Movie Mini-Reviews

"Farewell, Peter."
Peter O'Toole (1932-2013)

"We're all missing 'The Big Picture'."
Opening scene of the film 'Creator' starring Peter O'Toole.

"My Favorite Year" - Trailer
Peter O'Toole gives a knock-out performance as Alan Swann...

ABC - "Remembering Peter O'Toole"
Noel Coward: "If you had been any prettier, it would have been Florence of Arabia."

"David Lean's splendid biography of the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence paints a complex portrait of the desert-loving Englishman who united Arab tribes in battle against the Ottoman Turks during World War I. "

Nimes Pentecost Feria, France: brave French matador Juan Leal vs. bull

Luck. Atop a car that fell into the Skagit River: the I-5 bridge collapse

Defies Gravity. ‘Dancing With The Stars’ finals: 20May2013

chickens provide the fertilizer on this Pennsylvania farm: the Chesapeake Bay

simple vinegar test slashed cervical cancer death rates by 1/3: study of 150,000 women

(L) Martial artist Michelle Yeoh stunned in a sexy nude Roberto Cavalli gown at the 2009 premiere of Vengeance. (R) Wave and Goth Festival: Leipzig, Germany;

Roger Federer set a new standard of excellence in men's tennis: 2013 French Open  read more »

Best documentary feature winners Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn accept their award onstage for "Searching for Sugarman," about the reclusive Detroit musician Rodriguez, at the 85th annual Academy Awards.

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'Searching for Sugar Man' Wins Oscar, and More Praise for Rodriguez
"Searching for Sugar Man," honored with more than 30 awards in the last year, won the big one when it was named best documentary at the 85th annual Academy Awards. Director Malik Bendjelloul's film about the forgotten musician Rodriguez capped its journey that began at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film, leading to a theatrical release in July.

(below content may contain spoilers for the film)

Sixto Díaz Rodríguez (born July 10, 1942) is a folk musician, wildly popular, extremely successful and influential in South Africa, mistakenly rumored to have committed suicide. In his home country - America, no one knows about him, about his music - two little-sold albums in the early 1970s.  read more »

Newt Gingrich: Rand Paul is a Pioneer of The Future 3/7/13

A typical American tradition is shaking the world on March 6, 2013. Old school Filibuster, unheard of anywhere else in the world, well-portrayed in the famous movie “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” (starring the handsome James Stewart, added by Library of Congress to the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant").

Few do not know Jimmy Stewart as “Mr. Smith”, but no one would imagine such an old-fashioned filibuster was happening on Wednesday, March 6 – Senator Rand Paul held the floor for 12 hours 52 minutes, talking into midnight (official start time was 11:47am), simply to demand a direct answer to a direct question... Senator Paul: "at about 6:30 p.m., something extraordinary happened. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who has been recovering from a stroke, came to the floor to give me something. I was not allowed to drink anything but water or eat anything but the candy left in our Senate desks. But he brought me an apple and a thermos full of tea — the same sustenance Jimmy Stewart brought to the Senate floor in the movie 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' That was a moment I will never forget."  read more »

Two most famous French stars, cultural icons, are indeed very much French - they act on passion. Brigitte Bardot is determined to defend elephants (population shockingly dropped from 13,000,000 to 400,000 within 20 years) while Gerard Depardieu is extremely upset that 85% of his hard-earned money is not his: "I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called 'pathetic'". Per Daily Mail UK - 'Over 45 years, Depardieu has paid €145million euros' since he started working at age 14 as a printer. [Guardian UK] In protest not at tax hikes but at treatment of elephants, Brigitte Bardot threatens to follow Gérard Depardieu's move to quit France.

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new version "all-in-one: judge, jury and executioner"

Hal 9000, the supercomputer who commits murder in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Einstein warned us long ago: "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."...
Philosophers and scientists: "In the case of artificial intelligence, it seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology" (...will, or have escaped?) "...advanced technology could be a threat when computers start to direct resources towards their own goals, at the expense of human concerns like environmental sustainability."
VP of space technologies at Physical Sciences: "30,000 unmanned drones (which can hover 100 feet above your home or zip past your office window) estimated could be aloft by 2020. 'We’re in a rapid spool-up phase now, where we’re thinking about going from producing tens of aircraft per month to a thousand or more...' "

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News / Marilyn Monroe's Death 50 Years On: What's Changed, What Hasn't

One change is certain - the temperature of Earth has been obviously and continuously rising particularly in the last 50 years:

Data on global land-ocean temperature anomalies indicate that Earth has been warming approximately 0.36 Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years.

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