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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He 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, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Morris
Biography
Maurice De Bevere (1 December 1923 – 16 July 2001), better known as Morris, was a Belgian cartoonist, comics artist, illustrator and the creator of Lucky Luke, a bestselling comic series about a gunslinger in the American Wild West. He was inspired by the adventures of the historic Dalton Gang and other outlaws. It was a bestselling series for more than 50 years that was translated into 23 languages and published internationally. He collaborated for two decades with French writer René Goscinny on the series. Morris's pen name is an Anglicized version of his first name.
Born in Kortrijk, Belgium, Morris attended the well-known Jesuit college in Aalst. His math teacher told his parents the youth would unfortunately never succeed in life, as he passed math classes doodling in the margin of his math books. The student uniforms required there inspired his choices for those of the undertakers in his Lucky Luke cartoon series.
Morris started his career after college drawing in the Compagnie Belge d'Actualités (CBA) animation studios. This was a small and short-lived Belgian animation studio, where he met fellow artists Peyo, André Franquin and Eddy Paape.
After World War II, the company folded. Morris worked as an illustrator for Het Laatste Nieuws, a Flemish newspaper, and Le Moustique, a French-language weekly magazine published by Dupuis. He made some 250 covers and numerous other illustrations for the latter magazine, mainly caricatures of movie stars.
Morris died in 2001 of an embolism following an accidental fall.
In 1946, Morris created Lucky Luke for Spirou magazine, the Franco-Belgian comics magazine published by Dupuis. Lucky Luke is a solitary cowboy who travels across the Wild West, helping those in need and aided by his faithful horse, Jolly Jumper. The first adventure, "Arizona 1880", was published in L'Almanach Spirou 1947, released on 7 December 1946.
Morris became one of the central artists of the magazine. He was one of the so-called La bande des quatre (Gang of Four), with Jijé, André Franquin, and Will. All four lived and worked for a couple of years at Jijé's studio in Waterloo, and became very good friends, stimulating each other artistically.
In 1948, Morris, Jijé and Franquin travelled to the United States (Will was still too young and had to remain in Belgium). They wanted to get to know the country, see what was left of the Wild West, and meet some American comic artists. Morris stayed the longest of the three, for six years. During his six-year stay in the U.S. Morris met Jack Davis and Harvey Kurtzman, and assisted them with founding their Mad magazine at EC Comics. In the U.S. he also met René Goscinny, a French comic artist and writer.
They developed a long collaboration, and Goscinny wrote all the Lucky Luke stories between 1955 and his death in 1977. In the 1950s, Goscinny was still fairly unknown, but he became the most successful comic writer in Europe, first with Lucky Luke and a few years later with his Asterix series. ...
Source: Article "Morris (cartoonist)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Brigitte Lin
Biography
Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia (Chinese: 林青霞; pinyin: Lín Qīngxiá; born 3 November 1954) is a Taiwanese actress. She was a popular actress, regarded as an icon of Chinese cinema, who acted in both Taiwanese and Hong Kong films. She retired in 1994, although she had a minor role in the 1998 film Bishonen.
She was born in Taipei, and was "discovered" in 1972 by a film producer, and first appeared in many Taiwanese romance films based on the novels of Chiung Yao. Her movie debut is in Chuangwai. She later switched over to making movies in Hong Kong. At the height of her popularity she was arguably one of the most sought-after actresses in the Chinese film industry. She starred in more than 100 movies.
In Hong Kong movies, Lin made a career of playing transgender roles: in Peking Opera Blues she plays a tomboy who dresses in male Western clothes; in New Dragon Gate Inn she is a woman who dresses as a man, and in Swordsman II and III she plays a male character who castrates himself for power and so is now slowly turning into a woman. She had a good working relationship with Tsui Hark, acting in many of the films he directed (like Peking Opera Blues) and produced (Swordsman II).
She married businessman Michael Ying in 1994 and left the film industry. She has two daughters, born in 1997 and 2001. She made her first public appearance since her marriage at a screening of Ashes of Time Redux at the 2008 New York Film Festival.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Brigitte Lin, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Alexander Skarsgård
Biography
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (born August 25, 1976) is a Swedish actor. Born in Stockholm, he began acting at age seven but quit at 13. After serving in the Swedish military, Skarsgård returned to acting and gained his first role in the US film comedy Zoolander. In 2008, he played Marine Brad Colbert in the miniseries Generation Kill. Skarsgård's breakthrough came when he portrayed vampire Eric Northman in the television series True Blood (2008–2014).
After appearing in films such as Melancholia (2011), Battleship (2012) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016), Skarsgård starred in the drama series Big Little Lies (2017–2019) as an abusive husband, which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. From 2019 to 2022, he appeared in the films Long Shot (2019), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Passing (2021), and The Northman (2022) as well as playing Randall Flagg in the miniseries The Stand (2020–2021).
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Prabhat Mukhopadhyay
Biography
Prabhat Mukherjee (1917-1997) was an Indian film director, actor and writer. He is known for his work in Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and Hindi language films.
Mukherjee's career began with All India Radio. He started acting in Bengali films in 1950. The first film directed by him was Maa (1956) in Bengali language. In 1959 he worked with the legendary iconic actor Uttam Kumar in a cult film called Bicharak which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali. Mukherjee directed three more films till 1960. The Assamese film Puberun, directed by Mukerjee was released in 1959. The film was screened at the 1960 Berlin Film Festival. He also wrote the script for the film. From 1972 to 1984, Mukherjee made at least five Odia films. One of these is Ratnakar (1982), which was the first film by Odia actor and director Prashant Nanda. His other Odia films include "Nuabou"(1962), "Jeevan Sathi"(1963), "Sadhana"(1964). In 1972 Mukherjee directed his first Hindi-language film Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor, which was a biopic on Ghulam Ahmad (1885-1952), the famous national poet of Kashmir and produced by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. Balraj Sahni played the title role. After that Mukherjee directed two more Hindi films before coming back to Bengali films. He introduced Mallika Sarabhai into films.
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Frank Reicher
Biography
Frank Reicher (December 2, 1875 – January 19, 1965) was a German-born American stage and film actor, director and producer. He is best known for playing Captain Englehorn in the 1933 film King Kong.
Reicher made his Broadway debut the year he came to America playing Lord Tarquin in Harrison Fiske's production of Becky Sharp, a comedy by Langdon Mitchell based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. His early career was spent in legitimate theater on and off Broadway. He was head of the Brooklyn Stock Company when Jacob P. Adler performed The Merchant of Venice in Yiddish while the rest of the cast remained in English. Reicher was for a number of years affiliated with the Little Theatre on West Forty-Fourth Street as an actor and manager and would remain active on Broadway as actor, director or producer well into the 1920s. On stage, Reicher starred in such plays as the first Broadway production of Georg Kaiser's From Morning to Midnight (as the cashier), and the original production of Percy MacKaye's The Scarecrow (in the title role).
Frank Reicher is probably more familiar to modern audiences as a supporting character actor in films. He began his cinema career with an uncredited role in the 1915 film The Case for Becky and would go on to work in over two hundred motion pictures. He is probably best remembered for playing the character of Captain Englehorn in King Kong and The Son of Kong, and for his work in such films as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). His last Hollywood role was in the very first theatrical Superman movie, Superman and the Mole Men, in 1951.
Frank Reicher died at a hospital in Inglewood, California, aged 89. He was survived by his sister and a brother. His interment was at Inglewood Park Cemetery.
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Anita Garvin
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anita Garvin (February 11, 1907 – July 7, 1994) was an American actress and comedian who appeared in both silent and sound films. She is best known for her work with comedians Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chase.
Garvin was born in New York City.] Her two sisters who danced in vaudeville encouraged her talents. At age 12, she lied to an agent saying she was "almost sixteen" and got a job being a bathing beauty for one of Mack Sennett's stage shows. The following year she joined the Ziegfeld Follies. She took pride in being the only woman allowed to touch Will Rogers's ropes. She also appeared in Earl Carroll Vanities.
Garvin went on tour with the musical Sally staying with the show for two seasons, then decided to stay in California when the tour left that stop in 1924. In Hollywood, Garvin began working for Christie Film Company's comedies. She recalled her co-star Bobby Vernon dropping butter on the floor onto which she stepped and tumbled, cementing her career as a comedian. Charles Lamont brought her over to work for Educational Pictures. In 1926, Hal Roach took her under contract, where she appeared in many silent films with Charley Chase, James Finlayson, and Max Davidson as well as playing occasional supporting roles in feature films. Standing around 6 feet tall, "her regal countenance and deadpan expression" made her the perfect comic foil.
Roach later considered her "one of his finest actresses." Reflecting upon her frequent co-star Stan Laurel, Garvin observed: "One thing about Stan--with apologies to a lot of directors--they thought they were directing him. And they thought they were directing the picture. But Stan was the one...He was very clever about it. The director was never cognizant of the fact that he was not doing all the directing. Stan's mind was going all the time, always thinking of gags and things to do. The script didn't mean a thing." Garvin appeared in a total of eleven Laurel and Hardy films. In 1928, she was teamed with Marion Byron as a short-lived female version of Laurel and Hardy. Along with Edgar Kennedy, Byron and Garvin appeared in A Pair of Tights, an "acknowledged masterpiece."
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He Changxi
Biography
He Changxi, born on November 24, 1997 in Yueyang, Hunan, is a male singer and actor from Mainland China. He graduated from Beijing Modern Music Training Institute.
At the beginning of 2019, he participated in the youth inspirational variety show "Youth with You" as a trainee, and finally became a member of the UNINE group with 9th place , thus officially debuting; on May 6, the group's first music was released with UNINE EP "UNLOCK"; On October 21, the group's second music EP "UNUSUAL" was released with UNINE.
In September 2020, he joined the Tencent Video character competition reality show "Actors Please Take Your Place Season 2"; in October, his group UNINE officially disbanded after issuing graduation photos; on November 24, it was released His first EP "THE MAN".
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Jiang Yue
Biography
Jiang Yue (蒋樾, b. 1962) is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and one of the central figures of China’s New Documentary Movement. Born in Beijing, he graduated in 1988 from the Chinese Traditional Opera Academy (中国戏曲学院) with a degree in dramatic literature and screenwriting before joining the Beijing Film Studio, where he worked under director Huang Jianzhong and participated in productions including The Policeman of the Year of the Dragon (龙年警官) and The Spring Festival (过年).
Beginning in the early 1990s, Jiang turned to independent documentary filmmaking, traveling to Tibet to direct or co-direct four documentary films: Lama Tibetan Opera Troupe (喇嘛藏戏团, 1991), Lhasa Snow Residents (拉萨雪居民, 1992), and Catholicism in Tibet (天主在西藏, 1992), and Celestial Burial (達木天葬台, co-directed with Wen Pulin, 1992). After returning to Beijing, he became associated with the influential television documentary program Oriental Horizon (东方时空) and its documentary sub-program Living Space (生活空间), helping pioneer a new observational documentary style in China through works such as Three Eastern Heroes (东方三侠), Opera Performers (票友), Going to Work (上班), and Miners (矿工).
Jiang is particularly known for documentaries that examine the tensions between individual lives and broader historical and social transformations. His major works include The Other Bank (彼岸, 1995), A River Stilled (静止的河, 1998), Happy Life (幸福生活, 2000), War of Love (爱情战争, co-directed with Duan Jinchuan, 2002), and The Storm (暴风骤雨), a documentary investigation of land reform and historical memory in northeastern China. Critics and fellow filmmakers have frequently cited Jiang, alongside Wu Wenguang and Duan Jinchuan, as one of the most important pioneers of independent documentary practice in post-Mao China.
In 1998, Jiang co-founded the Memento Films (年年三畅影像工作室) with Kang Jianning and Duan Jinchuan, producing documentary projects for broadcasters including the BBC, ARTE, and China Central Television. Throughout his career, Jiang has emphasized documentary film as a means of preserving lived experience and historical memory, particularly the voices of ordinary people whose stories might otherwise disappear from the historical record.
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Kenny Powers
Biography
Kenneth Marion Powers, born on July 9, 1947, in Landrum, South Carolina, lived a high-octane life, fueled by drugs, debauchery and death-defying stunts. He served in the U.S. Navy after completing high school. He was an American stuntman recognized for a notable yet unsuccessful feat. In October 1979, he gained attention for stepping in for stuntman Ken Carter in an ill-fated endeavour to leap over the Saint Lawrence River using a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. Powers, who had never driven a rocket car before, broke his wrist, three ribs, eight vertebrae, and Carter’s heart. Kenny Powers survived, however, he struggled with problems due to alcohol and drug abuse his whole adult life. He passed away on February 28, 2009, at the Hampton Veterans Center in Hampton, Virginia, leaving behind his wife, Beverly Powers.
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