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Sayaka Asaoka
Biography
Born in 1979 in Tokyo, Sayaka started learning the piano at the age of three. In 1992 and 1995, she was invited by the Japan-Germany Association and JML to take part in a series of concert tours in Germany and Korea. Between 1992 and 1995, she also performed in concerts at seven schools in England (Eton College, Westminster School, Whitgift School, Rikyo Suchool, St. Mary’s School, James Allen’s School and Purcell School.)
Sayaka has won many prizes in major Japanese piano competitions, including the 1st prize of the All Japan Student Music Competition and the 1st prize of The 20th PTNA Piano Competition Concerto Division. She has performed with various Japanese orchestras, including Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Toshiaki Umeda and Toho Academy Orchestra conducted by Kazuyoshi Akiyama.
Between 1998~2004, Sayaka studied the Soloist Diploma Course, the highest course of the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, and received the Piano Soloist Diploma, the first time this had ever been awarded in the history of Toho Gakuen. At the same time, she also studied clinical psychology in the International Christian University (ICU) and received a BA degree. From 2005, she began to study in London with Christopher Elton, and in June 2006 she completed the Postgraduate Performance Diploma Course of Royal Academy of Music and received The Vice Principal’s Special Award for her final recital in which she played Rachmaninov’s pieces and she also received DipRAM, the Academy’s ‘Premier Prix’.
Sayaka has also composed a series of original pieces, and a set of her debut CDs “Morning Star” and “Midnight Sun” were released in 2012.
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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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Steve Varnom
Biography
Steve Varnom is a UK-based actor, screenwriter and film-maker. He trained at LAMDA. He will soon be seen as King Custennin, a series regular in the upcoming historical fantasy TV show "The Pendragon Cycle." (Bonfire Legend/The Daily Wire.) He played Eddie Rubinski in the movie "The Sweeter Side of Life," a romantic comedy directed by Michael Damian for The Hallmark Channel - and Ben Goeser in "Obsession: Dark Desires," a true life drama for Discovery I.D. Other television and film work includes "Eastenders", "Coronation Street", "Holby City", "Level Up", "God The Father", "The Storyteller", "London's Burning", "Down to Earth", "The Bill", "Dalziel and Pascoe", "Sugar Rush" and "Doctors". He also wrote, directed and starred in the feature film "It's Been Real", and has a supporting role in "Heroes and Villains" and "Level Up". He starred in "Broadside", a costume drama for American television, in which he played General George Monck, directed by the award winning David Hickman. Steve has had a long and successful career in the theatre, playing leading roles in London's West End and working with renowned directors at the Royal Shakespeare Company, RUG, The Manchester Royal Exchange and The New Vic. His company, King Ziggy Films is developing several feature film projects.
- IMDb mini biography by: Steve Varnom
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Ernst Hofbauer
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ernst Hofbauer (b. 22 August 1925 Vienna, Austria - d. 24 February 1984 Munich, Germany at age 58) was an Austrian film director. During the early 1970s, in Munich, Hofbauer teamed with Walter Boos, Wolf C. Hartwig, and Ludwig Spitaler to produce the original thirteen films under the banner Schulmadchen Report (or Schoolgirl Report); the stories were adapted from books written by Guenther Hunold, while Guenther Heller composed the film script, Klaus Werner did the camera work, and the music was handled by Gert Wilden & Orchestra. Hofbauer and Boos were referred to as the 'Titans of Teen Libido'. The films were classified as 'sexploitation', and were extremely popular, seen by more than 30 million people all over the world. In the United States, the films were released in grindhouses and drive-ins, and the names of the films were changed to conform to American standards. Because the films focused on young girls who may have been under legal age in this country, the Schoolgirl Report series was eventually suppressed. The Schoolgirl Report series was very interesting because the films portrayed many unknown teenagers and actresses who were vibrant, beautiful, naive, innocent, and unabashed. Most of the films related a series of vignettes to tell an interesting story. Hidden pedophile lust, co-ed skinnydipping, situations involving first-time sexual experiences, and encounters with teachers were all shown in the episodes. Interracial love affairs, male and female masturbation sequences, forced prostitution, rape, voyeurism, harmless erotic games, seduction, and erotic touching are also portrayed in the vignettes. Well-known German sex kitten Ingrid Steeger and the ever-horny Italian comic Rinaldo Talamonti play key roles in many of the vignettes. Rosl Mayr appears in almost all of the thirteen Schulmadchen Report films as an elderly lady with a comic role. She is perfectly cast as a comedic talent and is the only senior actress that plays a key element in many of the vignettes. Marie Ekorre, Sonja Jeannine, Christina Lindberg, and Birgit Tetzlaff are a few of the young actresses who titillate the audience with their erotic encounters. Friedrich von Thon conducted street interviews to discuss the plots in the vignettes, and many of the situations were followed up with a courtroom setting (the male actors were charged with statutory rape). The Schoolgirl Report films were classified as 'soft-core' eroticism, which is similar to the David Hamilton genre. Ernst Hofbauer directed many erotic films in addition to the original thirteen Schulmadchen Report classics. Sex sells, and Hofbauer exploited consumer demand for R-rated movies involving young actors and actresses. He had a unique style that combined youth, eroticism, wit, and anecdote. His exploitation films of the 1970s appealed to moviegoers from all walks of life. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ernst Hofbauer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Gilbert Montagné
Biography
Gilbert Montagné (born 28 December 1951) is a French singer, musician, pianist and organist from the Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris and Bourbonnais historical region of central France. Blind since shortly after birth, he is best remembered for his international hit "The Fool" which was a number 1 single across Europe and South America in 1971, as well as his songs "On va s'aimer" (1983) and "Les Sunlights des tropiques" (1984). In France, he is still a popular albums and concert artist, having toured and sang with the likes of Johnny Hallyday and Kool & the Gang.
In 2009, he participated in the television show Rendez-vous en terre inconnue in Zanskar. He was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1982, an Officer in the National Order of Merit in 2011 and an Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honour in 2020.
Montagné was active in politics within the Union for a Popular Movement under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. In the 2010 regional election, he ran as a candidate in Allier. Montagné is also noted for his activism for blind people. From ages 10 to 16, he was a student at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris. In 2022, Saint-Léon, the village his father was originally from and Gilbert Montagné visited as a child, named a square after him.
Source: Article "Gilbert Montagné" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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Scott Dunn
Biography
Scott Dunn is a Korean-American filmmaker from Illinois. Throughout his childhood, he made films with his friends as a hobby. After graduating high school, he began his career acting in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles. He got his first break in a three-episode arc in Disney XD’s “Kickin’ It”. After appearing in several short films and webisodes, Scott switched back to his filmmaking roots. He made his first feature film, “Schlep” which won Best Comedy/Dramedy at the Hollywood Boulevard Film Festival and was nominated in five different categories at the FirstGlance Film Festival. “Mandao of the Dead” is Scott’s second feature film that he wrote, directed, edited, produced, and starred in.
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Venkataraman Raghavan
Biography
Venkataraman Raghavan (1908–1979) was a Sanskrit scholar and musicologist. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Padma Bhushan and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit, and authored over 120 books and 1200 articles.After a brief tenure as the superintendent of the Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji's Saraswathi Mahal Library, Raghavan joined Madras University in 1934 as a Ph.D. assistant and in 1935 as a lecturer. Rising to the rank of professor and head of the Department of Sanskrit, he held the latter position until his retirement in 1968.
In 1931, he paid frequent visits to Tanjore villages with K.V. Ramachandran to highlight the traditional Natakas of the Bhagavata's at Merattur, Sulamangalam. He presented a paper in the Madras Music Academy's annual conference session on "Some Names in Early Sangita Literature" in 1932. He wrote film scripts for Puranas, epics, and Sanskrit classics at a friend's request without making money out of it. He also played an active role in producing dialogue, general advice, and scenario for three films, Sita Kalyanam (1934), Chandrasena (1935) and Jalaja (1938).[3] In the same year, he wrote reviews for the renowned magazines Sound & Shadow and Triveni on Carnatic music, Bharatanatya, and Harikatha performances.[2]
He authored several articles and books on music and aesthetics in English, Tamil, and Sanskrit. He was a founding member of the Sahitya Akademi and the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and the founding editor of Samskrita Pratibha, a journal of the Sahitya Akademi (1958–1979). V. Raghavan advised and supervised 22 Ph.D., M.Litt., and non-degree students in their research and publications. He remained a life-long mentor for his students from all over the world.
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Sina Mehrad
Biography
Sina Mehrad AKA Sina Soheili was born into an artist family with his father Saeed Soheili as well as his sibling Saed being famous names in Iranian cinema. He started amateur acting with a role in his father's flick 'Naked Night' (2001). Some years later at the age of 19, he made a comeback with stage acting in theater plays. The actor's first appearance on the small screen came with 'The Recluse' (2014) before he shot to fame among TV audiences in the series ‘Father’ (2017). Most recently he acted in his father's new offering 'Pig Gene' (2019).
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Nils Allen Stewart
Biography
Nils Allen Stewart (Born July 19th, 1961) is an American Actor and stuntman with nearly 300 credits to his name on-screen and for stunt work. When on screen he is often typecast as a thug, henchmen, enforcer or some kind of tough role. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Orlando, The righthand man of Dorian Tyrell (played Peter Greene), in the 1994 Oscar nominated comedy The Mask which starred Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz. Stewart began his acting career with roles in such films as the action film "Cop and A Half" (1993) with Burt Reynolds, the Dan Aykroyd comedy "Coneheads" (1993) and the action flick "The Shadow" (1994) with Alec Baldwin. He also appeared in the Robert Patrick action picture "Double Dragon" (1994) and the action movie "Soul of the Avenger" (1995) with Mark Pellegrino. In the nineties and the early 2000s, Stewart devoted his time to various credits, such as "The Chamber" (1996) starring Chris O'Donnell, "The Quest" (1996) and "Meet Wally Sparks" (1997). He also worked on "Hitman's Run" (2000) starring Eric Roberts. Stewart continued to exercise his talent in the early 2000s, taking on a mix of projects like "Undisputed" (2002), the Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson box office smash "Anger Management" (2003) and "Brick" with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (2006). His credits also expanded to "Eragon" with Ed Speleers (2006) and "Man of Faith" (2006) starring Damian Chapa. Most recently, Stewart worked on the Thomas Horn adventure for the whole family "Space Warriors" (2013). He is married to Renee Steward and they have 4 children. He is the father of Booboo and Fivel Stewart.
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Sofiane Zermani
Biography
Sofiane Zermani (born 21 July 1986) is a French rapper of Algerian descent. He's also known as Fianso (verlan of his first name). Born in Saint-Denis, Paris Region, in the northern suburbs of Paris, he lived in the nearby Stains until age 13 when he moved to Le Blanc-Mesnil.
In 2011, he released independently the album Blacklist followed by Blacklist II in 2013. In 2016, he launched a series of videos titled #JeSuisPasséChezSo inviting other less-known rappers to take part. In November 2016, he was signed to Capitol Records, an affiliate of Universal Music France. In January 2017, he released "Ma cité a craqué" featuring Bakyl. The album #JeSuisPasséChezSo, same title as the earlier series has peaked at #2 on SNEP, the French Albums Chart. The album is certified Platinum in May 2017 for selling over 100,000 copies internationally.
In May 2017 Sofiane released the album Bandit saleté ("Filth bandit"), which again was certified platinum. For the music video for the song "Toka" from the album, Sofiane and around 10 of his crew stood in the middle of the A3 autoroute, blocking cars, while Sofiane rapped the song in front of cameras. The filming was done without a permit. In February 2018 he was fined €1,500 and given a suspended sentence of four months in jail for obstructing traffic. At the sentencing, Sofiane apologized for his actions, and said that the decision to film there had come to him in a moment of "bad inspiration".
Source: Article "Sofiane (rapper)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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