Month: October 2020

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood^[a] is a 2019 comedy-drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Columbia Pictures, Bona Film Group, Heyday Films, and Visiona Romantica and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is a co-production between the United States, United Kingdom, and China. It features a large ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie. Set in 1969 Los Angeles, the film follows a fading character actor and his stunt double as they navigate the rapidly changing film industry, with the looming threat of the Tate-LaBianca Murders hanging overhead. It features "multiple storylines in a modern fairy tale tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age."^[5][6][7]

Announced in July 2017, it is the first Tarantino film not to involve Bob and Harvey Weinstein, as Tarantino ended his partnership with the brothers following the sexual abuse allegations against the latter. After a bidding war, the film was distributed by Sony Pictures, which met Tarantino's demands including final cut privilege. Pitt, DiCaprio, Robbie, Zoë Bell, Kurt Russell, and others joined the cast between January and June 2018. Principal photography lasted from June through November around Los Angeles. This was the final film to feature Luke Perry, who died on March 4, 2019.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 26, 2019 and in the United Kingdom on August 14. The film has grossed $374 million worldwide and received praise from critics for Tarantino's screenplay and direction, acting, cinematography, costume design, production values, and soundtrack. Among its various accolades, the film was chosen by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of the year. It received 10 nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Best Supporting Actor (Pitt) and Best Production Design. It also won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 77th Golden Globe Awards.

A television series titled Bounty Law, based on a TV program depicted in the film, is currently being developed by Tarantino.

Plot

In February 1969, Hollywood actor Rick Dalton, star of 1950s Western television series Bounty Law, fears his career is fading. Casting director Marvin Schwarz recommends he make Spaghetti Westerns in Italy, which Dalton feels are beneath him. Dalton's best friend and stunt double, Cliff Booth—a war veteran skilled in hand-to-hand combat^[10] who lives in a trailer with his pit bull, Brandy—drives Dalton around Los Angeles because Dalton's driver's license has been suspended due to his DUI arrests. Booth struggles to find stunt work because of rumors he murdered his wife. Actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski, have moved next door to Dalton, who dreams of befriending them to revive his acting career. That night, Tate and Polanski attend a celebrity-filled party at the Playboy Mansion.

The next day, while repairing Dalton's TV antenna, Booth reminisces about a sparring contest he had with Bruce Lee on the set of The Green Hornet which resulted in Booth being fired. Meanwhile, Charles Manson stops by the Polanski residence looking for producer Terry Melcher, who used to live there, but is turned away by Jay Sebring. Tate goes for errands and stops at a movie theater to watch herself in the film The Wrecking Crew.

Dalton is cast to play the villain in the pilot of Western television series Lancer and strikes up a conversation with his eight-year-old co-star, Trudi Fraser. During filming, Dalton struggles to remember his lines and suffers a violent breakdown later in his trailer as a result. He subsequently delivers a strong performance that impresses Fraser and the director, Sam Wanamaker, bolstering his confidence.

While driving Dalton's car, Booth picks up a female hitchhiker named Pussycat, whom he takes to Spahn Ranch, where Booth once worked on the set of Bounty Law. He takes notice of the many hippies living there (the Manson Family). Suspecting they may be taking advantage of the ranch's owner, George Spahn, Booth insists on checking on him despite Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's objections. Booth finally speaks with Spahn, who dismisses his concerns. Upon leaving, Booth discovers that Steve "Clem" Grogan has punctured a tire on Dalton's car. Booth beats him and forces him to change the tire. Charles "Tex" Watson is summoned to deal with the situation, but he arrives as Booth is driving away.

After watching Dalton's guest performance on an episode of The F.B.I., Schwarz books him as the lead in Sergio Corbucci's next Spaghetti Western, Nebraska Jim. Dalton takes Booth with him for a six-month stint in Italy, during which time he films two additional Westerns and a Eurospy comedy, and marries Italian starlet Francesca Capucci. With a new wife, Dalton informs Booth he can no longer afford his services.

On the evening of August 8, 1969, their first day back in Los Angeles, Dalton and Booth go out for drinks to commemorate their time working together and then return to Dalton's house. Tate and Sebring go out for dinner with friends and then return to Tate's house. Booth smokes an LSD-laced cigarette purchased earlier from a hippy girl and takes Brandy for a walk while Dalton prepares drinks. Manson Family members Tex, "Sadie", "Katie", and "Flowerchild" arrive outside in preparation to murder everyone in Tate's house, but Dalton hears their noisy muffler and orders them off his street. Recognizing Dalton, the Family members change their plans and decide to kill him instead, after Sadie reasons that Hollywood has "taught them to murder". Flowerchild deserts the group, speeding off with their car. Breaking into Dalton's house, they confront Capucci and Booth inside. Booth recognizes them from his visit to Spahn Ranch and orders Brandy to attack. Together they kill Tex and injure Sadie, though Booth is stabbed in the right thigh and passes out after killing Katie. Sadie stumbles outside, alarming Dalton, who was in his pool listening to music on headphones, oblivious to the melee inside. Dalton retrieves a flamethrower previously used in a movie and incinerates Sadie. After Booth is taken away in an ambulance to receive treatment for his injuries, Sebring engages Dalton in conversation outside and Dalton receives an invitation for a drink with Tate and her friends at her house, which he accepts.

Box office

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood grossed $142.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $231.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $374.3 million.^[4] By some estimates, the film needed to gross around $250 million worldwide in order to break-even,^[132] with others estimating it would need to make $400 million in order to turn a profit.^[133]

In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross $30–40 million from 3,659 theaters in its opening weekend, with some projections having it as high as $50 million or as low as $25 million.^[134][135] The week of its release, Fandango reported the film was the highest pre-seller of any Tarantino film.^[136] The film made $16.9 million on its first day, including $5.8 million from Thursday night previews (the highest total of Tarantino's career). It went on to debut to $41.1 million, finishing second behind holdover The Lion King and marking Tarantino's largest opening. Comscore reported that 47% of audience members went to see the film because of who the director was (compared to the typical 7%) and 37% went because of the cast (compared to normally 18%).^[3] The film grossed $20 million in its second weekend, representing a "nice" drop of just 51% and finishing third, and then made $11.6 million and $7.6 million the subsequent weekends.^{[137][138][139]} In its fifth weekend the film made $5 million, bringing its running domestic total to $123.1 million, becoming the second-highest of Tarantino's career behind Django Unchained.^[140] In its ninth weekend, its global total earnings reached $329.4 million, surpassing Inglourious Basterds to become Tarantino's second-highest global grosser behind Django Unchained.

New York City (NYC), often called simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2019 population of 8,336,817 distributed over about 302.6 square miles (784 km²), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States.^[11] Located at the southern tip of the U.S. state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass.^[12] With almost 20 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and approximately 23 million in its combined statistical area, it is one of the world’s most populous megacities. New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, significantly influencing commerce,^[13] entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations,^[14] New York is an important center for international diplomacy.^[15][16]

Situated on one of the world’s largest natural harbors, New York City is composed of five boroughs, each of which is a county of the State of New York. The five boroughs—Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898.^[17] The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,^[18] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States,^[19] the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.^[20][21] As of 2019, the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $2.0 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world.

In May 1513, the PortugueseexplorerJorge Álvares arrived at an island near the coast of China they called “Tamão“.^[4] This was the first contact of Europeans with China via the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope.^[5] Tamão was fortified by Simão de Andrade and reclaimed by the Chinese during the expulsion of the Portuguese in the 1520s.^[6] Western scholarship, following J. M. Braga, generally contends that this “Tamão” is Nei Lingding, the main island in the mouth of the Pearl River, 6 km off the coast of the mainland. Recent Chinese scholarship finds this identification to be insufficiently proven, however, and suggests a number of other potential islands including the nearby and far larger Lantau Island

n May 1513, Álvares sailed under the Portuguese Malacca captain Rui de Brito Patalim in a junk from Pegu. The expedition was accompanied by five other junks. Álvares himself was accompanied by two other Portuguese mariners.^[1]

Álvares made first contact on Chinese soil on an island near the historic city of Guangzhou in southern China in May 1513.^[2] The location of the island, which the Portuguese called Tamão, is not exactly known except that it is in the Pearl River Delta, and scholarship has suggested islands such as Lantau Island and Lintin Island as potential candidates. Upon landing on Tamão, Álvares raised a padrão from the king of Portugal.^[1] Based on information from their captain, they hoped to find trade. Soon after this, Afonso de Albuquerque, the Viceroy of the Estado da Índia dispatched Rafael Perestrello—a cousin of Christopher Columbus^[3]—to seek trade relations with the Chinese. In a ship from Malacca, Rafael Perestrello landed on the southern shores of Guangdong later that year in 1513.^[3]

The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth‘s oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.

At 165,250,000 square kilometers (63,800,000 square miles) in area (as defined with an Antarctic southern border), this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth’s water surface and about 32% of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth’s land area combined.^[1] The centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. Ocean circulation ( caused by the Coriolis effect ) subdivides it into two largely independent volumes of water, which meet at the equator: the North(ern) Pacific Ocean and South(ern) Pacific Ocean. The Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific.^[2]

Russia,^[c] or the Russian Federation,^[14][d] is a transcontinental country located in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the south. Russia covers over 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), spanning more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, stretching eleven time zones, and bordering 16 sovereign nations. Moscow is the country’s capital and largest city, other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk and Samara.

Russia is the largest country in the world, the ninth-most populous country, as well as the most populous country in Europe. The country is one of the world’s most sparsely populated and urbanized. About half of the country’s total area is forested, concentrating around four-fifths of its total population of over 146.7 million on its smaller and dense western portion, as opposed to its larger and sparse eastern portion. Russia is administratively divided into 85 federal subjects. The Moscow Metropolitan Area is the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and among the largest in the world, with more than 20 million residents.

The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran.^[2][3] They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language,^[4][5][6] as well as languages closely related to Persian.^[7]

The ancient Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who migrated to the region of Persis, corresponding to the modern province of Fars in southwestern Iran, by the ninth century BC.^[8][9] Together with their compatriot allies, they established and ruled some of the world’s most powerful empires,^[10][9] well-recognized for their massive cultural, political, and social influence covering much of the territory and population of the ancient world.^[11][12][13] Throughout history, Persians have contributed greatly to art and science.^[14][15][16] Persian literature is one of the world’s most prominent literary traditions.^[17]

In contemporary terminology, people of Persian heritage native specifically to present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are referred to as Tajiks, whereas those in the Caucasus (primarily in the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian federal subject of Dagestan), albeit heavily assimilated, are referred to as Tats.^[18][19] However, historically, the terms Tajik and Tat were used as synonymous and interchangeable with Persian.^[18] Many influential Persian figures hailed from outside Iran’s present-day borders to the northeast in Central Asia and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent to the northwest in the Caucasus proper.^[20][21] In historical contexts, especially in English, “Persians” may be defined more loosely to cover all subjects of the ancient Persian polities, regardless of ethnic background.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire (Assyrian cuneiform:  mat Aš-šur ^KI, “Country of the city of god Aššur“; also phonetically  mat Aš-šur)^[a] was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 609 BC,^[10][11][12] and became the largest empire of the world up until that time.^{[13][unreliable source?]} The Assyrians perfected early techniques of imperial rule, many of which became standard in later empires.^[14] The Assyrians were the first to be armed with iron weapons, and their troops employed advanced, effective military tactics.^[15]

Following the conquests of Adad-nirari II in the late 10th century BC, Assyria emerged as the most powerful state in the world at the time, coming to dominate the Ancient Near East, East Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Caucasus, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, eclipsing and conquering rivals such as Babylonia, Elam, Persia, Urartu, Lydia, the Medes, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Israel, Judah, Phoenicia, Chaldea, Canaan, the Kushite Empire, the Arabs, and Egypt.