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Those who converted to Catholicism were questioned about their loyalty to Japan and in 1597 Hideyoshi ordered the crucifixion of nine Catholic missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts This was only the start of the hostility towards European influence and interaction persecutions beheadings and forced conversions would all but eliminate the Christian community over the next few decades

The key points of the Edict of 1635 included

As a way of enforcing the edict investigation methods such as the antiChristian inquisition were established to expose those still practicing Catholicism The fumi e ceremony was considered yet another way of detecting a Christian to reveal any individual that was still loyal to the Christian faith a picture resembling that of Jesus or Mary was placed on the floor of a pagoda and everyone within the building was required to step on it If any hesitation was visible or any reluctance was detected that individual was automatically suspect and subject to investigation

Monetary rewards were also offered to anyone who had information regarding the violation of the edict Anyone suspect of disregarding the decree would undergo a thorough investigation and punishment usually followed The allowance of ships was strictly regulated only specific vessels were permitted to enter Japan and merchants had to obtain special licenses to trade Although trade was not cut off completely it was very rare To discourage those from embracing anything even remotely related to Europe the Tokugawa punished any offenders that happened to surface Many were publicly tortured and often faced the death penalty as a result of their practices

Following the precedence of this seclusion edict others followed in its footsteps One example is the edict detailing the Exclusion of the Portuguese in 1639 This isolationist policy would continue to thrive until 1854 over two hundred years later when Commodore Perry from the Americas embraced Japan at the Convention of Kanagawa Nichibei Washin Jyaku Although the isolationist policy was not willingly given up on July 29 1858 Japan and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce Nichibei Shk Tssh Jyaku also known as the Harris Treaty The signing of this document opened numerous trade ports in areas such as Edo Kobe Nagasaki Niigata and Yokohama along Japan s coast

Zodiac is a 2007 American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher The screenplay by James Vanderbilt is based on the 1986 nonfiction book of the same name by Robert Graysmith The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr with Anthony Edwards Brian Cox Elias Koteas Donal Logue John Carroll Lynch Dermot Mulroney and Chlo Sevigny in supporting roles

Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for a notorious serial killer who called himself the Zodiac and killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters blood stained clothing and ciphers mailed to newspapers The cases remain one of the United States most infamous unsolved crimes

Fincher Vanderbilt and producer Bradley J Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation and research into the Zodiac murders Fincher employed the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to photograph most of the film with traditional high speed film cameras used for slow motion murder sequences

Reviews for Zodiac were very positive lauding the film s writing directing acting and historical authenticity Zodiac was nominated for several awards and Fincher won the Best Director prize from the Dublin Film Critics Circle in 2007 The film grossed over 84 million worldwide against a production budget of 65 million

On July 4 1969 an unknown man attacks Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau with a handgun at a lovers lane in Vallejo California Mageau survives Ferrin dies

One month later the San Francisco Chronicle receives encrypted letters written by the killer calling himself the Zodiac and taunting the police Political cartoonist Robert Graysmith is not taken seriously by crime reporter Paul Avery or the editors and is excluded from the initial details about the killings despite his interest in the case When the newspaper publishes the letters a married couple is able to decipher one At a local bar Avery initially makes fun of Graysmith before they discuss the coded letters Graysmith interprets the letter which Avery finds helpful and Avery begins sharing information The Zodiac killer attacks law student Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard at Lake Berryessa in Napa County on September 27 1969 Shepard dies two days later and Hartnell survives One of Graysmith s insights about the letters is that the Zodiac s reference to man as the most dangerous animal of them all is a reference to the story and film The Most Dangerous Game which features General Zaroff as a man who hunts live human prey The fact that both Zaroff s surname and the name Zodiac start with a Z also seems significant

Two weeks later San Francisco taxicab driver Paul Stine is shot and killed in the city s Presidio Heights district immediately after dropping the killer off The Zodiac killer mails pieces of Stine s blood stained shirt to the Chronicle along with a taunting letter San Francisco police detectives Dave Toschi and his partner Bill Armstrong are assigned to the Stine case and work closely with Vallejo s Jack Mulanax and Captain Ken Narlow in Napa The killer or someone posing as him continues to toy with authorities by sending more letters and speaks on the phone with lawyer Melvin Belli when he makes an appearance on a television talk show Avery and Graysmith form an alliance delving deeper into the case as time permits

In 1971 Detectives Toschi Armstrong and Mulanax question Arthur Leigh Allen a suspect in the Vallejo case Allen behaves suspiciously during the interview They ask to see his watch and notice that he wears a Zodiac brand wristwatch which has the same logo used by the killer However a handwriting expert insists that Allen did not write the Zodiac letters even though Allen is said to be ambidextrous Avery receives a letter threatening his life becoming increasingly paranoid he turns to drugs and alcohol At one point he shares information with the Riverside Police Department angering both Toschi and Armstrong The case s notoriety weighs on Toschi who is bothered when Graysmith shows up at the theater where Toschi is watching a Hollywood film Dirty Harry loosely based on the Zodiac case with his wife

In 1978 Avery leaves the Chronicle and moves to the Sacramento Bee Graysmith persistently contacts Toschi about the Zodiac murders and eventually impresses the veteran detective with his knowledge of the case While Toschi can not directly give Graysmith access to the evidence he provides contact names of other police departments in other counties where Zodiac murders occurred Armstrong transfers from the San Francisco Police homicide division and Toschi is demoted for supposedly forging a Zodiac letter Graysmith continues his own investigation which is profiled in the Chronicle and he allows himself to be interviewed on television about his book in progress concerning the case He begins receiving anonymous phone calls with heavy breathing Because of his immersion in the case Graysmith loses his job and his wife Melanie leaves him taking their children with her Graysmith acquires more information that points to Allen as the Zodiac and although circumstantial evidence seems to indicate his guilt the physical evidence such as fingerprints and handwriting samples do not implicate him

In December 1983 Graysmith tracks Allen down to a Vallejo Ace Hardware store where he is employed as a sales clerk The men have a brief encounter before Graysmith leaves Eight years later victim Mike Mageau meets with authorities and identifies Allen from a police mugshot As the authorities walk by an airport book store copies of Graysmith s book Zodiac are shown Final title cards inform the audience that Allen died in 1992 before he could be questioned further A DNA test performed in 2002 on an archived autopsy sample did not match a partial DNA sample gathered from the postage stamp on one of the Zodiac letters but this does not rule him out as a suspect

James Vanderbilt had read Robert Graysmith s book Zodiac in 1986 while in high school Years later after becoming a screenwriter he got the opportunity to meet Graysmith and became fascinated by the folklore surrounding the Zodiac Killer He then decided to try to translate the story into a script Vanderbilt had endured bad experiences in the past in which the endings of his scripts had been changed and wanted to have more control over the material this time He pitched his adaptation of Zodiac to Mike Medavoy and Bradley J Fischer from Phoenix Pictures by agreeing to write a spec script if he could have more creative control over it

Graysmith first met Fischer and Vanderbilt at the premiere of Paul Schrader s film Auto Focus which was based on Graysmith s 1991 book about the life and death of actor Bob Crane A deal was made and they optioned the rights to Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked when they became available after languishing at another studio for nearly a decade David Fincher was their first choice to direct based on his work on Seven Originally he was going to direct an adaptation of James Ellroy s novel The Black Dahlia later filmed by Brian De Palma and envisioned a five hour 80 million miniseries with film stars When that fell through Fincher left that project and moved on to Zodiac

Fincher was drawn to this story because he spent much of his childhood in San Anselmo in Marin County during the initial Zodiac murders I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now And my dad who worked from home and who was very dry not one to soft pedal things turned slowly in his chair and said Oh yeah There s a serial killer who has killed four or five people who calls himself Zodiac who s threatened to take a high powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus and then shoot the children as they come off the bus For Fincher as a young boy the killer was the ultimate boogeyman The director was also drawn to the unresolved ending of Vanderbilt s screenplay because it felt true to real life as cases are not always solved Toschi later stated that he had watched Zodiac several times and added I thought Ruffalo did a good job but also reported that the film reminded him of old frustrations that the case was never closed

Fincher realized that his job was to dispel the mythic stature the case had taken on over the years by clearly defining what was fact and what was fiction He told Vanderbilt that he wanted the screenplay rewritten but with additional research done from the original police reports Fincher found that there was a lot of speculation and hearsay and wanted to interview people directly involved in the case in person to see if he believed what they were telling him Fincher did this because he felt a burden of responsibility in making a film that convicted someone posthumously

Fincher Fischer and Vanderbilt spent months interviewing witnesses family members of suspects retired and current investigators the only two surviving victims and the mayors of San Francisco and Vallejo Fincher said Even when we did our own interviews we would talk to two people One would confirm some aspects of it and another would deny it Plus so much time had passed memories are affected and the different telling of the stories would change perception So when there was any doubt we always went with the police reports During the course of their research Fincher and Fischer hired Gerald McMenamin an internationally known forensic linguistics expert and professor of linguistics at California State University Fresno to analyze the Zodiac s letters Unlike document examiners in the 1970s he focused on the language of the Zodiac and how he formed his sentences in terms of word structure and spelling

Fincher and Fischer approached Metro Goldwyn Mayer to finance the film but talks with them fell through because the studio wanted the running time fixed at two hours and fifteen minutes They then approached other studios and Warner Bros and Paramount Pictures agreed to share the production costs and were willing to be more flexible about the running time The film was a tough sell to the studios and the executives were concerned about the heavy amount of dialogue and the lack of action scenes as well as the inconclusive nature of the story arc

When Dave Toschi met Fincher Fischer and Vanderbilt the director told him that he was not going to make another Dirty Harry which had been loosely based on the Zodiac case Toschi was impressed with their knowledge of the case and afterwards he realized that he had learned a lot from them In addition the Zodiac s two surviving victims Mike Mageau and Bryan Hartnell were consultants on the film

Alan J Pakula s film All the President s Men was the template for Zodiac as Fincher felt that it was also the story of a reporter determined to get the story at any cost and one who was new to being an investigative reporter It was all about his obsession to know the truth And like in that film he did not want to spend time telling the back story of any of the characters focusing instead on what they did in regards to the case

Vanderbilt was drawn to the notion that Graysmith went from a cartoonist to one of the most significant investigators of the case He pitched the story as What if Garry Trudeau woke up one morning and tried to solve the Son of Sam As he worked on the script he became friends with Graysmith The filmmakers were able to get the cooperation of the Vallejo Police Department one of the key investigators at the time because they hoped that the film would inspire someone to come forward with a crucial bit of information that might help solve this decades old cold case

One of his earliest conversations on the film s casting was with the actress Jennifer Aniston She was talking about actors she had worked with who she loved and two of her favorites were Gyllenhaal The Good Girl and Mark Ruffalo Rumor Has It While researching the film Fincher considered Jake Gyllenhaal to play Robert Graysmith According to the director I really liked him in Donnie Darko and I thought He s an interesting double sided coin He can do that naive thing but he can also do possessed In preparation for his role Gyllenhaal met Graysmith and videotaped him to study his mannerisms and behavior

Initially Mark Ruffalo was not interested in the project but Fincher wanted him to play David Toschi He met with the actor and told him that he was rewriting the screenplay I loved what he was saying and loved where he was going with it the actor remembers For research he read every report on the case and read all the books on the subject Ruffalo met Toschi and found out that he had perfect recall of the details and what happened when where who was there what he was wearing He always knew what he was wearing I think it is seared into who he is and it was a big deal for him

When casting the role of Inspector William Armstrong Fincher said he thought of Anthony Edwards because I knew I needed the most decent person I could find because he would be the balance of the movie In a weird way this movie would nt exist without Bill Armstrong Everything we know about the Zodiac case we know because of his notes So in casting the part I wanted to get someone who is totally reliable

Originally Gary Oldman was to play Melvin Belli but he went to a lot of trouble they had appliances but just physically it was nt going to work he just did nt have the girth Graysmith remembers Brian Cox was cast instead

The finished film has an unusually large cast of characters In a May 15 2007 film review Variety noted Performances and casting are impeccable down to the smallest role

Fincher decided to use the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to shoot the film Fincher had previously used the Thomson Viper over the past three years on commercials for Nike Hewlett Packard Heineken and Lexus which allowed him to get used to and experiment with the equipment He was able to use inexpensive desktop software like Final Cut Pro to edit Zodiac Fincher remarked in an interview Dailies almost always end up being disappointing like the veil is pierced and you look at it for the first time and think Oh my god this is what I really have to work with But when you can see what you have as it s gathered it can be a much less neurotic process

Zodiac was the first production to employ the Filmstream camera in its native Filmstream mode which records an uncompressed video stream allowing for exceptional quality

Contrary to popular belief Zodiac was not shot entirely digitally traditional high speed film cameras were used for slow motion murder sequences Michael Mann s Miami Vice as well as his previous effort Collateral a coproduction of Paramount and its current sister studio DreamWorks and which also starred Mark Ruffalo were also shot with the camera but mixed in other formats Once shot on the Viper camera the files were converted to DVCPro HD 1080i and edited in Final Cut Pro This was for editorial decisions only During the later stages of editing the original uncompressed 1080p 4 4 4 RAW digital source footage was assembled automatically to maintain an up to date digital negative of the film Other digital productions like Superman Returns or Apocalypto recorded to the HDCAM tape format

Fincher had previously worked with director of photography Harris Savides on Seven he shot the opening credits and The Game Savides loved the script but realized there was so much exposition just people talking on the phone or having conversations It was difficult to imagine how it could be done in a visual way Fincher and Savides did not want to repeat the look of Seven The director s approach to Zodiac was to create a look mundane enough that audiences would accept that what they were watching was the truth The filmmakers also did not want to glamorize the killer or tell the story through his eyes That would have turned the story into a first person shooter video game We did nt want to make the sort of movie that serial killers would want to own Fincher said

Savides first experience with the Viper Filmstream camera was shooting a Motorola commercial with Fincher From there he used it on Zodiac Fincher wanted to make sure that the camera was more inclined towards film production so that the studio would be more comfortable about using it on a project with a large budget To familiarize himself with the camera he did as many things wrong as I possibly could I went against everything I was supposed to do with the camera Savides felt comfortable with the camera after discovering its limitations

Fincher and Savides used the photographs of William Eggleston Stephen Shore s work from the early Seventies and actual photos from the Zodiac police files The two men worked hard to capture the look and feel of the period as Fincher admitted I suppose there could have been more VW bugs but I think what we show is a pretty good representation of the time It is not technically perfect There are some flaws but some are intended The San Francisco Chronicle was built in the old post office in the Terminal Annex Building in downtown Los Angeles A building on nearby Spring Street subbed for the Hall of Justice and the San Francisco Police Department Production began on September 12 2005 The filmmakers shot for five weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of the time in Los Angeles bringing the film in under budget wrapping in February 2006 The film took 115 days to shoot

Some of the cast was not happy with Fincher s exacting ways and perfectionism Some scenes required upwards of 70 takes Gyllenhaal was frustrated by the director s methods and commented in an interview You get a take 5 takes 10 takes Some places 90 takes But there is a stopping point There s a point at which you go That s what we have to work with But we would reshoot things So there came a point where I would say well what do I do Where s the risk Downey said I just decided aside from several times I wanted to garrote him that I was going to give him what he wanted I think I m a perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags Fincher responded If an actor is going to let the role come to them they ca nt resent the fact that I m willing to wait as long as that takes You know the first day of production in San Francisco we shot 56 takes of Mark and Jake and it s the 56th take that s in the movie Ruffalo also backed up his director s methods when he said The way I see it is you enter into someone else s world as an actor You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that s new and pushes and changes you or hold on to what you think it should be and have a stubborn immovable journey that s filled with disappointment and anger

Digital Domain handled the bulk of the film s 200 effects shots including pools of blood and bloody fingerprints found at crime scenes For the murder of Cecelia Shepard that took place at Lake Berryessa blood seepage and clothing stains were added in postproduction Fincher did not want to shoot the blood with practical effects because wiping everything down after every take would take too long so the murder sequences were done with CG blood

CG was also used to recreate the San Francisco neighborhood at Washington and Cherry Streets where cab driver Paul Stine was killed The area had changed significantly over the years and residents did nt want the murder to be recreated in their neighborhood so Fincher shot the six minute sequence on a bluescreen stage Production designer Donald Burt gave the visual effects team detailed drawings of the intersection as it was in 1969 Photographs of every possible angle of the area were shot with a high resolution digital camera allowing the effects crew to build computer based geometric models of homes that were then textured with period facades 3 D vintage police motorcycles squad cars a firetruck and street lights were added to the final shot

Several of the film s establishing shots of the 70s era Bay Area were created by the Marin County effects house Matte World Digital The helicopter shots of the fireworks laden sky over Vallejo the San Francisco waterfront and the overhead shot of the cab driving through San Francisco were CG as was the shot looking down at traffic from the tower of the Golden Gate Bridge A time lapse sequence of the building of the Transamerica Pyramid was a hybrid of 2D and 3D matte painting The shot was initially created using reference photos of the Pyramid taken from the rooftop of Francis Ford Coppola s Sentinel Building MWD s visual effects supervisor Craig Barron then researched the Pyramid s original construction techniques for accuracy in the animated sequence to imply the passage of time within the film s story

Originally Fincher envisioned the film s soundtrack to be composed of 40 cues of vintage music spanning the nearly three decades of the Zodiac story With music supervisor George Drakoulias the director searched for the right pop songs that reflected the era including Three Dog Night s cover of Easy to Be Hard because it s so ingrained in my psyche as being what the summer of 69 sounded like in northern California Initially Fincher did not envision an original score for the film but rather a tapestry of sound design vintage songs of the period sound bites and clips of KFRC an AM radio giant and Mathews Top of the Hill Daly City home of a prominent hi fi dealership of the time The director told the studio that he did not need a composer and would buy various songs instead They agreed but as the film developed sound designer and longtime Fincher collaborator Ren Klyce felt there were places in some scenes that could have used music So he inserted music from two of his favorite soundtracks David Shire s scores for The Conversation and All the President s Men Fincher was eager to work with Shire as All the President s Men was one of his favorite films and one of the primary cinematic influences on Zodiac He reminded Klyce of the deal that he had made with the studio

Klyce got in touch with sound and film editor Walter Murch who worked on The Conversation and he got Klyce in touch with Shire Fincher sent the composer a copy of the script and flew him in for a meeting and a screening in LA At first Fincher only wanted 15 20 minutes of score and for it to be all based on solo piano As Shire worked on it and incorporated textures of a Charles Ives piece called The Unanswered Question and Conversation based cues he found that he had 37 minutes of original music The orchestra Shire assembled consisted of musicians from the San Francisco Opera and SF ballet Shire said There are 12 signs of the Zodiac and there is a way of using atonal and tonal music So we used 12 tones never repeating any of them but manipulating them He used specific instruments to represent the characters the trumpet for Toschi the solo piano for Graysmith and the dissonant strings for the Zodiac killer

An early version of Zodiac ran three hours and eight minutes It was supposed to be released in time for Academy Award consideration but Paramount felt that the film ran too long and asked Fincher to make changes Contractually he had final cut and once he reached a length he felt was right the director refused to make any further cuts To trim down the film to two hours and forty minutes he had to cut a two minute blackout montage of hit songs signaling the passage of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer It was replaced with a title card that reads Four years later Another cut scene that test screening audiences did not like involved three guys talking into a speakerphone to get a search warrant as Toschi and Armstrong talk to SFPD Capt Marty Lee Dermot Mulroney about their case against suspect Arthur Leigh Allen Fincher said that this scene would probably be put back on the DVD

To promote Zodiac Paramount posted on light poles in major cities original sketches of the actual Zodiac killer with the words In theaters March 2nd at the bottom The film was screened in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 17 2007 with Fincher and Gyllenhaal participating in a press conference afterwards The director s cut of Zodiac was given a rare screening at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City on November 19 2007 with Fincher being interviewed by film critic Kent Jones afterwards

The DVD for Zodiac was released on July 24 2007 and is available widescreen or fullscreen presented in anamorphic widescreen and an English Dolby Digital 51 Surround track There are no extra materials included

According to David Prior producer of the subsequent two disc special edition the initial bare bones edition was only reluctantly agreed to by Fincher because I needed more time on the bonus material The studio was locked into their release date so Fincher allowed that version to be released first It had nothing to do with Fincher double dipping his own movie before it even makes it to stores and everything to do with buying more time for the special edition He stated that the theatrical cut would only be available on the single disc edition Prior elaborated further Nobody wants fans feeling like they re being taken advantage of and I know that double dipping creates that impression That s why it was so important to me that consumers be told there was another version coming In this case it really was a rock and ahard place situation and delaying the second release was done strictly for the benefit of the final product But this is a very ambitious project easily the most far reaching I ve ever worked on and owing largely to studio snafus that I ca nt really elaborate on I did nt have enough time to do it properly Thus Fincher bought me the extra time by agreeing to a staggered release which I m very grateful for In its first week rentals for the DVD earned 67 million

The two disc director s cut DVD and HD DVD were released on January 8 2008 with its UK release on Blu ray and DVD announced for September 29 2008 Disc 1 features in addition to a longer cut of the film an audio commentary by Fincher and a second by Gyllenhaal Downey Fischer Vanderbilt and author James Ellroy Disc 2 includes a trailer a Zodiac Deciphered documentary a Visual Effects of Zodiac featurette previsualization split screen comparisons for the Blue Rock Springs Lake Berryessa and San Francisco murder sequences a This is the Zodiac Speaking featurette and a His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen featurette Other extras apparently originally intended for the set including TV spots and featurettes on Digital Workflow Linguistic Analysis Jeopardy Surface Geographic Profiling Dr Kim Rossmo s geographic profile of the Zodiac and The Psychology of Aggression Behavioral Profiling Special Agent Sharon Pagaling Hagan s behavioral profile of the Zodiac were omitted However the latter three featurettes were made available on the film s website This new version runs five minutes longer than the theatrical cut For Oscar contention Paramount distributed the Director s Cut DVD to the Producers Guild of America the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild instead of the official release version This was the first time that the studio had done this

Opening in 2362 theaters on March 2 2007 the film grossed US 133 million in its opening weekend placing second and posting a per theater average of 5671 The film was outgrossed by fellow opener Wild Hogs and saw a decline of over 50 in its second weekend losing out to the record breaking 300 It grossed 33 million in North America and 51 million in the rest of the world bringing its current total to 84 million above its estimated 65 million production budget In an interview with Sight Sound magazine Fincher addressed the film s low gross at the North American box office Even with the box office being what it is I still think there s an audience out there for this movie Everyone has a different idea about marketing but my philosophy is that if you market a movie to 16 year old boys and do nt deliver Saw or Seven they re going to be the most vociferous ones coming out of the screening saying This movie sucks And you re saying goodbye to the audience who would get it because they re going to look at the ads and say I do nt want to see some slasher movie

Overall reviews of the film were highly positive Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman awarded the film an A grade hailing the film as a procedural thriller for the information age that spins your head in a new way luring you into a vortex and then deeper still Nathan Lee in his review for The Village Voice wrote that director Fincher s very lack of pretense coupled with a determination to get the facts down with maximum economy and objectivity gives Zodiac its hard bright integrity As a crime saga newspaper drama and period piece it works just fine As an allegory of life in the information age it blew my mind Todd McCarthy s review in Variety praised the film s almost unerringly accurate evocation of the workaday San Francisco of 35 40 years ago Forget the distorted emphasis on hippies and flower power that many such films indulge in this is the city as it was experienced by most people who lived and worked there David Ansen in his review for Newsweek magazine wrote Zodiac is meticulously crafted Harris Savides s state of the art digital cinematography has a richness indistinguishable from film and it runs almost two hours and 40 minutes Still the movie holds you in its grip from start to finish Fincher boldly and some may think perversely withholds the emotional and forensic payoff we re conditioned to expect from a big studio movie Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of a possible 4 writing The film is a police procedural crossed with a newspaper movie but free of most of the cliches of either Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful Ebert also praised the casting critical in an ensemble film and as a longtime columnist for The Chicago Sun Times asserted Zodiac was intriguing in its accuracy in showing the operation of a major newspaper

Some critics however were displeased with the film s long running time and lack of action scenes The film gets mired in the inevitable red tape of police investigations wrote Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal Constitution who also felt that the film stumbles to a rather unfulfilling conclusion and seems to last as long as the Oscars Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer felt that Mr Fincher s flair for casting is the major asset of his curiously attenuated return to the serial killer genre I keep saying curiously with regard to Mr Fincher because I ca nt really figure out what he is up to in Zodiac with its two hour and 37 minute running time for what struck me as a shaggy dog narrative Christy Lemire wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that Jake Gyllenhaal is both the central figure and the weakest link But he s never fleshed out sufficiently to make you believe that he d sacrifice his safety and that of his family to find the truth We are told repeatedly that the former Eagle Scout is just a genuinely good guy but that s not enough

In the United Kingdom Time Out magazine wrote Zodiac is nt a puzzle film in quite that way instead its subject is the compulsion to solve puzzles and its coup is the creeping recognition quite contrary to the flow of crime cinema of how fruitless that compulsion can be Peter Bradshaw in his review for The Guardian commended the film for its sheer cinematic virility and gave it four stars out of five In his review for Empire magazine Kim Newman gave the film four out of five stars and wrote You ll need patience with the film s approach which follows its main characters by poring over details and be prepared to put up with a couple of rote family arguments and weary cop conversations but this gripping character study becomes more agonisingly suspenseful as it gets closer to an answer that ca nt be confirmed Graham Fuller in Sight Sound magazine wrote the tone is pleasingly flat and mundane evoking the demoralising grind of police work in a prefeminist pretechnological era As such Zodiac is considerably more adult than both Seven which salivates over the macabre cat and mouse game it plays with the audience and the macho brinkmanship of Fight Club Not all British critics liked the film David Thompson in The Guardian felt that in relation to the rest of Fincher s career Zodiac was the worst yet a terrible disappointment in which an ingenious and deserving all American serial killer nearly gets lost in the meandering treatment of cops and journalists obsessed with the case

In France Le Monde newspaper praised Fincher for having obtained a maturity that impresses by his mastery of form while Libration described the film as a thriller of elegance magnificently photographed by the great Harry Savides However Le Figaro wrote No audacity no invention nothing but a plot which intrigues without captivating disturbs without terrifying interests without exciting

As of September 2017 Zodiac has a rating of 89 rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 233 reviews dubbing it Certified Fresh with an average rating of 77 10 Its consensus states A quiet dialogue driven thriller that delivers with scene after scene of gut wrenching anxiety David Fincher also spends more time illustrating nuances of his characters and recreating the mood of the 70s than he does on gory details of murder It also has a 78 metascore at Metacritic

Only two 2007 films No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood appeared on more critics top ten lists than Zodiac Some of the notable top ten list appearances are

In the British Film Institute s 2012 Sight Sound polls of the greatest movies ever made three critics and one director Bong Joon ho named Zodiac one of their 10 favorite films In August 2016 it was ranked 12th on a critics poll conducted by BBC of the 21st century s greatest films

Wins

Nominations

A constitutional amendment is a modification of the constitution of a nation or state In many jurisdictions the text of the constitution itself is altered in others the text is not changed but the amendments change its effect The method of modification is typically written into the constitution itself

Most constitutions require that amendments can not be enacted unless they have passed a special procedure that is more stringent than that required of ordinary legislation Examples of such special procedures include supermajorities in the legislature or direct approval by the electorate in a referendum or even a combination of two or more different special procedures A referendum to amend the constitution may also be triggered in some jurisdictions by popular initiative

Australia and Ireland provide examples of constitutions requiring that all amendments are first passed by the legislature before being submitted to the people in the case of Ireland a simple majority of those voting at the electorate is all that is required whereas a more complex set of criteria must be met in Australia a majority of voters in a majority of states is also necessary Switzerland has procedure similar to that of Australia

The special procedures for the amendment of some constitutions have proven to be so exacting that of proposed amendments either few 8 Amendments out of 44 proposed in Australia or none as in Japan have been passed over a period of several decades In contrast the constitution of the US state of Alabama has been amended over 800 times since 1901

There are a number of formal differences from one jurisdiction to another in the manner in which constitutional amendments are both originally drafted and written down once they become law In some jurisdictions such as Ireland Estonia and Australia constitutional amendments originate as bills and become laws in the form of acts of parliament This may be the case notwithstanding the fact that a special procedure is required to bring an amendment into force Thus for example in Ireland and Australia although amendments are drafted in the form of Acts of Parliament they can not become law until they have been approved in a referendum By contrast in the United States a proposed amendment originates as a special joint resolution of Congress that does not require the President to sign and that the President can not veto

The manner in which constitutional amendments are finally recorded takes two main forms In most jurisdictions amendments to a constitution take the form of revisions to the previous text Thus once an amendment has become law portions of the original text may be deleted or new articles may be inserted among existing ones The second less common method is for amendments to be appended to the end of the main text in the form of special articles of amendment leaving the body of the original text intact Although the wording of the original text is not altered the doctrine of implied repeal applies In other words in the event of conflict an article of amendment will usually take precedence over the provisions of the original text or of an earlier amendment Nonetheless there may still be ambiguity whether an amendment is intended to supersede or to supplement an existing article in the text

An article of amendment may however explicitly express itself as having the effect of repealing a specific existing article The use of appended articles of amendment is most famous as a feature of the United States Constitution but it is also the method of amendment in a number of other jurisdictions such as Venezuela

Under the 1919 German Weimar Constitution the prevailing legal theory was that any law reaching the necessary supermajorities in both chambers of parliament was free to deviate from the terms of the constitution without itself becoming part of the constitution This very wide conception of amendment eased the rise of Adolf Hitler to power it was consequently explicitly ruled out in the postwar 1949 constitution which allows amendments only by explicitly changing the constitution s text

The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between member states that describe the constitutional basis of the European Union Prior to the Treaty of Lisbon s entry into force in 2009 there was only one procedure for the revision of the treaties on which the EU is based the convening of an intergovernmental conference Since 2009 Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union has laid down two procedures for the revision of the treaties

The Constitution of Albania states its terms for being amending under Article 177 within Part 17 Amending The Constitution

1 An initiative for amending the Constitution may be taken by not less than one fifth of the members of the Assembly

2 No amendment to the Constitution may take place when extraordinary measures are in effect

3 A proposed amendment is approved by not less than two thirds of all members of the Assembly

4 The Assembly may decide by two thirds of all its members that the proposed constitutional amendments be voted on in a referendum The proposed constitutional amendment becomes effective after ratification by referendum which takes place not later than 60 days after its approval by the Assembly

5 An approved constitutional amendment is submitted to referendum when one fifth of the members of the Assembly request it

6 The President of the Republic can not return for reconsideration a constitutional amendment approved by the Assembly

7 An amendment approved by referendum is promulgated by the President of the Republic and becomes effective on the date provided for in it

8 An amendment of the Constitution can not be made unless a year has passed since the rejection by the Assembly of a proposed amendment on the same issue or three years have passed from its rejection by referendum

Article 177 is the only article under this part of the Albanian constitution

The Constitution of Austria is unusually liberal in terms of constitutional amendments Any piece of parliamentary legislation can be designated as constitutional law ie as a part of the constitution if the required supermajority and other formalities for an amendment are met An amendment may take the form of a change of the Bundes Verfassungsgesetz the centerpiece of the constitution a change to another constitutional act a new constitutional act or of a section of constitutional law in a nonconstitutional act Furthermore international treaties can be enacted as constitutional law as happened in the case of the European Convention of Human Rights Over the decades frequent amendments and in some cases the intention to immunize pieces of legislation from judicial review have led to much constitutional garbage consisting of hundreds of constitutional provisions spread all over the legal system This has led to calls for reform

A majority of two thirds in the National Council parliament Only in the case of a fundamental change Gesamtnderung of the constitution a confirmation by referendum is required Since 1945 this has only happened once when Austria s accession to the European Union was approved by popular vote

If a constitutional amendment limits the powers of the states a two thirds majority in the Federal Council of Austria is required as well Depending on the matter on hand two thirds of the Federal Councilors present attendance of one half of all Councilors is required or two thirds of all Federal Councilors must approve If the amendment would change articles 34 or 35 the majority of councilors of at least four of the nine states is an additional requirement

The Constitution of Belgium can be amended by the federal legislative power which consists of the King in practice the Federal Government and the Federal Parliament In order to amend the Constitution the federal legislative power must declare the reasons to revise the Constitution in accordance with Article 195 This is done by means of two so called Declarations of Revision of the Constitution one adopted by the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate and one signed by the King and the Federal Government

Following this declaration the Federal Parliament is automatically dissolved and a new federal election must take place This makes it impossible to amend the Constitution unless an election has intervened Following the election the new Federal Parliament can amend those articles that have been declared revisable Neither Chamber can consider amendments to the Constitution unless at least two thirds of its members are present and the Constitution can only be amended if at least two thirds of the votes cast are in favour of the amendment

The Constitution of Brazil states various terms on how it can be amended Article 60 lies within Section VIII The Legislative Process Subsection 2 Amendments to the Constitution The following is detailed therein

Constitutional amendments may be proposed by

I at least one third of the members of the Chamber of Deputies or the Federal Senate

II the President of the Republic

III more than one half of the Legislative Assemblies of units of the Federation each manifesting its decision by a simple majority of its members

1 The Constitution can not be amended during federal intervention state of defense or stage of siege

2 A proposed amendment shall be debated and voted on in each Chamber of the National Congress in two rounds and shall be considered approved if it obtains three fifths of the votes of the respective members in both rounds

3 A Constitutional amendment shall be promulgated by the Executive Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and Federal Senate taking the next sequential number

4 No proposed constitutional amendment shall be considered that is aimed at abolishing the following

I the federalist form of the National Government

II direct secret universal and periodic suffrage

III separation of powers

IV individual rights and guarantees

5 The subject of a defeated or prejudiced proposed Constitutional amendment may not be made the subject of another proposed amendment in the same legislative session

Article 60 is the only article prescribed under Subsection 2 of Section 8 in the Brazilian constitution

Under the current Constitution of Bulgaria 1991 there are two procedures for amendment depending on the part of the constitution to be amended

This procedure is viewed by some critics as too slow and ineffective There are voices in Bulgaria to remove the institution of Great National Assembly which they view as an anachronism and to adopt a new procedure of constitutional amendment through popular vote

The Constitution of China states how to be amended under Article 64 of Chapter III The Structure of the State It says the following