Andrea Hirata Seman Said Harun (lahir 24 Oktober) adalah seorang penulis Indonesia yang berasal dari pulau Belitong, propinsi Bangka Belitung. Novel pertamanya adalah novel Laskar Pelangi yang merupakan buku pertama dari tetralogi novelnya, yaitu :
1. Laskar Pelangi
2. Sang Pemimpi
3. Edensor
4. Maryamah Karpov
Laskar Pelangi termasuk novel yang ada di jajaran best seller untuk tahun 2006 - 2007.
Meskipun studi mayor yang diambil Andrea adalah ekonomi, ia amat menggemari sains--fisika, kimia, biologi, astronomi--dan tentu saja sastra. Andrea lebih mengidentikkan dirinya sebagai seorang akademisi dan backpacker. Sedang mengejar mimpinya yang lain untuk tinggal di Kye Gompa, desa tertinggi di dunia, di Himalaya.
Andrea berpendidikan ekonomi di Universitas Indonesia, mendapatkan beasiswa Uni Eropa untuk studi master of science di Universite de Paris, Sorbonne, Perancis dan Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom. Tesis Andrea di bidang ekonomi telekomunikasi mendapat penghargaan dari kedua universitas tersebut dan ia lulus cum laude. Tesis itu telah diadaptasi ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia dan merupakan buku teori ekonomi telekomunikasi pertama yang ditulis oleh orang Indonesia. Buku itu telah beredar sebagai referensi Ilmiah. Saat ini Andrea tinggal di Bandung dan masih bekerja di kantor pusat PT Telkom.
Andrea Hirata
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the President-elect of the United States and the first African American to be elected President of the United States. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned on November 16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency.
He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003, won a primary victory in March 2004, and was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel.
Early life and career
Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas of mainly English, Irish and smaller amounts of German descent. His parents met in 1960 while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. The couple married February 2, 1961; they separated when Obama was two years old and subsequently divorced in 1964. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.
After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools, such as Asisi, in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years, and then in 1977 went back to Indonesia, where she worked as an anthropological field worker. She stayed there most of the rest of her life, returning to Hawaii in 1994. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.
As an adult Obama admitted that he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol when in high school, which he described as his greatest moral failure at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency.
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[15] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then at the start of the following year worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side, and worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors. Obama's election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.[25] During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.
The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations. In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.
Obama directed Illinois' Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.
Obama served for twelve years as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, teaching constitutional law. He was first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004. He also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.
Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993. He served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation. Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999. He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.
State legislator, 1997–2004
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois' 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.
In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations. During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.
2004 U.S. Senate campaign
In mid-2002, Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate; he enlisted political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003. Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates. Obama's candidacy was boosted by Axelrod's advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois. He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.
In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America." Though not televised by the three major broadcast news networks, a combined 9.1 million viewers watching on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and C-SPAN saw Obama's speech, which was a highlight of the convention and confirmed his status as the Democratic Party's brightest new star.
Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004. Two months later and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan. A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.
U.S. Senator, 2005–2008
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005. Obama was the fifth African-American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected.[59] He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. In 2005 he was ranked sixteenth, and in 2006 he was ranked tenth. In 2008, Congress.org ranked him as the eleventh most powerful Senator. Obama resigned his senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period. His immediate successor will be named by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Legislation
Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act. Obama introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, and the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending. On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.
Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee. In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007. Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, neither of which have been signed into law.
Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges. This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008. He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism. Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.
Committees
Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006. In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before he became President of Palestine, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption in the Kenyan government.
2008 presidential campaign
On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. The choice of the announcement site was symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858. Throughout the campaign, Obama emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care.
During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations. On June 19, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.
A large number of candidates initially entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. After a few initial contests, the field narrowed to a contest between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, with each winning some states and with the race remaining nearly tied throughout the primary process. On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegates at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama's delegate lead. On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold to become the presumptive nominee. On that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7. From that point on, he campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.
On August 23, 2008, Obama selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Obama's former rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in support of Obama's candidacy and later called for Obama to be nominated by acclamation as the Democratic presidential candidate. On August 28, Obama delivered a speech to the 84,000 supporters in Denver. During the speech, which was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide, he accepted his party's nomination and presented his policy goals.
After McCain was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, polls indicated that he had closed the gap with Obama. There were three presidential debates between Obama and McCain in September and October 2008. After the debates, Obama pulled ahead in national polls, and he won the vote in nearly all of the actively contested states.
Obama's election sparked spontaneous street celebrations in the United States and abroad. Many editorialized that the image of the United States abroad that was strained during the administration of George Bush would improve.
President-elect of the United States
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the general election and became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. In his victory speech, delivered before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Grant Park in Chicago, Obama proclaimed that "change has come to America." Born in Hawaii, Obama will be the first U.S. President born outside the contiguous United States. He also will be fifth youngest President at a date of accession, and the first since Lincoln whose primary political base is Illinois.
President-elect Obama is scheduled to be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009. His assigned Secret Service codename is "Renegade".
Political positions
A method that some political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Based on his years in Congress, Obama has a lifetime average conservative rating of 7.67% from the ACU, and a lifetime average liberal rating of 90% from the ADA.
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza, speaking out against the war. On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Obama addressed the largest Chicago anti-Iraq War rally to date in Daley Plaza and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.
Obama stated that if elected he would enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in "unproven" missile defense systems, not "weaponize" space, "slow development of Future Combat Systems," and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons. Obama favors ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status.
In November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran. In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although he did not rule out military action. Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions. Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.
In a December 2005, Washington Post opinion column, and at the Save Darfur rally in April 2006, Obama called for more assertive action to oppose genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.[140] He has divested $180,000 in personal holdings of Sudan-related stock, and has urged divestment from companies doing business in Iran. In the July–August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Obama called for an outward looking post-Iraq War foreign policy and the renewal of American military, diplomatic, and moral leadership in the world. Saying that "we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission," he called on Americans to "lead the world, by deed and by example."
In economic affairs, in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor. Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama said he supports universal health care in the United States. Obama proposes to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.
In September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code.[148] His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut, close corporate tax loopholes, lift the income cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS. Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a ten year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.
Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups.[153] In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier. He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" and not be ashamed of it. Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged "so-called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all too eager to exploit what divides us."
Family and personal life
Obama met his wife, Michelle Robinson, in June 1989, when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial offers to date. They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992. The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998, followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), in 2001.
Obama was known as "Barry" in his youth, but asked to be addressed with his given name during his college years.
Applying the proceeds of a book deal, in 2005 the family moved from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to their current $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood. The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's indictment and subsequent conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.
In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million. Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.
In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. "Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations," he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher." Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family, six of them living, and a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband. Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham until her death on November 2, 2008, just before the presidential election. In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.
Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team. Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking.
Obama is a Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change." He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988.
Cultural and political image
With his Kenyan father and white American mother, his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, and his Ivy League education, Obama's early life experiences differ markedly from those of African-American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement. Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough," Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that the debate is not about his physical appearance or his record on issues of concern to black voters. Obama said that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong."
Echoing the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation." A popular catch phrase distilled the concept: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run."
Many commentators mentioned Obama's international appeal as a defining factor for his public image. Not only did several polls show strong support for him in other countries, but Obama also established close relationships with prominent foreign politicians and elected officials even before his presidential candidacy, notably with then current British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he met in London in 2005, with Italy's Democratic Party leader and then Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, who visited Obama's Senate office in 2005, and with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also visited him in Washington in 2006.
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Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean is a series of adventure films directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. They are based on a Walt Disney theme park ride of the same name, and follow the pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, portrayed by Johnny Depp. The trilogy was first released on the big screen on July 9, 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. After the unexpected success of the first film, Walt Disney Pictures revealed that a trilogy was in the works. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was released three years later on July 7, 2006. The sequel proved to be very successful, breaking records worldwide the day of its premiere. In the end it acquired a total of $1,066,179,725 at the worldwide box office, becoming the third and fastest film to reach this amount. The last film in the trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was released worldwide on May 24, 2007. Altogether, the film franchise has grossed over $2.79 billion worldwide. In September 2008, Johnny Depp signed for a new movie in the franchise, expected to be released in 2012. During the early 1990s, screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio conceived of writing a film based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. In their original pitch, Will Turner was the lead role, and the villainous pirates were searching for treasure. Steven Spielberg expressed interest, and wanted to cast Bill Murray, Robin Williams or Steve Martin as Jack Sparrow. Disney was already making Muppet Treasure Island at the time and did not give permission for the film to be made because the two had similar storylines. Disney had Jay Wolpert write a script based on the ride, which producer Jerry Bruckheimer rejected, feeling it was, "a straight pirate movie." Stuart Beattie was brought in to rewrite the script in March 2002, due to his knowledge of piracy, and later that month Elliott and Rossio were brought in. Elliott and Rossio were inspired by the opening narration of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride, and decided to give the film a supernatural edge. As the budget rose, Michael Eisner and Bob Iger threatened to cancel the film, though Bruckheimer changed their minds when he showed them concept art and animatics. In May 2002 Gore Verbinski signed on to direct Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush signed on the following month to star..Verbinski was attracted to the idea of using modern technology to resurrect a genre that had disappeared after the Golden Age of Hollywood, and recalled his childhood memories of the ride, feeling the film was an opportunity to pay tribute to the "scary and funny" tone of it. Depp was attracted to the story as he found it quirky: rather than trying to find treasure, the crew of the Black Pearl were trying to return it in order to lift their curse; also, the traditional mutiny had already taken place. Verbinski approached Rush for the role of Barbossa, as he knew he would not play it with attempts at complexity, but with a simple villainy that would suit the story's tone. Orlando Bloom read the script after Rush, whom he was working with on Ned Kelly, suggested it to him. Keira Knightley came as a surprise to Verbinski: he had not seen her performance in Bend It Like Beckham and was impressed by her audition. Tom Wilkinson was negotiated with to play Governor Swann, but the role went to Jonathan Pryce, whom Depp idolized. Shooting for The Curse of the Black Pearl began on October 9, 2002 and wrapped by March 2003. Before its release, many had expected the film to be a flop, as the pirate genre had not been successful for years, that the film was based on a theme park ride, and that Johnny Depp rarely made a big film. However The Curse of the Black Pearl became both a critical and commercial success. Seeing the film's performance, the cast and crew signed on for two more sequels to be shot back-to-back, a practical decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio knew that with an ensemble cast, they weren't free to invent totally different situations and characters, as with the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, and so had to retroactively turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to explore the reality of what would happen after Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann's embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the Fountain of Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing Davy Jones, the Flying Dutchman and the Kraken, a mythology only mentioned twice in the first film. They also introduced the historical East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates. Filming for the sequels began on February 28, 2005, with Dead Man's Chest finishing on March 1, 2006,, and At World's End on January 10, 2007. Elizabeth Swann, daughter of the Governor of Jamaica, is kidnapped by the crew of the Black Pearl, led by Captain Hector Barbossa, in order to release a curse placed on them after stealing Aztec gold. Blacksmith Will Turner, a friend of Elizabeth who is also in love with her, persuades pirate captain Jack Sparrow to help him in the rescue. Lord Cutler Beckett, a powerful and ruthless East India Trading Company agent, arrests Will and Elizabeth for aiding Jack Sparrow's escape. Beckett however offers clemency if Will agrees to search for Sparrow and his magical compass. At the same time, Sparrow tries to release himself from an old debt with villainous Davy Jones. Cutler Beckett gains power over Davy Jones, and with the help of Jones' ship, The Flying Dutchman, is now executing his plans to extinguish piracy. To combat the East India Trading Company, the crew of the Black Pearl goes rescuing Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones' Locker, because he is one of the nine pirate lords needed to summon an ancient goddess.
Development Films
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Dead Man's Chest (2006)
At World's End (2007)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical-thriller and the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's award-winning 1979 stage musical. It re-tells the Victorian melodramatic tale of Sweeney Todd, a fictitious English barber who, driven insane by the loss of his wife and daughter, murders his customers with a cut-throat razor, and with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, turns their remains into meat pies.
Having been struck by the cinematic qualities of Sondheim's musical while still a student, director Tim Burton had entertained the notion of a film version since the early 1980s. However, it was not until 2006 that he had the opportunity to realize this ambition, when DreamWorks announced his appointment as replacement for director Sam Mendes, who had been working on such an adaptation. Sondheim, although not directly involved, was extensively consulted during the film's production. It stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Nellie Lovett. Depp, not known for his singing, took lessons in preparation for his role, which producer Richard D. Zanuck acknowledged was something of a gamble. However, Depp's vocal performance, despite being criticized as lacking certain musical qualities, was generally thought by critics to suit the part.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released in the United States on December 21, 2007, and in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2008, to largely enthusiastic reviews. However, Warner Bros.'s decision not to advertise the film as a musical led to complaints from some cinema-goers, who felt they had been deliberately misled. The film won a number of awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and the Academy Award for Best Art Direction. Although not an outstanding financial success in the United States, barely covering its $50 million budget, it performed well worldwide, and has spawned a soundtrack album and various DVD releases. The film received a "Restricted" rating from the MPAA for "graphic bloody violence".
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Plot
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a skilled barber, is falsely charged and sentenced to a life of hard labor in Australia by the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who lusts after Barker's wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly). Fifteen years later, under the assumed name "Sweeney Todd", Barker returns to London with sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). At his old Fleet Street lodgings above Mrs. Nellie Lovett's (Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop, he discovers that Lucy, having been raped by Turpin, has poisoned herself, and his teenage daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) is now Turpin's ward, and like her mother before her, is the object of his unwanted affections. Todd vows revenge, reopening his barber shop in the upstairs flat.
While roaming London, Todd's shipmate Anthony spots Johanna and falls in love with her, but is ejected from the Judge's house by a disapproving Turpin and his associate, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall). Far from being discouraged, the sailor becomes determined that the pair will elope. Meanwhile Todd, during a visit to the marketplace, denounces a fraudulent hair tonic by faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), and later humiliates him in a public shaving contest. Pirelli and his boy assistant Toby (Ed Sanders) visit Todd's barbershop; Lovett keeps Toby occupied downstairs, while in the parlor Pirelli reveals himself to be Todd's former assistant and attempts to blackmail him. To protect the secret of his true identity, Todd murders Pirelli.
Judge Turpin, intending to propose to Johanna, pays a visit to Todd's parlor for grooming. Recognizing his tormentor, Todd relaxes the judge while preparing to slit his throat. Before he can do so, they are interrupted by Anthony, who, unaware of Turpin's presence, bursts in and reveals his plan to elope with Johanna. Turpin leaves enraged, vowing to never return. Infuriated at being thwarted, Todd has an epiphany, and decides to vent his murderous rage upon his customers while waiting for another chance to kill Turpin. Lovett becomes his willing accomplice, suggesting they dispose of the bodies by baking them into pies to improve her business. Todd enthusiastically agrees, and rigs his barber's chair with a pedal-operated mechanism, which deposits his victims through a trapdoor into Lovett's bakehouse. As the weeks pass, Todd's murders accumulate and Anthony begins to search for Johanna, who was sent by Turpin to Fogg's insane asylum as punishment for her refusal to marry him.
The barbering and pie-making business prospers financially, and Lovett takes in young Toby. Anthony finally discovers Johanna's whereabouts, and following Todd's plan, poses as a wig-maker's apprentice, allowing him access to the asylum to put a rescue plan into action. Todd's motive for assisting is to lure Turpin back to the barber shop, and he sends Toby to the courthouse to let the judge know where he will find Johanna. Toby has become wary of Todd, and when he returns he tells Lovett of his distrust, unaware of her complicity in his activities. He promises to protect her, and Mrs. Lovett returns this promise. Beadle Bamford arrives at the barber shop and is murdered by Todd, and Lovett informs Todd of Toby's suspicions. The pair search for Toby, whom Lovett has locked in the basement bakehouse to keep him out of the way. He is nowhere to be found, having hidden in the sewers after seeing the Beadle's body drop into the room from the trapdoor above. Meanwhile, Anthony brings a disguised Johanna to the shop, where she hides herself in a trunk in a corner of the room.
A disfigured beggar woman, who has been pestering Todd, Lovett, and Anthony throughout the film, now makes her way into the shop. Todd kills her moments before Turpin arrives, then finally gets his revenge upon the corrupt Judge. As Johanna peeks out of the trunk she is hiding in, Todd spots her and prepares to slit her throat as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. A scream from Lovett diverts him to the basement, where she tells him that Turpin had still been alive and tried to grab at her dress before bleeding to death. Viewing the corpses in the light of the bakehouse fire, Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife, Lucy, whom he had believed to be dead based on Lovett's account of the poisoning. Todd realizes that Lovett knew Lucy was alive, and she confesses that she only lied because she loved him and wanted him to marry her instead of Lucy. Todd begins to waltz maniacally with her around the bakehouse before hurling her into the open oven, where he watches Mrs. Lovett burn to death. He returns to Lucy and cradles her dead body as an enraged Toby emerges from the sewer and picks up Todd's discarded razor. Todd, now wishing to die, silently offers his own neck to the boy, and Toby slits Todd's throat. The movie ends with Todd bleeding over his dead wife, and Toby walking away.
Cast
Johnny Depp as Benjamin Barker / Sweeney Todd, a barber who slits the throats of his customers after being driven mad by the loss of his wife and daughter. Depp first learned of Sweeney Todd in 2000, when Burton gave him an original cast recording of the 1979 stage musical. Although not a fan of the genre, Depp grew to like the tale's musical treatment, saying "How many chances do you get at a musical about a serial killer?" He cited Peter Lorre in Mad Love (1935) as his main influence for the role, and practiced the songs his character would perform while filming Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Although he had performed in musical groups, Depp was initially unsure that he would be able to sustain Stephen Sondheim's lyrics. He appreciated that there were "a lot of half-steps... kind of go G to A-flat to A to B-flat. It's super, ultra complicated; these notes that shouldn't work together at times." Depp recorded demos of himself in West Hollywood, working with Bruce Witkin to shape his vocals without a qualified voice coach.
Producer Richard Zanuck acknowledged the risk he was taking with Depp, admitting it was "millions of dollars committed on an assumption. [But] we all said to one another, 'Johnny is a smart guy. He would never put himself in this position if he didn't think he could do it." Sondheim supported the casting decision, saying, "I figured he'd have a light baritone... I love him as an actor, and always have. Put those things together, I didn't hesitate for one second." He told Depp that his performance would be more about acting than singing, although much of Sweeney Todd's dialogue was eventually cut. According to Depp, "We focused on the dangerous and unsettling idea of stillness, that he doesn’t look many people in the eye, or say much"—an idea Burton compared to Boris Karloff and other actors in classic horror films, where "his eyes and the music [...] tell the story." Depp decided on a punk rock approach to his performance, citing inspiration from Anthony Newley and Iggy Pop, whom he called a "very aggressive crooner".
Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Todd's accomplice, who bakes the corpses of his victims into pies. Bonham Carter was cast in the role, which she had wanted since childhood, by Stephen Sondheim, and was eager to prove there was no nepotism in her starring in the film. She spent three months while pregnant during the production of the film being trained to sing by Ian Adam, and Sondheim viewed around twelve of her audition tapes, saying "Even in a recording studio, wearing a schmatte, she is as beautiful and sexy as they come." Bonham Carter also spent many hours practising pie baking, commenting "you had to do it to syncopated Sondheim rhythm and sing at the same time." The character of Mrs. Lovett often sings while performing other activities, a behavior which Bonham Carter dubbed "the Olympics of multi-tasking". She was given some of the most difficult songs in the film, one such being "By the Sea". Bonham Carter recalls reading about Angela Lansbury (the original Mrs. Lovett) consulting Sondheim on where to breathe in the score; Sondheim replied that he hadn't written any room to breathe, and that you just don't.
Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, an evil judge who locked away Todd, raped his wife, and adopted his baby daughter Johanna as his "ward", intending to marry her when she was older. Rickman said, "The music is sort of constant, and it slips in and out of speech and song. Because it's in real rooms and real spaces, the move from speaking into singing becomes much more organic."
Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Turpin's personal assistant.
Sacha Baron Cohen as Davey Collins/Signor Adolfo Pirelli, Todd's disguised rival and former assistant. For his audition, Baron Cohen sang songs from Fiddler on the Roof; Burton commented, "I wish we had a camera, because he literally went through the whole score".
Laura Michelle Kelly as Lucy Barker/Beggar Woman, Todd's wife.
Jayne Wisener as Johanna Barker, Todd's daughter and the ward of Judge Turpin.
Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony Hope, a sailor who befriends Todd and falls for Johanna.
Ed Sanders as Tobias "Toby" Ragg, Pirelli's gin-loving young assistant who later joins Todd and Lovett. He spent his early years in a workhouse before being taken in by Pirelli.
Production
Development
Tim Burton first saw Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as a CalArts student in London in 1980. Although not a fan of the musical genre, Burton was struck by how cinematic the musical was, and repeatedly attended subsequent performances. He described it as a silent film with music, and was "dazzled both by the music and its sense of the macabre." When his directing career took off in the late 1980s, Burton approached Sondheim with a view to making a cinematic adaptation, but nothing came of it. In Sondheim's words, "[Burton] went off and did other things."
Meanwhile, director Sam Mendes had been working on a film version of the story for several years, and in June 2003 Sondheim was approached to write the script. Although he turned down the offer, Mendes and producer Walter Parkes obtained his approval to use writer John Logan instead. Logan had previously collaborated with Parkes on Gladiator, and claimed his biggest challenge in adapting the Sondheim stageplay "was taking a sprawling, magnificent Broadway musical and making it cinematic, and an emotionally honest film. Onstage, you can have a chorus sing as the people of London, but I think that would be alienating in a movie." Mendes left to direct the 2005 film Jarhead, and Burton leaped at taking over the direction after his project, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, fell apart due to its excessive budget.
DreamWorks announced Burton's appointment in August 2006, and Johnny Depp was cast as Todd. On Burton's hiring, he and Logan reworked the screenplay; Logan felt they agreed over the film's tone due to "share[d] stunted childhoods watching Amicus movies". Turning a 3-hour stage musical into a 2-hour film required some changes. Some songs were shortened, while others were completely removed. Christopher Lee, Peter Bowles, Anthony Stewart Head, and five other actors were set to play the ghost narrators, but their roles were cut. According to Lee, these elisions were due to time constraints caused by a break in filming during March 2007, while Depp's daughter recovered from an illness. Burton and Logan also reduced the prominence of other secondary elements, such as the romance between Todd's daughter Johanna and Anthony, to allow them to focus on the triangular relationship between Todd, Mrs. Lovett, and Toby.
Filming
Filming began on February 5, 2007 at Pinewood Studios, and was completed by May 11, despite a brief interruption when Depp's daughter was taken seriously ill. Burton opted to film in London, where he had felt "very much at home" since his work on Batman in 1989. Production designer Dante Ferretti created a darker, more frightening London by adapting Fleet Street and its surrounding area. Burton initially planned to use minimal sets and film in front of a green screen, but decided against it, stating that physical sets helped actors get into a musical frame of mind: "Just having people singing in front of a green screen seemed more disconnected". Depp created his own image of Todd. Heavy purple and brown make-up was applied around his eyes to suggest fatigue and rage, as if "he's never slept".
Burton insisted that the film be bloody, as he felt stage versions of the play which cut back on the bloodshed robbed it of its power. For him, "everything is so internal with Sweeney that [the blood] is like his emotional release. It's more about catharsis than it is a literal thing." Producer Richard D. Zanuck said that "[Burton] had a very clear plan that he wanted to lift that up into a surreal, almost Kill Bill kind of stylization. We had done tests and experiments with the neck slashing, with the blood popping out. I remember saying to Tim, 'My god, do we dare do this?'" On set, the fake blood was colored orange to render correctly on the desaturated color film used, and crew members wore bin liners to avoid getting stained while filming. This macabre tone made some studios nervous, and it was not until Warner Bros., DreamWorks and Paramount had signed up for the project that the film's $50 million budget was covered. Burton said "the studio was cool about it and they accepted it because they knew what the show was. Any movie is a risk, but it is nice to be able to do something like that that doesn't fit into the musical or slasher movie categories."
Music
| Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street OST | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| Soundtrack by Various Artists | ||
| Released | December 18 2007 | |
| Recorded | 2007 | |
| Genre | Soundtrack | |
| Length | 71:26 | |
| Label | Nonesuch Records | |
| Producer | Stephen Sondheim | |
Sweeney Todd has joined Ed Wood to become only the second film in Burton's career with music not composed by Danny Elfman. Burton wanted to avoid the traditional approach of patches of dialogue interrupted by song. He cut the show's famous opening number, "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", explaining, "Why have a chorus singing about 'attending the tale of Sweeney Todd' when you could just go ahead and attend it?" Sondheim acknowledged that, in adapting a musical to film, the plot has to be kept moving, and was sent MP3 files of his shortened songs by Mike Higham, the film's music producer, for approval. Several other songs were also cut, and Sondheim noted that there were "many changes, additions and deletions... [though]... if you just go along with it, I think you'll have a spectacular time." To create a larger, more cinematic feel, the score was reorchestrated by the stage musical's original orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, who increased the orchestra from twenty-seven musicians to seventy-eight.
The Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Deluxe Complete Edition soundtrack was released on December 18 2007. Johnny Depp's singing was described by a New York Times reviewer as "harsh and thin, but amazingly forceful". Another critic adds that, though Depp's voice "does not have much heft or power", "his ear is obviously excellent, because his pitch is dead-on accurate... Beyond his good pitch and phrasing, the expressive colorings of his singing are crucial to the portrayal. Beneath this Sweeney’s vacant, sullen exterior is a man consumed with a murderous rage that threatens to burst forth every time he slowly takes a breath and is poised to speak. Yet when he sings, his voice crackles and breaks with sadness."
Track listing
All music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim
- "Opening Title" - 3:30
- "No Place Like London" - Jamie Campbell Bower and Johnny Depp - 5:31 **
- "The Worst Pies in London" - Helena Bonham Carter - 2:23
- "Poor Thing" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 3:09 **
- "My Friends" - Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter - 3:48
- "Green Finch and Linnett Bird" - Jayne Wisener - 2:16
- "Alms! Alms!" - Laura Michelle Kelly and Jamie Campbell Bower - 1:16 * ***
- "Johanna" - Jamie Campbell Bower - 1:57
- "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" - Edward Sanders, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter - 2:00
- "The Contest" - Sacha Baron Cohen, Johnny Depp, and Timothy Spall - 3:39 **
- "Wait" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 2:38
- "Ladies in Their Sensitivities" - Timothy Spall and Alan Rickman - 1:23 *
- "Pretty Women" - Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp - 4:27 **
- "Epiphany" - Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Jamie Campbell Bower - 3:16
- "A Little Priest" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 5:15 **
- "Johanna" (Reprise) - Jamie Campbell Bower, Johnny Depp, and Laura Michelle Kelly - 5:42
- "God, That's Good!" - Edward Sanders and Helena Bonham Carter - 2:46
- "By the Sea" - Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp - 2:19
- "Not While I'm Around" - Edward Sanders and Helena Bonham Carter - 4:11 **
- "Final Scene" - Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Laura Michelle Kelly, Alan Rickman, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Jayne Wisener - 10:21 * ***
* Missing from the Highlights version of the soundtrack.
** Tracks that are significantly longer than their Highlights counterparts.
*** Song is either written specially or adapted for the film.
Release
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street officially opened at the US box office on December 21, 2007 in 1,249 theaters, and took $9,300,805 in its opening weekend. Worldwide releases followed during January and February 2008, with the film performing well in the United Kingdom and Japan. Sweeney Todd grossed $52.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $99.62 million in other markets, accumulating a worldwide total of $152.52 million. In the United States, the Marcus Theaters Corporation was not initially planning to screen the movie after its premiere, because it was unable to reach a pricing agreement with Paramount. However, the dispute was resolved in time for the official release.
Critical reception
Although Stephen Sondheim was cautious of a cinematic adaptation of his musical, he was largely impressed by the results. Public reaction was very favourable—as of September 16, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 192 reviews, and Metacritic gave the film an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 39 reviews. Sweeney Todd appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.
Of the reviewers, Time magazine rated it an A-minus and added, "Burton and Depp infuse the brilliant cold steel of Stephen Sondheim's score with a burning passion. Helena Bonham Carter and a superb supporting cast bring focused fury to this musical nightmare. It's bloody great." Time's Richard Corliss named the film one of its top ten movies of 2007, placing it fifth. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it four stars out of four, lauding Burton's visual style. In his review in Variety, Todd McCarthy called it "both sharp and fleet" and "a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1979 theatrical musical ... things have turned out uniformly right thanks to highly focused direction by Tim Burton, expert screw-tightening by scenarist John Logan, and haunted and musically adept lead performances from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Assembled artistic combo assures the film will reap by far the biggest audience to see a pure Sondheim musical, although just how big depends on the upscale crowd’s tolerance for buckets of blood, and the degree to which the masses stay away due to the whiff of the highbrow." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B-plus on the Movie Reviews section and stated, "To stage a proper Sweeney Todd, necks must be slit, human flesh must be squished into pastries, and blood ought to spurt in fountains and rivers of death. Enter Tim Burton, who ... has tenderly art-directed soup-thick, tomato-red, fake-gore blood with the zest of a Hollywood-funded Jackson Pollock." She went on to refer to the piece as "opulent, attentive ... so finely minced a mixture of Sondheim's original melodrama and Burton's signature spicing that it's difficult to think of any other filmmaker so naturally suited for the job."
On the DVD Reviews section, EW's Chris Nashawaty gave the film an A-minus, stating, "Depp's soaring voice makes you wonder what other tricks he's been hiding... Watching Depp's barber wield his razors... it's hard not to be reminded of Edward Scissorhands frantically shaping hedges into animal topiaries 18 years ago... and all of the twisted beauty we would've missed out on had [Burton and Depp] never met." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers awarded it 3½ out of 4 stars and added, "Sweeney Todd is a thriller-diller from start to finish: scary, monstrously funny and melodically thrilling ... [the film] is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score." As with Time, the critic ranked it fifth on his list of the best movies of 2007. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said, "The blood juxtaposed to the music is highly unsettling. It runs contrary to expectations. Burton pushes this gore into his audiences' faces so as to feel the madness and the destructive fury of Sweeney's obsession. Teaming with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smoldering dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy acting and surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages." Harry Knowles gave the film a highly positive review, calling it Burton's best film since Ed Wood, his favorite Burton film, and said it was possibly superior. He praised all of the cast and the cinematography, but noted it would probably not appeal to non-musical fans due to the dominance of music in the film.
Not every review was laudatory. Cole Haddon of film.com was critical of Depp's and Bonham Carter's singing voices and the use of CGI. Acknowledging his stance, Haddon stated that his unfavorable review of the film was "contrary to everything you’ve read elsewhere", as well as saying that "I stand alone against the masses," highlighting the enormous critical acclaim the film had received.
Marketing
The film's marketing has been criticized for not advertising it as a musical. Michael Halberstam of the Writers' Theatre said, "By de-emphasizing the score to the extent they did in the trailer, it is possible the producers were condescending to us - a tactic which cannot ultimately end in anything but tears." In the UK, a number of audience members walked out of the film on realizing it was a musical, and complaints that advertisements for the film were deliberately misleading were made to both the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards agency. The studios involved opted for a low-key approach to their marketing. Producer Walter Parkes stated, "All these things that could be described as difficulties could also be the movie's greatest strengths." Warner Bros. felt it should take a similar approach to marketing as with The Departed, with little early exposure and discouraging talk of awards.
Awards and nominations
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street received four Golden Globe nominations for the January 2008 65th Golden Globe Awards, winning two. The film received the award for Best Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy genre, and Johnny Depp for his performance as Sweeney Todd. Tim Burton was nominated for Best Director, and Helena Bonham Carter was nominated for her performance as Mrs. Lovett. The film has been included in the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures's top ten films of 2007, and Burton was presented with their award for Best Director. The film was also nominated for two BAFTA awards, in the categories of Costume Design and Make Up and Hair. Sweeney Todd further received three Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role for Depp; Best Achievement in Costume Design; and Best Achievement in Art Direction, which it won. Depp won the award for Best Villain at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards. He thanked his fans for "sticking with me on this very obtuse and strange road." He also won the Choice Movie Villain award at the Teen Choice Awards;[50][dead link] and at Spike TV's 2008 Scream Awards (filmed on October 18, 2008, and aired three days later), the film won two awards: Best Horror Movie, and Best Actor in a Horror Movie or TV Show (Depp).
DVD/Blu-ray release
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released on DVD in North America on April 1, 2008, and the UK on May 19. A Blu-ray Disc version of the film is readily available in Australia, although it was announced on June 25 that the film would be delayed until October 21 for release in North America. An HD DVD release was announced for the same date, but due to the discontinuation of the format, Paramount has since canceled this version in preference for international distribution of the Blu-ray release.
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Tiger
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest and strongest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 4 metres (13 ft) in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The largest subspecies of tiger is the Siberian tiger. The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "tigris", which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning "arrow", a reference to the animal's speed and also the origin for the name of the River Tigris. In American English, "Tigress" was first recorded in 1611. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and theron ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow". A group of tigers is rare (see below), but when seen together is termed a 'streak' or an 'ambush'. In the historical past tigers were widespread in Asia, from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, to Siberia and Indonesia. During the 19th century the striped cats completely vanished from western Asia, and became restricted to isolated pockets in the remaining parts of their range. Today, this fragmented relic range extends from India in the west to China and Southeast Asia in the east. The northern limit is close to the Amur River in south eastern Siberia. The only large island inhabited by tigers today is Sumatra. Tigers vanished from Java during the second half of the 19th century, and in Borneo are known only from fossil remains. The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java. This species lived about 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and was smaller than a modern tiger. The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra. A subspecies called the Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) lived about 1.2 million years ago and is known fossils found at Trinil in Java. Tigers first reached India and northern Asia in the late Pleistocene, reaching eastern Beringia (but not the American Continent), and Japan, and Sakhalin. Fossils found in Japan indicate that the local tigers were, like the surviving island subspecies, smaller than the mainland forms. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see insular dwarfism), or perhaps the availability of prey. Until the Holocene, tigers also lived in Borneo. Today, tigers are perhaps the most recognisable of all the cats (with the possible exception of the lion). They typically have rusty-reddish to brown-rusty coats, a whitish medial and ventral area, a white "fringe" that surrounds the face, and stripes that vary from brown or gray to pure black. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies (as well as the ground coloration of the fur; for instance, Siberian tigers are usually paler than other tiger subspecies), but most tigers have over 100 stripes. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to help tigers conceal themselves amongst the dappled shadows and long grass of their environment as they stalk their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Like other big cats, tigers have a white spot on the backs of their ears. Tigers have the additional distinction of being the heaviest cats found in the wild. However, the subspecies differ markedly in size, tending to increase proportionally with latitude, as predicted by Bergmann's Rule. Thus, large male Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) can reach a total length of 3.5 m and a weight of 306 kilograms, which is considerably larger than the sizes reached by island-dwelling tigers such as the Sumatran, the smallest living subspecies with a body weight of only 75-140 kg. Tigresses are smaller than the males in each subspecies, although the size difference between male and female tigers tends to be more pronounced in the larger subspecies of tiger, with males weighing up to 1.7 times as much as the females. In addition, male tigers have wider forepaw pads than females. This difference is often used by biologists in determining the gender of tigers when observing their tracks. There are nine recent subspecies of tiger, three of which are extinct. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Bangladesh, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, and southeast Asia, including some Indonesian islands. The surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population, are: Hybridization among the big cats, including the tiger, was first conceptualized in the 19th century, when zoos were particularly interested in the pursuit of finding oddities to display for financial gain. Lions have been known to breed with tigers (most often the Amur and Bengal subspecies) to create hybrids called ligers and tigons. Such hybrids were once commonly bred in zoos, but this is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conserving species and subspecies. Hybrids are still bred in private menageries and in zoos in China. The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress.Because the lion sire passes on a growth-promoting gene, but the corresponding growth-inhibiting gene from the female tiger is absent, ligers grow far larger than either parent. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species (spots and stripes on a sandy background). Male ligers are sterile, but female ligers are often fertile. Males have about a 50% chance of having a mane, but, even if they do, their manes will be only around half the size of that of a pure lion. Ligers are typically between 10 to 12 feet in length, and can be between 800 and 1,000 pounds or more. The less common tigon is a cross between the lioness and the male tiger. There is a well-known mutation that produces the white tiger, technically known as chinchilla albinistic, an animal which is rare in the wild, but widely bred in zoos due to its popularity. Breeding of white tigers will often lead to inbreeding (as the trait is recessive). Many initiatives have taken place in white and orange tiger mating in an attempt to remedy the issue, often mixing subspecies in the process. Such inbreeding has led to white tigers having a greater likelihood of being born with physical defects, such as cleft palates and scoliosis (curvature of the spine). Furthermore, white tigers are prone to having crossed eyes (a condition known as strabismus). Even apparently healthy white tigers generally do not live as long as their orange counterparts. Recordings of white tigers were first made in the early 19th century. They can only occur when both parents carry the rare gene found in white tigers; this gene has been calculated to occur in only one in every 10,000 births. The white tiger is not a separate sub-species, but only a colour variation; since the only white tigers that have been observed in the wild have been Bengal tigers (and all white tigers in captivity are at least part Bengal), it is commonly thought that the recessive gene that causes the white colouring is probably carried only by Bengal tigers, although the reasons for this are not known. Nor are they in any way more endangered than tigers are generally, this being a common misconception. Another misconception is that white tigers are albinos, despite the fact that pigment is evident in the white tiger's stripes. They are distinct not only because of their white hue; they also have blue eyes and pink noses. In addition, another recessive gene may create a very unusual "golden tabby" colour variation, sometimes known as "strawberry". Golden tabby tigers have light gold fur, pale legs and faint orange stripes. Their fur tends to be much thicker than normal. There are extremely few golden tabby tigers in captivity, around 30 in all. Like white tigers, strawberry tigers are invariably at least part Bengal. Both white and golden tabby tigers tend to be larger than average Bengal tigers. There are also unconfirmed reports of a "blue" or slate-coloured tiger, and largely or totally black tigers, and these are assumed, if real, to be intermittent mutations rather than distinct species. Tigers are essentially solitary and territorial animals. The size of a tiger's home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of male tigers, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 square kilometres while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60–100 km². The ranges of males tend to overlap those of several females. The relationships between individuals can be quite complex, and it appears that there is no set "rule" that tigers follow with regards to territorial rights and infringing territories. For instance, although for the most part tigers avoid each other, both male and female tigers have been documented sharing kills. For instance, George Schaller observed a male tiger share a kill with two females and four cubs. Females are often reluctant to let males near their cubs, but Schaller saw that these females made no effort to protect or keep their cubs from the male, suggesting that the male might have been the father of the cubs. In contrast to male lions, male tigers will allow the females and cubs to feed on the kill first. Furthermore, tigers seem to behave relatively amicably when sharing kills, in contrast to lions, which tend to squabble and fight. Unrelated tigers have also been observed feeding on prey together. The following quotation is from Stephen Mills' book Tiger, as he describes an event witnessed by Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore: A dominant tigress they called Padmini killed a 250-kg (550-lb) male nilgai - a very large antelope. They found her at the kill just after dawn with her three 14-month-old cubs and they watched uninterrupted for the next ten hours. During this period the family was joined by two adult females and one adult male - all offspring from Padmini's previous litters and by two unrelated tigers, one female the other unidentified. By three o'clock there were no fewer than nine tigers round the kill. When young female tigers first establish a territory, they tend to do so fairly close to their mother's area. The overlap between the female and her mother's territory tends to wane with increasing time. Males, however, wander further than their female counterparts, and set out at a younger age to eke out their own area. A young male will acquire territory either by seeking out a range devoid of other male tigers, or by living as a transient in another male's territory, until he is old and strong enough to challenge the resident male. The highest mortality rate (30-35% per year) amongst adult tigers occurs for young male tigers who have just left their natal area, seeking out territories of their own. Male tigers are generally more intolerant of other males within their territory than females are of other females. For the most part, however, territorial disputes are usually solved by displays of intimidation, rather than outright aggression. Several such incidents have been observed, in which the subordinate tiger yielded defeat by rolling onto its back, showing its belly in a submissive posture. Once dominance has been established, a male may actually tolerate a subordinate within his range, as long as they do not live in too close quarters. The most violent disputes tend to occur between two males when a female is in oestrus, and may result in the death of one of the males, although this is actually a relatively rare occurrence. To identify his territory, the male marks trees by spraying of urine and anal gland secretions, as well as marking trails with scat. Males show a grimacing face, called the Flehmen response, when identifying a female's reproductive condition by sniffing their urine markings. Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. The populations of tigers were estimated in the past using plaster casts of their pugmarks. This method was found faulty and attempts were made to use camera trapping instead. Newer techniques based on DNA from their scat are also being evaluated. Radio collaring has also been a popular approach to tracking them for study in the wild. In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals. Sambar, gaur, domestic buffalo, chital, boar, and nilgai are the tiger's favored prey in India. Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles. In Siberia the main prey species are Mandchurian elk, wild boar, Sika Deer, Moose, roe deer, and musk deer. In Sumatra Sambar, Muntjac, wild boar, and Malayan Tapir are preyed on. In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included Saiga Antelope, camels, Caucasian Wisent, yak, and wild horses. Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish. Adult elephants are too large to serve as common prey, but conflicts between tigers and elephants do sometimes take place. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed. Young elephant and rhino calves are occasionally taken. Tigers also sometimes prey on domestic animals such as dogs, cows, horses, and donkeys. These individuals are termed cattle-lifters or cattle-killers in contrast to typical game-killers. Old tigers, or those wounded and rendered incapable of catching their natural prey, have turned into man-eaters; this pattern has recurred frequently across India. An exceptional case is that of the Sundarbans, where healthy tigers prey upon fishermen and villagers in search of forest produce, humans thereby forming a minor part of the tiger's diet. Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fiber, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured. Tigers usually hunt at night. They generally hunt alone and ambush their prey as most other cats do, overpowering them from any angle, using their body size and strength to knock large prey off balance. Even with their great masses, tigers can reach speeds of about 49-65 kilometres per hour (35-40 miles per hour), although they can only do so in short bursts, since they have relatively little stamina; consequently, tigers must be relatively close to their prey before they break their cover. Tigers have great leaping ability; horizontal leaps of up to 10 metres have been reported, although leaps of around half this amount are more typical. However, only one in twenty hunts ends in a successful kill. When hunting large prey, tigers prefer to bite the throat and use their forelimbs to hold onto the prey, bringing it to the ground. The tiger remains latched onto the neck until its prey dies of strangulation. By this method, gaurs and water buffalos weighing over a ton have been killed by tigers weighing about a sixth as much. With small prey, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears. During the 1980s, a tiger named "Genghis" in Ranthambhore National Park was observed frequently hunting prey through deep water at the edges of lakes, a pattern of behaviour that had not been previously witnessed in over 200 years of observations. Moreover, he appeared to be extraordinarily successful for a tiger, with as many as 20% of hunts ending in a kill. Mating can occur all year round, but is generally more common between November and April. A female is only receptive for a few days and mating is frequent during that time period. A pair will copulate frequently and noisily, like other cats. The gestation period is 16 weeks. The litter size usually consists of around 3–4 cubs of about 1 kg (2 lb) each, which are born blind and helpless. The females rear them alone, sheltering them in dens such as thickets and rocky crevices. The father of the cubs generally takes no part in rearing them. Unrelated wandering male tigers may even kill cubs to make the female receptive, since the tigress may give birth to another litter within 5 months if the cubs of the previous litter are lost. The mortality rate of tiger cubs is fairly high - approximately half do not survive to be more than two years old. There is generally a dominant cub in each litter, which tends to be male but may be of either sex. This cub generally dominates its siblings during play and tends to be more active, leaving its mother earlier than usual. At 8 weeks, the cubs are ready to follow their mother out of the den, although they don't travel with her as she roams her territory until they are older. The cubs become independent around 18 months of age, but it is not until they are around 2–2½ years old that they leave their mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-4 years, whereas males reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. Over the course of her life, a female tiger will give birth to an approximately equal number of male and female cubs. Tigers breed well in captivity, and the captive population in the United States may rival the wild population of the world. Tigers may kill such formidable predators as leopards, pythons and even crocodiles on occasion, although predators typically avoid one another. When seized by a crocodile, a tiger will strike at the reptile's eyes with its paws. Leopards dodge competition from tigers by hunting in different times of the day and hunting different prey. With relatively abundant prey, tigers and leopards were seen to successfully coexist without competitive exclusion or inter-species dominance hierarchies that may be more common to the savanna. Tigers have been known to suppress wolf populations in areas where the two species coexist. Dhole packs have been observed to attack and kill tigers in disputes over food, though not usually without heavy losses. Siberian tigers and brown bears can be competitors and usually avoid confrontation; however, tigers will kill bear cubs and even some adults on occasion. Bears (Asiatic black bears and brown bears) make up 5-8% of the tiger's diet in the Russian Far East. Some bears emerging from hibernation will try to steal tigers' kills, although the tiger will mostly defend its kill. Sloth bears are quite aggressive and will sometimes drive younger aged tigers away from their kills, although in most of cases Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears. However, for the tiger, even bears of the same size are a force to be reckoned with when confronted head on. Adult brown bears are known for killing and driving off adult male tigers. There is an opinion that the brown bear/tiger conflict can eliminate the weakest animals from both populations. Typical tiger country has three main features: It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey. Bengal Tigers live in all types of forests, including Wet, Evergreen, semi-evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the mangrove forest of Ganges Delta; The deciduous forest of Nepal and thorn forests of the Western Ghats. Compared to the lion, the tiger prefers more dense vegetation, for which its camouflage is ideally suited, and where a single predator is not at a disadvantage compared to a pride. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they are often to be found cooling off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers, better than the jaguar and can swim up to 4 miles. Tigers are often to be found carrying their dead prey across lakes.
Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian taiga, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range, which once reached from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia, has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to be threats.
Nonetheless, tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations.Naming and etymology
Range
Physical characteristics, taxonomy and evolution
Physical characteristics
Subspecies
Extinct subspecies
Hybrids
Colour variations
White tigers
Golden tabby tigers
Other colour variations
Biology and behaviour
Territorial behavior
Hunting and diet
Reproduction
Interspecific predatory relationships
Habitat
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