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William Hanna
Biography
William Denby "Bill" Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, director, producer, television director, television producer, and cartoon artist, whose movie and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by 1919. There, Hanna became an Eagle Scout. Hanna graduated from Compton High School in 1928. He briefly attended Compton City College but dropped out at the onset of the Great Depression.After working odd jobs in the first months of the Depression, Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930. During the 1930s, Hanna steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry and live action films. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna–Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.Hanna and Barbera won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoons have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media such as films, books, and toys. Hanna–Barbera's shows have a global audience of over 300 million people and have been translated into more than 20 languages.
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Alican Yücesoy
Biography
Alican Yücesoy is a Turkish actor and director. His maternal family is of Turkish descent who immigrated from Ruse which Turk minority in Bulgaria live. His paternal family is of Arab descent.
After completing his primary, secondary and high school education in Bursa, Yücesoy enrolled in Haliç University Theatre Department for acting education. He started to work at Bakirköy Municipality Theatre after he participated in an audition the day after he entered the school.
He later started appearing in TV series and movies. As of 2015, he is the new general art director of Bakirköy Municipality Theatre.
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Iain Smith
Biography
Iain Smith was educated in Glasgow. He received a 1st Class Hons Diploma from London School of Film Technique (1969/70) now the London Film School.
In the early 1970s, Smith worked as assistant editor, assistant director or production manager on numerous short films, commercials and children's feature films. He worked in London for several years before returning to his native Scotland to make (uncredited) My Childhood for the British Film Institute, the first of the trilogy by Bill Douglas.
In 1976, Smith formed his own production company in partnership with Jon Schorstein (Smith Schorstein Associates Ltd) and produced television commercials, documentaries, children's feature films and low-budget dramas. In 1978, he production-managed Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch,[1] starring Romy Schneider and Harvey Keitel. A year later, he joined David Puttnam and Hugh Hudson, as the location manager for Chariots of Fire, starring Ian Charleson and Ben Cross.
Smith went on to line produce a variety of films for David Puttnam, getting associate producer credit on Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert, Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields, starring Sam Waterston and Haing Ngor, and Roland Joffe's The Mission, starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. He also produced Brian Gilbert's The Frog Prince.
In 1987, Smith formed Applecross Productions and went on to co-produce Richard Marquand's Hearts of Fire, starring Bob Dylan and Rupert Everett, followed by Michael Austen's Killing Dad, starring Richard E. Grant, Denholm Elliott and Julie Walters. In 1991, he co-produced Roland Joffe's City of Joy, starring Patrick Swayze and Pauline Collins, and in 1992, executive produced Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise, starring Gérard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver.
In 1994, Smith co-produced Stephen Frears's Mary Reilly, starring Julia Roberts and John Malkovich for Tristar Pictures, followed by Luc Besson's The Fifth Element in 1996, which starred Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman and was produced by his company Zaltman Films Ltd for Gaumont.
He then produced Jean-Jacques Annaud's Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt and David Thewlis for Columbia Pictures, followed by Jon Amiel's Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones for 20th Century Fox.
Smith executive produced Tony Scott's Spy Game for Universal Pictures, which starred Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, followed by Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain for Miramax, starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger. He went on to produce Oliver Stone's Alexander for Intermedia, starring Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie, followed by producing Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain for New Regency/Warner Bros., starring Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Ellen Burstyn, and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men for Strike Entertainment/Universal Pictures.
In 2005, he was awarded a BAFTA Scotland for Outstanding Achievement in Film. He also was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.
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Hunter S. Thompson
Biography
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is known also for his unrepentant lifelong use of alcohol, LSD, mescaline, and cocaine (among other substances); his love of firearms; his inveterate hatred of Richard Nixon; and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. While suffering a bout of health problems, he committed suicide in 2005, at the age of 67.
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Kristin Davis
Biography
Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis; born February 23, 1965) is an American actress and producer. She is known for playing Charlotte York in the HBO romantic comedy series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She received nominations at the Emmys and the Golden Globes in 2004 for her role as Charlotte, and reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), as well as the revival of the show And Just Like That... (2021–2025) on HBO Max.
Davis's big break came in 1995, when she was cast as the villainous Brooke Armstrong in the Fox prime time soap opera Melrose Place (1995–1996). Her film credits include The Shaggy Dog (2006), Deck the Halls (2006), Couples Retreat (2009), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) and Holiday in the Wild (2019). Davis made her Broadway debut playing Mabel Cantwell in the 2012 revival of The Best Man, and her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in the original 2014 stage production of Fatal Attraction.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Kristin Davis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Alain Jessua
Biography
Alain Jessua began his career as assistant to directors like Max Ophüls, Marcel Carne, Yves Allégret and Jacques Becker, before making his unique short film, Léon la lune, which earned him the prestigious Prix Jean-Vigo award in 1957. A few years later, in 1963, his first feature film (which became "cult" among moviegoers) won two prizes in Cannes and also Venice: La Vie à l'envers, with Charles Denner and Jean Yanne in his first movie role. He then went on to direct a series of successful and critically acclaimed feature films, which he produced himself (a rare risk in the French cinema landscape).
Alain Jessua is regularly honored in France and abroad. His short film Léon la lune was screened at the MOMA - Museum of Modern Art in New York a few years ago and Martin Scorsese cited La Vie à l'envers as one of the films that really made an impact on him. Jean Tulard , in his "Dictionary of Cinema", writes: "He proposes a cinema where he tackles the problems of our time and makes cries of alarm. "
Alain Jessua is also the author of six novels.
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Georges Franju
Biography
Georges Franju was a French filmmaker. He was born in Fougères, Ille-et-Vilaine. Before working in French cinema, Franju had several different jobs. Franju was also briefly in the military in Algeria and was discharged in 1932. On his return, Franju studied to become a set designer and later created backdrops for music halls including Casino de Paris and the Folles Bergère.
In the mid-thirties, Franju and Henri Langlois met through Franju's twin brother Jacques Franju. As well as creating the 16 mm short film Le Métro, Langlois and Franju also started a short-lived film magazine and created a film club called Le Cercle du Cinema with 500 francs he borrowed from Langlois' parents. The club showed silent films from their own collections followed by an informal debate about them amongst members. From Le Cercle du Cinema, Franju and Langlois founded the Cinématheque Française in 1936.
Franju ceased to be closely related with the Cinématheque Française as early as 1938, and only became associated with it strongly again in the 1980s when he was appointed as the honorary artistic director of the Cinématheque.
In 1949, Franju began work on a series of nine documentary films. The Nazi occupation of Paris and the industrialism following World War II influenced Franju's early works. With Head Against the Wall (French:La tête contre les murs) in 1958, Franju turned toward fiction feature films. His second feature was the horror film Eyes Without a Face (French:Les Yeux sans Visage) about a surgeon who tries to repair his daughter's ruined face by grafting on to it the faces of beautiful women. His 1963 film Judex was a tribute to the silent film serials Judex and Fantomas. In Franju's later years his film work became less frequent. Franju occasionally directed for television and in the late seventies he retired from filmmaking to preside over the Cinématheque Française. In her study of French cinema since the French new wave, Claire Clouzot described Franju's film style as "a poignant fantastic realism inherited from surrealism and Jean Painlevé science cinema, and influenced by the expressionism of Lang and Murnau". Franju's focus was on the visual aspect of filmmaking, which he claimed marked a director as an auteur. Franju claimed to "not have the story writing gift" and was focused on what he described as the "putting into form" of the film.
Franju was also extremely influenced by surrealism. He used elements of surrealism and shock horror within his films in order to “awaken” his audience. Franju had a long history of friendship with well-known surrealists including Andre Breton, and the influence of this movement is extremely evident in his works. Franju uses these elements to link horror, history, and an ironic commentary on modernity’s ideal of progress. Franju is quoted as having said “It’s the bad combination, it’s the wrong synthesis, constantly being made by the eye as it looks around, that stops us from seeing everything as strange.”
Description above from the Wikipedia article Georges Franju , licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Edward Fox
Biography
Edward Charles Morice Fox (born 13 April 1937) is an English stage, film and television actor. He is the older brother of actor James Fox.
He played the part of the professional assassin who is hired to assassinate the French president Charles de Gaulle in the film The Day of the Jackal (1973). He is also known for his roles in Battle of Britain (1969), The Go-Between (1971), for which he won a BAFTA award, and The Bounty (1984). He also collaborated with director Richard Attenborough, appearing in his films Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Gandhi (1982).
He portrayed Edward VIII in the British television drama series Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978) and appeared in the historical series Taboo (2017). In addition to film and television work, he has also garnered acclaim as a stage actor.
In 2003, Fox was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to Drama.
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Marianne Farley
Biography
Marianne Farley is an actress and director, known for White Skin (2004), The Christmas Choir (2008) and Imaginaerum (2012). She was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Marianne has recorded a couple of music discs, including one for the French market in Quebec. Her television and film work has been lauded with many nominations and wins. One of these wins was for her film White Skin (2004). White Skin won a Genie award for the Best First Feature Film, a Best Canadian First Feature Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and a Best Canadian Feature Award in the Victoria Independant Film and Video Festival for director Daniel Rob. Marianne directed her first short film, when Saccage was released in 2015.
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