Personalized medicine is becoming the hallmark of care in oncology, but its use is also increasing in other therapeutic areas including inflammation, respiratory, infectious diseases and central nervous system disorders, as scientific understanding of these diseases advances. The expansion of companion diagnostics beyond oncology has impacts on dealmaking, clinical practice and the R&D pipeline.
Companion diagnostics are critical tools for the implementation of personalized medicine by enabling the identification of particular biomarkers that indicate the patients most likely to benefit from specific therapies or combinations of therapies.
Takeda and AstraZeneca are investigating biomarkers with their late-stage assets for Alzheimer's disease and asthma, respectively, indicating that companion diagnostics have the potential to reach beyond specialty therapeutic and rare disease areas in the near term.
Multi-biomarker assays are an area of interest among pharmaceutical and diagnostics developers, and clinicians are interested in using them to inform their treatment decisions.
InVentiv Health's survey of practicing oncologists in the US finds that 90% believe multi-biomarker diagnostics will be accepted as the standard of care within the next three to five years.
Expanding personalized medicine beyond the oncology sphere offers significant upside, including targeted use in patients most likely to benefit as well as adding value to the health care system. However, there are unique development and commercialization challenges associated with pairing a therapy with a companion diagnostic. Proper preparation and expertise is required to avoid potential pitfalls, such as partnership challenges and education requirements for expanded audiences at launch. Additional considerations for a successful drug-companion diagnostic launch include demonstrating clear value to both providers and payers, both of whom are critical drivers of uptake.
Advancing personalized medicine is becoming the goal of many drug manufacturers, as is evident by the number of such therapies in clinical development. According to the FDA, more than 20% of new molecular entities (NME) approved by the FDA in the last three years – and 27% of the 22 NME approvals in 2016 alone – can be classified as a personalized medicine, not including previously approved therapies. Half of the personalized medicines approved in 2016 (three) were indicated in oncology. The others had indications for either infectious or rare disease. This trend signifies a major shift in the way drug companies are organizing and thinking about commercializing pipeline assets – likely as a way to differentiate therapies in crowded markets (e.g., oncology, hepatitis C) or command a higher price point due to their ability to selectively target appropriate patient populations most likely to benefit.
Companion diagnostics that can help identify the right patient for the right drug at the right time are playing a major role in this trend. An analysis of recent deals in diagnostics shows that companion diagnostics deals, as a percentage of all diagnostics partnerships (including licensing agreements, asset purchases, joint ventures, etc.), have held relatively steady over the past five years, despite an overall decrease in the number of diagnostics deals.
For example, in January 2016, NanoString Technologies Inc., Medivation Inc. and Astellas Pharma Inc. announced a partnership to develop and commercialize a triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) companion diagnostic for enzalutamide based on a cancer gene expression signature algorithm from NanoString, in a partnership agreement with a disclosed value of $22 million. [See Deal]NanoString will modify its existing Prosigna Breast Cancer Assay, a multiplexed biomarker test, as a companion diagnostic for enzalutamide in TNBC, a form of breast cancer with relatively high unmet need.
Beyond oncology, NuSirt Biopharma and OWL Metabolomics forged a partnership to develop a blood-based companion diagnostic for NuSirt's NS-0200, currently in Phase II trials for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an increasing cause of liver transplantation. OWL Metabolomics' approach to development of this companion diagnostic is to analyze a patient's lipidomic signature over certain time intervals to measure specific markers of histopathological change in the liver. Currently, liver biopsy is the gold standard in the diagnosis of NASH; OWL's technology will utilize minimal blood draws (>0.5 ml), offering a significant benefit over surgery and its related potential complications. Development of NASH therapies is expected to address a major unmet need in a disease area with no approved therapies. Driven by a crowded pipeline and historically low success in NASH clinical trials, these companies are seeking to differentiate therapies and improve odds of trial success to ultimately evolve a new standard of personalized care.
As companion diagnostics become more common, the traditional paradigm of "one biomarker, one disease" (such as treating an anaplastic lymphoma kinase [ALK] fusion in non-squamous cell lung cancer ([NSCLC] with an ALK inhibitor) is expected to evolve to "multiple biomarkers, one disease" or "one biomarker, multiple diseases." For example, the National Cancer Institute's Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH) trial is exploring this with a 24-arm study exploring the potential for treating cancer patients with currently available targeted therapies based on the molecular profiles of their tumors, regardless of a product's specific indication (e.g., evaluating crizotinib in ALK-mutated breast cancer).
According to William Grady, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and director of translational research at the University of WashingtonMedical School Gastroenterology Division, "The hope is that we'll be able to better use targeted therapies by directing them to the molecular target in the cancer rather than by directing their use based on the tissue of origin of the cancer. However, what the NCI-MATCH trials are showing is that in only about 10% of the cases where the cancers have the predicted targets that should cause the cancer to be sensitive to the therapy are we seeing a clinical effect; in 90% of the cases that have the appropriate targets, the cancers are turning out to not be responsive." He says more work is needed to better understand cellular and molecular pathways in cancer, but there is a high likelihood that a combination treatment approach with multiple targeted therapies will be able to attack the dynamic cellular features that change with time in cancer cells.
Multi-biomarker assays, similar to Foundation Medicine Inc.'s FoundationOne and next-generation sequencing panels, may help to fill the void in current understanding of molecular targets. Grady continues: "What we're discovering with functional assays is that some of the targets are completely unexpected, which means new possibilities for using other platforms to predict these targets. These assays will be another way forward" toward understanding genomic and molecular characteristics of disease through retrospective analyses to match potential drug-molecular target pairs. For example, Ignyta Inc.'s STARTRK-2 trial is incorporating powerful technologies, such as next-generation sequencing and proprietary algorithm-based biomarker panels, to identify and characterize genetic or molecular variation (TrkA, TrkB, TrkC, ROS1 and ALK) in cancer patients in combination with an investigational therapeutic, entrectinib.
Ignyta's unique business model, in which it is developing both the drug and the diagnostic in-house, is enabling the rapid exploration of molecular biomarkers implicated in pan-tumor settings (i.e., NSCLC, colorectal cancer, salivary gland cancer and astrocytoma) in ways that may foreshadow the future of biomarker testing and companion diagnostics development.
inVentiv Health Consulting conducted a survey of 85 physicians (oncologists, n = 30; and non-oncologists, n = 55) in February 2017 to explore the views of physicians regarding the role of biomarkers and companion diagnostics in clinical practice.
While oncologists reported high rates of familiarity with next-generation sequencing applications, the same was also true for non-oncologists. Among the 55 non-oncologists surveyed (i.e., rheumatologists, pulmonologists, neurologists and PCPs), only 9% reported low or very low familiarity with next-generation sequencing. Non-oncology physicians also anticipated using personalized medicine approaches in regular practice, with 79% expressing high or very high likelihood that they will be using biomarker assays in the future if available.
Indeed, well-studied therapeutic areas with numerous treatment choices in inflammatory disease (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel disease) and infectious diseases are likely to be fruitful areas for companion diagnostics development in the near future. This is in addition to those therapeutic areas that already have the attention of biopharmaceutical companies (i.e., Alzheimer's disease and NASH) due to the absence of approved therapies. Analysis of the current companion diagnostics development pipeline shows that almost half of therapies currently in Phase III are associated with a biomarker diagnostic intended for use outside of oncology. (See Exhibit 3.) For example, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.'s AD-4833, currently in Phase III for Alzheimer's disease, is leveraging a growing practice from oncology – that is, testing for multiple biomarkers using a risk assignment algorithm, similar to Prosigna or Genomic Health Inc.'s Oncotype Dx,which can predict the risk of breast and colon cancer recurrence using multiple genes. These types of assays have found a valuable niche among oncologists due to their ability to effectively help inform and guide treatment decisions for cancer patients, driven by inclusion in National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines. In addition to broad physician uptake, payers have supported the use of these assays through ensuring coverage in most commercial plans.
The goal of Takeda's trial is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of AD-4833 in delaying the onset of mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease and to validate a risk-based biomarker algorithm for determining this, developed in conjunction with pharmacogenomics company Zinfandel Pharmaceuticals Inc. The assay is evaluating three factors: APOE, TOMM40 genotypes and age to produce a risk score for developing early onset Alzheimer's disease. The disease is an increasing focus for this type of effort due to the large and growing patient population as well as efforts to better understand the underlying pathophysiology that leads to disease progression.
Timing: When should we partner? How should we coordinate and manage the alliance?
Capabilities: What capabilities should the ideal partner have? Do they have a track record of experience?
Scale: Does the partner have financial stability/access to capital and have the ability to scale at launch?
It is also important to keep in mind that incentives for the drug developer and diagnostics partner are very different. Often the primary benefit will go to the drug developer – that is, shortened time to approval and reduced development costs, greater revenues, differentiation as a personalized medicine, etc. Thus, therapeutics companies must carefully consider the investments they may need to make in biomarker strategy and partnership structure.
With early planning and execution, the benefits of partnering with the right diagnostics developer can be tremendous, starting with the opportunity to tailor the drug development program and clinical trial design much earlier in the process. Choosing a diagnostics partner too late into clinical development runs the risk that the companion diagnostic assay won't be developed, validated, and approved by the time of drug approval. This can lead to potential confusion and inefficiencies during development and launch planning and, most importantly, poor uptake and failure to realize the full commercial potential of the therapeutic. Companion diagnostic development and optimization should be completed prior to pivotal trial initiation to increase the likelihood of simultaneous launch. Diagnostics companies may have different expectations and it is important for both partners to gain alignment.
With or without a partner, making an early decision to utilize a biomarker-based strategy may help reduce exposure to the risk of clinical trial failure and subsequently improve return on investment. In the largest study of clinical drug development success rates to date (over 9,500 phase transitions), a BIO Industry Analysis using data from Informa's Pharma Intelligence's Biomedtracker found that between 2006 and 2015, therapies that utilized biomarkers as inclusion or exclusion criteria had a three-fold higher likelihood of approval (25.9% from Phase I to approval) compared with drugs that do not have an associated selection biomarker (8.4%). At launch, the adoption of personalized medicine is heavily dependent on stakeholder education, and detailed launch planning is key to preparing the market. Generally, launches with companion diagnostics include more customer stakeholders than the traditional drug launch. In addition to the traditional stakeholders (e.g., prescribers, nurses and payers, etc.), education of appropriate lab personal is also required to ensure awareness of the companion diagnostic and help guarantee uptake of the novel therapy. This may require development of additional marketing materials or even coordination of sales teams to incorporate a laboratory call point.
Nothing is more important to a successful companion diagnostics partnership than excellent communication from start to finish – a key factor in which is trust. Trust can be built or frayed around such issues as intellectual property sharing, the timing and strategy surrounding market development and educational initiatives, progress updates and the like. Even differences in corporate culture can make it difficult for partners to communicate with each other effectively.
To mitigate these risks, it is vital to establish a regulatory communication plan at the outset. Partners should communicate with each other before and after each FDA interaction. Both drug and companion diagnostics partners should consider and align on marketing strategies for pathology labs that will be involved in terms of investment, messaging, education, training and marketing materials. During the launch window, communication between the partners needs to continue to ensure optimal uptake.
Personalized medicine is anticipated to continue changing treatment paradigms and evolve beyond oncology with the aid of companion diagnostics. A successful drug-companion diagnostic launch may be complicated and multi-faceted, yet the benefits greatly outweigh the challenges. There are few other strategies that allow drug developers to reduce development time lines, increase the likelihood of R&D success, improve outcomes for patients and deliver greater value.
The challenges associated with the development and commercialization of personalized medicine can be minimized with proper and careful preparation: from development of biomarker strategy, to diagnostics partner selection, to engaging expanded stakeholder audiences – physicians, pathology labs, payers, patients, advocacy groups – at launch to ensure a therapy's success. Ultimately, companion diagnostics and personalized medicine have enormous potential to deliver significant value to patients and the health care system, benefiting all stakeholders.
Jessica B. Lee, PhD (jessica.lee@inventivhealth.com) is a director, Commercial Strategy and Planning, for inVentiv Health Consulting in San Francisco; Ravi Patel (ravi.patel@inventivhealth.com) is an engagement manager, Commercial Strategy and Planning, for inVentiv Health Consulting in New York; David Ruch (david.ruch@inventivhealth.com) and Katya Magonova (katya.magonova@inventivhealth.com) are senior consultants in the Commercial Strategy and Planning practice for inVentiv Health Consulting, based in Boston and New York, respectively.
Which Path Forward For Foundation Medicine?


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Bibliography - Liwei Jia
Strazzo, S E., D C Collins, A Schepen, Q J Wang, E Becker, and Liwei Jia, February 2019: Application of a hybrid statistical-dynamical system to seasonal prediction of North American temperature and precipitation. Monthly Weather Review, 147(2), DOI:10.1175/MWR-D-18-0156.1.
Recent research demonstrates that dynamical models sometimes fail to represent observed teleconnection patterns associated with predictable modes of climate variability. As a result, model forecast skill may be reduced. We address this gap in skill through the application of a Bayesian post-processing technique–Calibration, Bridging, and Merging (CBaM)–which previously has been shown to improve probabilistic seasonal forecast skill over Australia. Calibration models developed from dynamical model reforecasts and observations are employed to statistically correct dynamical model forecasts. Bridging models use dynamical model forecasts of relevant climate modes (e.g., ENSO) as predictors of remote temperature and precipitation. Bridging and calibration models are first developed separately using Bayesian joint probability modeling and then merged using Bayesian model averaging to yield an optimal forecast. We apply CBaM to seasonal forecasts of North American 2-m temperature and precipitation from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) hindcast. Bridging is done using the model-predicted Niño3.4 index. Overall, the fully merged CBaM forecasts achieve higher Brier skill scores and better reliability compared to raw NMME forecasts. Bridging enhances forecast skill for individual NMME member model forecasts of temperature, but does not result in significant improvements in precipitation forecast skill, possibly because the models of the NMME better represent the ENSO-precipitation teleconnection pattern compared to the ENSO-temperature pattern. These results demonstrate the potential utility of the CBaM method to improve seasonal forecast skill over North America.
Krishnamurthy, Lakshmi, Gabriel A Vecchi, Xiaosong Yang, Karin van der Wiel, V Balaji, Sarah B Kapnick, Liwei Jia, Fanrong Zeng, Karen Paffendorf, and Seth D Underwood, May 2018: Causes and probability of occurrence of extreme precipitation events like Chennai 2015. Journal of Climate, 31(10), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0302.1.
Unprecedented high intensity flooding induced by extreme precipitation was reported over Chennai in India during November-December of 2015, which led to extensive damage to human life and property. It is of utmost importance to determine the odds of occurrence of such extreme floods in future and the related climate phenomena, for planning and mitigation purposes. Here, we make use of a suite of simulations from GFDL high-resolution coupled climate models to investigate the odds of occurrence of extreme floods induced by extreme precipitation over Chennai and the role of radiative forcing and/or large-scale SST forcing in enhancing the probability of such events in future. Climate of 20th century experiments with large ensembles suggest that the radiative forcing may not enhance the probability of extreme floods over Chennai. Doubling of CO2 experiments also fail to show evidence for increase of such events in a global warming scenario. Further, this study explores the role of SST forcing from the Indian and Pacific Oceans on the odds of occurrence of Chennai-like floods. Neither an El Niño nor La Niña enhances the probability of extreme floods over Chennai. However, warm Bay of Bengal tends to increase the odds of occurrence of extreme Chennai-like floods. The atmospheric condition such as a tropical depression over Bay of Bengal favoring the transport of moisture from warm Bay of Bengal is conducive for intense precipitation.
van der Wiel, Karin, Sarah B Kapnick, Gabriel A Vecchi, J A Smith, P C D Milly, and Liwei Jia, October 2018: 100-yr Lower-Mississippi floods in a global climate model: characteristics and future changes. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 19(10), DOI:10.1175/JHM-D-18-0018.1.
Floods in the Mississippi basin can have large negative societal, natural and economic impacts. Understanding the drivers of floods, now and in the future, is relevant for risk management and infrastructure-planning purposes. We investigate the drivers of 100-year return Lower-Mississippi River floods using a global coupled climate model with an integrated surface-water module. The model provides 3400 years of physically consistent data from a static climate, in contrast to available observational data (relatively short records, incomplete land-surface data, transient climate). In the months preceding the model's 100-year floods, as indicated by extreme monthly discharge, above-average rain and snowfall lead to moist subsurface conditions and the build up of snowpack, making the river system prone to these major flooding events. The melt water from snowpack in the northern Missouri and Upper Mississippi catchments primes the river system, sensitizing it to subsequent above-average precipitation in the Ohio and Tennessee catchments. An ensemble of transient-forcing experiments is used to investigate the impacts of past and projected anthropogenic climate change on extreme floods. There is no statistically significant projected trend in the occurrence of 100-year floods in the model ensemble, despite significant increases in extreme precipitation, significant decreases in extreme snowmelt, and significant decreases in less extreme floods. The results emphasize the importance of considering the fully-coupled land-atmosphere system for extreme floods. This initial analysis provides avenues for further investigation, including comparison to characteristics of less extreme floods, the sensitivity to model configuration, the role of human water management, and implications for future flood-risk management.
Yang, Xiaosong, Liwei Jia, Sarah B Kapnick, Thomas L Delworth, Gabriel A Vecchi, Richard G Gudgel, Seth D Underwood, and Fanrong Zeng, November 2018: On the seasonal prediction of the western United States El Niño precipitation pattern during the 2015/16 winter. Climate Dynamics, 51(9-10), DOI:10.1007/s00382-018-4109-3.
A "typical" El Niño leads to wet (dry) wintertime anomalies over the southern (northern) half of the Western United States (WUS). However, during the strong El Niño of 2015/16, the WUS winter precipitation pattern was roughly opposite to this canonical (average of the record) anomaly pattern. To understand why this happened, and whether it was predictable, we use a suite of high-resolution seasonal prediction experiments with coupled climate models. We find that the unusual 2015/16 precipitation pattern was predictable at zero-lead time horizon when the ocean/atmosphere/land components were initialized with observations. However, when the ocean alone is initialized the coupled model fails to predict the 2015/16 pattern, although ocean initial conditions alone can reproduce the observed WUS precipitation during the 1997/98 strong El Niño. Further observational analysis shows that the amplitudes of the El Niño induced tropical circulation anomalies during 2015/16 were weakened by about 50% relative to those of 1997/98. This was caused by relative cold (warm) anomalies in the eastern (western) tropical Pacific suppressing (enhancing) deep convection anomalies in the eastern (western) tropical Pacific during 2015/16. The reduced El Niño teleconnection led to a weakening of the subtropical westerly jet over the southeast North Pacific and southern WUS, resulting in the unusual 2015/16 winter precipitation pattern over the WUS. This study highlights the importance of initial conditions not only in the ocean, but in the land and atmosphere as well, for predicting the unusual El Niño teleconnection and its influence on the winter WUS precipitation anomalies during 2015/16.
Zhang, Wei, Gabriel A Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami, G Villarini, Thomas L Delworth, Xiaosong Yang, and Liwei Jia, January 2018: Dominant Role of Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation in the Recent Decadal Changes in Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Activity. Geophysical Research Letters, 45(1), DOI:10.1002/2017GL076397.
Over the 1997-2014 period, the mean frequency of western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones (TCs) was markedly lower (~18%) than the period 1980-1996. Here we show that these changes were driven by an intensification of the vertical wind shear in the southeastern/eastern WNP tied to the changes in the Walker circulation, which arose primarily in response to the enhanced sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the North Atlantic, while the SST anomalies associated with the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in the tropical Pacific and the anthropogenic forcing play only secondary roles. These results are based on observations and experiments using the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Forecast-oriented Low-ocean Resolution Coupled Climate Model (FLOR) coupled climate model. The present study suggests a crucial role of the North Atlantic SST in causing decadal changes to WNP TC frequency.
He, Jie, Michael Winton, Gabriel A Vecchi, Liwei Jia, and M Rugenstein, February 2017: Transient Climate Sensitivity Depends on Base Climate Ocean Circulation. Journal of Climate, 30(4), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0581.1.
There is large uncertainty in the simulation of transient climate sensitivity. This study aims to understand how such uncertainty is related to the simulation of the base climate by comparing two simulations with the same model but in which CO2 is increased from either a preindustrial (1860) or a present-day (1990) control simulation. This allows different base climate ocean circulations that are representative of those in current climate models to be imposed upon a single model. As a result, the model projects different transient climate sensitivities that are comparable to the multimodel spread. The greater warming in the 1990-start run occurs primarily at high latitudes and particularly over regions of oceanic convection. In the 1990-start run, ocean overturning circulations are initially weaker and weaken less from CO2 forcing. As a consequence, there are smaller reductions in the poleward ocean heat transport, leading to less tropical ocean heat storage and less moderated high-latitude surface warming. This process is evident in both hemispheres, with changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and the Antarctic Bottom Water formation dominating the warming differences in each hemisphere. The high-latitude warming in the 1990-start run is enhanced through albedo and cloud feedbacks, resulting in a smaller ocean heat uptake efficacy. The results highlight the importance of improving the base climate ocean circulation in order to provide a reasonable starting point for assessments of past climate change and the projection of future climate change.
Jia, Liwei, Xiaosong Yang, Gabriel A Vecchi, Richard G Gudgel, Thomas L Delworth, Stephan Fueglistaler, Pu Lin, A A Scaife, Seth D Underwood, and Shian-Jiann Lin, June 2017: Seasonal Prediction Skill of Northern Extratropical Surface Temperature Driven by the Stratosphere. Journal of Climate, 30(12), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0475.1.
This study explores the role of the stratosphere as a source of seasonal predictability of surface climate over Northern Hemisphere extra-tropics both in the observations and climate model predictions. A suite of numerical experiments, including climate simulations and retrospective forecasts, are set up to isolate the role of the stratosphere in seasonal predictive skill of extra-tropical near surface land temperature. We show that most of the lead-0 month spring predictive skill of land temperature over extra-tropics, particularly over northern Eurasia, stems from stratospheric initialization. We further reveal that this predictive skill of extra-tropical land temperature arises from skillful prediction of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). The dynamical connection between the stratosphere and troposphere is also demonstrated by the significant correlation between the stratospheric polar vortex and sea level pressure anomalies, as well as the migration of the stratospheric zonal wind anomalies to the lower troposphere.
Murakami, Hiroyuki, Gabriel A Vecchi, Thomas L Delworth, Andrew T Wittenberg, Seth D Underwood, Richard G Gudgel, Xiaosong Yang, Liwei Jia, Fanrong Zeng, Karen Paffendorf, and Wei Zhang, January 2017: Dominant Role of Subtropical Pacific Warming in Extreme Eastern Pacific Hurricane Seasons: 2015 and the Future. Journal of Climate, 30(1), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0424.1.
The 2015 hurricane season in the Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans (EPO and CPO), particularly around Hawaii, was extremely active – including a record number of tropical cyclones (TCs) and the first instance of three simultaneous Category 4 hurricanes in the EPO and CPO. A strong El Niño developed during the 2015 boreal summer season, and was attributed by some to be the cause of the extreme number of TCs. However, according to a suite of targeted high-resolution model experiments, the extreme 2015 EPO and CPO hurricane season was not primarily induced by the 2015 El Niño's tropical Pacific warming, but by warming in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. This warming is not typical of El Niño, but rather the "Pacific Meridional Mode (PMM)" superimposed on long-term anthropogenic warming. Although the likelihood of such an extreme year depends on the phase of natural variability, the coupled GCM projects an increase in the frequency of such extremely active TC years over the next few decades for the EPO, CPO, and Hawaii due enhanced subtropical Pacific warming from anthropogenic greenhouse forcing.
Zhang, Wei, Gabriel A Vecchi, G Villarini, Hiroyuki Murakami, Anthony Rosati, Xiaosong Yang, Liwei Jia, and Fanrong Zeng, January 2017: Modulation of western North Pacific tropical cyclone activity by the Atlantic Meridional Mode. Climate Dynamics, 48(1-2), DOI:10.1007/s00382-016-3099-2.
This study examines the year-to-year modulation of the western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones (TC) activity by the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM) using both observations and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Forecast-oriented Low Ocean Resolution Version of CM2.5 (FLOR) global coupled model. 1. The positive (negative) AMM phase suppresses (enhances) WNP TC activity in observations. The anomalous occurrence of WNP TCs results mainly from changes in TC genesis in the southeastern part of the WNP. 2. The observed responses of WNP TC activity to the AMM are connected to the anomalous zonal vertical wind shear (ZVWS) caused by AMM-induced changes to the Walker circulation. During the positive AMM phase, the warming in the North Atlantic induces strong descending flow in the tropical eastern and central Pacific, which intensifies the Walker cell in the WNP. The intensified Walker cell is responsible for the suppressed (enhanced) TC genesis in the eastern (western) part of the WNP by strengthening (weakening) ZVWS. 3. The observed WNPTC–AMM linkage is examined by the long-term control and idealized perturbations experiment with FLOR-FA. A suite of sensitivity experiments strongly corroborate the observed WNPTC–AMM linkage and underlying physical mechanisms.
Zhang, Liping, Thomas L Delworth, Xiaosong Yang, Richard G Gudgel, Liwei Jia, Gabriel A Vecchi, and Fanrong Zeng, July 2017: Estimating decadal predictability for the Southern Ocean using the GFDL CM2.1 model. Journal of Climate, 30(14), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0840.1.
This study explores the potential predictability of the Southern Ocean (SO) climate on decadal timescales as represented in the GFDL CM2.1 model using prognostic methods. We conduct perfect model predictability experiments starting from ten different initial states, and show potentially predictable variations of Antarctic bottom water formation (AABW) rates on time scales as long as twenty years. The associated Weddell Sea (WS) subsurface temperatures and Antarctic sea ice have comparable potential predictability as the AABW cell. The predictability of sea surface temperature (SST) variations over the WS and the SO is somewhat smaller, with predictable scales out to a decade. This reduced predictability is likely associated with stronger damping from air-sea interaction. As a complement to our perfect predictability study, we also make hindcasts of SO decadal variability using the GFDL CM2.1 decadal prediction system. Significant predictive skill for SO SST on multi-year time scales is found in the hindcast system. The success of the hindcasts, especially in reproducing observed surface cooling trends, is largely due to initializing the state of the AABW cell. A weak state of the AABW cell leads to cooler surface conditions and more extensive sea ice. Although there are considerable uncertainties regarding the observational data used to initialize the hindcasts, the consistency between the perfect model experiments and the decadal hindcasts at least gives us some indication as to where and to what extent skillful decadal SO forecasts might be possible.
Zhang, Liping, Thomas L Delworth, and Liwei Jia, August 2017: Diagnosis of decadal predictability of Southern Ocean sea surface temperature in the GFDL CM2.1 model. Journal of Climate, 30(16), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0537.1.
The average predictability time (APT) method is used to identify the most predictable components of decadal sea surface temperature (SST) variations over the Southern Ocean (SO) in a 4000 year unforced control run of the GFDL CM2.1 model. The most predictable component shows significant predictive skill for periods as long as 20 years. The physical pattern of this variability has a uniform sign of SST anomalies over the SO, with maximum values over the Amundsen-Bellingshausen-Weddell Seas. Spectral analysis of the associated APT time series shows a broad peak on time scales of 70-120 years. This most predictable pattern is closely related to the mature phase of a mode of internal variability in the SO that is associated with fluctuations of deep ocean convection. The second most predictable component of SO SST is characterized by a dipole structure, with SST anomalies of one sign over the Weddell Sea and SST anomalies of the opposite sign over the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Seas. This component has significant predictive skill for periods as long as 6 years. This dipole mode is associated with a transition between phases of the dominant pattern of SO internal variability. The long time scales associated with variations in SO deep convection provide the source of the predictive skill of SO SST on decadal scales. These analyses suggest that if we could adequately initialize the SO deep convection in a numerical forecast model, the future evolution of SO SST and its associated climate impacts is potentially predictable.
Jia, Liwei, Gabriel A Vecchi, Xiaosong Yang, Richard G Gudgel, Thomas L Delworth, William F Stern, Karen Paffendorf, Seth D Underwood, and Fanrong Zeng, June 2016: The Roles of Radiative Forcing, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Atmospheric and Land Initial Conditions in U.S. Summer Warming Episodes. Journal of Climate, 29(11), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0471.1.
This study investigates the roles of radiative forcing, sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and atmospheric and land initial conditions in the summer warming episodes of the United States. The summer warming episodes are defined as the significantly above normal (1983-2012) June-August 2-m temperature anomalies, and are referred to as heat waves in this study. Two contrasting cases, the summers of 2006 and 2012, are explored in detail to illustrate the distinct roles of SSTs, direct radiative forcing, and atmospheric and land initial conditions in driving U.S. summer heat waves. For 2012, simulations with the GFDL atmospheric general circulation model reveal that SSTs play a critical role. Further sensitivity experiments reveal the contributions of uniform global SST warming, SSTs in individual ocean basins and direct radiative forcing to the geographic distribution and magnitudes of warm temperature anomalies. In contrast, for 2006, the atmospheric and land initial conditions are key drivers. The atmospheric (land) initial conditions play a major (minor) role in the central and northwestern (eastern) U.S.. Due to changes in radiative forcing, the probability of areal-averaged summer temperature anomalies over U.S. exceeding the observed 2012 anomaly increases with time over the early 21st century. La Niña (El Niño) events tend to increase (reduce) the occurrence rate of heat waves. The temperatures over the central U.S. are mostly influenced by El Niño/La Niña, with the central tropical Pacific playing a more important role than the eastern tropical Pacific. Thus, atmospheric and land initial conditions, SSTs and radiative forcing are all important drivers of, and sources of predictability for U.S. summer heat waves.
Pascale, S, S Bordoni, Sarah B Kapnick, Gabriel A Vecchi, Liwei Jia, Thomas L Delworth, Seth D Underwood, and Whit G Anderson, November 2016: The impact of horizontal resolution on North American monsoon Gulf of California moisture surges in a suite of coupled global climate models. Journal of Climate, 29(21), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0199.1.
The impact of atmosphere and ocean horizontal resolution on the climatology of North American Monsoon Gulf of California (GoC) moisture surges is examined in a suite of global circulation models (CM2.1, FLOR, CM2.5, CM2.6, HiFLOR) developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). These models feature essentially the same physical parameterizations, but differ in horizontal resolution in either the atmosphere (≃200, 50 and 25 km) or the ocean (≃1°, 0.25°, 0.1°). Increasing horizontal atmospheric resolution from 200 km to 50 km results in a drastic improvement in the model's capability of accurately simulating surge events. The climatological near-surface flow and moisture and precipitation anomalies associated with GoC surges are overall satisfactorily simulated in all higher-resolution models. The number of surge events agrees well with reanalyses but models tend to underestimate July-August surge-related precipitation and overestimate September surge-related rainfall in the southwestern United States. Large-scale controls supporting the development of GoC surges, such as tropical easterly waves (TEWs), tropical cyclones (TCs) and trans-Pacific Rossby wave trains (RWTs), are also well captured, although models tend to underestimate the TEW/TC magnitude and number. Near-surface GoC surge features and their large-scale forcings (TEWs, TCs, RWTs) do not appear to be substantially affected by a finer representation of the GoC at higher ocean resolution. However, the substantial reduction of the eastern Pacific warm sea surface temperature bias through flux adjustment in the FLOR model leads to an overall improvement of tropical-extratropical controls on GoC moisture surges and the seasonal cycle of precipitation in the southwestern United States.
Tian, D, M Pan, Liwei Jia, Gabriel A Vecchi, and Eric F Wood, July 2016: Assessing GFDL High-Resolution Climate Model Water and Energy Budgets from AMIP simulations over Africa. Journal of Geophysical Research, 121(14), DOI:10.1002/2016JD025068.
This study assessed surface water and energy budgets in Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations of a coupled atmosphere-land model developed by Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory [Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AM2.5)]. The AM2.5 water and energy budget variables were compared with four reanalyses datasets and an observational-based reference, the Variable Infiltration Capacity model simulations forced by Princeton Global Meteorological Forcing (PGF/VIC) over 20-year period during 1991-2010 in nine African river basins. Results showed that AM2.5 have closed water and energy budgets. However, the discrepancies between AM2.5 and other datasets were notable in terms of their long-term averages. For the water budget, the AM2.5 mostly overestimated precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff compared to PGF/VIC and reanalyses. The AM2.5, reanalyses, and PGF/VIC showed similar seasonal cycles but discrepant amplitudes. For the energy budget, while the AM2.5 has relatively consistent net radiation with other datasets, it generally showed higher latent heat, lower sensible heat, and lower Bowen ratio than reanalyses and PGF/VIC. In addition, the AM2.5 water and energy budgets terms mostly had the smallest interannual variability compared to both reanalyses and PGF/VIC. The spatial differences of long-term mean precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration, and latent heat between AM2.5 and other datasets were reasonably small in dry regions. On average, AM2.5 is closer to PGF/VIC than R2 and 20CR are to PGF/VIC, but is not as close as MERRA and CFSR to PGF/VIC. The bias in AM2.5 water and energy budget terms may be associated with the excessive wet surface and parameterization of moisture advection from ocean to land.
van der Wiel, Karin, Sarah B Kapnick, Gabriel A Vecchi, William F Cooke, Thomas L Delworth, Liwei Jia, Hiroyuki Murakami, Seth D Underwood, and Fanrong Zeng, November 2016: The resolution dependence of contiguous US precipitation extremes in response to CO forcing. Journal of Climate, 29(22), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0307.1.
Precipitation extremes have a widespread impact on societies and ecosystems; it is therefore important to understand current and future patterns of extreme precipitation. Here, a set of new global coupled climate models with varying atmospheric resolution has been used to investigate the ability of these models to reproduce observed patterns of precipitation extremes and to investigate changes in these extremes in response to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The atmospheric resolution was increased from 2°×2° grid cells (typical resolution in the CMIP5 archive) to 0.25°×.25° (tropical cyclone-permitting). Analysis has been confined to the contiguous United States (CONUS). It is shown that, for these models, integrating at higher atmospheric resolution improves all aspects of simulated extreme precipitation: spatial patterns, intensities and seasonal timing. In response to 2×CO2 concentrations, all models show a mean intensification of precipitation rates during extreme events of approximately 3-4% K−1. However, projected regional patterns of changes in extremes are dependent on model resolution. For example, the highest-resolution models show increased precipitation rates during extreme events in the hurricane season in the CONUS southeast, this increase is not found in the low-resolution model. These results emphasize that, for the study of extreme precipitation there is a minimum model resolution that is needed to capture the weather phenomena generating the extremes. Finally, the observed record and historical model experiments were used to investigate changes in the recent past. In part because of large intrinsic variability, no evidence was found for changes in extreme precipitation attributable to climate change in the available observed record.
Zhang, Wei, Gabriel A Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami, G Villarini, and Liwei Jia, January 2016: The Pacific Meridional Mode and the Occurrence of Tropical Cyclones in the Western North Pacific. Journal of Climate, 29(1), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0282.1.
This study investigates the association between the Pacific Meridional Mode (PMM) and tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the western North Pacific (WNP). It is found that the positive PMM phase favors the occurrence of TCs in the WNP while the negative PMM phase inhibits the occurrence of TCs there. Observed relationships are consistent with those from a long-term pre-industrial control experiment (1000 years) of a high-resolution TC-resolving Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Forecast-oriented Low Ocean Resolution (FLOR) coupled climate model. The diagnostic relationship between the PMM and TCs in observations and the model is further supported by sensitivity experiments with FLOR. The modulation of TC genesis by the PMM is primarily through the anomalous zonal vertical wind shear (ZVWS) changes in the WNP, especially in the southeastern WNP. The anomalous ZVWS can be attributed to the responses of the atmosphere to the anomalous warming in the northwestern part of the PMM pattern during the positive PMM phase, which resembles a classic Matsuno-Gill pattern. Such influences on TC genesis are strengthened by a cyclonic flow over the WNP. The significant relationship between TCs and the PMM identified here may provide a useful reference for seasonal forecasting of TCs and interpreting changes in TC activity in the WNP.
Zhang, Wei, Gabriel A Vecchi, G Villarini, Hiroyuki Murakami, Thomas L Delworth, Liwei Jia, Richard G Gudgel, and Fanrong Zeng, November 2016: Simulated Connections between ENSO and Tropical Cyclones near Guam in a High-Resolution GFDL Coupled Climate Model: Implications for Seasonal Forecasting. Journal of Climate, 29(22), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0126.1.
This study aims to assess the connections between the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and tropical cyclones near Guam (GuamTC) using the state-of-the-art Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Forecast-oriented Low Ocean Resolution Version of CM2.5 (FLOR). In observations, more (less) GuamTCs occur in El Niño (La Niña) years and the ENSO-GuamTC connections arise from TC genesis locations in ENSO phases. The observed ENSO-GuamTC connections are realistically simulated in the two control experiments that use two versions of FLOR, the standard version and another with flux adjustments (FLOR-FA). The ENSO-GuamTC connections in FLOR-FA are closer to observations than those in FLOR because of a better representation of TC genesis during ENSO phases. The physical mechanisms underlying the observed ENSO-GuamTC connections are further supported in the long-term control experiments with FLOR/FLOR-FA. The ENSO-GuamTC connections in sea surface temperature (SST)- and sea surface salinity (SSS)-restoring experiments with FLOR 1990 strongly resemble the observations, suggesting the ENSO-GuamTC connections arise substantially from the forcing of SST. The prediction skill of FLOR-FA for GuamTC frequency is quite promising in terms of correlation and root mean square error and is higher than that of FLOR for the period 1980-2014. This study shows the capability of global climate models (FLOR/FLOR-FA) in simulating the linkage between ENSO and TC activity near a highly localized region (i.e., Guam) and in predicting the frequency of TCs at the sub-basin scale.
Zhang, Honghai, Thomas L Delworth, Fanrong Zeng, Gabriel A Vecchi, Karen Paffendorf, and Liwei Jia, December 2016: Detection, Attribution and Projection of Regional Rainfall Changes on (Multi-) Decadal Time Scales: A Focus on Southeastern South America. Journal of Climate, 29(23), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0287.1.
Observed austral summertime (November through April) rainfall in southeastern South America (SESA)—including northern Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil and Paraguay—has exhibited substantial low-frequency variations with a multi-decadal moistening trend during the 20th century and a subsequent decadal drying trend during the current century. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for these variations is essential for predicting long-term rainfall changes. Here with a suite of attribution experiments using a pair of high-resolution global climate models—GFDL CM2.5 and FLOR_FA, we investigate the causes of these regional rainfall variations. Both models reproduce the 20th-century moistening trend, albeit with a weaker magnitude than observed, in response to the radiative forcing associated with increasing greenhouse gases. The increasing greenhouse gases drive tropical expansion; consequently, the subtropical dry branch of Hadley cell moves away from SESA, leading to the rainfall increase. The amplitude discrepancy between the observed and simulated rainfall changes suggests a possible underestimation by the models of the atmospheric response to the radiative forcing, as well as an important role for low-frequency internal variability in the observed moistening trend. Over the current century, increasing greenhouse gases drive a continuous SESA rainfall increase in the models. However, the observed decadal rainfall decline is largely (~60%) reproduced in response to the observed Pacific trade wind strengthening, which is likely associated with natural Pacific decadal variability. These results suggest that the recent summertime rainfall decline in SESA is temporary and the positive trend will resume in response to both increasing greenhouse gases and a return of Pacific trade winds to normal conditions.
Zhang, Wei, Gabriel A Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami, Thomas L Delworth, Karen Paffendorf, Liwei Jia, G Villarini, Richard G Gudgel, Fanrong Zeng, and Xiaosong Yang, December 2016: Influences of Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Forcing on the Extreme 2015 Accumulated Cyclone Energy in the Western North Pacific [in "Explaining Extremes of 2015 from a Climate Perspective"]. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(12), DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0146.1S131-S135.
DelSole, T, M K Tippett, and Liwei Jia, October 2015: Multi-year Prediction and Predictability In Climate Change: Multidecadal and Beyond, DOI:10.1142/9789814579933_0014.
This chapter reviews climate prediction and predictability on multi-year time scales. There is clear evidence from coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models that the climate system can be predicted on multi-year time scales based on changes in greenhouse gas concentration, aerosol concentration, and solar insolation, and on initial condition information primarily from the ocean subsurface. New statistical optimization techniques have substantially clarified the space-time structure of predictability on multi-year time scales. These techniques reveal not only predictability of ocean quantities, but also predictability of temperature and precipitation over land on multi-year time scales. A forecast system based on these predictable components is verified to have skill on multi-year time scales over the entire twentieth century observational record.
Jia, Liwei, Xiaosong Yang, Gabriel A Vecchi, Richard G Gudgel, Thomas L Delworth, Anthony Rosati, William F Stern, Andrew T Wittenberg, Lakshmi Krishnamurthy, Shaoqing Zhang, Rym Msadek, Sarah B Kapnick, Seth D Underwood, Fanrong Zeng, Whit G Anderson, V Balaji, and Keith W Dixon, March 2015: Improved Seasonal Prediction of Temperature and Precipitation over Land in a High-resolution GFDL Climate Model. Journal of Climate, 28(5), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00112.1.
This study demonstrates skillful seasonal prediction of 2m air temperature and precipitation over land in a new high-resolution climate model developed by Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and explores the possible sources of the skill. We employ a statistical optimization approach to identify the most predictable components of seasonal mean temperature and precipitation over land, and demonstrate the predictive skill of these components. First, we show improved skill of the high-resolution model over the previous lower-resolution model in seasonal prediction of NINO3.4 index and other aspects of interest. Then we measure the skill of temperature and precipitation in the high-resolution model for boreal winter and summer, and diagnose the sources of the skill. Lastly, we reconstruct predictions using a few most predictable components to yield more skillful predictions than the raw model predictions. Over three decades of hindcasts, we find that the two most predictable components of temperature are characterized by a component that is likely due to changes in external radiative forcing in boreal winter and summer, and an ENSO-related pattern in boreal winter. The most predictable components of precipitation in both seasons are very likely ENSO-related. These components of temperature and precipitation can be predicted with significant correlation skill at least 9 months in advance. The reconstructed predictions using only the first few predictable components from the model show considerably better skill relative to observations than raw model predictions. This study shows that the use of refined statistical analysis and a high-resolution dynamical model leads to significant skill in seasonal predictions of 2m air temperature and precipitation over land.
Murakami, Hiroyuki, Gabriel A Vecchi, Thomas L Delworth, Karen Paffendorf, Liwei Jia, Richard G Gudgel, and Fanrong Zeng, December 2015: Investigating the Influence of Anthropogenic Forcing and Natural Variability on the 2014 Hawaiian Hurricane Season. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(12), DOI:10.1175/BAMS-EEE_2014_ch23.1.
Yang, Xiaosong, Gabriel A Vecchi, Richard G Gudgel, Thomas L Delworth, Shaoqing Zhang, Anthony Rosati, Liwei Jia, William F Stern, Andrew T Wittenberg, Sarah B Kapnick, Rym Msadek, Seth D Underwood, Fanrong Zeng, Whit G Anderson, and V Balaji, May 2015: Seasonal predictability of extratropical storm tracks in GFDL's high-resolution climate prediction model. Journal of Climate, 28(9), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00517.1.
The seasonal predictability of extratropical storm tracks in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL)'s high-resolution climate model has been investigated using an average predictability time analysis. The leading predictable components of extratropical storm tracks are ENSO-related spatial pattern for both boreal winter and summer, and the second predictable components are mostly due to changes in external radiative forcing and multidecadal oceanic variability. These two predictable components for both seasons show significant correlation skill for all leads from 0 to 9 months, while the skill of predicting the boreal winter storm track is consistently higher than that of the austral winter. The predictable components of extratropical storm tracks are dynamically consistent with the predictable components of the upper troposphere jet flow for both seasons. Over the region with strong storm track signals in North America, the model is able to predict the changes in statistics of extremes connected to storm track changes (e.g., extreme low and high sea level pressure and extreme 2m air temperature) in response to different ENSO phases. These results point towards the possibility of providing skillful seasonal predictions of the statistics of extratropical extremes over land using high-resolution coupled models.
Yang, Xiaosong, Gabriel A Vecchi, Thomas L Delworth, Karen Paffendorf, Richard G Gudgel, Liwei Jia, Seth D Underwood, and Fanrong Zeng, December 2015: Extreme North America Winter Storm Season of 2013/14: Roles of Radiative Forcing and the Global Warming Hiatus. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(12), DOI:10.1175/BAMS-EEE_2014_ch6.1.
Vecchi, Gabriel A., Thomas L Delworth, Richard G Gudgel, Sarah B Kapnick, Anthony Rosati, Andrew T Wittenberg, Fanrong Zeng, Whit G Anderson, V Balaji, Keith W Dixon, Liwei Jia, Hyeong-Seog Kim, Lakshmi Krishnamurthy, Rym Msadek, William F Stern, Seth D Underwood, G Villarini, Xiaosong Yang, and Shaoqing Zhang, November 2014: On the Seasonal Forecasting of Regional Tropical Cyclone Activity. Journal of Climate, 27(21), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00158.1.
Tropical cyclones (TCs) are a hazard to life and property and a prominent element of the global climate system, therefore understanding and predicting TC location, intensity and frequency is of both societal and scientific significance. Methodologies exist to predict basin-wide, seasonally-aggregated TC activity months, seasons and even years in advance. We show that a newly developed high-resolution global climate model can produce skillful forecasts of seasonal TC activity on spatial scales finer than basin-wide, from months and seasons in advance of the TC season. The climate model used here is targeted at predicting regional climate and the statistics of weather extremes on seasonal to decadal timescales, and is comprised of high-resolution (50km×50km) atmosphere and land components, and more moderate resolution (~100km) sea ice and ocean components. The simulation of TC climatology and interannual variations in this climate model is substantially improved by correcting systematic ocean biases through "flux-adjustment." We perform a suite of 12-month duration retrospective forecasts over the 1981-2012 period, after initializing the climate model to observationally-constrained conditions at the start of each forecast period – using both the standard and flux-adjusted versions of the model. The standard and flux-adjusted forecasts exhibit equivalent skill at predicting Northern Hemisphere TC season sea surface temperature, but the flux-adjusted model exhibits substantially improved basin-wide and regional TC activity forecasts, highlighting the role of systematic biases in limiting the quality of TC forecasts. These results suggest that dynamical forecasts of seasonally-aggregated regional TC activity months in advance are feasible.
DelSole, T, Liwei Jia, and M K Tippett, October 2013: Scale-Selective Ridge Regression for Multimodel Forecasting. Journal of Climate, 26(20), DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00030.1.
This paper proposes a new approach to linearly combining multimodel forecasts, called scale-selective ridge regression, which ensures that the weighting coefficients satisfy certain smoothness constraints. The smoothness constraint reflects the "prior assumption" that seasonally predictable patterns tend to be large scale. In the absence of a smoothness constraint, regression methods typically produce noisy weights and hence noisy predictions. Constraining the weights to be smooth ensures that the multimodel combination is no less smooth than the individual model forecasts. The proposed method is equivalent to minimizing a cost function comprising the familiar mean square error plus a "penalty function" that penalizes weights with large spatial gradients. The method reduces to pointwise ridge regression for a suitable choice of constraint. The method is tested using the Ensemble-Based Predictions of Climate Changes and Their Impacts (ENSEMBLES) hindcast dataset during 1960–2005. The cross-validated skill of the proposed forecast method is shown to be larger than the skill of either ordinary least squares or pointwise ridge regression, although the significance of this difference is difficult to test owing to the small sample size. The model weights derived from the method are much smoother than those obtained from ordinary least squares or pointwise ridge regression. Interestingly, regressions in which the weights are completely independent of space give comparable overall skill. The scale-selective ridge is numerically more intensive than pointwise methods since the solution requires solving equations that couple all grid points together.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Tag Archives: Judi Dench
"I can only see the world as it should be." Murder On The Orient Express (2017) AND Daddy's Home 2
Hollywood gets a lot of flak, much of it deserved, but the crime perpetrated by Tinseltown that may bother me the most is when a talented cast is completely squandered in servitude to a lame script and lousy direction.
The Thanksgiving movie offerings this year all have left something to be desired, but we were misfortunate enough to see two of the worst offenders back to back last night. Murder on the Orient Express and Daddy's Home 2. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. We paid money to see these two movies in sequence. Maybe the problem is with us.
The first is an unnecessary remake of a far superior Sydney Lumet film, based on the original Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie. It is yet another self-serious, self-satisfied confectionery indulgence from director/star Kenneth Branagh, who fancies himself the poor man's Laurence Olivier, when he, in reality, may be the poor man's Benny Hill.
The second is an unnecessary sequel to an unnecessary broad farce, holding a far too indulgent and yuppified mirror to the mixed up sociopolitical and familial dynamics in modern middle-class America. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as an ex-husband/father and new husband/stepfather, respectively, whose own fathers John Lithgow and Mel Gibson, also respectively, crash Christmas and demonstrate that they are as boneheaded and as consumed with unflattering male ego as their sires.
NOTE: the movie isn't smart enough to actually do anything with that premise, and it's too frightened of its Trump-triggered audience demographic to actually skewer these idiotic men.
Both films favor set decoration and bleak whimsy over script and character development. Orient Express pursues arch tedium over anything resembling flesh and blood characterization, fetishizing starched linens and glistening martini glasses and anthropomorphizing its titular train to the point one wonders if Branagh is simply trying to capture the imaginations of too many young adults weened on the also creepy and tedious Polar Express.
Daddy's Home conversely, is the kind of film that seems to hold National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation as a kind of high art that could only be improved if the "Nancy Meyers' school of filmmaking" (middle-class characters living amidst-Better Homes and Gardens residential-porn they couldn't actually afford in real life) had installed a Sub Zero fridge in Randy Quaid's "the-sh*tter's-full" Winnebago. Daddy's Home is the kind of movie where a character cuts down a cell phone tower, thinking it is a Christmas tree, and gets charged $20,000, and everyone just laughs and shrugs and says, "Now, who is going to pay for that?" This inane, unrelatable incident occurs after the cast has engaged in an interminable sequence where they decorate – top-to-bottom, inside-and-out – a vacation home they are RENTING for the holidays. Who does that? In real life, this family would be trying to figure out how to pay the credit card bills they ran up to buy presents nobody actually wants and would end up in both divorce and bankruptcy courts when slapped with a $20,000 bill for destruction of public property. Or maybe they would be in jail. Fa la la la.
Orient Express is the kind of film where all of the characters have less depth than those found in a Clue board game, but lounge around all casual-cool-dramatic in beautifully appointed train cars (which seem much larger than humanly possible) as if they are posing for a Vanity Fair cover. It is the kind of film where people spout portentous philosophy ("I can only see the world as it should be." – Poirot) and glower at each other across petits fours. Whodunnit? Who cares?
When one film (Orient Express) offers the best Johnny Depp performance in years (not saying much … and, by the way, spoiler alert, he is the titular murder) and the other (Daddy's Home) makes John Cena as its final act complication seem practically Oscar-worthy, something ain't right in the mix.
NOTE: Kenneth, a mustache that covers half your face and renders your speech incomprehensible is not character development. You are no Wes Anderson. And I don't like Wes Anderson.
NOTE: Mel, swaggering around like an aging muscle man whose tummy has become a beach ball and who believes FOXNews offers great lessons in parenting and social graces is not character development. That is just you. And we don't like you.
To the rest of the luminaries who collected a paycheck to appear in these movies – John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Willem DaFoe, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom, Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, I'm looking at you – you all know better. Next time an easy payday comes along, please just say no.
Finally, I want to correct the statement with which I began this piece. The worst crime Hollywood commits is hypocrisy. Women are not disposable commodities. Violence is not comedy. Respect for each other, for our individuality, for our unique spirit is essential.
Daddy's Home 2 is by far the bigger offender because jokes about kissing/spanking little girls or about men "just being men" in Las Vegas or about fathers hitting on the mothers of their sons' classmates are not funny. They are gross.
Hollywood, if you want us to buy the rhetoric that you are rejecting the worst offenders in your midst, make better movies. More responsible movies. Movies that don't joke out of both sides of their mouths where animal rights or gun control or human equality are concerned. Stop trying to cater to every demographic. That lack of moral compass is the antithesis of what these holidays are truly about.
Rant over.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: (Dark) Slice-of-Life, Americana, Comedy, Film Review, Skip It, Thriller, Uncategorized	Tags: Agatha Christie, animal rights, clue, daddy's home 2, daisy ridley, feminism, gun control, holidays, john lithgow, johnny depp, josh gad, Jr., Judi Dench, kenneth branagh, Leslie Odom, Linda Cardellini, Mel Gibson, michelle pfeiffer, misogyny, Murder on the Orient express, nancy Meyers, national lampoon's vacation, Penelope Cruz, polar express, roy sexton, thanksgiving, violence, will ferrell, willem dafoe
"You're a kite dancing in a hurricane." Spectre
James Bond needs a good foil … or two. Without a sharply defined counterpart, ideally played by a crackerjack BBC-er, against which to reflect and/or deflect, 007 is just a swaggering phallus with a peculiar penchant for martinis and gun-play. And that's a bore.
Why was the last outing – Skyfall – so good? Yeah, Adele's theme song was one of the best we've heard in decades, and director Sam Mendes (Revolution Road, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead) applies a literary/theatrical craftsmanship that elevates film beyond mere verisimilitude to near-allegorical levels.
And, yes, Daniel Craig is the first actor to, you know, act while wearing Bond's trademark tight-fitting bespoke suits and leaping tall fire escapes in a single bound – his chief charm being that he seems to sort of hate the character and plays Bond as someone who has a f*cking job to do, mate, and, if he has a shag and a drink along the way while slaying an army of vaguely malevolent thugs and baddies, so be it. He's like your local cable guy if he were an international spy, that is, if said cable guy possessed the eyes of a malamute and the abs of an Abercrombie and Fitch model.
But the real reason Skyfall worked so freaking well? We had the BOGO (buy-one-get-one-free, kids) joys of Judi Dench AND Javier Bardem, who gave Craig/Bond a film "mother" and a film "brother" against whom to play some crackling "family" dysfunction, with a sparkling amount of wit and a smothering amount of tension. That acting trifecta of Dench, Bardem, and Craig also had the benefit of a great yarn to tell, a fractured fairy tale origin of Bond's Oliver Twist-meets-Batman upbringing, culminating in nigh-Shakespearean death, destruction, and dismemberment … and that's just describing what happened to his family vacation home in those eerily snowy Swiss/Austrian/Nordic (?) mountains where these films always seem to conclude.
Alas, Spectre, as fun as it is (and it is fun – kind of a rainbow sherbet to cleanse the palate after the heavy shepherd's pie that was Skyfall), has no such shining, scene-stealing yins to Craig's yang. Christoph Waltz, who becomes more of a cartoon every time I see him, seems like the perfect person to play a Bond villain … in 1968. However, in the postmodern grit and wit of Craig's Bond, Waltz is a bit of a snoozer. I suspect Spectre's BIG reveal – the Bond mythos legend whom Waltz portrays – is meant to bring the kind of shock and awe delight of the similar unveiling of Benedict Cumberbatch's character in Star Trek Into Darkness. It didn't.
But (spoiler alert), at least, we get the signature cat … and thuggish henchman (Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Bautista as the menacing and seemingly indestructible muscle Mr. Hinx … or Oddjob 2.0).
Ralph Fiennes as Bond handler "M" is no Dench, and he carries a constipated delivery in his few scenes that perhaps bespeaks some frustration that he had to retire Harry Potter's Darth Vader-esque Voldemort for a much less interesting 2nd banana role in the Bond franchise. At least Fiennes has nostrils in this series.
Much of the non-Craig spark comes from Naomie Harris' Moneypenny. She is such a source of light in the film, I'm baffled why the filmmakers aren't brave enough to mount a Bond/Moneypenny buddy flick. I'd go see that in a heartbeat. Ben Whishaw's Q grows on me with each subsequent outing, as well, bringing a sardonic glee to torturing Bond with high-tech goodies the spy can't have as 007 is perpetually in some kind of probationary limbo. (Isn't Bond at risk of losing his job in every one of these latest forays? I realize Craig does a great job playing the rogue cop notes, but how is Bond still employed at this rate?)
John Logan's screenplay packs a lot of punches (maybe two or three too many, yielding a near three-hour running time), but lacks the emotional wallop of Skyfall, which is to be expected, I suppose. The script's biggest crime is falling prey to the two Bond women structural cliche, with the first character being a disposable femme fatale (the much more interesting Monica Bellucci) and the second a wary love interest who will be totally forgotten by the next film in the series (the bland Lea Seydoux).
(We also get one of the loopiest credits sequences in recent memory. Sam Smith's song is pleasant enough, with a nicely subtle John Barry influence, but all the naked women writhing around with octopi and a shirtless Craig was just … troubling.)
The film aims to say something profound about how Orwellian our culture has become as we willingly submit to eye-in-the-sky surveillance and social media self-revelation, rendering privacy and freedom obsolete, all in a panicked and ultimately misplaced desire for security from nameless, faceless Terrorism with a capital "T." In the process, we hand the keys to the kingdom to the real terror-mongers in our midst.
Ultimately, this zippy thesis gets lost in the shuffle – with four endings too many ranging from lots of buildings going "boom" to damsel-in-distress kidnappings to way too much Snidely Whiplash-monologuing from Waltz. Spectre also never capitalizes on the spookiness of its strongest sequence, the opening cat-and-mouse chase set among skull-and-crossboned revelers at Mexico City's annual Day of the Dead celebration. Those early scenes impose a marvelously ominous claustrophobia and a sweaty delirium that the rest of film fritters away.
Spectre does a fine job drawing together the disparate threads of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall, with various villains from those prior episodes dancing in and out of the story – one of them intones to Bond, "You're a kite dancing in a hurricane." In fact, that cryptic phrase's chaotic imagery could describe the entire Spectre viewing experience: volatile, transporting, thrilling even, but ultimately tangled up in its own aspirations – a fun but forgettable ride.
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton's Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: Action, Film Review, Pop!, Thriller	Tags: adele, american beauty, batman, Ben Whishaw, blofeld, christoph waltz, daniel craig, darth vader, Dave Bautista, day of the dead, film review, guardians of the galaxy, harry potter, james bond, jarhead, javier bardem, john barry, john logan, Judi Dench, lea seydoux, m, mexico city, moneypenny, monica bellucci, moview review, mr. hinx, Naomie Harris, oddjob, oliver twist, q, Ralph Fiennes, reel roy reviews, revolution road, road to perdition, roy sexton, sam mendes, sam smith, skyfall, spectre, spectre film, spectre review, voldemort
A prurient taste for Penthouse Magazine and red-headed nursemaids? The Theory of Everything
Stephen Hawking is a bit of a pig (with apologies to our swine brethren). At least that is one takeaway from The Theory of Everything, James Marsh's biopic of A Brief History of Time's famed physicist author.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the profound physical limitations that ALS ("Lou Gehrig's Disease") imposed on his keen, unearthly scientific intellect, Hawking apparently always remained a bit of a 1960s Cambridge "lad" with a prurient taste for Penthouse Magazine and red-headed nursemaids.
This aspect of Hawking's personality isn't as prominent in the film as that lead-in might suggest, but it still stands in stark relief to the thirty-year devotion his first wife Jane offers him, from his early days struggling with the disease through the publication of his seminal work. Jane doesn't suffer silently, though, as she herself is depicted as toying with an extra-marital dalliance with her church choir director (sweetly underplayed by Stardust's Charlie Cox), whom she later marries. (Someday, someone has to make a movie about how many trysts start off in the church choir.) Marsh, working from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten based on Jane's own Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, does not shy from showing Hawking as a flawed but brilliant man.
The best weapon in Marsh's cinematic arsenal is Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables) in a jaw-droppingly transformational performance as Hawking. Redmayne, never showy in that "I'm not an animal!" Elephant Man way, immerses himself … no, subsumes himself … in Hawking's evolutionary physicality, from the occasional stutter step and cramped hand of his early 20s to the fetal crab-like nature of his present life. It is astonishing. Yet, the impish light never leaves Redmayne's eyes, conveying Hawking's exceptional genius, when the script fails to give us much scientific substance behind his discoveries.
In general, the Hollywood biopic is a flawed genre, cursed from its inception to cram a lifetime into two-plus hours. People become ciphers, reduced to a CliffsNotes existences, as hairstyles and fashion choices and home furnishings magically change around them, decade by decade.
Like such recent examples as Helen Mirren in The Queen or Michelle Williams in My Life with Marilyn (or even Judi Dench in Philomena – blech), Redmayne rises above a predictable "based on true events" script that tends to telegraph its punches. Look! Young Stephen drops a piece of chalk. Look! Hunky choir director is making goo-goo eyes at his new mezzo soprano Jane Hawking. Look! Marital tension boils over at a garden party Christening where Stephen's parents confront both son and daughter-in-law separately about their life choices, foreshadowing their ultimate implosion. Redmayne so fully inhabits Hawking's inner/outer life that we (mostly) look past the workmanlike narrative.
Every bit Redmayne's acting match is Felicity Jones (Northanger Abbey) as Stephen's long-suffering wife. It is to Jones' credit that she never descends into self-pity or martyrdom, but rather reveals a multi-layered person whose path has brought a mixed bag of reward, betrayal, fulfillment, and disappointment. The script saddles Redmayne and Jones throughout with a half-baked debate over science versus spirituality, unfortunately never resolved in any particularly meaningful way.
Rounding out the cast are David Thewlis as Stephen's long-term faculty mentor and a criminally under-used Emily Watson (oh, I love her) as Jane's patient mother.
The film is beautifully shot in gauzy light, like a box of old photographs. The approach suits the woozy material well, which spans thirty-or-so years, from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. The filmmakers generally get the feel and look of each decade right – Cambridge in the Hawkings' early days serves as a kind of shabby Camelot fairy tale setting, replaced later by garish, clunky 80s environs as their marriage crumbles.
I wish that I loved The Theory of Everything. It is supremely well-acted, but ultimately the conventionality of the narrative hurts the film's overall impact. I found myself deeply moved by Redmayne and Jones but left a bit cold where Mr. Hawking himself is concerned. Perhaps that is the film's point after all (though not a groundbreaking revelation) … all genius comes at a price, and the act of discovery is often much more interesting than the final summation.
Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton's Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: Biography, Film Review	Tags: a brief history of time, ALS, anthony mccarten, charlie cox, church choir, cineman, cliffsnotes, david thewlis, eddie redmayne, elephant man, emily watson, england, felicity jones, Film, film review, helen mirren, james marsh, jane wilde hawking, Judi Dench, les miserables, lou gehrig's disease, michelle williams, movie, Movie review, my life with marilyn, northanger abbey, penthouse, penthouse magazine, philomena, reel roy reviews, roy sexton, stardust, stephen hawking, the queen, the theory of everything, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, united kingdom
There is nothin' like a dame…who deserves a better movie: Philomena
Is it strange that I prefer my Judi Dench (DAME Judi Dench, if you're nasty) shaken and not stirred? I wish they hadn't killed her off last year in Skyfall so I could anticipate her next round of icily maternal spy-mastering and forget the dreck that is Philomena.
OK, this British tragicomic trifle isn't that bad but it ain't that good either.
I had high hopes for this one as I always enjoy Dench (she could read the phone book for all I care) as, unlike some UK thespians, she cuts through the pretense and offers her perfect cadence, crisp diction, and profound stares in an earthy and relatable way.
Pairing her with the reliably wry and delightful Steve Coogan (see: Hamlet 2 … no, really, see Hamlet 2 … right now!) seems inspired. And, while I'm not much a fan of director Stephen Frears – whose movies just seem scruffily overwrought to me, The Queen notwithstanding – he is a workmanlike director whom I assumed would be wise enough to just wind his actors up and start the cameras rolling.
All that said, Dench and Coogan are just fine, but the script is sorely lacking. This would have been a marvelous hour-long holiday special teleplay on Masterpiece Theatre or something, but as a nearly 2-hour film, the thin material is stretched to its breaking point. Dench and Coogan look quite bored for about a third of the film, to be honest – and so was I.
The plot, as it is, concerns a young girl in 1950s Ireland who finds herself "in the family way" as they say and is slapped in a nunnery to have the child, endure assorted abuses, do a lot of the nuns' laundry (yeah…really), and then have her toddler torn from her arms and sent to America to live with a wealthy couple. Flash forward to the present, said toddler now would be 50 years old, and Dench is hellbent to find him and finally meet him, with the assistance of recently "sacked" journalist Coogan.
This sets up what is arguably the dullest road trip on film. (I kept hoping for them to cross paths with The Guilt Trip's much funnier though critically maligned duo Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen, but, alas, no.) Coogan and Dench go to America, have some funny exchanges on the back of an airport go-cart thing, have some more fish-out-of-water interactions at the hotel omelette station, and then find her son … via the INTERNET (?!?!). They couldn't have accomplished that remaining in merry old England?
Then they episodically interview a number of folks with whom her son had interacted over the years, get some sad news (which I won't spoil), chase down some more people, and then race back to England for a throw down with the nuns who treated Dench so shabbily. THAT last part I enjoyed, and it's the moment when Coogan finally comes alive with that wild-eyed, exasperated, ticked off Brit thing he does so well.
The movie traffics in a few horrendous mid-90s cliches and attempts to say some deep things about gender, age, class, and faith, but it all comes off as a pencil sketch of a movie that could have been so much more.
I did very much enjoy the movie's point of view that the intent and the reality of organized religion couldn't be farther from one another, yet there was nothing groundbreaking nor bold in the telling. Cruel and hypocritical people use the umbrella of the church to get their jollies doing cruel and hypocritical things in the name of "morality." Irritates the living daylights out of me but I would rather watch a movie tackle that pernicious issue in a stronger, more confident manner.
I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but these actors deserve a much better film. You can plaster "based on a true story" on any flick, but, if the proceedings aren't compelling, well-written, or thoughtful, you may as well just pick up a copy of Reader's Digest and save yourself a trip to the theatre.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: (Dark) Slice-of-Life, Home Viewing, Skip It, Tragedy	Tags: adoption, barbra streisand, faith, hamlet 2, james bond, Judi Dench, masterpiece theatre, nuns, omelette, pbs, philomena, reader's digest, reel roy reviews, religion, road trip, roy sexton, seth rogan, seth rogen, skyfall, stephen frears, steve coogan, teleplay, the guilt trip, the queen
Yes, I cried in a Star Trek movie: Star Trek Into Darkness
Yes, I cried in a Star Trek movie. First time for everything.
I'm not exactly a Trekkie – before this J.J. Abrams-led reinvention of "Wagon Train in Space," the only entry in the canon I truly loved was Star Trek IV (or as I always call it in our house: "the one with the whales").
Like the recent craftily re-engineered James Bond (thank you, Daniel Craig and Judi Dench) and Batman (yup, you are ok by me, Christopher Nolan) franchises, 2009's Star Trek and this new sequel Star Trek Into Darkness mine and refine the source material as if the filmmakers are re-staging one of Shakespeare's famous "problem plays" to appeal to modern sensibilities.
Notably, Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mister Spock eliminate the pork from their hammy forebears' performances (William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy respectively) while keeping the trademarked tics (goony alpha male swagger and goonier pointy ears also respectively). What both do so smartly (and what brought me to tears at a significant twist in the film's final act) is give these iconic characters vulnerability and flawed humanity. No offense Mr. Priceline Negotiator Shatner, but I will take Pine's wounded-little-boy-compensating-for-his-deep-seated-insecurity-by-affecting-a-swaggering-prick persona over, well, your swaggering-prick-persona any day of the week.
The film wisely stocks its other iconic roles with a bevy of gifted character actors: Karl Urban (my personal favorite as the crusty, twinkle-eyed, metaphor-spewing Dr. Bones), Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Peter Weller, and the always phenomenal Bruce Greenwood. The ensemble work in these films is feisty, zippy, and fun and should be used as a case study in acting schools everywhere: how to engage your audience and create a credibly warm ensemble dynamic in the midst of rampant CGI, deafening explosions, tilt-a-whirl camera angles, and spoof-worthy use of lighting flares.
I will close on this point. Bar none the canniest thing Abrams does (similar to the casting of Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley in that other summer tent pole, a little movie called Iron Man 3) is select Sherlock's and War Horse's Benedict Cumberbatch (what a name!) as the film's main big bad. He is a marvel, commanding every minute of screen time with his handsome yet slightly space alien visage and basso profondo voice. He almost seems bored with EVERYONE around him and, given his sociopathic mission in the film, that works swimmingly. With his nuanced menace, he joins the ranks of Heath Ledger's Joker, Tom Hiddleston's Loki, and Javier Bardem's Silva in the rogue's gallery of perfect post-modern, post-millennial popcorn film villains.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: Action, Film Review, Must See, Sci Fi	Tags: Anton Yelchin, avengers, batman, ben kingsley, benedict cumberbatch, bones, bruce greenwood, casino royale, chris pine, christopher nolan, daniel craig, dark knight, guy pearce, heath ledger, iron man 3, javier bardem, jj abrams, John Cho, joker, Judi Dench, karl urban, kirk, leonard nimoy, loki, negotiator, Peter Weller, priceline, silva, Simon Pegg, spock, star trek, star trek into darkness, star trek Iv, tom hiddleston, wagon train, war horse, whales, william shatner, zachary quinto, Zoe Saldana
Kicking the world in its collective teeth: Skyfall
Skyfall, the 23rd "official" James Bond film, is about as perfect an escapist adventure film as I've seen. By the way, the spoofy, 60s Casino Royale and the unauthorized Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again don't count in the sanctioned tally of Bond films…BUT, if they did, that would make for a nifty 25 films in 50years…ah well.
I did not get a chance to see Quantum of Solace, which, from what I understand, was a wise choice, but I adored Daniel Craig's first Bond outing Casino Royale. That would be the serious, gritty one with the villain who cried blood while gambling…ewwww. To my mind, the actorly, rugged Craig is the perfect Bond, barely masking what appears to be contempt for and occasional bemusement with a world gone horribly awry as he kicks said world in its collective teeth.
This latest film fires on all cylinders – action, drama, emotion, and even a bit of comedy. The comic moments blessedly never veer into high-camp Roger Moore territory… there are more than a few clever allusions, however, to the goofy charms of early films in the series. Director Sam Mendes brings gravitas to the proceedings, working with screenwriters John Logan, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade to give us a backstory for 007 that leads to a powerful, engaging, and rather heartbreaking finale. The film owes a bit of its DNA to classic cat-and-mouse thrillers like Charade as well as more recent popcorn fare like Silence of the Lambs (for its villain's creepy plexiglass cell escape) and The Dark Knight/Dark Knight Rises (with its backdrop of have/have not inequality that supercharges social anarchy against a flawed social system). Ensemble players Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, and Helen McCrory are all reliably excellent – what a cast!
But beyond Craig's nuanced, charmingly surly performance, supported by a dream BBC miniseries-style cast, what is the film's best "special effect"? That would be none other than Javier Bardem. He internalizes the epic, broadly drawn supervillainy of previous Bond antagonists, turning it into a charmingly twisted, Freudian pretzel of a characterization. Bardem's Silva is fascinating, transfixing, and utterly relatable/revolting. The chemistry between Craig and Bardem is electric. Don't miss this one, folks. Smart, sharp fun.
Posted By: Roy Sexton (Reel Roy Reviews)	Category: Film Review, Must See	Tags: 007, Albert Finney, bbc, Ben Whishaw, camp, casino royale, charade, dark knight, dark knight rises, Helen McCrory, james bond, javier bardem, john logan, Judi Dench, Naomie Harris, neal purvis, never say never again, plexiglass, quantum of solace, Ralph Fiennes, roger moore, roger wade, sam mendes, silence of the lambs, skyfall, thunderball


The holiday season is quickly approaching, as is your upcoming Walt Disney World Vacation...you must be getting so excited! Taking a day during your trip to visit Disney's Vero Beach Resort sounds like a perfect idea to me. My family has frequently combined our Walt Disney World Resort vacations with a beach day or two as the sunshine state has some of the most gorgeous beaches and warmest waters around!
Disney's Vero Beach Resort is a true treasure, and only a two hour drive from Walt Disney World. I hope you will get time to enjoy it at some point during your vacation. While visiting the Resort, you may wish to make a dining reservation at Wind & Waves Grill, a casual dining restaurant, which even offers character dining experience with some of your favorite Disney pals. Green Room Cabin also provides a relaxed open-air lounge where guests can enjoy cocktails and beverages as well as lighter fare and small snacks.
For a real treat, you may also want to indulge yourself with a signature massage or spa experience at The Spa at Disney's Vero Beach Resort.
Unfortunately, Bonnie, many other Resort amenities, including various recreational activities, use of the Resort pool, water slide, whirlpool spa, sun deck, and water play areas are reserved exclusively for Resort hotel guests. While there are no "day passes" available for purchase, if you are visiting for the day, you may want to look at booking a one night stay so you can truly experience all that this fantastic Resort has to offer.
Wishing you a wonderful upcoming holiday vacation!
On 10/27/2017 Karen from ON Asked: Hi! Just wondering how I reserve Mini Van transportation?


With Thanksgiving just gone and Christmas on its merry way, the season for giving is now upon us.
If you run a blog, then you may be thinking about hosting a giveaway this festive season. If you are, good for you, giveaways are a fantastic way to thank your readers, build connections with brands and promote your blog.
They're also relatively easy to set up and run, however if you've never held a giveaway before there are some pitfalls you will need to avoid.
Read on to find out how you can successfully source a giveaway prize, keep tabs on entries and make sure that it's promoted to a wider audience.
Brands nowadays are always on the look-out for bloggers to promote their products. Studies have shown that brand advocates are 70% more likely to be seen as a reliable source of information, as well as being 50% more likely to create content which influences people to buy.
Therefore, if you believe your blog has the right tone and style to get a brands notice then you may be well on your way to running a successful sponsored giveaway.
To build your blog's credibility if you're just starting out, include some honest and informative reviews. This will help you get to the stage where brands can become interested in you as an advocate.
Once your blog is ready, sign up to a service like CollectivEdge who can help get you in touch with relevant brand marketing campaigns, as well as help you promote your site – a match made in blogging heaven.
The next thing to think about is what you're hoping to get out of your giveaway. Your goal might be to encourage more Facebook likes or Instagram followers, or you may want to cement a relationship with a certain brand. Once you have thought about your goals, get in contact with specific brands to source a prize and arrange for their promotion in return (which may consist of backlinks to their site, a good review or a link to their social media page).
As a rule of thumb, the easier your competition or giveaway is, the more entries you will get. The simplest way to gain entries is to get your readers to leave a comment on your giveaway blog post. Bear in mind that if you choose this option, you will have to make sure you pick the winner at random.
Alternatively, you may want to use a giveaway site to help you keep track of your entries. A site like Rafflecopter is perfect; it allows you to create widgets which you can then share through your social media profiles quickly and easily. The widget will prompt readers into a performing an action, like leaving a blog comment, before an entry is then submitted. At the end of the giveaway it also provides you with a spreadsheet of all the entries your giveaway received, making it super-simple to verify entries and pick a winner.
On your blog giveaway post, it is also necessary to write a disclosure notice stating your affiliations with the brand. In order to build credibility with your audience, your readers have to know how and why you are hosting this giveaway, that you have used the product/service yourself and who will be shipping the winner's item (be that you or the company).
Important note: Terms of Services Agreements on many social networking websites state that you cannot use the network as a means of gaining mandatory entries into a prize draw.
This means that you can't get your fans to, for example, like your Facebook page as automatic entry into your contest, they must post a comment to your original site in order for it to be counted. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. also insist that you post a disclosure notice on your competition update, stating that your giveaway is in no way affiliated with the social network.
You must then post how long the competition will run for, how the winner will be picked, and how they can then get in touch to claim their prize. You will also want to put a time limit on how long the winner has to get in touch with you. This will allow you to pick another winner if the original entrant wasn't quick enough to claim their prize.
It is also important to set entrants an age limit (ages 18 or over), state where you will be willing to ship the prize (which may be UK only) and be clear on how many people can win.
Once your giveaway is up and running, you will need to promote it on social media. Be wary of 'spamming' your readers by posting multiple competition updates a day, as this will more likely cause you to lose followers. Once or twice a day, through all of your social networks should be enough to get the word out. Remember, if you have also prompted your readers to like your Facebook page, they may also help you promote your competition by sharing the competition post themselves. Your friends in the blogging community can share your post too. But again, don't send frequent emails to everyone in your blogging network, as this may harm your reputation.
Once you have picked a winner, allow them to verify their entry by giving them a certain amount of time (24-48 hours usually) to reply to you. Once you have notified them you can then let your readers know who the lucky winner is!
Competition giveaways really are a great way for bloggers to get their opinions heard and raise their credibility with wider audiences. We wish you the best of luck in your blog giveaways and if you have any tips on how to get your competitions noticed, please share with us your tried and tested methods.


text:
Q: What would be a good Android tablet to buy to test code? I'm producing an Android app for a customer. Currently I do not have an Android device. Does any have any suggestions on what Android device I should get to test my code on a real device?
Could I just get a really cheap one?

A: I bought a tablet for development testing and it has been INVALUABLE, so I definitely recommend others do it. In theory Android devices are pretty much all the same, but this isn't true in reality. As Android developers we do better if we have more than one device to test on - it's dangerous to assume "it works on my phone, it'll work ok on other devices" - NO.
I think you have three options:

*

*Buy a very cheap tablet. It may not be approved by Google, so it may be missing some stuff, e.g. the Geolocation APIs, as well as GMail, Market etc. It may also not have a GPS, probably won't have 3G. This makes it a fairly bad tablet, but great for testing. I bought a cheap one and it's made it clear just how often Android apps blow up if they've not been tested on a device that's v different to a phone. I'm amazed how many apps don't use exception handling round a GPS lookup, so the app fails (including Tweetdeck).

*Buy the Motorola XOOM. It's the first Google-approved tablet, and will be the first Honeycomb tablet. It looks like it'll be on sale in February. Probably $700-800 so not cheap, but it does look very promising as a device, and if you want to test against the presence of features (rather than absence) this is the one (until anything better comes).

*Wait for a while and I suspect by the Spring the market will be flooded with tablets from many manufacturers, and prices may come down, with more choice.
I suppose another option is to not buy one, and let your users report bugs and request improvements, and rely on the emulator, but that's a poor approach.
I think if your customer needs the app to work well on tablets (you didn't say) then you must buy one, and if they're likely to buy XOOMs, you should get one of them. If it was me I'd want to know what devices the customer needs the app to run on, and get one of them.
I bought an Advent Vega (UK) for testing (a bit like the Viewsonic GTab) and it's great for testing, but when the XOOM arrives I expect I will buy one of them, as the experience of using it will be much better. The screen on the Vega is pretty bad.

A: It may not be the best test device, but in terms of getting an android tablet cheaply, you may consider buying a Nook Color from Barnes & Noble, and rooting it.
http://blogkindle.com/2010/12/read-kindle-books-on-nook-color/
http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/nook-color-technical/3483-nookcolor-full-specifications.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Many applications take over 15 days to be viewed , after this time if you are lucky your app/game is approved, otherwise…go back to start: submit and wait over 15 days: these times are becoming too long every day.
My last approval interval was of OVER 20 days (from 13th august to 3th september): Apple have to take more reviewers otherwise the Apple Store will loose many developers.
Many reviewers let pass many applications (if you don't know every application is accepted by 2 reviewers so two of them let it pass) while many others not: cross your finger.