Sunday, April 28, 2019

Tony Brooks, a British former racing driver from England also known as the "racing dentist". He participated in 39 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 14 July 1956


Charles Anthony "Tony" Standish Brooks (born 25 February 1932 in Dukinfield, Cheshire) is a British former racing driver from England also known as the "racing dentist". He participated in 39 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 14 July 1956, achieving six wins, 10 podium finishes and 75 career points. He was third in the World Drivers' Championship in 1958 and second in 1959. He also scored the first win by a British driver in a British car in a Grand Prix since 1923, in 1955 driving a Connaught at Syracuse in a non-World Championship race.


Brooks was born on 25 February 1932, in Dukinfield, Cheshire, and educated at Mount St Mary's College. He is the son of a dental surgeon, Charles Standish Brooks, and studied the practice himself. He is also a cousin of Norman Standish Brooks, a former British Olympic swimmer. He took up racing in 1952 and drove a Healey and a Frazer Nash[1] at club events until 1955. In that same year, Brooks drove a Formula Two Connaught at Crystal Palace and finished fourth.[2]

 
Brooks claimed the first victory for a British-constructed car in a World Championship race in the 1957 British Grand Prix at Aintree, which he shared with Sir Stirling Moss. Along with Moss, Brooks is considered one of the best drivers never to have been World Champion and both Moss and three-time World Champion Jack Brabham were known to have thought highly of his ability.[3]
 
In 1959, Brooks, together with Brabham and Moss, had a chance to win the title due to the retirement (and subsequent death in a road accident) of Mike Hawthorn and the death, the previous season, of Peter Collins. Brooks started well, with a second place at Monaco, behind Brabham. He failed to finish at the Dutch Grand Prix, but dominantly won the French Grand Prix at Reims. Having failed to finish in a Vanwall at the British Grand Prix which he drove due to Ferrari workers in Italy being on strike, he won the only German Grand Prix of Formula One to be held at AVUS. The race was split unusually into two heats, and he won both. He had a slow car in Portugal, qualifying 10th and finishing five laps down. He retired shortly after the start at Monza but was still in contention to win the championship. At the first ever United States Grand Prix for Formula One at Sebring, he was hit by German teammate Wolfgang von Trips and pitted to check for any damage, losing two minutes. It proved to be a waste of time, but still finished in third place. He finished second in the championship with 27 points, seven behind Brabham, and one-and-a-half ahead of Moss.[4]
 
Brooks won six races for Vanwall and Ferrari, secured four pole positions, achieved ten podiums, and scored a total of 75 championship points. He drove for BRM but retired from the team at the end of 1961, just before their most successful season. He ended his career with a third place at the first ever United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
He was also an accomplished sports car driver, winning both the 1957 1000 km Nürburgring and the 1958 RAC Tourist Trophy, with co-driver, Moss, racing an Aston Martin DBR1.[5] He was less successful at Le Mans in 1957, due again to an accident which occurred while racing an Aston Martin DBR1 at that year's 24-hour race, which brought about a change in his racing philosophy. A crash in the 1956 British Grand Prix and the subsequent Le Mans crash both occurred in cars with mechanical problems, of which he was aware, and Brooks, being a devout Catholic, vowed he would never again risk his life in a car that was in less than sound condition.[6]
 
He had fewer qualms when it came to his own condition, however: "I was lucky in the Le Mans shunt in that I didn't break anything, but I did have very severe abrasions – there was a hole in the side of my thigh I could literally have put my fist into."[6] It was with these injuries that he went on to race in the 1957 British GP with Moss, and win.

In 2008, Brooks was honoured by his home town. The Dukinfield District Assembly, part of Tameside Council, held a dinner in his honour and unveiled a plaque outside his former home on Park Lane.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Viggo Mortensen, an American/Danish actor, author, photographer, poet, and painter

Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. (born October 20, 1958) is an American/Danish actor, author, photographer, poet, and painter. Born in New York to a Danish father and American mother, he was a resident of Venezuela and Argentina during his childhood. He is the recipient of various accolades including a Screen Actors Guild Award and has been nominated for three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
Mortensen made his film debut in a small role in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness starring Harrison Ford and has appeared in several notable films since, including The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito's Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Daylight (1996), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), Psycho (1998), A Perfect Murder (1998), A Walk on the Moon (1999), and 28 Days (2000).
Mortensen received international attention in the early 2000s with his role as Aragorn in the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, Mortensen won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence.[2] Two years later, another Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises (2007), earned him further critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. A third teaming with Cronenberg in A Dangerous Method (2011) resulted in a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture. Other well-received films include Appaloosa (2008) and Far from Men (2014). Further Academy Award nominations came for his leading roles in Captain Fantastic (2016) and Green Book (2018).
Aside from acting, Mortensen's other artistic pursuits include fine arts, photography, poetry, and music. In 2002, he founded the Perceval Press to publish the works of little-known artists and authors.

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

David Croft, an English writer, producer and director. David Croft is particularly noted for producing and co-writing a string of popular BBC sitcoms with Jimmy Perry and Jeremy Lloyd including Dad's Army, Are You Being Served?, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! and 'Allo 'Allo!

Major David John Croft, OBE (born David John Andrew Sharland; 7 September 1922 – 27 September 2011) was an English writer, producer and director. David Croft is particularly noted for producing and co-writing a string of popular BBC sitcoms with Jimmy Perry and Jeremy Lloyd including Dad's Army, Are You Being Served?, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! and 'Allo 'Allo!

Croft began to co-write Are You Being Served? with Jeremy Lloyd. He was to continue both writing partnerships for the rest of his career in several hit series including It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! (with Perry) and 'Allo 'Allo! (with Lloyd). He then started up You Rang, M'Lord?, a show that spoke of policies and unfairness in 1927. His last full series Oh, Doctor Beeching!, broadcast from 1995 to 1997, was co-written with Richard Spendlove. He created a television pilot in 2007, entitled Here Comes The Queen, with Jeremy Lloyd. This starred Wendy Richard and Les Dennis, but the show did not develop further.[12] Of these, It Ain't Half Hot Mum "was David’s and my favourite", Jimmy Perry told journalist Neil Clark in 2013.[13]
As a producer, Croft's regular practice was to signal the end of an episode with the caption "You Have Been Watching ...", followed by vignettes of the main cast.
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Carmen Silvera, British comic actress that achieved mainstream fame in the 1980s with her starring role in the British television programme, 'Allo 'Allo! as Edith Artois

Carmen Dorothy Blanche Silvera (2 June 1922 – 3 August 2002) was a British comic actress. Born in Canada of Spanish descent, she moved to Coventry, England, with her family when she was a child.

She appeared on television regularly in the 1960s, and achieved mainstream fame in the 1980s with her starring role in the British television programme, 'Allo 'Allo! as Edith Artois. She appeared twice in Doctor Who, in the serials The Celestial Toymaker as Clara the Clown, Mrs. Wiggs, and the Queen of Hearts, and as Ruth in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.[3] In 1970 she appeared in the Dad's Army episode Mum's Army as Fiona Gray, the love-interest for Captain Mainwaring, a role especially written for her by David Croft. She also had roles in British sex comedies, such as Clinic Exclusive (1971), On the Game (1974), and Keep It Up Downstairs (1976).

Silvera's longest-running role came as Edith, the antagonistic wife of opportunistic cafe owner Rene Artois, throughout the history of the 'Allo 'Allo! series from 1982 to 1992.

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Kim Hartman aka Private Helga Geerhart in the famous british television series 'Allo 'Allo!

Kim Lesley Hartman (born 11 January 1952) is an English actress, best known for her role as Private Helga Geerhart in the British television series 'Allo 'Allo!.

In addition to 'Allo 'Allo!, Hartman's television acting credits also include Casualty and The Brittas Empire, and her stage work includes the West End stage production of 'Allo 'Allo!. In 2005, she acted in Daisy Chain, an audio drama based on the television series Sapphire and Steel, In 2006 she played in the British film, Once Upon a Tyme. From 2005 to 2008, she played a science teacher, Ms. Hilda Rawlinson in the long-running children's series Grange Hill. In 2010, she took on the role of Elizabeth in the stage adaptation of the BBC situation comedy Keeping Up Appearances.

Kim presented on a travel programme shown on Travel Channel (UK) Cruising to the Northern Lights.

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Carlos Sastre, Spanish professional road bicycle racer and champion of the 2008 Tour de France

Carlos Sastre Candil (born 22 April 1975 in Leganés, Madrid) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer and champion of the 2008 Tour de France. Sastre rides for UCI Professional Continental team Geox-TMC. Through his consistently improved top 10 results in the Vuelta a España and good showings in the Tour de France, Sastre established himself as a strong and stable climbing specialist, and after working to improve his individual time trial skills, he has become a contender for the top GC spots in the Grand Tours.
When Sastre was young, professional cyclist Francisco Ignacio San Román lived in his parents's house during military service. Sastre was at first coached by his father, until he became an amateur.
Sastre signed his first professional contract in 1997 with ONCE. In his five years at ONCE he mostly served as a domestique and only managed a few wins, though he showed his strength in the mountains with several good results, most notably winning the mountain competition in the 2000 Vuelta a España.
In 2002 he switched to Team CSC, where he filled the role of captain in the Vuelta a España and, until 2005, had a free role in the Tour de France. This resulted in his winning the 13th stage of the 2003 Tour de France, which Sastre won with a pacifier in his mouth, as a greeting to his infant daughter. Sastre finished 2 minutes 32 seconds ahead of team captain Tyler Hamilton on the stage.
Before the 2004 season, Carlos Sastre and teammate Ivan Basso trained extensively to improve their individual time trial skills, making them better all-round riders. They went to Boston to train on MIT's wind tunnel. This helped Sastre improve his Vuelta a España performance, ranking 6th in the overall classification, as well as 8th in the 2004 Tour de France.

In the 2005 Tour de France he was a domestique for Ivan Basso, and 21st in the overall classification. However, as the captain of Team CSC's 2005 Vuelta a España campaign, Sastre finally reached the podium of a Grand Tour, finishing in third place behind Denis Menchov and initial winner Roberto Heras. Heras was later disqualified due to a positive EPO test, making Sastre the de facto second placed rider of the competition. After the Vuelta a España, he extended his contract with Team CSC for another year. In May 2006 he signed a new contract which expired after the 2008 season. Before the 2006 Giro d'Italia in May, Sastre decided to ride the Giro d'Italia to help Ivan Basso to win,indicating that he would ride all three Grand Tours; the Giro and Tour in support of Basso and the Vuelta as team captain. In the Giro, Sastre's pace on select mountain stages helped Basso win the overall classification. Sastre finished 43rd in the GC of the 2006 Giro.
Days before the 2006 Tour de France started in July, Team CSC suspended Ivan Basso as his name was brought up in the Operación Puerto doping case. This meant Sastre became the CSC team captain at the 2006 Tour. Even though his main focus for the season had been the 2006 Vuelta a España in September, this Tour was a great opportunity for Sastre to prove himself as a Tour GC contender. Through the mountain stages, Sastre proved himself the strongest mountain rider in the peloton, beating Floyd Landis by one minute and 59 seconds and Andreas Klöden by two and a half minutes on mountain climbs.  Sastre was placed well on stage 15, and came in 2nd on both stage 16 and 17, where he closed the gap to the then yellow jersey Óscar Pereiro. Before the penultimate stage of the Tour, the stage 19 individual time trial, Sastre was the second placed rider overall, trailing race leader Óscar Pereiro by 14 seconds. However, on the final time trial, which stretched 57 kilometres between Le Creusot and Montceau-les-Mines, Sastre finished 20th, losing several minutes to Pereiro, eventual overall winner Floyd Landis and Andreas Klöden, who took third place overall. Sastre thus finished the 2006 Tour in 4th place. Floyd Landis has since been stripped of this title, making Sastre 3rd in the 2006 Tour de France.
By completing the Vuelta, Sastre, who also rode the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2006, became one of a rare breed of riders to finish all three Grand Tours in one year.

Coming into the 2008 Tour de France, Sastre was considered one of the favorites to win the race along with Australian Cadel Evans of Team Silence-Lotto, Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of Caisse d'Epargne and Russian Denis Menchov of Rabobank. He also faced competition within his own team from brothers Andy and Fränk Schleck, despite officially being the leader of Team CSC Saxo Bank.
Sastre had a quiet, understated opening to the tour. After a lacklustere opening time-trial, he remained relatively restrained in the opening mountain stages in the Pyrenees and opted to stay defensive and follow the wheel of his main rivals. This allowed his CSC teammate Fränk Schleck to claim the yellow jersey at the finish to stage 15 at Prato Nevoso. However, on the crucial 17th stage, Sastre showed his class and mountain climbing prowess, attacking at the bottom of the final climb of the day, Alpe d'Huez, finishing 2 minutes and 15 seconds ahead of Evans,claiming both the stage win and the yellow jersey.Sastre, knowing that a slender lead over a strong time-trialist like Evans may not have been enough to secure overall victory going into the penultimate stage, sought to gain an advantage of at least a couple of minutes over his closest rivals.
Following his victorious Stage 17 attack, Sastre took a lead of 1 minute and 24 seconds over teammate Fränk Schleck into the final time trial, although, more crucially, he had a further 10 seconds advantage over Evans, a man considered to be a more accomplished time trialist,who was widely expected to overcome the deficit and leapfrog Sastre into first place. However, Sastre managed to hold onto his lead in the time trial, finishing the Tour with a 58 second lead.
Sastre's victory capped an exceptional 2008 tour for Team CSC Saxo Bank, as they also won the young rider classification with Andy Schleck, the overall team classification, as well as 2 stages, the latter being won by Sastre, on l'Alpe d'Huez.
His victory was however criticized by Lance Armstrong, who said the 2008 Tour was a joke. Armstrong later apologized for this to Sastre.
Sastre and CSC could not agree on a new contract, so Sastre left the team at the end of the year. 
Sastre joined the new Cervélo TestTeam for the 2009 season. He won the high mountain Stage 16 of the 2009 Giro d'Italia, which had been called the Giro's queen stage, after seven hours and twelve minutes. His decisive attack saw him break free from a group of general classification contenders to get to the summit of Monte Petrano just under half a minute faster than the group he left.After seeming off his form in Stage 17 of that race, Sastre rebounded with another solo ride to victory in Stage 19 to Mount Vesuvius.  He then completed the Giro with a solid ride in the final time-trial around Rome to hold off Ivan Basso and take 4th place and another top ten placing in a Grand Tour.




Saturday, March 2, 2019

Meat Loaf, an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor

Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday; September 27, 1947), known professionally as Meat Loaf, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He is noted for his wide-ranging operatic voice and theatrical live shows.
His Bat Out of Hell trilogy of albums—Bat Out of Hell, Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose—have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.[1] More than 40 years after its release, Bat Out of Hell still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums in history.[2][3]
After the commercial success of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and earning a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song "I'd Do Anything for Love", Meat Loaf experienced some initial difficulty establishing a steady career within the United States. However, he has retained iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, where he received the 1994 Brit Award for best-selling album and single, appeared in the 1997 film Spice World, and ranks 23rd for the number of weeks spent on the UK charts as of 2006. He ranked 96th on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".[2]
He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with worldwide sales of more than 80 million records.[4] He has also appeared in over 50 movies and television shows,[5] sometimes as himself or as characters resembling his stage persona. His most notable roles include Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Robert "Bob" Paulson in Fight Club (1999), and "The Lizard" in The 51st State (2002). He has also appeared as a guest actor in television shows such as Monk, Glee, South Park, House, and Tales from the Crypt.

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Frank Farian, muzicianul ghostwriter


Frank Farian este un producător muzical și un compozitor german. Compoziţiile sale au câştigat mai mult de 800 de discuri de aur şi platină.

Muzicianul german s-a aflat în spatele succesului unor formaţii precum No Mercy, Boney M sau Milli Vanilli. Iniţial, Farian a fost vocea masculină din Boney M. În 1986, Farian a produs şi mixat albumul trupei Meat Loaf Blind Before I Stop.

În 1990, Farian a recunoscut că a orchestrat evenimentele care au condus la scandalul referitor la trupa Milli Vanilli, fiind considerat, de atunci, ca un echivalent în domeniul muzical al ghostwriter-ilor.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Dick Hyman, jazz living legend


Richard “Dick” Hyman is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, best-known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a 50 year career, he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.
While developing a facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller which he often features in his frequent recitals. Hyman recorded two highly regarded ragtime albums under the pseudonym "Knuckles O'Toole", and included two original compositions.
In the 1960s, he was regularly seen on NBC-TV's weekly musical series Sing Along with Mitch. Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington. He recorded as a member of the 'Dick Hyman Trio', including a 78 RPM called 'Rolling the Boogie'. During the 1970s, he was also member of Soprano Summit

Hyman served as artistic director for the Jazz in July series at New York's 92nd Street Y for twenty years, a post from which he stepped down in 2004. (He was succeeded in that post by his cousin, Bill Charlap, a highly regarded jazz pianist.) He continues his Jazz Piano at the Y series as well as his post as jazz advisor to The Shedd Institute's Oregon Festival of American Music. In 1995, he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society. Since then, he has received honorary doctorates from Wilkes University, Five Towns College, Hamilton College and the University of South Florida at Tampa, Florida.
Hyman has had an extensive career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He acted as music director for such television programs as Benny Goodman's final appearance (on PBS) and for In Performance at the White House. For five years (1969-1974), he was the in-studio organist for the stunt game show Beat the Clock. He received an Emmy Award for his original score for Sunshine's on the Way, a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS Special on Eubie Blake. He continues to be a frequent guest performer with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on the long-running public radio series Riverwalk Jazz, and has been heard on Terry Gross' Fresh Air. He has also collaborated with Ruby Braff extensively on recordings at Arbors Records.
Dick Hyman's Century Of Jazz Piano, an encyclopedic series of solo performances, has been released on Arbors Records. Other new recordings include Thinking About Bix and E Pluribus Duo with Ken Peplowski.
Classical
Hyman's concert compositions for orchestra include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy, The Longest Blues in the World, and From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a work for orchestra, jazz combo, and prerecorded railroad sounds. A cantata based on the autobiography of Mark Twain was premiered in 2004.
Film work
He has served as composer/arranger/conductor/pianist for the Woody Allen films Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda.
Other scores include: Moonstruck, Scott Joplin, The Lemon Sisters and Alan and Naomi. His music has also been heard in The Mask, Billy Bathgate, Two Weeks Notice, and other films. He was music director of The Movie Music of Woody Allen, which premiered at the Hollywood Bowl.
Electronic/Pop
In the 1960s, Hyman recorded several innovative pop albums on Enoch Light's Command Records. At first, he used the Lowrey organ, on the albums Electrodynamics, Fabulous, Keyboard Kaleidoscope and The Man From O.R.G.A.N. He later recorded several albums on the Moog synthesizer which mixed original compositions and cover versions, including Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman, and The Age of Electronicus. The former has now been reissued on CD by Varese Sarabande with some, but not all, of the tracks from The Age of Electronicus.
The track "The Minotaur" from The Electric Eclectics charted in the US top-40, becoming the first Moog single hit. Some elements from the track, "The Moog And Me" (most notably the synthetic whistle that serves as the song's lead-in) on the same album were sampled by Beck for the track "Sissyneck" on his 1996 album Odelay.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Tori Amos, an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos, August 22, 1963) is mezzo-soprano vocal range.
an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range.
Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She was expelled at the age of eleven for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination."[11] Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.[12]
Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor", and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.[13] Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations, eight Grammy nominations, and has won an Echo award for her classical work. She is listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" list. 

Early life and education

Amos is the third child of Mary Ellen (Copeland) and the Rev. Edison McKinley Amos.[15] She was born at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. Amos has said that her maternal grandparents each had an Eastern Cherokee grandparent of their own; of particular importance to her as a child was her maternal grandfather, Calvin Clinton Copeland, who was a great source of inspiration and guidance, offering a more pantheistic spiritual alternative to her father and paternal grandmother's traditional Christianity.[16]
When she was two years old, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had transplanted his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, D.C. Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Amos didn't need them. From the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play: when she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once,[17] and, by the age of three, she was composing her own songs.

Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the
The song appears as light filament once I've cracked it. As long as I've been doing this, which is more than thirty-five years, I've never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns, but try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever—after the initial excitement, you start to focus on each element's stunning original detail. For instance, the sound of the words with the sound of the chord progression combined with the rhythm manifests itself in a unique expression of the architecture of color-and-light. ... I started visiting this world when I was three, listening to a piece by Béla Bartók; I visited a configuration that day that wasn't on this earth. ... It was euphoric.[18]

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Uma Thurman, an American actress and model. She has performed in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies

Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970)[1] is science fiction and action movies. Following her appearances on the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue, Thurman starred in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). She rose to international prominence with her performance in Pulp Fiction (1994),[2] for which she was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Quentin Tarantino's muse,[3] she reunited with the director to play the main role in both Kill Bill films (2003–2004),[4] which brought her two additional Golden Globe Award nominations.[5]
an American actress and model. She has performed in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to
Established as a leading Hollywood actress,[6] her other notable films include Henry & June (1990), The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Batman & Robin (1997), Gattaca (1997), Les Misérables (1998), The Producers (2005), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), and Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013)[7] and The House That Jack Built (2018).[8] In 2011, Thurman was a member of the jury for the main competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival,[9] and in 2017, she was named president of the 70th edition's "Un Certain Regard" jury. Thurman made her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman (2017–2018).

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Lev Yashin, nicknamed the "Black Spider" or the "Black Panther", a Soviet professional footballer, considered by many as the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the sport

Lev Ivanovich Yashin (Russian: Лев Ива́нович Я́шин, 22 October 1929 – 20 March 1990), nicknamed the "Black Spider" or the "Black Panther",[2][3] was a Soviet professional footballer, considered by many as the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the sport.[4] He was known for his athleticism, positioning, stature, bravery, imposing presence in goal, and acrobatic reflex saves.[5][6][7][8] He was also deputy chairman of the Football Federation of the Soviet Union.

Yashin earned status for revolutionising the goalkeeping position by imposing his authority on the entire defence.[5][6][9] A vocal presence in goal, he shouted orders at his defenders, came off his line to intercept crosses and also ran out to meet onrushing attackers, done at a time when goalkeepers spent the 90 minutes standing in the goal waiting to be called into action.[5][9][10] His performances made an indelible impression on a global audience at the 1958 World Cup, the first to be broadcast internationally. He dressed head to toe in apparent black (in truth very dark blue),[3] thus earning his nickname the 'Black Spider', which enhanced his popularity.[5][9]
Yashin appeared in four World Cups from 1958 to 1970, and in 2002 was chosen on the FIFA Dream Team of the history of World Cups. In 1994, he was chosen for the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team, and in 1998 was chosen as a member of the World Team of the 20th Century. According to FIFA, Yashin saved over 150 penalty kicks in professional football – more than any other goalkeeper.[11] He also kept over 270 clean sheets in his career, winning a gold medal at the 1956 Olympic football tournament, and the 1960 European Championships.[12] In 1963, Yashin received the Ballon d'Or, the only goalkeeper ever to receive the award.[5] He was voted the best goalkeeper of the 20th century by the IFFHS.