X-Men (film)

X-Men is a 2000 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the first installment in the X-Men film series. The film, directed by Bryan Singer and written by David Hayter, features an ensemble cast that includes Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Ray Park, Tyler Mane, and Anna Paquin. It depicts a world in which a small proportion of people are mutants, whose possession of superhuman powers makes them distrusted by normal humans. The film focuses on the mutants Wolverine and Rogue as they are brought into a conflict between two groups that have radically different approaches to bringing about the acceptance of mutantkind: Professor Xavier's X-Men, and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by Magneto.

Development for X-Men began as far back as 1984 with Orion Pictures. At one point James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow were in discussions. The film rights went to 20th Century Fox in 1994 and various scripts and film treatments were commissioned from Andrew Kevin Walker, John Logan, Joss Whedon and Michael Chabon. Singer signed to direct in 1996, with further rewrites by Ed Solomon, Singer, Tom DeSanto, Christopher McQuarrie and Hayter in which Beast and Nightcrawler were deleted over budget concerns from Fox. X-Men marks the Hollywood debut of actor Hugh Jackman, who was a last-second choice for Wolverine, cast three weeks into filming. Filming took place from September 22, 1999 to March 3, 2000, primarily in Toronto. X-Men was released to positive reviews and was a financial success, starting the X-Men film franchise and spawning a reemergence of superhero films.

X-Men (Game Gear video game)

X-Men is a video game that was released in 1994 for the Sega Game Gear featuring the X-Men superhero team. In the game, most of the X-Men have been captured by Magneto; only Wolverine and Cyclops survived the initial assault on X-Men headquarters and are available for play at the start of the game. Players rescue the other X-Men and use them and their abilities to defeat Magneto.

Sega released a sequel in 1995, X-Men 2: Game Master's Legacy.

Gameplay

Players defeat enemies and navigate levels by punching, kicking, and jumping. Mutant abilities can be activated and deactivated. However, these mutant abilities drains the energy from the player's character. A new playable character is unlocked after finishing a level, including Storm, Rogue, Psylocke, Nightcrawler and Iceman.

There are several foes from the X-Men universe to defeat including Callisto, Sauron, Sebastian Shaw, Omega Red, a Brood Queen and Magneto. Each boss has their own stage based on various diverse settings from X-Men, including the Morlock Tunnels, the Savage Land, the Hellfire Club, Madripoor, the Brood homeworld and Avalon. These levels are often labyrinths of either technological wonders, biological wonders, or a mixture of both. As more X-Men are rescued, these allies can be called upon to take over as the player's character. Magneto serves as the final boss of the game.

Marvel Anime

Marvel Anime is a series of four television anime series and two direct to video films produced in collaboration between Marvel Entertainment and Japanese animation studio Madhouse. The four twelve-episode series, based on Iron Man, Wolverine, X-Men, and Blade respectively, aired in Japan on Animax between October 2010 and September 2011. An English-language version aired in North America on G4 between July 2011 and April 2012. Each of the series, guided by writer Warren Ellis, largely features Japan as the setting for the storyline.

Premise

The project took top Marvel characters and reintroduced them for a Japanese audience via four 12-part series; Iron Man, Wolverine, X-Men, and Blade, which aired in Japan on Animax between October 2010 and September 2011. The announcement was confirmed at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. According to former Madhouse President and CEO Jungo Maruta, Marvel gave the anime studio free rein to re-imagine the Marvel superheroes for Japanese audiences. An English version is currently airing in the United States on G4. The series was guided by Warren Ellis. "It will create an entire parallel universe for Marvel," said Simon Philips, president of Marvel International about Marvel Anime. The Marvel Anime series is being aired in Australia on Sci Fi.

Opening

Opening may refer to:

See also

Balance of Power (album)

Balance of Power is the twelfth studio album by the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) released in 1986.

Overview

Balance of Power was the last studio album by the Electric Light Orchestra before their disbanding (the band would later reform in 2000). By this time Kelly Groucutt had departed and the group was pared down to a trio of Jeff Lynne, Richard Tandy, and Bev Bevan. Recording for the album began in 1984, with a planned release in spring 1985. The addition of several synthesizer tracks to the album caused its release to be pushed back to early 1986. ELO played some live concerts in the UK and Europe (their last for fifteen years), and for one UK show George Harrison performed as guest guitarist.

The video for the single "Calling America" was shot in Paris, and contains shots of the band playing in front of Centre Georges Pompidou. A video was also made for the single "So Serious." The track "Endless Lies" was intended as an homage to Roy Orbison, and was originally recorded for the never-released double LP version of Secret Messages; it reappeared on this album in a slightly reworked and more compact form. The album was ELO's first to not feature any strings, the first to feature a saxophone solo, and the first released on CD. The original release has the shortest running time of any ELO album.

Opening (morphology)

In mathematical morphology, opening is the dilation of the erosion of a set A by a structuring element B:

where and denote erosion and dilation, respectively.

Together with closing, the opening serves in computer vision and image processing as a basic workhorse of morphological noise removal. Opening removes small objects from the foreground (usually taken as the dark pixels) of an image, placing them in the background, while closing removes small holes in the foreground, changing small islands of background into foreground. These techniques can also be used to find specific shapes in an image. Opening can be used to find things into which a specific structuring element can fit (edges, corners, ...).

One can think of B sweeping around the inside of the boundary of A, so that it does not extend beyond the boundary, and shaping the A boundary around the boundary of the element.

Properties

Opening is idempotent, that is, .

Opening is increasing, that is, if , then .

Opening is anti-extensive, i.e., .

DVD

DVD ( "digital versatile disc" or "digital video disc") is a digital optical disc storage format invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is widely used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.

Pre-recorded DVDs are mass-produced using molding machines that physically stamp data onto the DVD. Such discs are a form of DVD-ROMs, because data can only be read and not written or erased. Blank recordable DVD discs (DVD-R and DVD+R) can be recorded once using a DVD recorder and then function as a DVD-ROM. Rewritable DVDs (DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM) can be recorded and erased many times.

DVDs are used in DVD-Video consumer digital video format and in DVD-Audio consumer digital audio format as well as for authoring DVD discs written in a special AVCHD format to hold high definition material (often in conjunction with AVCHD format camcorders). DVDs containing other types of information may be referred to as DVD data discs.