, as Sturges spent much of his childhood and youth in France, he ended up fluent in French and a Francophile who always considered France his second home. In 1916, he worked as a runner for New York stock brokers, the next year, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Service, and graduated as a lieutenant from Camp Dick in Texas without seeing action. While at camp, Sturges wrote an essay, Three Hundred Words of Humor, returning from camp, Sturges picked up a managing position at the Desti Emporium in New York, a store owned by his mothers fourth husband. He spent eight years there, until he married the first of his four wives, in 1928, Sturges performed on Broadway in Hotbed, a short-lived play by Paul Osborn, and Sturges first produced play, The Guinea Pig, opened in Massachusetts. The play was a success and Sturges moved it to Broadway the following year and that same year also saw the opening of Sturges second play, the hit Strictly Dishonorable. Written in just six days, the play ran for sixteen months and earned Sturges over $300,000 and it attracted interest from Hollywood, and Sturges was writing for Paramount by the end of the year. Three other Sturges stage plays were produced from 1930 to 1932, one of them a musical, by the end of the year, he was working more in Hollywood as a writer-for-hire, operating on short contracts, for Universal, MGM, and Columbia studios. He also sold his screenplay for The Power and the Glory to Fox. The film told the story of a self-involved financier via a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, Sturges later recalled, The film made a lot of enemies. Writers at that time worked in teams, like piano movers, and my first solo script was considered a distinct menace to the profession
9.
Damien Chazelle
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Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and went on to receive five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also received a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations, winning six including Best Director, Chazelle was born to a Roman Catholic family in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Celia Chazelle, is an American-Canadian writer and professor of history at The College of New Jersey and his father, Bernard Chazelle, is a French-American Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University, originally from Clamart, France. Chazelle has a sister, Anna, who is an actress and his maternal grandfather, John Sayre Martin, Jr. is the son of John Sayre Martin, who worked for Paramount Pictures in London, and Eileen Earle, who was a stage actress. Filmmaking was Chazelles first love, but he wanted to be a musician. He has said he had a music teacher, who was the inspiration for the character of Terence Fletcher in Chazelles breakout film Whiplash. Unlike the films protagonist Andrew Neiman, however, Chazelle stated that he knew instinctively he never had the talent to be a great musician and he studied filmmaking in the Visual and Environmental Studies department at Harvard University and graduated in 2007. At Harvard he lived in Currier House as roommates with the composer, Chazelles debut as a writer and director was the film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Chazelle has shared screenplay credit with director Ed Gass-Donnelly on The Last Exorcism Part II,2013 and he is also credited as the screenwriter on 2013s Grand Piano, a thriller that has an anxious pianist dealing with a death threat during a concert. Chazelle has stated in interviews that he was working as a writer for hire but had the ambition to direct his own script, Chazelle described Whiplash as a writing reaction to being stuck on another script. I just thought, thats not working, let me put it away and he stated he initially did not want to show the script around, as it felt too personal, and I put it in a drawer. Whiplash gained interest from producers, but nobody wanted to make the film. Whiplash won the Sundance Film Festival Short Prize in 2013 as a short and in 2014 the top audience, the film also took the grand prize and the audience award for favorite film at the 40th Deauville American Film Festival. On January 15,2015, Whiplash received 5 Academy Award nominations and it won three of them, Best Supporting Actor for Simmons, Best Achievement in Film Editing and Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, on February 22,2015. Chazelle co-wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane, which was released on March 11,2016, Chazelle was brought in by J. J. Abrams Bad Robot Productions to re-write a draft, with the intention of Chazelle directing. However, Chazelle ultimately chose to direct Whiplash instead and his musical, La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, opened the Venice International Film Festival on August 31,2016. It began a limited release in the United States on December 9,2016 and it has received rave reviews from critics
10.
Orson Welles
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George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring, although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety. His first film was Citizen Kane, which he co-wrote, produced, directed, Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He has been praised as the ultimate auteur, Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai and Chimes at Midnight, are underappreciated. Known for his voice, Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor. George Orson Welles was born May 6,1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles and he was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head. Despite his familys affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood and his parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital May 10,1924, the Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrices funeral. After his mothers death Welles ceased pursuing music and it was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony in Wyoming, New York, established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward. There he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, Welles briefly attended public school before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, when the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again. During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom, in some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know, said Roger Hill, who became Welless teacher and lifelong friend. Welles briefly attended school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade. At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions there, Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences, wrote critic Richard France
11.
The Fifth Estate (film)
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The Fifth Estate is a 2013 thriller film directed by Bill Condon, about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange, anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney are featured in supporting roles. The films name is a used to describe the people who operate in the manner of journalists outside the normal constraints imposed on the mainstream media. The film performed poorly at the box office and garnered mixed critical reaction, receiving criticism for its screenplay and direction, the story opens in 2010, with the release of the Afghan War Logs. It then flashes back to 2007, where journalist Daniel Domscheit-Berg meets Australian computer hacker Julian Assange for the first time, Daniels interest in online activism has led him to Assange, with whom he has corresponded by email. They begin working together on WikiLeaks, a devoted to releasing information being withheld from the public while retaining anonymity for its sources. Their first major target is a private Swiss bank, Julius Baer, despite Baers filing of a lawsuit and obtaining an injunction, the judge dissolves the injunction, allowing Julian and Daniel to reclaim the domain name. At first Daniel enjoys changing the world, viewing WikiLeaks as a noble enterprise, however, the relationship between the two becomes strained over time. Assange openly mocks Daniels concerns about issues, implying his own life has been more troubling. Assanges abrasive manner and actions, such as abandoning Daniel at his parents house after having accepted their dinner invitation, Daniel begins to fear that Assange may be closer to a con-man than a mentor. He also notices that Assange constantly gives different stories about why his hair is white, Assange at first tells Daniel that WikiLeaks has hundreds of workers, but Daniel later finds out that Daniel and Assange are the only members. Most importantly to Daniel, Assange frequently claims that protecting sources is the number one goal. Daniels girlfriend tells him that she believes in his cause, Assange wants to leak the documents immediately, but Daniel insists that they review the documents first. Later, several major newspapers agree to cooperate with WikiLeaks in releasing the documents while spinning WikiLeaks positively, however, both Daniel and the newspapers require the names in the documents be redacted both to protect sources and to assist in the media spin, to which Assange reluctantly agrees. Daniel realizes that Assange has no intention of following through on this promise and is grooming a right-hand man to replace Daniel, the newspapers release the redacted documents. The resulting media and public uproar forces informants to flee from their countries of residence, before Assange can go further, however, Daniel and the other members of the original WikiLeaks team delete the site and block Assanges access to the server. Daniel later talks with a reporter from The Guardian, and the two fear that giving Assange such a platform was a mistake. The reporter tells Daniel that while Assange may be untrustworthy, he had done a thing by uncovering secret dealing in the government and business world
