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Julia Elihu
Biography
Julia is an Iranian-American Writer/Director whose work spans across the narrative, documentary, and commercial landscape. Through film, she aims to shed light on underrepresented stories that capture life’s candid beauty.
In 2018, her short film YASAMIN, based on her mother’s story of immigration, was a Grand Jury Prize Nominee at the 2018 AFI Film Festival. In 2022, she associate produced the short documentary
LONG LINE OF LADIES which world premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and won the grand jury prize at SXSW. In 2021, she produced the short documentary titled TEAM MERYLAND which was acquired by The New Yorker and PBS' POV Shorts Program. Julia's short narrative film, WINTER OF '79, had its World Premiere at the Oscar-Qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival and is available to watch on Vimeo or Omeleto. Her latest short,
IN THE GARDEN OF TULIPS world premiered at the Aspen Shortsfest, winning the "Youth Jury Award". When it comes to commercial work, Julia has worked with a range of clients like Amazon, Nike x Togethxr, and Sqaure. Julia was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Commercial Directors Diversity Program, endorsed by the AICP and the Directors Guild of America (DGA).
In the future, Julia hopes to tell more stories that remind us to savor the small beauties of life.
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Alexander O'Neal
Biography
Alexander O'Neal (born November 15, 1953) is an American R&B singer, songwriter and arranger from Natchez, Mississippi.
O'Neal came to prominence in the mid-1980s as a solo artist, with eleven top 40 singles on the US R&B chart, three of which also reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. However, he enjoyed more mainstream success in the United Kingdom, achieving fourteen top 40 singles on the UK Singles Chart between 1985 and 1996, along with three top ten albums on the UK Albums Chart.
His solo singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, include "If You Were Here Tonight", "Fake", "Criticize", "The Lovers", "(What Can I Say) To Make You Love Me", "All True Man", "Love Makes No Sense" and "In the Middle". He is also known for duets with Tabu labelmate Cherrelle such as "Saturday Love" and "Never Knew Love Like This". AllMusic described O'Neal as having a "tough voice [that] has the same grain and range as that of Otis Redding."
O'Neal released his debut album, the eponymous Alexander O'Neal, in 1985. Since then, he has released nine studio albums, six compilation albums and two live albums.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Alexander O'Neal, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Ricardo Cortez
Biography
Ricardo Cortez (September 19, 1900 – April 28, 1977) was an American film actor who began his career during the silent film era.
Born Jacob Krantz in New York City into a Jewish family, he worked on Wall Street in a broker's office and as a boxer before his looks got him into the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno. When rumour began to circulate that Cortez was not actually Spanish, the studios tried to pass him off as a different type of Latin, French, before they finally admitted his (supposedly) Viennese origin.
Cortez appeared in over 100 films. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Montana Moon in 1930, played Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon in 1931, co-starred with Charles Farrell and Bette Davis in The Big Shakedown and Wonder Bar (with Al Jolson and Dolores del Río) in 1934. He also played Perry Mason in the 1936 film The Case of the Black Cat. Although he began his career playing romantic leads with actresses like Greta Garbo, when sound cinema arrived, his powerful delivery and New York accent made him an ideal villain and conman, and he switched from sex symbol to character actor.
Cortez was married to silent film actress Alma Rubens until her death of pneumonia in 1931.
When he retired from the film business, Cortez went to work as a stockbroker for Solomon Brothers on New York's Wall Street. He died in New York City in 1977 and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
He was the older brother of noted cinematographer Stanley Cortez (born Stanislaus Krantz).
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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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Sofia Boutella
Biography
Sofia Boutella (born April 3, 1982) is an Algerian dancer, model, and actress. She is known mainly for her hip-hop and street dance, and for appearing in Nike Women's advertising campaigns. Boutella has starred as Gazelle in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), an alien warrior named Jaylah in Star Trek Beyond (2016), and the main antagonist, Princess Ahmanet, in Universal's Dark Universe film The Mummy. Also in 2017, she starred alongside Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, the film adaptation of the graphic novel The Coldest City, as undercover French agent Delphine Lasalle.
Sofia Boutella was born in the Bab El Oued district of Algiers, Algeria, to an architect mother and a jazz musician father, Safy Boutella. Her brother, Seif, works as a visual effects artist in the entertainment industry. Her surname means 'the men of the mountains'. She was raised in a fairly secular household that cultivated artistic expression and creativity. In 1992, at the age of 10, she left Algeria with her family in the midst of the Algerian Civil War and moved to France. Shortly thereafter, she started rhythmic gymnastics, joining the French national team at age 18.
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Ralph Bellamy
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 62 years on stage, screen and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and awards, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Awful Truth (1937).
His film career began with The Secret Six (1931) starring Wallace Beery and featuring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. By the end of 1933, he had already appeared in 22 movies, most notably Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932) and the second lead in the action film Picture Snatcher with James Cagney (1933). He played in seven more films in 1934 alone, including Woman in the Dark, based on a Dashiell Hammett story, in which Bellamy played the lead, second-billed under Fay Wray. Bellamy kept up the pace through the decade, receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and played a similar part, that of a naive boyfriend competing with the sophisticated Grant character, in His Girl Friday (1940). He portrayed detective Ellery Queen in a few films during the 1940s, but as his film career did not progress, he returned to the stage, where he continued to perform throughout the 1950s. Bellamy appeared in other movies during this time, including Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) with Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball, and the horror classic The Wolf Man (1941) with Lon Chaney, Jr. and Evelyn Ankers. He also appeared in The Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942 with Chaney and Bela Lugosi.
Bellamy appeared in numerous television series. In 1949, Bellamy starred in the television noir private eye series Man Against Crime (also known as Follow That Man) on the DuMont Television Network; initially telecast live in its earliest seasons, the program lasted until 1956 and was simulcast for a season on Dumont and NBC, and ran on CBS during a different year. The lead role was taken by Frank Lovejoy in 1956, who subsequently starred in NBC's Meet McGraw detective series.
An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983) – in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt – brought him back into the spotlight.
Highly regarded within the industry, Bellamy served as a four-term President of Actors' Equity from 1952–1964. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ralph Bellamy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Friedrich Gulda
Biography
Friedrich Gulda (16 May 1930 – 27 January 2000) was an Austrian pianist and composer who worked in both the classical and jazz fields.
Born in Vienna the son of a teacher, Gulda began learning to play the piano at age 7 with Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx.
During World War II as teenagers, Gulda and his friend Joe Zawinul would perform forbidden music, including jazz, in violation of the government's prohibition of playing of such music.
Gulda won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946. Initially, the jury preferred the Belgian pianist Lode Backx, but when the final vote was taken, Gulda was the winner. One of the jurors, Eileen Joyce, who favoured Backx, stormed out and claimed the other jurors were unfairly influenced by Gulda's supporters. Gulda began to play concerts worldwide. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Together with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, Gulda formed what became known as the "Viennese troika".
Although most renowned for his Mozart and Beethoven interpretations, Gulda also performed the music of J. S. Bach (often on clavichord), Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Debussy and Ravel. His recordings of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier are well regarded, but Gulda performed very few other pieces by Bach and recorded even fewer. Gulda's later reliance on co-operating with companies whose recording techniques were primitive in comparison to those espoused by more sophisticated rivals stood him in very poor stead with regard to posterity. The rescued Mozart sonata tapes issued on DG are bad in terms of recorded technical quality; likewise are the Debussy Preludes and Bach recordings of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the late 1960s Gulda recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas. He continued to perform classical works throughout his life, composing cadenzas for two Mozart concertos, which he famously recorded with his former pupil Claudio Abbado, although he sometimes conducted from the keyboard himself. A notable feature of his Mozart recordings were his own improvisations.
Phillips Records included Gulda in its Great Pianists of the 20th Century CD box set, which came out in 1999. His piano students included Martha Argerich, who called him "my most important influence," and the conductor Claudio Abbado. ...
Source: Article "Friedrich Gulda" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Joan Hickson
Biography
Joan Bogle Hickson OBE (5 August 1906 – 17 October 1998) was an English actress of theatre, film and television. She was known for her role as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the television series Miss Marple. As well as portraying Miss Marple on television, Hickson also narrated a number of Miss Marple stories on audio books.
Born in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, Hickson was a daughter of Edith Mary (née Bogle) and Alfred Harold Hickson, a shoe manufacturer. Boarding at Oldfield School at Swanage in Dorset she went on to train at RADA in London. Making her stage debut in 1927, she worked for several years throughout the United Kingdom and achieved success playing comedic, often eccentric characters in London's West End, including the role of the cockney maid Ida in the original production of See How They Run, at the Q Theatre in 1944, and then at the Comedy Theatre in January 1945.
She made her first film appearance in 1934. The numerous supporting roles of her career included several Carry On films including Sister in Carry On Nurse and Mrs May in Carry On Constable.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Greg Palast
Biography
Gregory Allyn Palast (born June 26, 1952) is a New York Times-bestselling author and a journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but has also been known to work with labor unions and consumer advocacy groups. Notably, he has claimed to have uncovered evidence that Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and Florida Elections Unit Chief Clay Roberts, along with the ChoicePoint corporation, rigged the ballots during the US Presidential Election of 2000 and again in 2004 when, he argued, the problems and machinations from 2000 continued, and that challenger John Kerry actually would have won if not for disproportional "spoilage" of Democratic votes.
Palast spoke at a Think Twice conference held at Cambridge University and lectured at the University of São Paulo. He lives in New York City. Palast is originally from Los Angeles, and was educated at the University of Chicago, and eventually earned an MBA.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Greg Palast, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Bill Murray
Biography
William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He is known for his deadpan delivery in roles ranging from studio comedies to independent dramas. He has frequently collaborated with directors Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and Jim Jarmusch. He has earned numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two Independent Spirit Awards, as well as a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2016, Murray was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Murray was born in Evanston, Illinois, to Lucille (1921–1988), a mail-room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II (1921–1967), a lumber salesman. He was raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. Murray and his eight siblings grew up in an Irish Catholic family. His paternal grandfather was from County Cork, while his maternal ancestors were from County Galway. Three of his siblings, John Murray, Joel Murray, and Brian Doyle-Murray, are also actors.
Murray attended Regis University in Denver, Colorado, where he studied pre-med for a year. He dropped out after being arrested for marijuana possession. In 1973, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in comedy. He joined the National Lampoon Radio Hour, and later appeared in the National Lampoon stage show Lemmings.
In 1977, Murray joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. He quickly became one of the show's most popular cast members, known for his deadpan delivery and his ability to improvise. He left the show in 1980 to pursue a film career.
Murray's first major film role was in the 1979 comedy Meatballs. He went on to star in a number of successful comedies, including Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993). He has also starred in a number of critically acclaimed dramas, such as Lost in Translation (2003) and Broken Flowers (2005).
Murray is known for his eccentric and unpredictable behavior. He has been known to disappear from sets and film projects, and he has often been quoted as saying that he doesn't like to work. However, he is also known for his generosity and his willingness to help out his fellow actors.
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