Like many a president, Mr Obama took office vowing to transcend Washington's tribal politics and neuter the power of special interests.

ECONOMIST: Obama and the mid-terms

Kiki Wolfkill, Halo 4's startlingly-named executive producer, believes part of the solution is to transcend the genre's bullets-and-lasers roots.

BBC: Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 shoot it out

He said the designs shared a common theme of rebirth and needed to transcend the present to speak to future generations about today's society and its spirit.

BBC: World Trade Center architects aim high

That's how we can rise to this moment and transcend the failures of the past, tackle the challenges before us, and leave behind a nation that is more prosperous than ever before.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Addresses Business and Tourism Leaders

Kurzweil's magnum opus, "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, " outlines the implications of this transition in a way that is simultaneously believable, terrifying, meticulous and mind-bendingly absurd.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

When adapting fiction like this for the screen, the challenge is always to find cinematic ways to express the writer's larger purpose, and one of the first things a period film has to do is to transcend its set.

ECONOMIST: All that glitters