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Since the mid-2000s, there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older male heroes, predominantly showcasing stars ranging from their mid-fifties into their seventies. This ‘geri-action’ cycle – a less-than-kind label that combines geriatric and action – has revitalised the careers of aged action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A core element of the cycle, beyond action franchise revivals and all-star ensembles featuring stars from the 1980s and 1990s, has been the emergence of late-career action turns by ageing Hollywood actors in globally successful French-produced, Hollywood-style action films. Part of a larger trend in French cinema towards the production of films in a distinctly commercial register, the ‘globalised’ aesthetic of French action film cannily mimics Hollywood action film style and aesthetics. These French-produced geri-action films are the roots of the cycle, represent some of its biggest box office successes and have transformed the career of several acclaimed recent-to-action Hollywood stars, exemplified by the prolific late action career of Oscar-nominated actor, Liam Neeson, most notably across three Taken films (2008–2014, EuropaCorp). Despite this, these French-produced geri-action films have predominantly been examined as a Hollywood and American phenomenon.

Geri-action quickly became synonymous with 1980s Hollywood action cinema's white male ‘hard bodies’, who are still widely understood to diagnose national anxieties and social ills – and violently embody their so-called “cures”. These French geri-action films similarly feature protagonists who forcefully struggle against perceived threats to the cultural position of traditional (white) masculinities and professional and paternal redundancy. Yet they also showcase deep-seated European anxieties about the threat of porous borders, immigration and social change, presaging a later shift in the cycle in Hollywood. Focusing on films that have received comparatively less scholarly attention, Taken 2 (2012), 3 Days to Kill (2014) and The Commuter (2018), this chapter examines the productive confluence of lower budget French-produced geri-action films and their ageing recent-to-action stars. These films depend on their stars to fortify their globalised Hollywood aesthetic and the stars' personae permit efficiencies such as clipped pacing. At the same time, budget constraints enhance the action performance of recent-to-action stars as unadorned, visceral and authentic-feeling. The films often stage fight sequences in confined, everyday spaces of work and tourism with ageing heroes who must creatively ‘make do’ with objects available to them. Equally, stunt coordination and choreography, editing and sound design make ageing and less experienced action performers appear to move faster and hit harder. Taken together, French-produced geri-action and its recent-to-action stars have transformed not only who stars in ‘Hollywood’ action cinema but who produces it.

The increasing accumulation of synthetic plastic waste in oceans and landfills, along with the depletion of non-renewable fossil-based resources, has sparked environmental concerns and prompted the search for environmentally friendly alternatives. Biodegradable plastics derived from lignocellulosic materials are emerging as substitutes for synthetic plastics, offering significant potential to reduce landfill stress and minimise environmental impacts. This study highlights a sustainable and cost-effective solution by utilising agricultural residues and invasive plant materials as carbon substrates for the production of biopolymers, particularly polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), through microbiological processes. Locally sourced residual materials were preferred to reduce transportation costs and ensure accessibility. The selection of suitable residue streams was based on various criteria, including strength properties, cellulose content, low ash and lignin content, affordability, non-toxicity, biocompatibility, shelf-life, mechanical and physical properties, short maturation period, antibacterial properties and compatibility with global food security. Life cycle assessments confirm that PHB dramatically lowers CO₂ emissions compared to traditional plastics, while the growing use of lignocellulosic biomass in biopolymeric applications offers renewable and readily available resources. Governments worldwide are increasingly inclined to develop comprehensive bioeconomy policies and specialised bioplastics initiatives, driven by customer acceptability and the rising demand for environmentally friendly solutions. The implications of climate change, price volatility in fossil materials, and the imperative to reduce dependence on fossil resources further contribute to the desirability of biopolymers. The study involves fermentation, turbidity measurements, extraction and purification of PHB, and the manufacturing and testing of composite biopolymers using various physical, mechanical and chemical tests.

The latest advances in digital technologies have changed the way companies communicate with their stakeholders. This chapter explores the businesses’ usage of digital communication channels. It focuses on their utilization of social media for marketing and promotion of products, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and stakeholder engagement with financial stakeholders. An exploratory study was carried out on a sample of 167 Italian businesses. It investigated the companies’ websites and their social media accounts. The findings suggest that the Italian businesses are using various social media networks for corporate communication purposes. This descriptive research shows that they are utilizing Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, among others, to communicate commercial information and to promote their business. Moreover, they are using Instagram and Twitter to raise awareness about their CSR initiatives. In conclusion, this chapter implies that marketers need to carefully coordinate the use of different digital tools to ensure that they reach their target audiences in an effective manner.

The aim of this chapter is to study individualism and collectivism as two construct indicators of social patterns in Lebanon using Triandis's (1995) framework of individualism and collectivism. This study explores the Lebanese autostereotypes and views of their extreme individualism and collectivism compared to the common opinion held by cross-cultural research. The study sheds light on how social patterns of different Lebanese individuals are distributed across four “cultural syndromes,” namely vertical and horizontal collectivism and vertical and horizontal individualism. These four social patterns will be tested against various contextual factors such as age, gender, and education. The results may provide a better idea for managers and human resources practitioners of how to prepare training and evaluation programs for their employees. Findings from 161 respondents showed that the subjects tested tended to be individualistic in their choices, and this suggests that the classification in the literature of the Lebanese as collectivists was based on the fact that there was no evidence to the contrary. Also, results showed a positive correlation between sociodemographic measures (gender, age, education, income, occupation, and location) and individualism. The author argues that these findings might have been the result of the evolution of the Lebanese family in the past 25 years. Suggestions for the use of these results in management and human resources practices and theory are given.

We investigate the interaction of debt covenants and tax accounting on the adoption of Financial Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48). We examine how firms respond to the potential tightening of covenant slack upon FIN 48 adoption and whether these actions are penalized by creditors and anticipated by equity markets. We find that upon FIN 48 adoption, the majority of sample corporate borrowers increase their tax reserves and reduce equity. Firms close to debt covenant violation were even more likely to increase tax reserves upon FIN 48 adoption; however, the size of the adjustment was relatively smaller, suggesting that the FIN 48 standards limited, but did not eliminate, firms use of discretion in reporting uncertain tax positions to avoid costly covenant violations. For firms near net worth debt covenant violation, the act of decreasing equity upon FIN 48 adoption imposes real economic costs, as the average cost of debt increased by 43 basis points. Finally, we extend prior research on the market response to FIN 48 by showing how the market response to FIN 48 adoption is a function of debt covenant slack and tax aggressiveness. Specifically, the cumulative abnormal return at the FIN 48 exposure draft release date is negative only for tax aggressive firms that are close to debt covenant violation.

This chapter presents a comparative study of the trends and patterns of communication and tourism research in Brazil and the United States over the last 20 years. Through a bibliometric analysis of the CAPES and EBSCO databases, the study identifies the main theoretical and methodological references, classifies the fundamental themes in the area, and describes the role of communication for tourism. The results indicate the predominance in North American scientific literature of research related to the image and the brand of the tourist destinations, as well as the measurement and the evaluation of the communicative strategies. On the other hand, Brazilian research presents a greater diversity of approaches: destination image studies, tourism consumption, tourist narrative analysis, identities, social networks, community-based tourism, sports, and ecological tourism, with an explicit recognition of the dangers of sexual objectification and dehumanization within tourism. The survey showed that the scientific community has a strong interest in this area, signaling a search for knowledge to deepen the conceptual understanding of the subject. Thus, this chapter provides insights regarding the opportunities and directions for the next decades of research in this field of study.