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Michael Maltese
Biography
Michael Maltese (February 6, 1908 – February 22, 1981) was an American story man for classic animated cartoon shorts. He is best known for working in the 1950s on a series of Merrie Melodies cartoons with director Chuck Jones. This collaboration produced many highly acclaimed animated shorts, including 4 of the top 5 "greatest cartoons" as judged by 1000 animation professionals; "What's Opera, Doc?" tops this list as the best animated short of all time.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
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Michaël Youn
Biography
Michaël Benayoun (born 1973), known professionally as Michaël Youn, is a French actor, singer, comedian and television personality.
Youn was born Michaël Benayoun in Suresnes, France, to a family of Hungarian, Italian, Moroccan-Jewish, and Algerian-Jewish descent.
After his education as an announcer and theater actor, Youn joined the Paris radio station Skyrock in 1998. There, he made sketches and further entertainment during the morning show.
The popularity and success of Michael Youn, at the most important French private broadcast station brought Youn to the attention of French TV executives. In July 2000, he was hired for the new morning show "Morning Live" shown on Métropole 6. With Vincent Desagnat and Benjamin Morgaine, Youn did the entertainment part of the show. Like their sketches and public events (e.g. foam bath in a Paris fountain, and waking random Parisians up shooting the slogan of the show at them), their parodies were particularly successful. In particular, they parodied the music scene of Jean-Michel Jarre, casting-popstars, the Grand Prix and French rappers.
The success of "Morning Live" was mainly due to Youn and his colleagues – when they left the show, it remained on the air for just one more year.
After leaving "Morning Live" in 2002, Youn, Desagnat and Morgaine have focused on their music parodies: The three sailors "Piotr", "Olaff" and "Dvorjak" from the Eastern European "Slowakistan", the Bratisla Boys, appeared on the Western music market with their song "Stach Stach". The act became a big success and was number one on the French charts for ten weeks. On a 2004 list of the all-time best selling CDs in France, "Stach Stach" was listed number 30. The success even spread beyond the French border and reached Switzerland, where it was 2nd on the official charts. On 7 July 2002, the project was stopped by its makers. They claimed that the Bratisla Boys had vanished on the Dead Sea without a trace.
In 2003, the film "La Beuze", written by Youn and Desagnat, was released. Youn played the character of Alphonse, the "unknown son" of James Brown, who tries to start his own career – by creating a new (fictional) style called "Frunkp" (a mixture of funk and rap). The song "Le Frunkp" was published as a CD-single and Michaël Youn (under the name of Alphonse Brown) had another hit. This time, he even reached #1 in Swiss charts.
Youn had a comedy-tour, called Pluskapoil in 2003/04 (its sequel followed in 2005) and has acted in films. New music projects followed: Les Conards (The Imbeciles) with Comme des Connards, a cover version of My Sharona by The Knack, as well as a song for the movie Iznogoud (both were in the French Top 20). He had small roles in rather big films, and was part of Les 11 commandements in 2004 (A French film done in the style of MTV's Jackass, together with Desagnat and Morgaine).
In 2005, Youn was Iznogoud in the film version of the comic "Iznogoud" (also known as Isnogud). In 2006, he had the main role in the film comedy Incontrôlable. Those two films were not very successful, critics and viewers finding them only so-so. Both films starred Desagnat and Morgaine, but only in small roles.
In 2010, he directed his first movie "Fatal" in which he also stars. ...
Source: Article "Michaël Youn" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Manushyaputhiran
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Manushya Puthiran (born 1968) is a poet and also a DMK supporter in Tamil Nadu. He was born as S. Abdul Hameed in Thuvarankurichi, the Tiruchirappalli district. He began his literary career in early 80's and at a very young age of 16, his first poem got published. In 2002, he was awarded the Sanskriti National Award for his outstanding contribution to Tamil literature as a young writer.
Over the past two decades, several of his poems got published in popular Tamil Magazines like Ananda Vikatan, Kumudam, Kalki and Kalachuvadu. His political and topical columns are regular in Tamil periodicals such as Kungumam, Nakeeran and Tamil popular daily Dinamalar.
He is known for his progressive views on various socio-political issues like capital punishment abolition, caste system annihilation, women liberation etc.
Now he lives in Chennai He is running Uyirmmai publication and Uyirmmai magazine. On Aug 19th 2015, he joined leading political party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu
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Charles Villeneuve
Biography
Charles Villeneuve (born Charles Leroy; 19 July 1941) is a French journalist.
He was the sports director of the television channel TF1.
On 27 May 2008, he was named as president of Paris Saint-Germain F.C. ahead of the new season, after the one-month interim of Simon Tahar; PSG had narrowly avoided relegation from Ligue 1. He was the third journalist to hold the post, after Michel Denisot and Charles Biétry in the 1990s.
In January 2009, he wrote a letter to the club's board in which he criticised their lack of investment. The letter was leaked to Le Parisien. He was then dismissed by owners Colony Capital, whose president Sébastien Bazin took that position at the club.
Source: Article "Charles Villeneuve" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Ai Hashimoto
Biography
Kumamoto-native Ai Hashimoto debuted in 2008 via an audition at Sony's Newcome that her mother pushed her to attend. Her mother loves celebrities. She has two sisters with her being the middle one. Her mother believed she is the one daughter who could make it in the audition. Immediately after the audition Ai disbelieved she would win. She began modelling in Seventeen magazine in 2010 and also made her acting debut in that year in Give And Go where she was the main character. She continued with roles in Confessions and Sadako 3D. Ai was awarded the prize as Rookie of The Year at the 36th Japan Academy Program in 2013. She ceased modelling in 2014. Hashimoto likes manga, karaoke and bicycling. She states that while she memorizes her scripts she avoids trying to understand the character from the lines and instead understand the spirit and motivation. Hashimoto is obsessed with eating tomatoes and cites the number three as her favourite.
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Geno Segers
Biography
Geno Segers is an American actor known for his roles as Mason Makoola in the Disney XD television series Pair of Kings, Chayton Littlestone on Cinemax's Banshee, Kincaid on MTV's Teen Wolf and also as co-host of Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge for two seasons. Born Lonnie Geno Segers, Jr., he is the oldest son of Lonnie G. Segers Sr. and Sandra Eldridge. His ancestry is Native American and tiny nigerian slave ancestry. Segers was a footballer, wrestler, and track athlete in high school and college. He played football at Western Carolina University, after which he played in the American National Rugby League. From there, he moved to New Zealand to play for the Richmond Rovers rugby league team. At the suggestion of a friend, Segers auditioned for voice ads at a New Zealand radio station. His voice (Segers is a bass) earned him a lot of attention, and caught the attention of an agent that led Segers to be cast as Mufasa in the Australian production of The Lion King. He went on to star in the American and Chinese productions as well.
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John Barnard
Biography
John Barnard, born on May 4, 1946, in Wembley, London, is a distinguished British engineer and designer renowned for his transformative contributions to Formula 1. Graduating from Watford Technical College, Barnard began his career at Lola Cars, where he honed his skills in race car design. In 1981, while at McLaren, Barnard introduced the MP4/1, the first Formula 1 car to feature a full carbon-fiber composite monocoque. This innovation significantly enhanced chassis rigidity and driver safety, setting a new standard in F1 car construction. Barnard's tenure at Ferrari from 1986 to 1996 was marked by the development of the semi-automatic paddle-shift gearbox, first implemented in the 1989 Ferrari 640. This technology revolutionized gear shifting in Formula 1, improving performance and reliability. Throughout his career, Barnard worked with several leading teams, including Benetton and Arrows, consistently pushing the boundaries of race car design. His innovations have had a lasting impact on the sport, influencing modern F1 engineering and design principles.
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Harvey Fierstein
Biography
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is an American actor, playwright, and voice actor. Fierstein has won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his own play Torch Song Trilogy (about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family) and the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. He also wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, and wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning "Kinky Boots". He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007.
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Colin Campbell
Biography
Colin Campbell was born in Reston, Manitoba in 1942. He gained his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1966 and his Masters of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate School in California in 1969. After completing his education, he returned to Canada to teach at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he stayed until 1972 – a watershed year in Campbell’s artistic development. As one of the pioneers of video art in Canada, Toronto based artist Colin Campbell has had an international career that parallels the development of video art. Originally a sculptor, Campbell was first introduced to video in 1972, as the technology was beginning to emerge. “For me, video’s appeal lay in its potential for theatricality, performance and narrative,” said Campbell in Now Magazine. “The first subject of those things was myself. Gradually I started to turn the camera outward, developing characters and personae much different from my own.” Campbell avoids slick television style video production in favour of his highly developed grass roots style, which Bruce Ferguson has called the “aesthetics of poverty.”
Campbell’s narratives explore gender-bending scenarios, rich with humour and pathos. In his exploration of gender stereotypes, Campbell has consistently kept to informal styles and scripts, cheap and homespun sets, and a cast often made up of himself and friends, including Ferguson, artists Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars, and fellow video veteran Lisa Steele. His approach was perhaps best described by Adele Freedman in Toronto Life: “Campbell is the kind of romantic who can sense tragic potential in a package of Kraft dinner.”
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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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