History.

1972–1996.

Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The partnership provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children "Vision On". The company name originates from the name of their nerdish Superman character in that sequence. After creating a segment called "Greeblies" (1975) using clay animation, became what was the inspiration for creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts "Down and Out" and "Confessions of a Foyer Girl", entries in the BBC's "Animated Conversations" series using real-life conversations as soundtracks. Aardman also created the title sequence for "The Great Egg Race" and supplied animation for the multiple award-winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer". They produced the music video for the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" by Nina Simone in 1987.  Later Aardman produced a number of shorts for Channel 4, including the "Conversation Pieces" series. These five shorts worked in the same area as the "Animated Conversations" pieces, but were more sophisticated. Lord and Sproxton began hiring more animators at this point; three of the newcomers made their directorial debut at Aardman with the "Lip Synch" series. Of the five "Lip Synch" shorts, two were directed by Lord, one by Barry Purves, one by Richard Goleszowski and one by Nick Park.  In 1991, Park's short, "Creature Comforts", was the first Aardman production to win an Academy Award. Park also developed the clay modelled shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace and Gromit, a comical pair of friends: Wallace being a naive English inventor with a love of cheese, and Gromit his best friend, the intelligent but silent dog. These films include "A Grand Day Out" (1989), "The Wrong Trousers" (1993) and "A Close Shave" (1995), the latter two winning Academy Awards.

1997–2007.

In December 1997, Aardman and DreamWorks (later DreamWorks Animation) announced that their companies were teaming up to co-finance and distribute "Chicken Run", Aardman's first feature film, which had already been in pre-production for a year. On 27 October 1999, Aardman and DreamWorks signed a $250 million deal to make an additional four films that were estimated to be completed during the next 12 years. Along with the deal their first project was announced, titled "The Tortoise and the Hare". Intended to be based on Aesop's fable and directed by Richard Goleszowski, it was put on hold two years later because of script issues. On 23 June 2000, "Chicken Run" was released to a great critical and financial success. In 2005, after ten years of absence, Wallace and Gromit returned in Academy Award-winning "". The following year "Flushed Away", Aardman's first computer-animated feature, was released.  On 1 October 2006, right before the release of "Flushed Away", "The New York Times" reported that due to creative differences DreamWorks Animation and Aardman would not be extending their contract. The deal was officially terminated on 30 January 2007. According to an Aardman spokesperson: "The business model of DreamWorks no longer suits Aardman and vice versa. But the split couldn't have been more amicable." Unofficial reasons for departure were weak performances of the last two movies, for which DreamWorks had to take writedowns, and citing the article, "Aardman executives chafed at the creative control DreamWorks tried to exert, particularly with "Flushed Away"..." The studio had another film in development, "Crood Awakening" (eventually "The Croods"), which had been announced in 2005, with John Cleese co-writing the screenplay. With the end of the partnership, the film's rights reverted to DreamWorks.  On 10 October 2005, a serious fire at a storage facility used by Aardman and other Bristol-based companies destroyed over 30 years of props, models, and scenery often built by the Bristol-based Cod Steaks. This warehouse was used for storage of past projects and so did not prevent the production of their current projects at the time. In addition, the company's library of finished films was stored elsewhere and was undamaged. An electrical fault was determined to be the cause of the blaze. Referring to the 2004 South Asia earthquake and tsunami, Park was quoted as saying, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal."  From 2006 to 2007, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, had an exhibit featuring the works of Aardman Studios. Sproxton and Lord visited the exhibit in May 2006 and met with animator Hayao Miyazaki during the visit. Miyazaki has long been a fan of Aardman Animations' works.

2007–present.

In April 2007, Aardman signed and in 2010 renewed a three-year deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to finance, co-produce, and distribute feature films. The next year, Aardman released a new "Wallace and Gromit" short film, called "A Matter of Loaf and Death". The first film made in partnership with Sony was the computer-animated "Arthur Christmas" (2011), which is Aardman's first 3-D feature film. 2012 saw the release of "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!" (known internationally as "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), Aardman's first 3-D stop-motion film and Peter Lord's first film as a director since "Chicken Run". An additional two films were announced in June 2007: "The Cat Burglars", a stop-motion film directed by Steve Box, about cats that steal milk, and their plans to pull off 'the great milk float robbery'; and an untitled Nick Park project (which would later become "Early Man").  Aardman is also known to provide generous resources and training to young animators by providing awards at various animation festivals. For example, The Aardman Award at the UK's Animex Festival in Teesside provides story consultation to a promising young animator for their next film.  In 2008, Aardman joined with Channel 4 and Lupus Films to launch a user-generated content animation portal called 4mations.  They also designed the BBC One Christmas Idents for that year, which featured Wallace and Gromit to tie in with the showing of the new Wallace and Gromit film called "A Matter of Loaf and Death" on Christmas Day at 8:30pm.  In April 2008, Aardman launched the Aardman YouTube channel, which is a YouTube Partner channel featuring the entire "Creature Comforts" TV series, the Morph series, "Cracking Contraptions" and clips from the Wallace and Gromit films.  From December 2008, Aardman also started posting various flash games on Newgrounds, the majority of which are based on "Wallace and Gromit" and "Shaun the Sheep".  In 2009, Nintendo announced that Aardman would make twelve short films using only Flipnote Studio from Nintendo DSi. The films were posted on Flipnote's Hatena web service provider. The first film was called "The Sandwich Twins" and was released on 16 September 2009. The remaining eleven films were released on a weekly basis until Christmas, and can also be downloaded using Hatena.  In 2009 the headquarters of the company moved into a new building, designed by Alec French architects, in Gas Ferry Road, Bristol, although work needing large-scale sets is still carried out in sheds in Aztec West and Bedminster.  In April 2009, Aardman Animations edited the existing Watch identity by UKTV to make the inflatable eyeball (called "Blinky") in the idents blink.  In October 2013, Peter Lord (co-founder of Aardman Animations) created a fundraising project on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The campaign has a target of £75,000 which will be used to fund 12 new one-minute episodes of Morph. Lord was hoping to start production in January 2014 using the original stop-frame animation. Backers of the project will receive a variety of rewards, including early access to the new animations and a small box of clay used in the production, depending on the individual's level of funding.  In 2015, the company bought a majority share in New York-based animation studio Nathan Love, announcing the merger with a short film called "Introducing: Aardman Nathan Love" in 25 September of the same year.  In advance of Aardman's fortieth anniversary, BBC One aired the one-hour television documentary "A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman", first broadcast on December 2015. Narrated by Julie Walters, this career retrospective includes commentary by the company's founders and staff, as well as various friends, fans and colleagues including Terry Gilliam, John Lasseter, and Matt Groening.  From 29 June 2017 to 29 October 2017, an exhibition entitled "Wallace and Gromit and Friends" was shown at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. A report on this exhibition was shown on Australian "ABC News Breakfast" on Wednesday, 28 June, featuring an 8-minute interview with producers Peter Lord and David Sproxton. The exhibition revealed that in Nick Park's very early sketches, Gromit was originally a cat, but Park soon changed him into a dog, since it was generally agreed that a dog was clearly more suitable as a loyal pet/companion than a cat and also because a dog would be easier to make and animate in Plasticine. Embedded in the ABC News article is a video interview with Lord and Sproxton, which gives information not only on Wallace and Gromit, but also Shaun the Sheep and others.  On 9 November 2018, Aardman Animations announced that Peter Lord and David Sproxton would be transferring majority ownership of the company to its employees in order to keep the company independent. In January 2019, Lord and Sproxton released a book detailing the history of the studio, called "A Grand Success! The Aardman Journey, One Frame at a Time."

Company name.

The company name is taken from one of its early characters, a superhero created for "Vision On" in 1972. Unlike the claymation productions that the company are famous for, Aardman was cel-animated. Peter Lord has stated that the most interesting thing about the company name is that it "means nothing" and is only a joke that two teenagers found funny. He has stated that the name came from a combination of "Aardvark" and "Superman" for the reason that they found "aardvark" to be a particularly funny word. Aardman Animations became their company name when the BBC asked them who they should make their first cheque out to. Co-founder David Sproxton has claimed that the name was a result of being unable to "find another word with more A's in it than 'aardvark as a schoolboy.

Non-Aardman productions by Aardman directors.

A number of Aardman directors have worked at other studios, taking the distinctive Aardman style with them.  Aardman's Steve Box directed the animated music video for the Spice Girls' final single as a five-piece, "Viva Forever". Widely regarded as the Spice Girls' most critically acclaimed song, the video took over five months to produce, considerably longer than the group's box office hit movie, "Spice World".  Barry Purves, director of the Aardman short "Next", also directed "Hamilton Mattress" for Harvest Films. The film, a half-hour special that premiered on Christmas Day 2001, was produced by Chris Moll, producer of the "Wallace and Gromit" short film "The Wrong Trousers". The models were provided by Mackinnon & Saunders, a firm that did the same for "Bob the Builder" and "Corpse Bride".  Similarly, "Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire", a BBC Bristol/Comic Relief production, was directed by Richard Goleszowski, creator of "Rex the Runt". Its sequel, "Robbie the Reindeer in Legend of the Lost Tribe", was directed by Peter Peake, whose directorial credits for Aardman include "Pib and Pog" and "Humdrum".  Aardman alumni also produced many of the claymation shorts used in the 1986–1990 American television series "Pee-wee's Playhouse".

Filmography.

Aardman Animation has produced a number of animated features, shorts, videos and TV series, as well as adverts. The major feature films produced are:

Awards and nominations.

The works of Aardman have received numerous awards and nominations, the major awards won include the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and BAFTA Award for Best British Film for "".

Aardman Animations, Ltd. (also known as Aardman Studios or simply Aardman) is a British-American animation studio based in Bristol. Aardman is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. After some experimental computer animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with "Owzat" (1997), it entered the computer animation market with "Flushed Away" (2006). Aardman films have made $1 billion worldwide and average $147 million per film. All of their stop motion films are among the highest-grossing stop-motion films, with their debut, "Chicken Run" (2000), being their top-grossing film as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.

Aardman Animations Ltd. ist eine britische Filmproduktionsgesellschaft für Animationsfilme mit Sitz in Bristol, die sich auf den Claymation-Bereich spezialisiert hat.


Details.

Crystallite size is usually measured from X-ray diffraction patterns and grain size by other experimental techniques like transmission electron microscopy. Solid objects large enough to see and handle are rarely composed of a single crystal, except for a few cases (gems, silicon single crystals for the electronics industry, certain types of fiber, single crystals of a nickel-based superalloy for turbojet engines, and some ice crystals which can exceed 0.5 meters in diameter). Most materials are polycrystalline, made of a large number crystallites held together by thin layers of amorphous solid. The crystallite size can vary from a few nanometers to several millimeters.  If the individual crystallites are oriented completely at random, a large enough volume of polycrystalline material will be approximately isotropic. This property helps the simplifying assumptions of continuum mechanics to apply to real-world solids. However, most manufactured materials have some alignment to their crystallites, resulting in "texture" that must be taken into account for accurate predictions of their behavior and characteristics. When the crystallites are mostly ordered with just some random spread of orientations, one has a mosaic crystal.  Material fractures can be either intergranular or a transgranular fracture. There is an ambiguity with powder grains: a powder grain can be made of several crystallites. Thus, the (powder) "grain size" found by laser granulometry can be different from the "grain size" (rather, crystallite size) found by X-ray diffraction (e.g. Scherrer method), by optical microscopy under polarised light, or by scanning electron microscopy (backscattered electrons).  Coarse grained rocks are formed very slowly, while fine grained rocks are formed quickly, on geological time scales. If a rock forms very quickly, such as the solidification of lava ejected from a volcano, there may be no crystals at all. This is how obsidian forms.

Grain boundaries.

Grain boundaries are interfaces where crystals of different orientations meet. A grain boundary is a single-phase interface, with crystals on each side of the boundary being identical except in orientation. The term "crystallite boundary" is sometimes, though rarely, used. Grain boundary areas contain those atoms that have been perturbed from their original lattice sites, dislocations, and impurities that have migrated to the lower energy grain boundary.  Treating a grain boundary geometrically as an interface of a single crystal cut into two parts, one of which is rotated, we see that there are five variables required to define a grain boundary. The first two numbers come from the unit vector that specifies a rotation axis. The third number designates the angle of rotation of the grain. The final two numbers specify the plane of the grain boundary (or a unit vector that is normal to this plane).  Grain boundaries disrupt the motion of dislocations through a material. Dislocation propagation is impeded because of the stress field of the grain boundary defect region and the lack of slip planes and slip directions and overall alignment across the boundaries. Reducing grain size is therefore a common way to improve strength, often without any sacrifice in toughness because the smaller grains create more obstacles per unit area of slip plane. This crystallite size-strength relationship is given by the Hall–Petch relationship. The high interfacial energy and relatively weak bonding in grain boundaries makes them preferred sites for the onset of corrosion and for the precipitation of new phases from the solid.  Grain boundary migration plays an important role in many of the mechanisms of creep. Grain boundary migration occurs when a shear stress acts on the grain boundary plane and causes the grains to slide. This means that fine-grained materials actually have a poor resistance to creep relative to coarser grains, especially at high temperatures, because smaller grains contain more atoms in grain boundary sites. Grain boundaries also cause deformation in that they are sources and sinks of point defects. Voids in a material tend to gather in a grain boundary, and if this happens to a critical extent, the material could fracture.  During grain boundary migration, the rate determining step depends on the angle between two adjacent grains. In a small angle dislocation boundary, the migration rate depends on vacancy diffusion between dislocations. In a high angle dislocation boundary, this depends on the atom transport by single atom jumps from the shrinking to the growing grains.  Grain boundaries are generally only a few nanometers wide. In common materials, crystallites are large enough that grain boundaries account for a small fraction of the material. However, very small grain sizes are achievable. In nanocrystalline solids, grain boundaries become a significant volume fraction of the material, with profound effects on such properties as diffusion and plasticity. In the limit of small crystallites, as the volume fraction of grain boundaries approaches 100%, the material ceases to have any crystalline character, and thus becomes an amorphous solid.  Grain boundaries are also present in magnetic domains in magnetic materials. A computer hard disk, for example, is made of a hard ferromagnetic material that contains regions of atoms whose magnetic moments can be realigned by an inductive head. The magnetization varies from region to region, and the misalignment between these regions forms boundaries that are key to data storage. The inductive head measures the orientation of the magnetic moments of these domain regions and reads out either a “1” or “0”. These bits are the data being read. Grain size is important in this technology because it limits the number of bits that can fit on one hard disk. The smaller the grain sizes, the more data that can be stored.  Because of the dangers of grain boundaries in certain materials such as superalloy turbine blades, great technological leaps were made to minimize as much as possible the effect of grain boundaries in the blades. The result was directional solidification processing in which grain boundaries were eliminated by producing columnar grain structures aligned parallel to the axis of the blade, since this is usually the direction of maximum tensile stress felt by a blade during its rotation in an airplane. The resulting turbine blades consisted of a single grain, improving reliability.  Generally, polycrystals cannot be superheated; they will melt promptly once they are brought to a high enough temperature. This is because grain boundaries are amorphous, and serve as nucleation points for the liquid phase. By contrast, if no solid nucleus is present as a liquid cools, it tends to become supercooled. Since this is undesirable for mechanical materials, alloy designers often take steps against it (by grain refinement).

A crystallite is a small or even microscopic crystal which forms, for example, during the cooling of many materials. The orientation of crystallites can be random with no preferred direction, called random texture, or directed, possibly due to growth and processing conditions. Fiber texture is an example of the latter. Crystallites are also referred to as grains. The areas where crystallites meet are known as grain boundaries. Polycrystalline materials, or polycrystals, are solids that are composed of many crystallites of varying size and orientation.

Kristallite sind Kristalle, die die eigentliche Kristallform nicht oder nur teilweise abzeichnen. In der Metallkunde und Petrographie werden Kristallite auch als Korn bezeichnet.


Biography.

Early life.

Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was born in Saint Petersburg to the famed family of Tolstoy. His father, Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy (1780–1870), a son of the army general, was a Russian state assignation bank councilor. His mother, Anna Alekseyevna Perovskaya (1796–1857), was an illegitimate daughter of Count Aleksey Kirillovich Razumovsky (1784–1822), an heir of the legendary Ukrainian hetman Alexey Razumovsky. A. K. Tolstoy's uncle (on his father's side) was Fyodor Tolstoy (1783–1873). His uncle on his mother's side was Aleksey Perovsky (1787–1836), an author known under the pen name of Antony Pogorelsky. Aleksey

Career.

In 1834 Tolstoy enrolled in the Moscow Foreign Ministry State Archive as a "student", where he got his first taste of working with real historical documents. In December 1835 he completed exams (in English, French and German languages and literature, Latin, World and Russian history, and Russian statistics) at the University of Moscow for the formal 1st Grade State Bureaucrat certificate. He soon embarked on a career in the Economic Affairs and Statistics Department in Saint Petersburg. Before that, in July 1835, he had buried his uncle Aleksey Perovsky (who died in Warsaw of tuberculosis) and had become heir to his Krasny Rog estate. Also in 1835 Aleksey showed some of his new poems to Vasily Zhukovsky, who praised them. There's evidence that Pushkin also approved of the young poet's early works, giving him full moral support. Tolstoy wrote a lot, refining his technique, but wasn't eager to get published. "My first experiments were, no doubt, absurd, but at least metrically they were flawless. I went on training thus for many years, before I debuted... as a prose writer, not a poet," he remembered later.  In January 1837 Tolstoy became attached to the Russian Embassy in Frankfurt where he spent the next two years. The assignment was rather formal; it did not demand Tolstoy's presence in Germany and he spent most of his time in Saint Petersburg, leading a merry life, spending up to three thousand rubles per month, often traveling to Italy and France. It was during one of these visits that he wrote his first two "gothic" novellas – "The Family of the Vourdalak" and "Three Hundred Years On" (originally in German, later translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich). Tolstoy showed great interest in all things macabre, influenced, again, by his late uncle who "was obsessed with mysticism in every possible form" and who, in turn, was influenced by E. T. A. Hoffmann whom he was personally acquainted with.  In late 1840 Tolstoy was transferred back to Russia to a position in the Tsar's Imperial State Chancellery 2nd Department where he continued to work for many years, slowly rising in the hierarchy. As time went by, though, he showed less and less enthusiasm, for the demands of his position had come to feel like a major hindrance to his literary aspirations. In May 1841 Tolstoy debuted with "The Vampire" (a novella published under the pen name of "Krasnorogsky", a reference to Krasny Rog, his residence). Complicated in structure, multi-layered and rich in counterpoints, featuring both the element of "horror" and political satire, it instantly caught the attention of Vissarion Belinsky who praised its "obviously still very young, but undoubtedly gifted author," totally unaware of the latter's real identity. Tolstoy himself saw the story as insignificant and made no attempt to include it in any of the subsequent compilations; it was only in 1900 that "The Vampire" was re-issued. In the autumn of 1843 Tolstoy debuted as a poet: his poem "Serebryanka" was published in the No.40 edition of "Listok Dlya Svetskikh Lyudey" (The Paper for Fashionable People).  It took another two years for him to see his second short story, "Artyomy Semyonovich Bervenkovsky", a homage to the so-called 'natural school' apparently written under the influence of Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls", published in the 1st volume of Count Vladimir Sollogub's "Yesterday and Today" almanac. The 2nd volume featured "Amena", a novella, described as an extract from a novel called "Stebelovsky" which remained unfinished. Belinsky responded negatively to this publication, describing the piece as "rather dull", and an "unfortunate manifestation of mental irritation picked from Chateaubriand" (meaning apparently "Les Martyrs", 1809).  Throughout the 1840s Tolstoy led a busy high society life, full of pleasure trips, salon parties and balls, hunting sprees and fleeting romances. He was described as "a handsome young man with blonde hair and a freshly coloured face" and was renowned for his physical strength, "bending spoons, forks and horse-shoes and driving nails into walls with one finger." One notable business trip to Kaluga in 1850 led to a close friendship with Nikolai Gogol (whom he first met in Frankfurt and then in Rome). Tolstoy recited to Gogol many of his yet unpublished poems and fragments from what later became the novel "Prince Serebryany". Gogol read him the second part of his novel "Dead Souls". Among other friendships he struck up in the forties were those with Ivan Aksakov, Pavel Annenkov, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Panaev and Ivan Turgenev.  In the early 1850s, in collaboration with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Tolstoy created the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov, a petty bureaucrat with great self-esteem who parodied the poetry of the day and soon

Later life.

Tolstoy was lenient land-owner, admired by his Krasny Rog peasants who were permitted to use his fields as common pastures and given free timber and primary education for their children in a school he built for them in 1859. In 1861 he personally gathered all of his peasants together, read them the Emancipation reform of 1861 decree, gave money to everybody present and participated in the grandiose drinking spree that followed. Being a lavish spender and having no knowledge of the practical side of life, by the end of the 1860s he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, but loathed the idea of returning to the Tsar's Court.  Ever since the mid-1860s Tolstoy had fallen more and more out of sync with

Legacy.

Tolstoy represented the later period of Romanticism in Russian literature; art for him was a mystic link between the human world and the higher spheres where "eternal ideas dwell." Along with Afanasy Fet, his artistic and spiritual ally, he saw Art as a higher science, man's only instrument for a true and comprehensive understanding of the world. Romantic tendencies were best realised in Tolstoy's poetry and in some of his dramas, notably "Don Juan" where the hero is on quest for a romantic ideal, looking everywhere for love "that helps one penetrate into the wonderful universal laws, our world's hidden beginnings," as he put it. "Art can only be a'means' – all of the 'ends'... it contains in itself," Tolstoy wrote in 1870, in the course of long dispute with those whom he labeled "utilitarianists in literature". Such views automatically made him a "conservative" in the eyes of the revolutionary democrats who formed a large majority in the Russian literary circles of the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike Fet, though, Tolstoy insisted on the artist's total independence from ideology and politics, and felt himself totally free to criticize and mock authorities, a trait that snubbed many people in high places.  Tolstoy's poetry had certain qualities that made it unusual and even unique, one being the "half-spoken" nature of the verse. "It's good for poetry when a thought is only half-fulfilled, so that readers can complete it – each in their own way," he explained in a letter to Sophia Miller in 1854. This view translated into a technique of writing. One of the things Tolstoy was criticized and even jeered for were "bad rhymes" which he used consciously, as part of his "poetic system". "Imperfect rhyming, if kept in bounds of course, can be seen as corresponding to the Venetian school in painting which with little imperfections, or should I say, carelessnesses, could achieve the kind of effects which Raphael wouldn't dream of for all of his precision," Tolstoy wrote in 1859. In fact, Tolstoy, as I. Yampolsky pointed out, was a master of versification. Consciously imposed "careless" rhyming gave his poems an improvisational tone (with "an impression of thoughts being put to paper exactly in the form they were born") but behind it there was hard work and much editing. "Tolstoy's verse is so simple it hardly rises above prose, yet the poetic impression it carries is perfectly full," critic Nikolay Strakhov wrote in 1867. Another unusual feature of Tolstoy's poems was the fact that, while rather salon-like and graceful both in nature and form, they were full of'simplistic' bits borrowed freely from common talk and traditional Russian folklore. Kept in perfect balance, these tinged his verse with a peculiar, musical quality. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers like Tchaykovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergey Rakhmaninov and others. "Tolstoy is the unfathomable well of poems crying for music. For me he is one of the most attractive poets," wrote Tchaykovsky.  Assessing Tolstoy's poetry as a whole, D.S.Mirsky wrote: "Even if they suffer from sentimentality and are occasionally banal, his lyrics retain their freshness and even now taste like a delightful morning dew," the critic wrote.  Innokenty Annensky saw Tolstoy's poetry as being the perfect expression of "pure love", the "human soul's inner beauty" being the poet's ideal. "Tolstoy never wrote for children but his crystal clear idealism, tinged with mysticism, made his poetry resonate well with the period in adolescence when the human soul reaches out to something high and indescribable," Annensky wrote. Mentioning Nekrasov, who in his latter works created a strong image of the Russian mother, Annensky argued that what Tolstoy managed to create was an equally sublime portrait of the noble woman whose "serene placidity belies unspeakable sadness... of the one who's ashamed of her own happiness fearing that she, making the most of this world's beauty, somehow takes it away from those who have no opportunity to enjoy such riches in abundance."  Tolstoy's ballads and songs were close to traditional bylinas both in essence and form; in fact, the author himself made no distinction between the two genres. Critics argued that (unlike, say, Nekrasov) Tolstoy used folklorisms as a mere stylistic instrument, using stories from the history of the Russian Middle Ages as a means to convey his own ideas and theories ("Zmei Tugarin"), and to link historical utopias with relevant social comment ("Boryvoi", "Vasily Shibanov"). Tolstoy tended to greatly idealise Russia's pre-Mongol past which made the traditional bylina characters almost superheroes. "It's hard to recognize Alyosha Popovich, eyes-a-jealous, hands-a-grabbin'- as a romantic youth, speaking of love and devotion to his beloved," Semyon Vengerov remarked. Likewise, the fearsome Ilya Muromets who came across as a rather violent, dangerous and often sacrilegious type in folk bylinas, was portrayed by Tolstoy as a "benign grandfather figure," rather gracious and well-spoken.  Critic Yuly Aykhenvald derided Tolstoy's insistence on continuing with his "nationalistic masquerade" and quoted Anton Chekhov as commenting: "[Tolstoy] has put the opera costume on and forgotten to take it off before leaving the theatre." According to Aykhenvald, Tolstoy failed to see that "the national values, when taken to the extreme, become alien-looking." For Aykhenvald, though, it was Tolstoy's humour that prevented him from turning into an "archeology worshipper". The critic saw Tolstoy's romanticism as universal and in a certain way religious (resulting in the fact that his most memorable character, Tsar Fyodor was "an epitome of Christian meekness and grace"). Yet, "[Tolstoy] worshipped that kind of God who was devoid of stiffness... he was a free spirit and valued freedom most."  Tolstoy's sense of humour was best realised in Kozma Prutkov's extraordinary aphorisms, as well as in his own satirical poems. "Tolstoy... without any doubt, is Russia's greatest absurdist poet," wrote Mirsky. "The Dream of Councillor Popov" and "History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev", his best known satires, were spread across Russia in manuscript, gaining huge popularity amongst all social strata. According to Mirsky, "The Dream" is "the acme of Russian humorous poetry, mixing sharp, poignant satire... and pure delight in cheerful absurdity". It's "The Dream" that can be seen as Aleksey Tolstoy's most solid claim for immortality," the critic argued, mentioning "The Uproar in the Vatican" as another of his humorous masterpieces.  Tolstoy's anti-leftist, pro-conservative sarcasm, on the other hand, received much stick from the 'democratic' press. His "Ballad With a Tendency" was bitterly criticised by Saltykov-Schedrin while "" magazine parodied it in 1872 with a verse entitled "A Ballad with a Pro-Police Tendency". Shchedrin, describing the current state of Russian literature as a "kingdom of scoundrels", in a letter to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov wrote: "Add to all this the fun-and-games-seeking 'free artists' like Count A. K. Tolstoy who makes... our obscurantists' hearts beat faster with delight. I don't know about you, but I find it painful to see how people whom I though honest, even if not very far-seeing, fight on the side of obscurantism, employing pseudo-folklorism as a weapon."  Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella "The Vampire" (praised by Vissarion Belinsky) and his novel "Prince Serebrenni" received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott-type of book for adolescents, according to Vengerov. "The novel is highly involving... finely structured and well-written," Ivan Turgenev wrote, recommending it to a French publisher. Still, as a prosaic Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He’s been lauded as a classic of the 19th century Russian historical drama. D. S. Mirsky regarded Tolstoy as a dramatist superior to Aleksander Ostrovsky, describing his plays as "full of intriguing ideas and brilliantly crafted characters. They impress us with intelligence and insight rather than with flights of imagination, but in "Tsar Fyodor" Tolstoy managed to create one of the most interesting characters in Russian literature: that of a kind and weak ruler who has a keen sense of justice but is unable to make his evil aids implement his good will."  Critics noted, though, that history as such was secondary to Tolstoy; he was driven mostly by his own personal views and feelings, tending to judge his 16th century characters using mid-19th century moral values. "The life of today seeps through everywhere," Tolstoy himself admitted, speaking of his ballads. According to the author, historical drama had to be "true" only in a "humanist way". "A poet... has just one responsibility: to his own poetic self... human truth is his one law. Historical truth is something he is not bound to. If it fits into the concept, very good, if not, he can easily do without it," he wrote. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- "The Death of Ivan the Terrible", "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" and "Tsar Boris"- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik or the imitation of the French "tragedie des allusions" which Aleksander Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian "noble men" (he associated them with the boyarstvo) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to.  Pavel Annenkov considered Ioann and Fyodor as "loosely based upon" characters, being perfectly fine but only in representing their era, not their own historical selves. "They are as loose as King Lear or Hamlet were and, if they do belong more to Russian history than those two belong to English history, that is because no other reality than that of our Old Russia could have inspired [Tolstoy] in such a way, bringing him such colors, such an essence to freely draw from," the critic wrote. It was the generic closeness of Tolstoy's plays to the Russia of old, Annenkov argued, that made them historic in the truest sense of the word, for "their significance as living testimony to the spirit those people and their times is beyond doubt".  Common to the trilogy was a somewhat morbid look at the history of the Russian monarchy of the previous three centuries, where, as the author saw it, all the efficient rulers happened to be evil, and all the 'good' ones proved to be inefficient. The three stories of three different historical figures had similarly didactic finales: "God help you, Tsar Ivan, and God forgive us all! That's the fate autocracy deserved! Here's the result of our disintegration!" (Zakharyin's words over Ivan the Terrible's dead body), "I am to blame for all of this... Oh God, why did you make me Tsar?!" (Tsar Fyodor), "What Evil spawns is only more evil and nothing else." (Boris Godunov). All three parts of the trilogy, which, according to Nestor Kotlyarevsky, were "united by the idea of tragedy being intrinsic to Tsarist power in Russia," had serious problems with the censorship. The trilogy continued to divide opinion in Russia up until 1917. Not long before the Revolution, in Alexandrinsky Theatre the public reacted to "Tsar Boris" in an overtly political fashion. Monarchists applauded Boris Godunov's words, the left "supported" boyarin Sitsky, seeing in him a fighter of despotism. All three plays became part of the repertoire of the leading Russian and Soviet theaters, notably the Maly Theatre, with stars like Ivan Moskvin, Pavel Olenev, Stepan Kuznetsov and Nikolai Khmelyov in the leading roles. According to I. Yampolsky, Tolstoy the dramatist, even if not on par with Pushkin, was high above his contemporaries; he created complex, multi-dimensional historical figures. "In the arts, to be wary of showing weaknesses in your favourite characters is to pay them bad service... Thus one can only succeed in creating faceless dummies whom nobody would believe in," Tolstoy wrote.  In the mid-19th century Tolstoy was not taken very seriously, but his reputation started to grow after his death in 1875. Vladimir Korolenko called "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" "a gem of Russian drama," that's been shining especially bright next to "the totally dismal theater repertoire of the late 19th century".  Tolstoy was highly valued by Aleksander Blok and Valery Bryusov; Ivan Bunin, otherwise harsh in his comments on fellow writers, rated him very high; Velemir Khlebnikov mentioned him among his all-time favourites and, most surprisingly (according to Korney Chukovsky), Vladimir Mayakovsky knew his poetry by heart and often recited it in public. Both Tolstoy's poetry (the larger part of which has been transformed into classic romance) and his historical drama trilogy are regarded as an intrinsic part of the classic Russian literature of the 19th century.

Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy () ( – ), was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist, primarily on the strength of his dramatic trilogy "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (1866), "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" (1868), and "Tsar Boris" (1870). He also gained fame for his satirical works, published under his own name ("History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev", "The Dream of Councillor Popov") and under the collaborational pen name of Kozma Prutkov. His fictional works include the novella "The Family of the Vourdalak", "The Vampire" (1841), and the historical novel "Prince Serebrenni" (1862).

Graf Alexei Konstantinowitsch Tolstoi (, wiss. Transliteration ""; * in Sankt Petersburg; † in Krasny Rog, Gouvernement Tschernigow) war ein russischer Schriftsteller, Dramatiker und Dichter.


Example application.

The recording of a heart beat (an ECG), may be corrupted by noise from the AC mains. The exact frequency of the power and its harmonics may vary from moment to moment.  One way to remove the noise is to filter the signal with a notch filter at the mains frequency and its vicinity, but this could excessively degrade the quality of the ECG since the heart beat would also likely have frequency components in the rejected range.  To circumvent this potential loss of information, an adaptive filter could be used. The adaptive filter would take input both from the patient and from the mains and would thus be able to track the actual frequency of the noise as it fluctuates and subtract the noise from the recording. Such an adaptive technique generally allows for a filter with a smaller rejection range, which means, in this case, that the quality of the output signal is more accurate for medical purposes.

Block diagram.

The idea behind a closed loop adaptive filter is that a variable filter is adjusted until the error (the difference between the filter output and the desired signal) is minimized. The Least Mean Squares (LMS) filter and the Recursive Least Squares (RLS) filter are types of adaptive filter.  There are two input signals to the adaptive filter: formula_1 and formula_2 which are sometimes called the "primary input" and the "reference input" respectively. The adaption algorithm attempts to filter the reference input into a replica of the desired input by minimizing the residual signal, formula_3. When the adaption is successful, the output of the filter formula_4 is effectively an estimate of the desired signal.  The filter is controlled by a set of L+1 coefficients or weights.  The output is usually formula_3 but it could be formula_4 or it could even be the filter coefficients.(Widrow)  The input signals are defined as follows:  The output signals are defined as follows:

Tapped delay line FIR filter.

If the variable filter has a tapped delay line Finite Impulse Response (FIR) structure, then the impulse response is equal to the filter coefficients. The output of the filter is given by

Ideal case.

In the ideal case formula_24. All the undesired signals in formula_1 are represented by formula_26. formula_27 consists entirely of a signal correlated with the undesired signal in formula_26.  The output of the variable filter in the ideal case is  The error signal or cost function is the difference between formula_1 and formula_4  The error signal formula_3 is minimized in the mean square sense when formula_34 is minimized. In other words, formula_35 is the best mean square estimate of formula_26. In the ideal case, formula_37 and formula_38, and all that is left after the subtraction is formula_39 which is the unchanged desired signal with all undesired signals removed.

Signal components in the reference input.

In some situations, the reference input formula_40 includes components of the desired signal. This means g' ≠ 0.  Perfect cancelation of the undesired interference is not possible in the case, but improvement of the signal to interference ratio is possible. The output will be  The output signal to interference ratio has a simple formula referred to as "power inversion".  This formula means that the output signal to interference ratio at a particular frequency is the reciprocal of the reference signal to interference ratio.  Example: A fast food restaurant has a drive-up window. Before getting to the window, customers place their order by speaking into a microphone. The microphone also picks up noise from the engine and the environment. This microphone provides the primary signal. The signal power from the customer's voice and the noise power from the engine are equal. It is difficult for the employees in the restaurant to understand the customer. To reduce the amount of interference in the primary microphone, a second microphone is located where it is intended to pick up sounds from the engine. It also picks up the customer's voice. This microphone is the source of the reference signal. In this case, the engine noise is 50 times more powerful than the customer's voice. Once the canceler has converged, the primary signal to interference ratio will be improved from 1:1 to 50:1.

Adaptive Linear Combiner.

The adaptive linear combiner (ALC) resembles the adaptive tapped delay line FIR filter except that there is no assumed relationship between the X values. If the X values were from the outputs of a tapped delay line, then the combination of tapped delay line and ALC would comprise an adaptive filter. However, the X values could be the values of an array of pixels. Or they could be the outputs of multiple tapped delay lines. The ALC finds use as an adaptive beam former for arrays of hydrophones or antennas.

LMS algorithm.

If the variable filter has a tapped delay line FIR structure, then the LMS update algorithm is especially simple. Typically, after each sample, the coefficients of the FIR filter are adjusted as follows:(Widrow)  The LMS algorithm does not require that the X values have any particular relationship; therefore it can be used to adapt a linear combiner as well as an FIR filter. In this case the update formula is written as:  The effect of the LMS algorithm is at each time, k, to make a small change in each weight. The direction of the change is such that it would decrease the error if it had been applied at time k. The magnitude of the change in each weight depends on μ, the associated X value and the error at time k. The weights making the largest contribution to the output, formula_4, are changed the most. If the error is zero, then there should be no change in the weights. If the associated value of X is zero, then changing the weight makes no difference, so it is not changed.

Convergence.

μ controls how fast and how well the algorithm converges to the optimum filter coefficients. If μ is too large, the algorithm will not converge. If μ is too small the algorithm converges slowly and may not be able to track changing conditions. If μ is large but not too large to prevent convergence, the algorithm reaches steady state rapidly but continuously overshoots the optimum weight vector. Sometimes, μ is made large at first for rapid convergence and then decreased to minimize overshoot.  Widrow and Stearns state in 1985 that they have no knowledge of a proof that the LMS algorithm will converge in all cases.  However under certain assumptions about stationarity and independence it can be shown that the algorithm will converge if  In the case of the tapped delay line filter, each input has the same RMS value because they are simply the same values delayed. In this case the total power is  This leads to a normalized LMS algorithm:

Nonlinear Adaptive Filters.

The goal of nonlinear filters is to overcome limitation of linear models. There are some commonly used approaches: Volterra LMS, Kernel adaptive filter, Spline Adaptive Filter and Urysohn Adaptive Filter. Many authors include also Neural networks into this list. The general idea behind Volterra LMS and Kernel LMS is to replace data samples by different nonlinear algebraic expressions. For Volterra LMS this expression is Volterra series. In Spline Adaptive Filter the model is a cascade of linear dynamic block and static non-linearity, which is approximated by splines. In Urysohn Adaptive Filter the linear terms in a model  are replaced by piecewise linear functions  which are identified from data samples.

An adaptive filter is a system with a linear filter that has a transfer function controlled by variable parameters and a means to adjust those parameters according to an optimization algorithm. Because of the complexity of the optimization algorithms, almost all adaptive filters are digital filters. Adaptive filters are required for some applications because some parameters of the desired processing operation (for instance, the locations of reflective surfaces in a reverberant space) are not known in advance or are changing. The closed loop adaptive filter uses feedback in the form of an error signal to refine its transfer function.

Ein adaptives Filter in der Signalverarbeitung ist ein spezielles analoges Filter oder digitales Filter, das die Eigenschaft besitzt, seine Übertragungsfunktion und Frequenz im Betrieb selbstständig verändern zu können.


Plot.

Andy Kaufman is a struggling performer whose act fails in nightclubs because, while the audience wants comedy, he sings children's songs and refuses to tell conventional jokes. As the audience begins to believe that Kaufman may have no real talent, his previously timid "foreign man" character puts on a rhinestone jacket and does a dead-on Elvis impersonation. The audience bursts into applause, realizing Kaufman had tricked them.  Kaufman catches the eye of talent agent George Shapiro, who signs him as a client and immediately lands him a network TV series, "Taxi", much to Kaufman's dismay, since he dislikes sitcoms. Because of the money, visibility, and a promise that he can do his own television special, Kaufman accepts the role, turning his foreign man into a mechanic named Latka Gravas. Secretly he hates doing the show and expresses a desire to quit.  Invited to catch a different act at a nightclub, Shapiro witnesses a performance by a rude, loud-mouthed lounge singer, Tony Clifton, whom Kaufman wants to guest-star on "Taxi". Clifton's bad attitude is matched by his horrible appearance and demeanor. But backstage, when he meets Shapiro in person, Clifton takes off his sunglasses and reveals that he is actually Kaufman. Clifton is a "villain character" created by Kaufman and his creative partner, Bob Zmuda. Once again, the gag is on the audience.  Kaufman's profile increases with appearances on "Saturday Night Live", but he has problems with his newfound fame. When performing live, audiences dislike his strange anti-humor and demand that he perform as Latka. At one show, he deliberately antagonizes attendees by reading "The Great Gatsby" aloud from start to finish. Kaufman shows up on the "Taxi" set as Clifton and proceeds to cause chaos until he is removed from the set. He relates to Shapiro that he never knows exactly how to entertain an audience "short of faking my own death or setting the theater on fire."  Kaufman decides to become a professional wrestler — but to emphasize the "villain" angle, he will wrestle only women (hired actresses) and then berate them after winning, declaring himself "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion." He becomes smitten with one woman he wrestles, Lynne Margulies, and they begin a romantic relationship. Problems arise when, during an appearance on ABC's live TV comedy show "Fridays", Kaufman refuses to speak his lines.  Kaufman feuds publicly with Jerry Lawler, a male professional wrestler, who challenges him to a "real wrestling match", which Kaufman accepts. Lawler easily overpowers and appears to seriously injure Kaufman. Lawler and an injured Kaufman (wearing a neck brace) appear on NBC's "Late Night with David Letterman", ostensibly to call a truce, but Lawler insults Kaufman, who spews a vicious tirade of epithets and throws coffee at the wrestler. It is later revealed that Kaufman and Lawler were in fact good friends and staged the entire feud, but Kaufman pays a price when he is banned from "SNL" by a vote of audience members, weary of his wrestling antics. Shapiro advises Kaufman and Lawler not to work together again, and later calls Kaufman to inform him that "Taxi" has been canceled.  After a show at a comedy club, Kaufman calls together Lynne, Zmuda, and Shapiro to disclose that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer and may die soon. They aren't sure whether to believe this, thinking it could be yet another stunt, with Zmuda actually believing a fake death would be a fantastic prank. With little time to live, Kaufman gets a booking at Carnegie Hall, his dream venue. The performance is a memorable success, culminating with Kaufman inviting the entire audience out for milk and cookies. His health deteriorates. Desperate, Kaufman heads to the Philippines to seek a medical miracle through psychic surgery only to find it a hoax, laughing at the irony. He dies soon after. At Kaufman's funeral, friends and loved ones sing along to "This Friendly World" with a video of Kaufman. One year later, in 1985, Clifton appears at Kaufman's tribute at The Comedy Store's main stage, performing "I Will Survive". Zmuda watches in the audience.  Several members of the cast of "Taxi", including Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Christopher Lloyd, Carol Kane, and Jeff Conaway make cameos, playing themselves. Danny DeVito, who was also in the cast of "Taxi", co-starred in the film and did not appear as himself.

Cast.

Many of Kaufman's other real-life friends and co-stars also appear in the film (although not all as themselves), including Zmuda, Shapiro, Margulies, David Letterman, Paul Shaffer, professional wrestler Jerry Lawler, wrestling announcers Jim Ross and Lance Russell, "The Improv" founder Budd Friedman, "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels, and actors Vincent Schiavelli and Chad Whitson. Michael Richards is played by Norm Macdonald in a recreation of the "Fridays" show skit. According to Jerry Lawler's autobiography "It's Good to be the King... sometimes", WCW wrestler Glenn Gilbertti, better known to wrestling fans as Disco Inferno, was considered for the role of Lawler.

Production.

"Man on the Moon" was shot in Los Angeles in the winter of 1998. The film's production is notable for Carrey's rigid method acting, staying in-character as Kaufman both on and off the set for the duration of production. Carrey's adherence to the role reached the extent where he would develop unscripted tics and habits that were previously characteristic of Kaufman himself. Among other examples, Courtney Love noted how Carrey would stuff his clothing with Limburger cheese on the set when playing Kaufman's Tony Clifton character in the film, something Kaufman had done in his own performances of the character.  A documentary, "", was released in November 2017. Using behind-the-scenes footage, the documentary covers the production of "Man on the Moon" with a particular focus on Carrey's method-acting as Kaufman.

Soundtrack.

The soundtrack for the film was written by rock band R.E.M., whose 1992 song "Man on the Moon" (originally written in honor of Kaufman) gave the film its title. The soundtrack also included the Grammy-nominated song "The Great Beyond", which remains the band's highest-charting single in the United Kingdom.

Historical accuracy.

The film makes a few changes to Kaufman's life story. As Kaufman (played by Carrey) explains in the prologue, "All the most important things in my life are changed around and mixed up for dramatic purposes."  The famous Carnegie Hall "milk and cookies" performance, portrayed in the film as one of his last performances after being diagnosed with cancer, had in fact occurred in 1979, five years before Kaufman's death and well before his diagnosis. Also, the film is deliberately ambiguous over whether Kaufman actually died or if his death was a hoax as some fans believe.  The film implies that Carol Kane was a member of the "Taxi" cast during the show's first season, which in real life was 1978–79. In actuality, Kane did not make her first appearance on the series until the episode "Guess Who's Coming for Brefnish", which first aired on ABC in January 1980 during the show's second season. The film implies that "Taxi" was canceled only once. However, the show went on for one more season on NBC.  Other inaccuracies include scenes based around "SNL", specifically the first episode's host. Also, the scene where Lorne Michaels asks the home viewing audience to vote Kaufman off the show happened in 1982, two years after Michaels left the show as executive producer and Dick Ebersol took over.  After its release, the film attracted some criticism over various events in Kaufman's life that were left out. Max Allan Collins maintained that the filmmakers did not understand Kaufman, and that the film "does not give Kaufman the credit for his genius, that he had a complete intellectual grasp of what he was up to and a showman's instincts for how to play an audience." Significantly, these critics included Kaufman's own father Stanley, who was displeased that little of Andy's early life (before show business) and early career were portrayed.  Sam Simon, executive producer on "Taxi", stated in a 2013 interview with Marc Maron for the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast that the portrayal of Andy on the show was "a complete fiction," that Kaufman was "completely professional" and that he "told you Tony Clifton was him." Simon also stated that sources for these stories were mostly from Bob Zmuda and a "little bit of press and hype," but conceded that Kaufman would have "loved" Zmuda's version of events.

Reception.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 63% based on 119 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Jim Carrey is eerily dead-on in his portrayal of Andy Kaufman, which helps to elevate "Man on the Moon" above the script's formulaic biopic cliches." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 58 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.  Roger Ebert wrote for the "Chicago Sun Times":  "Man on the Moon" ended a string of Jim Carrey films that had very successful opening weekends, and grossed just $47 million against a budget of $82 million. Although the film received mixed reviews from critics, they were near unanimous in their praise for Jim Carrey's portrayal of Andy Kaufman. Carrey won a Golden Globe for his performance, and the film was nominated for Best Musical or Comedy as well.

Man on the Moon is a 1999 biographical comedy-drama film about the late American entertainer Andy Kaufman, starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman. The film was directed by Miloš Forman and also features Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, and Paul Giamatti.

Der Mondmann (Originaltitel: "Man on the Moon") ist ein Spielfilm von Miloš Forman über das Leben des US-Komikers Andy Kaufman. Die Hauptrolle spielt Jim Carrey. Die Nebenrollen sind unter anderem besetzt durch Danny DeVito, Courtney Love und Paul Giamatti. Die Film-Musik wurde zum Teil von R.E.M. (u. a. „Man on the Moon“) beigesteuert.


Early years.

Born Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle in Denver, Colorado in 1906, Chase remained in Denver her entire life. She grew up Irish Catholic and poor in the working class Baker neighborhood of Denver, not far from the railroad tracks.  She was greatly influenced by the Irish myths related to her by her mother, Mary Coyle, and her four uncles, Timothy, James, John, and Peter. Charlie Coyle, her older brother, had a strong impact on her sense of comedy, as she imitated his natural gifts at mimicry, one-liners, and comic routines. He went on to become a circus clown.  In 1921, she graduated from West High School in Denver and spent two years studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Denver without getting a degree.

Career.

In 1924, she began her career as a journalist on the "Denver Times" and "Rocky Mountain News", leaving the "News" (which the "Denver Times" was folded into in 1926) in 1931 to write plays, do freelance reporting work, and raise a family. At the "News", she started writing on the society pages, but soon became a feature writer, reporting the news from a sob sister, emotional angle, becoming part of the news itself as a comic figure, "our Lil' Mary", or writing funny, flapper era pieces as part of a series of "Charlie & Mary" stories (Charlie Wunder drew the cartoons and Mary wrote the text).  In the 1920s, reporters typically worked in "The Front Page" tradition: putting in long hours, drinking hard, and stopping at nothing to beat the competition to a story. Running around Denver with photographer Harry Rhoads in a Model T Ford, she recalled, "In the course of a day, Harry and I might begin at the Police Court, go to a murder trial at the West Side Court, cover a party in the evening at Mrs. Crawford Hill's mansion, and rush to a shooting at 11pm." She ended her journalistic career writing in the society pages where she had begun, perhaps as punishment for a practical joke that she played upon an unsuspecting editor.  After leaving the "News", in the 1930s Mary worked as a freelance correspondent for the United Press and the International News Service. But her true love had always been the theater, so she began to write plays. In 1936, her first play, "Me Third", was produced at the Baker Federal Theater in Denver as a part of the Roosevelt-era Works Progress Administration (WPA). In the spring of 1937, the play opened on Broadway, renamed as "Now You've Done It", but it failed to attract positive reviews and closed down after three weeks. In 1938, Mary wrote "Chi House", which was made into a Hollywood film by RKO Radio Pictures called "Sorority House" (1939), starring Anne Shirley of "Anne of Green Gables" fame.  In the early 1940s, she had a series of government, volunteer, and union jobs, serving as the Information Director for the National Youth Administration in Denver, doing volunteer work for the Colorado Foundation for the Advancement of Spanish Speaking Peoples, and working as the publicity director for the Denver branch of the Teamsters Union.

"Harvey".

During this time, she was working on the play "Harvey", which was very difficult for her to write and which went through numerous revisions, taking her two years to finish. On November 1, 1944, it opened on Broadway and was a smash hit, running for four and a half years, 1,775 performances, from November 1, 1944, to January 15, 1949.  "Harvey" became the 35th longest-running show (musicals and plays) in Broadway history and, if only plays are counted, the 6th longest-running Broadway play (after "Life With Father", "Tobacco Road", "Abie's Irish Rose", "Deathtrap", and "Gemini"). Frank Fay and James Stewart were the most famous actors to portray Elwood P. Dowd. Josephine Hull portrayed his increasingly concerned (and socially obsessed) sister on Broadway originally, and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the film. Ruth McDevitt, Marion Lorne, Helen Hayes, and Swoosie Kurtz, among other actresses, also portrayed Veta either onstage or on television. James Stewart was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the film version, which was won by Jose Ferrer for "Cyrano de Bergerac".  In 1945, Chase won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for "Harvey". She is the only Coloradan to have won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and, in a field dominated by men, was the 4th woman to win the award, after Zona Gale (1921), Susan Glaspell (1931), and Zoe Akins (1935). From 1917-2013, only 14 women have won the Pulitzer in Drama.  Immediately after "Harvey", Mary tried to repeat her success on Broadway with the "Next Half Hour", a play based on an autobiographical novel she had written called "The Banshee". It failed after a three-week run.  In 1950, "Harvey" was made into a Universal Studios film, starring James Stewart, with Mary collaborating with Oscar Brodney in writing the screenplay. In 1952 and 1953, she launched "Bernardine" and "Mrs McThing" on Broadway. Both plays were moderately successful. "Bernardine" was made into a 1957 film, starring Pat Boone and Janet Gaynor (in Gaynor's last film role). In 1958 and 1968, she wrote two children's stories, "Loretta Mason Potts" and "The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House". A 1961 production of her play, "Midgie Purvis", starring Tallulah Bankhead, flopped. A 1970 "Harvey" revival, starring James Stewart and Helen Hayes, was successful and ran for 79 performances while a 1981 musical adaptation of "Harvey", entitled "Say Hello to Harvey", failed after a six-week run amid negative reviews in Toronto.

Personal life.

In 1928, Mary married Robert L. Chase, a fellow reporter at the "Rocky Mountain News". Bob was a seasoned, "hard news" reporter, having worked at the "Denver Express" since 1922, covering the robbery of the US Mint and fighting against the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado state and local politics. The "Express" eventually merged with the "Rocky Mountain News" and Bob went on to a 47-year newspaper career at the paper, becoming managing editor and then associate editor. He was a founding member in 1936 (and named vice-president) of the Denver chapter of the American Newspaper Guild, a national labor union representing editors and reporters.  In 1932, their first son, Michael, was born, followed by Colin in 1935, and then Barry Jerome (Jerry) in 1937. Michael became the director of public television in New York, Colin was a professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto, and Jerry worked as a college academic counselor in New York City, and wrote the play, "Cinderella Wore Combat Boots".  While working on the musical adaptation, "Say Hello to Harvey", in 1981, Mary Coyle Chase suffered a heart attack suddenly at her home in Denver and died at the age of 75.

Recent events.

In August 2009, Steven Spielberg announced that he was planning a remake of "Harvey", with Tom Hanks or Will Smith playing Elwood Dowd. By December he had abandoned the project, the main reason being the difficulty of finding a star to play the lead role. Tom Hanks was not interested in walking in the shoes of the beloved, iconic star, James Stewart. Robert Downey Jr. was in the mix for several months, but he wanted changes to the script and Spielberg decided to pull the plug, feeling that the two were not on the same creative wavelength. This was not the first attempt at a "Harvey" remake. In 2002, Dimension Films, a division of Miramax, and MGM tried to get a film going with John Travolta playing the lead. This project ended in 2004, with Michael Eisner's expulsion of the Weinstein brothers from Miramax over the release of "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore.  On June 14, 2012, the Roundabout Theatre Company opened its Broadway revival of "Harvey" to positive reviews at the Studio 54 Theatre. The production starred Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons ("The Big Bang Theory"), returning to Broadway after a successful run in the revival of "The Normal Heart" in the summer of 2011. "Harvey" is directed by Scott Ellis and also features Charles Kimbrough (Emmy nominee, "Murphy Brown") in the role of psychiatrist William Chumley and Jessica Hecht ("Dan in Real Life") as sister Veta. "Harvey" was scheduled to run until August 5.

Mary Coyle Chase (born Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle; 25 February 1906 – 20 October 1981) was an American journalist, playwright and children's novelist, known primarily for writing the 1944 Broadway play "Harvey", which was adapted into the 1950 film starring Jimmy Stewart.

Mary McDonough Coyle Chase (* 25. Februar 1907 in Denver, Colorado; † 20. Oktober 1981 ebenda) war eine US-amerikanische Schriftstellerin.


Design.

The state flag bears the lesser coat of arms, centred vertically and shifted to the hoist side by one-seventh of the flag's length. The flag ratio is 2 to 3 (height/width), with three equal horizontal bands of red, blue and white, each taking one third of the height. Recommended colors (white and black are not documented in Pantone) are:

Medieval flags.

Flag of Stefan Vladislav.

The son of King Stefan Vladislav (reigned 1233–1243), "župan" Desa, sent delegates from Kotor to Ragusa (Dubrovnik) to bring back part of the king's treasury held at Ragusa, which they did on 3 July 1281; the inventory list included, among other things, "a flag of red and blue color". It is described as "vexillum unum de zendato rubeo et blavo"—"a flag of fabric red and blue"; "zendato" () being a type of light, silky fabric. This is the oldest known attestation of colours of a Serbian flag; the oldest known Serbian flag was red and blue.

Flag of Stefan Uroš.

Hungarian King Bela IV mentioned in his charter dated 8 April 1268, that his army had defeated King Stefan Uroš I (reigned 1243–1276), and that when he hosted some foreign rulers, his magnates brought captured Serbs and "in the sign of triumph, the flag of King Uroš before the court of Bela IV, and erected it there".

Flag of Stefan Dečanski.

In 1326, Dečanski sent a delegate to the Mamluk Sultanate in Alexandria and sought a flag in yellow colour, to be used as a war flag. The Byzantines mention that there were several war flags hoisted by the Serbs at the Battle of Velbazhd (1330), and the yellow one was likely one of those.

Flags of Emperor Dušan.

The oldest known drawing of a Serbian flag is from the 1339 map made by Angelino Dulcert; Serbia, at the time ruled by King Stefan Dušan, is represented by a white flag of a red double-headed eagle placed above the capital Skopje ("Scopi"). Stefan Dušan was crowned Emperor in 1346; Dušan also adopted the Byzantine "tetragramme" with four fire-steels, which afterwards became an element of the Serbian flag until today (the Serbian cross). A flag in Hilandar, seen by Dimitrije Avramović, was alleged by the brotherhood to have been a flag of Emperor Dušan; it was a triband of red at the top and bottom and white in the centre. Emperor Dušan also adopted the Imperial "divelion", which was purple and had a golden cross in the centre. Another of Dušan's flags was the Imperial cavalry flag, kept at the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos; a triangular bicolor flag, of red and yellow.

Revolutionary flags.

During the First Serbian Uprising, various flags were used. Among the early flags, the one described by Mateja Nenadović could be connected with today's flag and the first Serbian flag: it was red-blue-red with a Serbian cross. Regular armies of the uprising usually had light yellow flags with various symbols, while voivode flags were often red-white, and with a superimposed black two-headed eagle. There were also flags of other colors, including red-yellow, red-white-blue and red-blue. This variety of colors was followed by variety of symbols on the flags, most often taken from Hristofor Zhefarovich's book "Stemmatographia" of 1741. The most common symbol on the flags were the Serbian cross, followed by coat of arms of Tribalia and various other crosses. Most of the flags were made in Sremski Karlovci, designed by Serbian painters Stefan Gavrilović, Ilija Gavrilović and Nikola Apostolović.

Modern flags.

The 1835 Sretenje Constitution described the colors of the Serbian flag as bright red, white and "čelikasto-ugasita" (that could be translated as "steelish-dark"). The constitution was criticized, especially by Russia, and the flag was specifically singled out as being similar to the revolutionary flag of France. Soon afterwards, Miloš Obrenović was requesting to the Porte that the new constitution should contain an article about the flag and coat of arms, and subsequent ferman (1835) allowed Serbs to use their own maritime flag, which will have "upper part of red, middle of blue, and lower of white", which is the first appearance of the colors that are used today.  The colors are the reverse of those on the flag of Russia, and various popular stories exist in Serbia which seek to explain why. An example:  Serbia used the red, blue and white tricolor continuously from 1835 until 1918 when Serbia ceased to be a sovereign state after it joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later known as Yugoslavia. Also in 1918, a Serbian flag was flown over the White House in Washington, D.C. as a show of solidarity by the U.S. towards Serbia during World War I.  After World War II, Yugoslavia was reformed into a socialist federal republic, composed of six republics, one of which was Serbia. Each republic was entitled to its own flag on the condition that it contained the socialist red star. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia initially continued using the same flag; the 1990 Constitution of Serbia stated that flag and coat of arms of Serbia can only be changed by the same procedure used to change the constitution itself, which required an absolute majority of voters to support it. The 1992 Serbian constitutional referendum asked the voters to choose between the flag with and without the star, with red star gaining the majority of votes, however not the absolute majority of voters. The red star was nonetheless removed from the flag in 1992 by a recommendation by the Serbian parliament; however, the coat of arms remained unchanged. In 2003, however, the government of Serbia issued a recommendation on flag and coat of arms use, that preferred using different symbols from the ones in the constitution. The 2006 Constitution of Serbia stated that state emblems would be regulated by law; the recommendation remained in use until 11 May 2009, when the actual flag law was enacted. On 11 November 2010, a visual redesign of the coat of arms was enacted, which is currently used on the state flag.  The Serbian flag is also popular with Bosnian Serbs in the Republika Srpska, who usually prefer to fly it instead of the Bosnian national flag.

Related flags.

Montenegro used to have a flag similar to the Serbian tricolor with varying shades of blue. It originated from Montenegrin national costume. During the second Yugoslavia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro had flags of the same design and colors. Montenegro changed its flag in 1993 by altering the proportion and shade of blue in its flag and used this flag until 2004.  The Serbian tricolor was also the basis for the breakaway territories of Republic of Serbian Krajina and Republika Srpska during the Yugoslav Wars. The flag of Republika Srpska is still the Serbian tricolor as well as Flag of Serbs of Croatia.  The Serbian tricolor defaced with a Serbian cross is used as the flag of the Serbian Orthodox Church. A number of other unofficial variant flags, some with variations of the cross, coat of arms, or both, exist.

Proper flag protocol.

State flag.

The state flag (de facto national flag) is constantly flown on the entrances of state organ buildings. The National Assembly flies it only when in session and during state holidays. Organs of provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija, fly it only on national holidays.  It can also be flown during celebrations and other solemn manifestations which mark events of importance for Serbia, and on other occasions. During state mourning, it is flown at half mast, including by the organs of provinces, local organs, and public services. The flag must be displayed in an election room during an election for state bodies and in the room of civil registry dedicated for marriage (the officiant has to carry a sash with flag colours as well).

Civil flag.

The civil flag of Serbia is constantly flown on the entrance of the National Assembly and organs of provinces and public services. It must be displayed in an election room during an election for provincial or local organs.  Also, it can be hoisted during celebrations and other cultural or sport manifestations, and on other occasions.

Other flags.

The President of Serbia and the President (Speaker) of the National Assembly of Serbia use their official respective standards. The Serbian River Flotilla also uses its own naval ensign.

Respect for the flag.

Neither the state flag nor the civil flag can be hoisted so that they touch the ground, nor be used as rests, tablecloths, carpets or curtains, nor to cover vehicles or other objects, nor to attire speaker platforms or tables, except as table flags. They must not be used if damaged or otherwise look unsuitable for use.  The flag is not flown in bad weather conditions. Also, it is flown only in daylight, unless it is illuminated.  If the flag is flown vertically on tables or otherwise, its top field is on the left side of the viewer. If it is flown vertically across a street or square, its top field should be on the northern side if the street has east-west orientation, and eastern side if it has north-south orientation or on a circular square.

Correct display.

The law defines how the flag of Serbia is displayed along with other flags, making no difference between state flags and other kinds of flags. If the flag is hoisted with another flag, it is always on the viewer's left, except during an official visit of a representative of another country or an international organization, when the flag of the visitor is on the viewer's left. If the flag is hoisted with another on crossed staffs, its staff must be the front one.  If the flag of Serbia is hoisted along with two flags, it must be in the middle.  If the flag is flown with multiple flags,

The flag of Serbia () is a tricolor consisting of three equal horizontal bands, red on the top and blue in the middle (Kingdom), and white on the bottom (Empire). The same tricolour, in altering variations, has been used since the 19th century as the flag of the state of Serbia and the Serbian nation. The current form of the flag was officially adopted on 11 November 2010.

Die heutige Form der Flagge Serbiens nahm die serbische Nationalversammlung mit einer Empfehlung am 17. August 2004 an. Serbien war damals Teil des Staates Serbien und Montenegro. Mit dessen Auflösung 2006 erhielt die Flagge ihren heutigen Status als Nationalflagge.


Characterizations.

Chordal bipartite graphs have various characterizations in terms of perfect elimination orderings, hypergraphs and matrices. They are closely related to strongly chordal graphs. By definition, chordal bipartite graphs have a forbidden subgraph characterization as the graphs that do not contain any induced cycle of length 3 or of length at least 5 (so-called holes) as an induced subgraph. Thus, a graph "G" is chordal bipartite if and only if "G" is triangle-free and hole-free. In, two other characterizations are mentioned: "B" is chordal bipartite if and only if every minimal edge separator induces a complete bipartite subgraph in "B" if and only if every induced subgraph is perfect elimination bipartite.  Martin Farber has shown: A graph is strongly chordal if and only if the bipartite incidence graph of its clique hypergraph is chordal bipartite. A similar characterization holds for the closed neighborhood hypergraph: A graph is strongly chordal if and only if the bipartite incidence graph of its closed neighborhood hypergraph is chordal bipartite.  Another result found by Elias Dahlhaus is: A bipartite graph "B" = ("X","Y","E") is chordal bipartite if and only if the split graph resulting from making "X" a clique is strongly chordal.  A bipartite graph "B" = ("X","Y","E") is chordal bipartite if and only if every induced subgraph of "B" has a maximum "X"-neighborhood ordering and a maximum Y-neighborhood ordering.  Various results describe the relationship between chordal bipartite graphs and totally balanced neighborhood hypergraphs of bipartite graphs. A characterization of chordal bipartite graphs in terms of intersection graphs related to hypergraphs is given in. A bipartite graph is chordal bipartite if and only if its adjacency matrix is totally balanced if and only if the adjacency matrix is Gamma-free.

Recognition.

Chordal bipartite graphs can be recognized in time for a graph with "n" vertices and "m" edges.

Complexity of problems.

Various problems such as Hamiltonian cycle, Steiner tree and Efficient Domination  Various other problems which can be solved efficiently for bipartite graphs can be solved more efficiently for chordal bipartite graphs as discussed in

Related graph classes.

Every chordal bipartite graph is a modular graph. The chordal bipartite graphs include the complete bipartite graphs and the bipartite distance-hereditary graphs.

In the mathematical area of graph theory, a chordal bipartite graph is a bipartite graph "B" = ("X","Y","E") in which every cycle of length at least 6 in "B" has a "chord", i.e., an edge that connects two vertices that are a distance > 1 apart from each other in the cycle.

In der Graphentheorie heißt ein endlicher Graph "G" chordal bipartit (englisch "chordal bipartite"), falls jeder induzierte Kreis in "G" genau die Länge 4 hat. Auf dieser Graphenklasse lassen sich einige NP-schwere Probleme effizient lösen.