Legendary Characters

Clémentine (1985 - Animation Character)

2007-11-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

Hey friends! Do you remember this girl? Clémentine =)... I think you must be 20 at least to remember. She was a animated television series (cartoon) character. And the name of the show was the same: Clémentine. She travels the world after with her wheelchair and makes us travel, too. Clémentine is still my favourite animated character. And I think she will always be…

When I look at those old days (my childhood), I see that I was lucky to know a character like that. Because both of the cartoon Clémentine and the character Clémentine were original. The recent animation characters may be worth to see but Clémentine was worth to feel while watching.

I’ve made a research about Clémentine and I have found some useful links for you. When I was making link search, I ve read that a Turkish Movie Company would make a movie of Clémentine. If it is true, it will be wonderful I think.

http://www.planete-jeunesse.com/sources/series.php3?cle=50&sec=1 (in French)
http://www.shefilms.com/ (in English and in Turkish)
http://www.anime.gen.tr/yazi.php?id=59 (in Turkish)
wiki (English)
wiki (French)

Pervez Musharraf (President of Pakistan)

2007-11-11T12:53:00.000-08:00

General Pervez Musharraf is the President of Pakistan. And he is also the Chief of army Staff of his country. General Pervez Musharraf took the power after a coup d’etat October 12, 1999. Before the coup d’etat, Nawaz Sharif was the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. He became the President of Pakistan in 20 June 2001. He is always supported by the western countries.Here is the beginning of my post.

And on November 3, 2007 General Pervez Musharraf, declared Emergency Rule, suspending the constitution. He closed all of the private tv channels, jailed the Supreme Court of Pakistan Judges. General Pervez Musharraf promised to end the Emergency (Martial Law) in a month.

General Pervez Musharraf was born in Delhi, British India, on August 11, 1943. His battles are Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Siachen conflict, Kargil War.

This link is for the official biography of Pervez Musharraf
http://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/Biography.aspx

You may reach another biography of Pervez Musharraf here
http://www.storyofpakistan.com/person.asp?perid=P029

Tony Montana of Scarface (1983)

2007-11-11T10:48:00.000-08:00

Oh Tony Montana… Tony Montana of Scarface... If you ask me to summarize Tony Montana in a few words, surely I have an answer for you. But first I want to give a general information about him. Antonio Tony Montana is a fictional character of the movie Scarface. And a character like Tony Montana must be portrayed by Al Pacino. Yes, Al Pacino gave life this character in 1983. And the movie Scarface is directed by Brian DePalma.

Tony Montana is always quip and he trusts nobody. I first saw the movie Scarface when I was 18 and for a young boy like me, Tony Montana character could be one of the most impressive characters I had seen. And it is still… If you watch him, you can see that he has really got a heart but it is just made of steel. Tony Montana risks everything for power and money…

If you did'nt watch this movie, please watch it and try to understand this guy. Is the world really his? =)

I have got some links for you to get further information about Tony Montana.

To reach some information about Tony Montana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Montana

To reach the biography of Tony Montana
http://imdb.com/character/ch0003932/bio

To reach some photos of Tony Montana
http://imdb.com/character/ch0003932/photogallery

To buy some stuff of Tony Montana (t-shirts, posters etc.)
http://tonymontana.com/

Jessica Alba - Biography

2007-11-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

Born: 28 April 1981
Where: Pomona, California USA
Awards: 1 Golden Globe Nomination
Height: 168 cm
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Education : Graduated high school at age 16; attended the Atlantic Theater Company
Family : Mother: Cathy

Filmography: The Complete List

By her mid-twenties, Jessica Alba had already leapt more career hurdles than most actresses twice her age. In her early teens she starred in a kids' TV show - Flipper - usually enough to kill a fledgling film career stone dead. Yet she struggled on through bit parts in the likes of Beverly Hills 90120 and The Love Boat before being chosen by James Cameron to front his latest sci-fi project, Dark Angel. When that series was terminated before its time, it seemed Alba might forever be remembered merely as a second division Buffy. Yet again she bounced back, headlining a small hit in Honey, then stepping into the Silver Screen big-time with an eye-catching part in Robert Rodriguez' Sin City, then the successful Fantastic Four franchise. And all the while she was busy preparing herself for the tougher thespian challenges she knew would be ahead. Having come this far, Miss Alba was not to be denied.

She was born Jessica Marie Alba on Tuesday, the 28th of April, 1981, in Pomona, just a few miles east of Los Angeles down the San Bernadino Freeway. Her father, Mark, was a second generation Mexican-American, while her mother, Cathy Jensen, born in Montreal, was of French-Canadian and Danish descent. Mark and Cathy had met in a lift. He was a tennis trainer, she was a student at UCLA. Jessica arrived quickly, followed 15 months later by brother Josh.

Times were tough, both parents worked multiple jobs, and Mark had to follow the money. When Jessica was still an infant, he moved the family to Biloxi, on the Mississippi Sound between New Orleans and Mobile. Here he'd join the US Air Force at the Keesler Air Force Base, home of the 81st Training Wing, where airmen who'd just completed basic training would be further schooled, mostly in electronics - ground radio, cryptography etc. Cathy, meanwhile, would work as a lifeguard. They'd stay in Biloxi for three years, before briefly returning to southern California and then moving on to Del Rio, Texas, near Lake Amistead on the edge of the vast Edwards Plateau, Mark working at Laughlin Air Force Base, location of the 47th Flying Trianing Wing and the US Air Force's busiest pilot training base. Del Rio was a major crossing point for illegal Mexican immigrants, right on the border. In the past, many denizens of Laughlin had crossed the other way to visit the infamous brothel district of Cuidad Acuna, known as Boy's Town. Here had been the notorious Blowjob Alley, closed down in 1984 after a series of beatings and murders, most of them committed by soldiers enraged that their pleasurer was in fact a pre-op transsexual.

When Jessica was 9, the family returned to Pomona, and the bosom of an extended family that saw her as the eldest of 15 cousins (one older relative was Steve Alba, popularly known as Salba, a pioneering skateboarder since the Seventies). Mark's father, a first-generation Mexican, had made great efforts to integrate his family, speaking no Spanish in the house. His efforts at self-betterment would be continued by Mark and Cathy whose work ethic was admirable. At one point he was finishing his day job and going straight to work as a chef in a rib joint, while she spent her days at McDonalds and her nights tending bar. Young Jessica saw all this. In between scraps with brother Josh, she recognised the efforts made and, as the eldest of the kids and a serial nappy-changer from a very early age, she grew up fast. You needed to when you lived around Pomona. There were some dirt poor areas here, with concomitant gang activity and crime. Come 1999, Pomona would boast the third highest murder rate in California.

By now, Jessica had actually been through a lot. On the family's travels she'd suffered many bouts of pneumonia and twice endured a collapsed lung. She'd had a burst appendix, a cyst on her tonsils and asthma. She'd spent plenty of time in hospital and consequently made few friends wherever they'd gone. Often alone, she developed both a strong imagination and mild case of OCD. She'd become yet more independent on her return to Pomona where, though her health problems had gone, she still had trouble fitting in. Her mother's Danish genes and a purposefully American upbringing meant she did not slip easily into the Latino community. From her father's side, she wasn't quite white either. This wasn't good right now, but in the future it would help secure her one of the biggest jobs of her career.

As said, Jessica was mature for her age, mature enough to recognise that her young dreams might be turned into reality if she worked hard enough. By the age of 5, she's said, she'd already decided to become an actress, or at least an entertainer - fitting for a Pomona kid, really, as the nearby neighbourhoods had already produced Tim Robbins, Tom Waits and baseball star Mark McGwire. As a kid she'd demanded her father fit a bar to her bedroom door so she could practise ballet, often dressing in a leotard to dance along to Flashdance, Fame and Saturday Night Fever, or the routines of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul.

School did not fit into Alba's plans. She hadn't liked it since pre-school when a teacher tried to force her to write with her right hand. A precocious pupil, she'd always be questioning authority, demanding to know why she couldn't do what she thought was best for herself. Consequently, she didn't enjoy junior high at El Roble Intermediate in nearby Claremont. Not that it mattered, for this ambitious young lady was already on her way.

By the age of 12, Alba was already preparing her own (healthy) food, in order to avoid the weight problems that afflicted many in her family. Extra weight, she knew, might scupper her chances of screen success, something she was already pursuing. At the same age she began acting classes and, within 9 months scoring herself an agent, she began to regularly take that trip down the San Bernadino Freeway to LA for auditions. Quickly, she won a debut in a feature film - Camp Nowhere, where Christopher Lloyd would play a laid-back drama teacher who helps outcast kids to create their own fun-time summer camp and persuade their parents it's legit. At first Alba was down to play a bit-part, signing on for just two weeks' work. However, when one of the leads dropped out an immediate replacement was necessary and Alba - smart, pretty and, crucially, with a similar hair colour and style to the former lead - was promoted. On such small details do careers turn.

Having appeared in prestigious TV ads for Nintendo and JC Penney, Alba would now win a part in new TV show The Secret World Of Alex Mack, where Larisa Oleynik would star as a junior high school kid who, after being accidentally soaked in a chemical called GC-161, would have powers of self-transformation and telekinesis. Though she'd attempt to use her new gifts for the good of others, in early episodes she'd have her good nature tested to the max by young Jessica, a snobbish uber-bitch in cahoots with an equally vile Alexana Lambros, both of them plotting Mack's humiliation.

Now forging a fledgling career for herself, Alba would not complete at El Roble Intermediate. Indeed, this was the end of her public education. Though she'd be officially attached to Claremont High School, she'd now be home-tutored, graduating at the age of 16. With her eyes now firmly on the prize, her work-rate was phenomenal.

Alba's second appearance on the Silver Screen would be something of a dud. Venus Rising, featuring Morgan Fairchild and Joel Grey, was a sci-fi piece set in a 1999 where the world's population is anaesthetised with drugs and VR. Audie England would play a woman who escapes from a prison island and attempts to fit into this weird society, with Alba playing her (very briefly) in a flashback showing the slaughter of her parents on the island. Though there was murder, lesbianism and VR sex, it was still tame and silly stuff.

This would have no effect on Alba's career, though, as she now landed a prime role in an update of Flipper, the famed Sixties TV series about a surprisingly resourceful dolphin. Over the next two years, she'd spend 13 months filming in Australia, living just south of Brisbane in surfer paradise. And the show would be a big success, with Alba standing out as Maya Graham, close friend of the grinning aquatic hero. However, it was not an entirely blissful experience. Having received threatening phone calls, Alba was at one point actually kidnapped and discovered locked in the boot of a car. She was unharmed, but must have been terrified.

In her breaks from Flipper, Alba would pick up extra experience where she could. 1996 would see her in an episode of Chicago Hope so far removed from the moral rectitude of Flipper it was almost laughable. Following four separate storylines, each dealing with a different aspect of sexuality, the show would see Alba as a mature 14-year-old who visits hospital with a throat complaint. Complications ensue when it's discovered she's living with a 30-year-old and has contracted gonorrhoea. Of the throat. Ugh. Still edgy, though far less controversial, would be Too Soon For Jeff, an ABC Afterschool Special where Freddie Prinze Jr would get girlfriend Jessica pregnant and be overwhelmed by the possible consequences. Well-received, the film would see writer Karen Kasaba nominated for a Daytime Emmy.

It was already clear that Alba was not content to limit herself to standard teenage fare like Flipper. Chicago Hope had proved that beyond doubt. She wanted to learn, to set herself up for a thespian career that would last. Thus, having graduated at 16, she attended the Vermont workshop of the Atlantic Theatre Company, formed in 1985 by playwright David Mamet and actor William H Macy. Both students of Sanford Meisner, they looked to the later teachings of Stanislavsky and, believing acting schools usually made actors too self-indulgent and self-centred, they taught their charges to understand their responsibility to the script. This was Practical Aesthetics, where actors should reject introverted psychological exploration and work together to bring the page to the stage. The ATC would be increasingly popular. Woody Allen would work there, students would be lectured by the likes of Sam Shepard, Gore Vidal and Mary Steenburgen. However, when encouraged to continue with theatre, to hone her craft and become a "real" actress, Alba would refuse. Having worn thrift-store clothing as a kid, having seen her parents toil, she had no desire to spend years waitressing to finance such a risky career. Not when TV work was giving her the opportunity to support herself and her family in a style to which they were thoroughly unaccustomed. She would learn her craft - but not like that.

Another problem Alba would have to surmount with the ATC involved language. As you'd expect with theatrical exercises devised by Mamet, many of the expressions employed were fruity to say the least, which put the young actress in a difficult situation. This obsessive, alienated girl, leaping into a strange adult world long before her time, had come into contact with born again Christians and, probably needing some feeling of structure, of usefulness and togetherness, she'd joined them, waking at 5am to pray, attending church three times a week, handing out flyers on the streets. Now she had to reconcile herself with this hardcore and most unChristian dialogue, and went along with it, just as she'd gone along with the Chicago Hope storyline. And she'd continue to take tough and worldly TV parts. So independently minded, she would have great trouble accepting limits placed on her by her religious "superiors", particularly when it came to work and career progress. After 4 years with the group, continuously told by a young pastor to wear baggy clothes lest she tempt the good young men around her, she came to realise that her burgeoning sexuality was being repressed, and left.

As mentioned, aside from the cheery, clean-cut Flipper, much of Alba's TV work was earthy, indeed (she's said that most of the roles she turned down at the time had her as a variation on Maria, the Latino janitor's daughter who's messing around with a white kid). Having missed out on a role in Robert Rodriguez' The Faculty, 1998 would see her in three very varied small screen parts. First there'd be an episode of gritty police drama Brooklyn South where Alba would play a schoolgirl flashed by a perv on the street. Her father, a court official, demands an arrest, but Jessica can't manage a positive ID. Next there'd be a 2-episode spot in hit show Beverly Hills 90210 where she'd play a teenage mum who abandons her child outside the clinic of star Jenny Garth. Garth tries to persuade Alba to take the child back but she won't have it, until she's told that a gay couple would like to adopt. Now Alba faces a difficult choice. Will she keep a child she can't look after, or deliver it into a steady household of which she disapproves? Finally, there'd be a ride on The Love Boat, a revival of the Seventies hit now sailing under the title The Next Wave. Here Robert Urich would star as the captain of the titular cruise liner, the Sun Princess, with Kyle Howard onboard as his troubled 15-year-old son. Alba would appear as a teen passenger who begins a relationship with Howard, only for the pair of them to be thoroughly creeped out when Urich hooks up with Alba's mum, the couple having been high school sweethearts years before.

But the TV work was simply for experience (and money). Alba's real aim was cinematic success, and she now moved deliberately away from the small screen. Her next appearance would be in P.U.N.K.S, a film made for the Disney Channel, where scientist Randy Quaid would create a robot suit that turn wimps into supermen. Evil industrialist Henry Winkler wants it, but so do Quaid's neglected son Tim Redwine and his gang of nerdy mates, including Alba, as they take on high school bullies. It had a strong 1980s flavour, as indeed did Never Been Kissed, where newpaper girl Drew Barrymore went undercover at high school. Unpopular the first time round, this gave her a chance of redemption and she attempted to ingratiate herself with the in-crowd, fronted by Alba's Kirsten and Marley Shelton's Kristen. It was entertaining, warm-hearted stuff, with Alba excellent as a conceited Barbie training boys to do her bidding.

Very different would be the comedy horror of Idle Hands, inspired by Evil Dead 2, where young pot-head Devon Sawa was possessed by a murderous entity which gave his hand a mind of its own. The hand, of course, begins to dispatch Sawa's friends and acquaintances and even makes an attempt on Alba, a hot motorcycle babe Sawa's been after for ages and is now on the verge of seducing. As both he and the hand can't have their evil way at the same time, he ties the hand to the bed and Alba, not realising the danger, thinks that's kinda kinky.

Next, Alba would take off for England to shoot Paranoid, a thriller directed by John Duigan (Lawn Dogs, The Year My Voice Broke). This would see her moving away from the schoolkids she'd recently portrayed and playing a promiscuous, drug-taking supermodel who attends a party at a secluded country house, a reunion of a hit 1980s band, and wakes to find herself handcuffed to a bed. Now she's at the mercy of weirdo Iain Glen, his spooky wife Jeanne Tripplehorn and his freaky, camcorder-wielding brother and, as the movie examines the dangers of our objectification of youth and beauty, she discovers her only hope lies in some guy who's making obscene calls to her. It was tense, but perhaps not as tense as one would've liked.

Having turned her back on TV to concentrate on her film career, it looked like Alba was in for a long struggle. However, events conspired to drag her backwards and forwards at the same time. In 1999, James Cameron, self-proclaimed King of the World after his massive success with Titanic, was all set to make his screen comeback. This was to be a sci-fi TV series called Dark Angel, based on the exploits of a genetically-enhanced female in the year 2020. Alba's name was put forward, one of 1000 girls Cameron would cast his eye over. He liked her - he actually said he believed that with her racial background she was the future of humanity - and, despite her misgivings about TV work, she allowed herself to be persuaded. And so began a punishing year-long training schedule involving weights, cardio, kung fu and gymnastics. Once physically prepared she found filming to be no less gruelling, working in Seattle for 10 and a half months of each of the next two years, mostly at night and often being rained on.

Thus she became Max, also known as X5-452, one of a group of genetically engineered super-kids escaped from the evil Manticore corporation and entering a world destroyed by terrorist attacks on communications systems. In the ruins of a Seattle under martial law she works as a bike courier and burgler, chased by the law and bounty hunters, hanging with the denizens of a funky underground. The show, with its big budgets and massive Cameron-based hype, its wild action and gloomy sets, became increasingly popular over its first season. But things quickly changed. In real life Alba became attached and engaged to co-star Michael Weatherly, an actor 15 years her senior whose father had made millions importing Swiss Army knives into the States. This was big tabloid news and the producers, forced to tone down the show's apocalyptic visions after 9/11, began to concentrate on the relationship between Alba's Max and Weatherly's Logan Cale, a cyber-journalist and crusader for justice who winds up in a wheelchair. With Manticore's pursuit of Max no longer the show's focus, it became clunky and, when Fox rescheduled the programme, moving it to Friday nights, audiences began to fall. Dark Angel's high budgets began to count against it and executives decided to cancel it, concentrating instead in Joss Whedon's Firefly.

This was disappointing for all concerned, but Alba did walk away from Dark Angel with a Golden Globe nomination, a contract with L'Oreal and a reputation as a hi-octane sex kitten that made her one of the most sought-after stars on the Internet. Cannily, Alba would recognise the advantages of this situation and now play upon both her looks and her status among young action-fans, while gradually easing herself into more adult fare.

Her first post-Dark Angel release would be The Sleeping Dictionary, a love story set in Malaysia in the 1930s amidst British colonial rule. Here Hugh Dancy would arrive in Sarawak to take up a government post and, needing to learn local languages and customs, would be tutored by half-caste Alba. The governor's daughter, Emily Mortimer, falls for Dancy - a perfect match - but he and Alba share a love that's socially unacceptable and eventually catastrophic. Also starring Bob Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn, the movie would be excellent thespian experience for Alba but would still stiff royally, being shelved for over a year then released direct to DVD.

Alba would quickly shift back to more populist American fare. She'd reveal a lighter side on Mad TV when lampooning Jessica Simpson and pretending to adopt a Korean baby (a huge baby, played by Bobby Lee). Then would come Honey, a street-style dance movie that echoed Alba's early inspirations, Flashdance and Fame. Here she'd play a dance instructor in an urban activities centre threatened with closure. Seeing Lil' Romeo and his homies breakdancing in the 'hood, she decides to put on a show in a local church to raise funds to save the centre. At the same time, a big-shot producer is tempting her with fame and fortune. Will she take the money and leave behind the kids she's helping and the barber who loves her? It wasn't unpredictable in that respect, but Honey was warm and well-made, with Alba impresive in her dance sequences. Doubling its budget and opening at Number 2 at the US box office behind Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, it also proved she could pull off a starring performance that didn't involve roundhousing people in the head.

Having split with Michael Weatherly - she said he was a homebody while she wanted to go out dancing - she'd be connected in the press to Mark Wahlberg, and did indeed appear in an episode of his TV show Entourage, where the guys are all trying to score with her. Onscreen she'd next appear in Sin City, a chance to work with Robert Rodriguez after being turned down for The Faculty some 7 years before. Based on Frank Miller's graphic novels, this would be a crazy melange of stories, often amazingly violent and always ultra-noir. Bruce Willis would play an ex-cop just released from jail having been framed for the crimes of a senator's son. Returning to see Alba, whom he'd saved from the clutches of the villain when she was 11, he must rescue her again from the same guy, now an unspeakable monster. Rodriguez had previously enjoyed some success directing Salma Hayek's famously erotic dance in From Dusk Till Dawn. Now he repeated the trick with Alba, hugely provocative in leather and spinning a lasso. But her performance wasn't just about sensuous moves, she also displayed touching depth in her innocent and vulnerable love for the much-older Willis.

After the eye-popping mayhem of Sin City, Alba would next be seen in the far more family-orientated Fantastic Four. Here, four astronauts in orbit are accidentally showered with space-stuff and undergo molecular changes, now becoming Mr Fantastic, The Thing, The Human Torch and, in Alba's case, The Invisible Woman, not only capable of disappearing but also of containing explosions in a forcefield - useful tricks when warring against Dr Doom. Despite spending much of its time explaining itself rather than being fantastic, the movie was a big hit, big enough to launch a franchise, Alba returning in 2007 for Rise Of The Silver Surfer. Her position secured, she'd now have the leeway to make far smaller and more intimate movies. The movie would also bring her a new boyfriend, director's assistant Cash Warren, a Yale graduate two years her senior and the son of TV actor Michael Warren.

Following Fantastic Four, Alba would appear in Into The Blue, actually filmed before both Fantastic Four and Sin City. Set in the Bahamas, this would see Alba and Paul Walker as lovers in paradise, living on a boat and diving for treasure. However, when mate Scott Caan joins them and they discover not only ancient sunken treasure but also a very contemporary haul of drugs, they're in big trouble as the riches test their loyalties and a drug lord comes looking for his due. It was a fun-time adventure, for sure, and Alba would spend most of it in a revealing swimsuit, but the characters were properly drawn and portrayed - it was believable. Interestingly, before taking on Into The Blue, Alba had been in talks with former producer James Cameron about starring in another scuba-diving adventure - Fathom. Was it her athleticism, the way she looked in that swimwear, or was she still subconsciously seen as the girl from Flipper?

With her profile maintained by the Fantastic Four franchise, Alba now moved on to Awake, a fraught drama where super-rich Hayden Christensen finds himself aware but paralyzed during heart surgery. Meanwhile, in the waiting-room, his possessive mother Lena Olin discovers that he's secretly married her assistant, Alba and, as we view the Alba-Christensen relationship in flashback, the recriminations fly. Following this would be the comedy Good Luck Chuck, where Dane Cook would play a guy whose girlfriends always seem to get happily married to the man they meet immediately after leaving him. Naturally, word gets around and the women come flocking to (briefly) date Cook, a situation that delights him until he meets Alba, a woman so wonderful he wants to keep her for himself.

Outside of screen work, 2006 would also see Alba helping out Habitat For Humanity, a charity building homes for the homeless. She'd also sue Playboy who'd taken a promo shot from Into The Blue and slapped it on their cover. Alba claimed this would make people believe she was appearing nude inside the magazine (she still hadn't flashed the flesh onscreen and thus had grounds for complaint) and Hugh Hefner was forced to apologise and make a large charity donation.

2007 would bring more variety as Alba tested her own limits. First would come The Ten, a bizarre comedy loosely based on Kieslowski's Decalogue, with ten separate stories dealing with the Ten Commandments. Alba would appear alongside Oliver Platt, Winona Ryder and Famke Janssen as tales of prison bitches and puppet obsessions unfolded. Then, before Fantastic Four 2, would come Bill, a movie Alba snapped up when Lindsay Lohan pulled out at the last. Here Aaron Eckhart, crushed by his tiresome job and cheating wife, would have his love of life reignited by Alba's unusual and alluring saleswoman.

It's clear that Jessica Alba is far too smart to ever be typecast in a Dark Angel/Invisible Woman mould. Moving into comedy and thrillers while also developing movies and a (non-violent) videogame, she's she's setting herself up nicely for a long career. She says her favourite actresses are Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Sally Field, Susan Sarandon and Cate Blanchett, a mixed bag of inspirations that might well lead to rewarding work in many genres. Given that Alba has also said she has ambitions to play Medea, there's a lot to look forward to.

by Dominic Wills

Jessica Alba - Filmography

2007-11-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007)
Bill (2007)
The Ten (2007)
Good Luck Chuck (2006)
Awake (2006)
MTV Movie Awards (host) (2006)
Into The Blue (2005)
Fantastic Four (2005)
Sin City (2005)
Entourage (TV series, one episode, as herself) (2004)
Honey (2003)
Mad TV (TV series, one episode) (2003)
Punk'd (TV series, one episode, as herself) (2003)
The Sleeping Dictionary (2003)
Dark Angel (TV series) (2000-2002)
Paranoid (2000)
Idle Hands (1999)
Never Been Kissed (1999)
P.U.N.K.S (1999)
The Love Boat: The Next Wave (TV series, one episode) (1998)
Beverly Hills, 90210 (TV series, 2 episodes) (1998)
Brooklyn South (TV series, one episode) (1998)
Too Soon For Jeff (TV) (1996)
Chicago Hope (TV series, one episode) (1996)
Flipper (TV series) (1995-1997)
Venus Rising (1995)
The Secret World Of Alex Mack (TV series, 3 episodes) (1994)
Camp Nowhere (1994)

Angelina Jolie - Wallpapers

2007-11-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

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* Click on pictures to download full resolution.

Angelina Jolie - Biography

2007-11-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Full Name : Angelina Jolie Voight
Date Of Birth : 4 June 1975
Place Of Birth : Los Angeles, California, USA
Sign : Gemini
Height : 173 cm
Hair : Brown
Eyes : Blue
Children : Maddox Chivan (adopted from Cambodia, 2002), Zahara Marley (adopted from Ethiopia, 2005) , Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt (fathered by Brad Pitt), Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt (adopted from Vietnam, 2007)
Father : Jon Voight
Mother : Marcheline Bertrand
Brother : James Haven Voight

Filmography: The Complete List

While most Hollywood stars do everything they can to appear cool, professional and squeaky-clean, diligently concealing all their nasty little secrets, Angelina Jolie appears wholly unconcerned by controversy. Ever-keen to talk about her breakdowns, her disorders, her fantasies and her world-famous penchant for S&M, many would say she's built a career on titillating public confession. But she's also an increasingly fine and award-winning performer, her Oscar for Girl, Interrupted being only the first in a string of prestigious honours. Onscreen, as in bed, she is a risk-taker, and perhaps deserves to be seen as the spiritual sister of such greats as Streep, Pfeiffer and Lange. Beyond this, her international efforts on behalf of children and refugees have made her the most public-minded superstar since Audrey Hepburn.

She was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, on June 4th, 1975 - her name meaning Pretty Little Angel. Her father, Jon, was already an established superstar, having topped the bill in such classics as Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance. When Angelina was 2, he'd scoop the Best Actor Oscar for Coming Home. By then though, he'd already split from her mother, the part-Iroquois actress and model Marcheline Bertrand (now Angelina'smanager), who'd moved with Angelina and her brother James to the East Coast - to the Palisades, New York, to be more precise.

Living here, Jolie was a happy child. She collected snakes and lizards - her favourite lizard being named Vladimir, and her favourite snake Harry Dean Stanton - and, oddly, like many females of her age, she had a major crush on Mr Spock. She would wear glittery clothing, including sparkly underwear, and flounce around, already performing, keen to make people laugh, to make them like her. She was a member of the Kissy Girls, who hunted boys down and kiss them till they screamed - until the school was forced to call the parents and the gang broke up. Marcheline would take the kids to the movies often, and Jolie claims this is where she got the notion to be an actress - not from her uncle, Chip Taylor (an actor and composer), not from her godmother Jacqueline Bisset, and definitely NOT from her father, though at age 7 she did appear in Lookin' To Get Out, a movie about inveterate gamblers, co-written by and starring Jon Voight.

When Jolie was 11, her mother moved the family back to Los Angeles. They had already moved often, making the young girl feel constantly uprooted "I always dreamed", she says "of having an attic of things that I could go back up and look at". Now Angelina decided she wanted to act and, as ever jumping in at the deep end, enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years, appearing in several stage productions. As a pupil at Beverly Hills High School, she was not alone in her cinematic ambitions. But she certainly FELT alone in the midst of all those good-looking, pampered children, children who teased her mercilessly for wearing braces and glasses and being so painfully skinny. Unlike the other parents, Marcheline was not rich - so Angelina also had to seek her clothes at thrift stores like Aardvark. Her confidence received a further battering when her attempts at modelling proved fruitless. She never got picked - too short, too thin, too fat, too scarred.

Scarred - yes. Perhaps it was the many moves, maybe it was to do with her father, a lonely, detached figure who did not want to live with his family (Angelina always feared she would be like that herself). Maybe it was the relative poverty, or the taunting, or the way she felt that -with her big eyes, big lips, big everything - she looked like a muppet. But Angelina had come to hate herself, to feel absolutely worthless. She felt unworthy, didn't like to be touched (she still has this problem sometimes). So, like too many young girls, she started to cut herself. At 14, she dropped out of acting classes and began an existence of fast-living and active self-loathing. She wore black, dyed her hair purple and went out slam-dancing with her live-in punk boyfriend. They experimented heavily in S&M, Angelina once asking him to draw a blade along her jawline (the scar is now faint, but still there).

At 16, her relationship ended. She moved to an apartment opposite her mother and went back to theatre. Now committed to acting, her first role was, unsurprisingly, as a German dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, noticed how he would watch people, talk to them, become like them. She stopped fighting with him so much too, realising that they were both "drama queens". For his part, Voight noticed her talent, being moved to tears by her reading of the part of Catherine in A View From The Bridge.

With the braces and glasses gone, she became a model too, working in Los Angeles, New York and London. She also appeared in the video for Meat Loaf's Rock'n'Roll Dreams Come Through - she'd later turn up in promos for Lenny Kravitz, Lemonheads and The Rolling Stones. Her confidence rose, though it would often plummet back down. She tells a story of how once she was so down she actually tried to hire a man to kill her. Being a compassionate sort of assassin, he told her to think about it for a month. Obviously, she didn't call him back.

Jolie had appeared in five of her brother's student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinema (he was now known as James Haven), but her movie career proper began in 1993, when she starred as Casella "Cash" Reese, alongside Elias Koteas and Jack Palance in Cyborg 2. Here, a near-human robot-thing, she was designed to seduce her way into the HQ of her creators' rivals and blow up. Already, her sexual charisma had been noted. Next came Hackers, where she met her first husband, Jonny Lee Miller, then riding high after his performance as Sick Boy in Trainspotting. Miller played a computer whizz-kid on the wrong side of the law, trying to save the world from a swine intent upon unleashing a vicious virus, while being pursued by the Secret Service. Jolie was Acid Burn, one of his team.

The pair fell for each other big-time and were married, Jolie possibly looking for some kind of stability in her life. Now began her explicit openness in the press, as she told lurid tales of their sexual exploits. "You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens", she said jokingly. It was also announced that, when getting married, Jolie had worn black leather pants and a white shirt with Miller's name scrawled across the back in her own blood (well, who else's blood would she use?). In interviews, Jolie explained that her interest in blood and death was of long standing. She not only collected knives, she said, but had a fascination with mortuary science and, as a child, had dreamed of becoming a funeral director. Less Maude than Harold, then.

Now the roles started coming fast and thick. Jolie starred with David Duchovny in the nasty, stylish thriller Playing God (she'd later date her other co-star, Timothy Hutton). Then, in the road-movie Mojave Moon, she was a youngster, named Eleanor Rigby, who falls for Danny Aiello, while he takes a shine to her mother, Anne Archer. In Foxfire, she was one of a group of teenage girls who kill a teacher who harasses them, then gradually go wholly out-of-control. Directed by Annette Haywood-Carter, this was very much a girl-thing, as was Jolie's next release, the TV movie True Women, a Herstorical romantic drama set in the West, based on the book by Janice Woods Windle.

As a child, Jolie had always been encouraged to express her feelings, and now it really began to work for her. In biopic George Wallace, she played the wife of the segregationist Governor of Alabama who was shot and paralysed while running for President. This starred Gary Sinise and was directed by John Frankenheimer, but she more than held her own, picking up a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination. Next came Gia, another biopic, this time of Gia Carangi, a lesbian supermodel from the Seventies. This was crammed with sex, drugs and fearsome emotional drama, as Carangi crashed, burned and was eventually taken by AIDS. For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy. At the Golden Globes, by way of celebration, she jumped into a swimming-pool, clad in a hand-beaded Randolph Duke gown.

The emotional extravagance of these parts, added to her own confusion and pain, made living with Jolie an impossibility. She was breaking down and Miller could take no more. The couple split, Jolie living alone in Manhattan, getting her head together, and attending film classes at NYU. Now notorious for her candid quotes, her name stayed in the papers. The sexuality of Gia had got tongues wagging, and Jolie had made them wag some more by admitting to bi-sexuality, and a relationship with actress Jenny Shimizu.

Now came the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, about two air traffic controllers who engage in macho conflict. John Cusack was one, the other was Billy Bob Thornton, acclaimed director, writer and star of Sling Blade. Jolie played Thornton's wife, an extremely sexy sort who sends the guys crazy and sleeps with Cusack. The film was excellent. More importantly for Jolie, she fell for Thornton, 15 years her senior, who proceeded to dump his longtime girlfriend Laura Dern. The pair became infamous for their salacious quotes, Thornton admitting that he liked to wear Jolie's underwear, even to work, as it made him feel close to her. Actually, their quotes were often rude, but clearly loving.

Jolie was about to become a huge star. Winona Ryder has claimed that her character in Girl, Interrupted could have been her as a young girl. But Jolie's character, Lisa Rowe - insanely ebullient then horribly depressed, hating but needing some form of structure to her life, even an institution - really WAS Jolie. Stealing the show entirely, she won the Oscar, and herein lies a sweet tale. At the time filming Original Sin down in Mexico, Jolie flew to the Oscar ceremony (she'd attended before, age 12 and all glammed up in lace and pearls, with her dad), won, then flew straight back, arriving at 4.30 am and going straight to sleep. Suddenly, she was awoken by a mariachi band, hired by co-star Antonio Banderas and director Michael Cristofer. Stumbling from her trailer, she was handed a single rose by every member of the crew, many of whom, along with Cristofer, had worked on Gia and, remembering her at her lowest ebb, wished to recognise this moment of triumph. In the press, meanwhile, her victory was quickly overshadowed by freakish reports that she was having an affair with her own brother. They must have assumed she'd try anything once. This is a big part of the Jolie phenomenon - she has a searing reputation for being sexually voracious and promiscuous, yet says she's slept with only a tiny handful of people.

After Girl, Interrupted came the psycho-thriller The Bone Collector, where she aided a bedridden Denzel Washington in his pursuit of a killer, then Gone In 60 Seconds, where Jolie played Sarah "Sway" Wayland, ex-girlfriend of super-car-thief Nicolas Cage. She didn't have much to do but be charismatic, which she managed with ease - though she did look thin and drawn, something noted by Cristofer when Jolie moved directly from Gone In 60 Seconds on to the set of Original Sin. Based on Cornell Woolrich's Waltz Into Darkness, this would be a steamy bodice-ripper where she played a mail order bride for Banderas' coffee planter in 1900s Cuba, a bride who turns out to be dominating, manipulative and thoroughly untrustworthy. It was a wonder he didn't mail her straight back.

Next would come the big one - Tomb Raider. To play videogame heroine Lara Croft, Jolie had to master a Brit accent and upper-class manners, plus kick-boxing, street-fighting, yoga, ballet, car racing and dog-sledding. Few actresses have the outlandish features and sheer physical power to pull off such a character, but Jolie managed it with some aplomb as Croft criss-crossed the globe, trying to prevent the Illuminati from using a magic triangle to control Time Itself. She would revisit the part in 2003 with the superior Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life. Here a Chinese crime boss and evil mastermind would attempt to unleash a deadly plague that, for some reason, chose to remain in Pandora's Box when all the other bad stuff sprang forth. Naturally, only Lady Lara Croft (in the original her aristocratic dad was played by Jon Voight) can save the day. Once again, Jolie impressed with her straight face, dry wit and comically unbreakable British resolve - she certainly gained more prestige than she would have done had she instead taken the role in Charlie's Angels eventually filled by Lucy Liu.

Before the sequel, though, would come Life Or Something Like It where she played a Seattle TV reporter seemingly ambitious beyond her abilities. Stuck in a love triangle with a baseball pitcher and a cameraman, she's informed of her own imminent death by a street preacher and must get her life in order before popping her clogs. It doesn't sound good and it wasn't, Jolie hardly being tested by such weak material.

Personally speaking, this was a hard time for Angelina. Having in 2001 adopted a Cambodian boy named Maddox, and having made clear her sympathy for nations much poorer than her own, she was made a Good Will Ambassador for the United Nations. It was a role she took seriously, visiting Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan and the Western Sahara. She examined first-hand the plight of refugees from Thailand and Chechnia, called for peace in Sri Lanka and pledged $5 million to a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia (having been paid $12 million for Tomb Raider 2, this was something she could well afford).

Unfortunately, her relationship with Thornton did not survive this burst of activity. He, she later claimed, was more interested in his career (he was at the time concentrating on his music) and left her and Maddox to go out on tour. The couple would officially split up in May 2002 and divorce a year later, after almost exactly three years of marriage. And the split would bring about another when father Jon Voight used TV interviews to reach out to a daughter he said had "serious mental problems". Angelina did not appreciate his words or tactics.

Having worked extensively in the UK on the Tomb Raider movies, Jolie would buy herself a house in Buckinghamshire and often be seen out with former husband Jonny Lee Miller. Despite giving much of her time to the UN, she was still fairly prolific on-screen. After Tomb Raider 2 would come Beyond Borders, long delayed after the sacking of Kevin Costner (for being too demanding) and the subsequent departure of Oliver Stone. Interestingly, the movie would see her as the daughter of a rich industrialist, meeting a renegade doctor (Clive Owen replacing Costner) and, inspired by his impassioned desire to save lives, helping him do just that in war-torn Africa and beyond. There were clear parallels with her own life.

2004 would bring a welter of work and another tumult of rumours. Onscreen, she'd open the year with Taking Lives, playing an intuitive American detective called up to help Montreal cops track down a serial killer. Through a strange and near-psychic process (as well as dogged police work), she reveals that the murderer, a major self-loather, has been offing people of gradually increasing age, stealing their identities and thereby living a series of different lives. Artist Ethan Hawke is able to sketch the killer, but will that do any good? The movie was quite complex, full of clues, shocks and sly cheats, but it was rather overshadowed by the break-up of Hawke's marriage to Uma Thurman. Naturally, rumours abounded that Jolie was the scarlet woman - in fact, it was model Jen Perzow.

Next came Shark Tale, an animation where Will Smith's funky fish took credit for the accidental death of the son of shark mobster Robert De Niro. Now famous, Smith would attract the amorous, glamorous Angelina (a fish called Lola, of course) who'd tempt him to betray his long-time gal Rene Zellweger. Critics would complain that the film's welter of references to the likes of Jaws and The Godfather would put it beyond the ken of most kids. Nevertheless, without challenging the monolithic success of Shrek, it was still a big hit.

After Shark Tale would come a real oddity, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. Inspired by 1950s sci-fi comics, this would see a crazed German scientist kidnap the world's greatest minds and then send giant robots rampaging through the streets of New York City. Teaming up to foil this megalomaniac would be Jude Law's freelance buccaneer, Gwyneth Paltrow's scoop-hungry hack and Angelina, a sexy, piratical pilot who may well have caused the break-up of an earlier relationship between Law and Paltrow. Really, you couldn't blame him.

Sky Captain, an FX marvel that had seen the actors working mostly against green screens, was a cinematic wonder, but not a hit. Much the same could be said of Jolie's next venture, Oliver Stone's epic Alexander. This saw her as Olympias, mother of Colin Farrell's great conqueror. Married to a drunken Val Kilmer, she's beaten and banished, but returns when her young son acquires the crown of Macedon, henceforth acting as his inspiration as he subjugates the nations. It was an odd movie, glorious in its scope, thrilling in its battle sequences, but undermined by the complexity of its message and its shy handling of Alexander's bisexuality. Indeed, it was undermined to the extent that, having cost $150 million to make, its US box office takings stalled at $34 million. Ouch.

Generally slating the movie, the critics paid special attention to the eastern European accent Angelina adopted. Fans would say this was a tad unfair - after all, Macedonia borders on Bulgaria which, like Russia, touches the Black Sea. She wasn't THAT far off. But her career did not suffer. Branching out artistically, she'd move on to The Fever, directed by Vanessa Redgrave's son Carlo Gabriel Nero. This was an HBO take on Wallace Shawn's play about a middle-class woman's political awakening. Ambitiously switching from action to filmed theatre to into-camera monologues, it would see Redgrave educated in the world's political hot-spots by journalist Michael Moore and Jolie's angry, pistol-packing revolutionary. Jolie would then take on another major release, 2005's Mr And Mrs Smith, where she and Brad Pitt starred as a bored couple whose marriage is both stimulated and endangered when they discover they're both secret assassins, now unfortunately hired to kill one another. Even before its release the film would cause something of a stir. Firstly, extra shoots meant that Jolie could not carry the Olympic torch through Athens - her work for the United Nations High Commission For Refugees was to have seen her represent the world's refugees. And there were the inevitable rumours of sexual misbehaviour. With Pitt and Jennifer Aniston the world's most famous couple and Jolie Hollywood's most notorious femme fatale, the tabloids, understandably, went bananas. For once they had good reason.

Mr And Mrs Smith was, understandably, a massive hit, taking $186 million at the US box office. Much of the press surrounding it, though, concerned the stars themselves, the couple eventually being forced to ban questions about their relationship. For a full year they remained tight-lipped. Pictures of them together sporadically appeared, one set making upwards of $500,000. Pitt officially split from Aniston, divorcing in 2005. Only in 2006 would they come clean, with Pitt adopting Maddox and Zaharah Marley, an Ethiopian girl Jolie had herself adopted the year before. By the end of May they would have a child of their own, Shiloh Nouvel being born in Namibia. With Pitt now helping Jolie in her ambassadorial duties, it came as no surprise when they agreed to sell exclusive photos of the new arrival and donate all proceeds to charity.

Charitable work and motherhood would now take up much of Jolie's time. Having in 2004 been made an Honorary Citizen of Cambodia due to her efforts in the region, she'd visit post-earthquake Pakistan and involve herself in the huge Live 8 concert. She'd also address the World Economic Forum, highlighting the plights of Darfur, Afghanistan and Nepal. But there would be the occasional cinema release. 2006 would see the long-anticipated premiere of The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro. This would tell the story of the early years of the CIA by following the career of operative Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon, as he's recruited before WW2 then becomes a player in the Cold War. Jolie would deliver a highly dramatic turn as Wilson's wife Clover, first jumping him at a picnic and getting pregnant, then becoming estranged as war separates them, loneliness eventually driving her to cynicism and alcoholism. With an all-star cast featuring John Turturro, Michael Gambon and William Hurt, the movie would be both entertainment and history lesson. So would Jolie's next effort, Beowulf, where Robert Zemeckis told the old Norse legend using the same performance-capture animation technique he'd employed so successfully with The Polar Express. Playing one of history's most notorious female monsters, Jolie would be joined by John Malkovich, Anthony Hopkins, Crispin Glover and Ray Winstone.

Still struggling with herself, and still publicly discussing her pleasures and pains (as well as her ever-increasing charity work - covered in part in her 2003 book Notes From My Travels), Jolie is one of Hollywood's more complicated characters. She may have found happiness with Brad Pitt but, as of 2006, she hadn't spoken to her father in four years. She's both a sex object and an international diplomat, an action star and an Oscar-winning thespian, a constant contradiction. Alongside the Japanese sign for death, Billy Bob, H, two Native American symbols, a dragon and a black cross, she has marked on her body a Tennessee Williams line "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", and "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - What nourishes me also destroys me. Let's hope she continues to benefit from the nourishment. And the cage.

by Dominic Wills

Angelina Jolie - Filmography

2007-11-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Below are all movies and TV Shows Angelina has been acted in.

Wanted (2008) - Fox
Kung Fu Panda (voice) (2008) -Master Tigress
The Changeling (2008)
Atlas Shrugged (2008) -Dagny Taggart
Beowulf (2007) - Grendels Mother
A Mighty Heart ( 2007) - Marianne Pearl
The Good Shepherd (2006) - Catherine the Great
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) - Jane Smith
Alexander (2004) - Olympias
Shark Tale (2004) (voice) - Lola
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) - Capt. Franky Cook
Taking Lives (2004) - Illeana Scott
Beyond Borders (2003) - Sarah Jordan
Lara Croft and the Cradle of Life: Tomb Raider 2 (2003) - Lara Croft
Life or Something Like It (2002) - Lanie
Original Sin (2001) - Julia Russell
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) - Lara Croft
Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) - Sara 'Sway' Wayland
Girl, Interrupted (1999) - Lisa Rowe
Bone Collector, The (1999) - Amelia Donaghy
Pushing Tin (1999) - Mary Bell
Playing by Heart (1998) - Joan
Hell's Kitchen (1998) - Gloria McNeary
Gia (1998) (TV) - Gia Marie Carangi
Playing God (1997) - Claire
George Wallace (1997) (TV) - Cornelia Wallace
True Women (1997) (TV) - Georgia Virginia Lawshe Woods
Mojave Moon (1996) - Eleanor 'Elie' Rigby
Foxfire (1996) - Margret 'Legs' Sadovsky
Love Is All There Is (1996) - Gina Malacici
Without Evidence (1995) - Jodie Swearingen
Hackers (1995) - Kate Libby ('Acid Burn')
Cyborg 2 (1993) - Casella 'Cash' Reese
Lookin' to Get Out (1982) - Tosh

Isaac Mendez (Heroes)

2007-10-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Character: Tv Series Character
Tv Series: Heroes

Name: ISAAC MENDEZ
Portrayed by: Santiago Cabrera

Isaac is an artist who has the ability of Precognition.

Claire Bennet (Heroes)

2007-10-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

Character: Tv Series Character
Tv Series: Heroes

Name: CLAIRE BENNET
Portrayed by: Hayden Panettiere

Claire Bennet, who is a cheerleader at high school, lives in Costa Verde, CA with her adoptive family. She has an ability to heal. She always tries to be a normal teenager girl. Because she is afraid of being different from the others. And her real fear is that her family will reject her if they learn about her origins. Although she is afraid, she is always curious about her talents.

Starbuck - Kara Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)

2007-10-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

Character: Tv Series Character
Tv Series: Battlestar Galactica (2003)

Name: KARA THRACE
Nickname of the Character: STARBUCK

Portrayed by: Katee Sackhoff

A brilliant viper pilot of the Battlestar Galactica… Her skills and independent nature completes her weak character. She is always sarcastic but you can see her crying eyes oftenly. She always smokes her cigar and drinks while looking for anyone to make fun of or argue in the ship. Or if the crews are on their luck day she must be hunting cylons outside the ship.

With her sins and good deeds she fights for Battlestar Galactica and human beings. And especially for her own personal passions…

Kimi Raikkonen - Biography

2007-10-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Kimi Matias Raikkonen born on October 17th, 1979 in Espoo, Finland is an outstanding Formula One racer with a string of successes to his credit.

Raikkonen the born winner started off karting at an early age and continued participating in several races. Displaying his amazing racing skills in 1999 European Formula Super A championship, Raikkonen finished 2nd. Thereafter he continued his winning spree, winning first four races in 2000 British Formula Renault Winter series, and in 2000 Formula Renault UK Championship, Raikkonen won seven of ten events. With that he achieved a grand 56 percent win rate - winning 13 of 23 events in all.

These spectacular results have straight away landed him a Formula One racing berth. Peter Sauber took a daring step in signing Raikkonen for his Sauber-Petronas team in 2001, which he test-drove it in 2000.

But F1 critics including FIA president Max Mosley expressed dismay over granting an F1 superlicence to Kimi Raikkonen, as he had only 23 car races to his credit. Trying to prove his critics wrong, Raikkonen made a flying start in his debut 2001 Australian Grand Prix and finished 6th in the race.

In 2002, he switched over to McLaren-Mercedes Team and raced for them from 2002 to 2006. Giving out the best of his performances in racing, Raikkonen finished 2nd conceding the title to Michael Schumacher in 2003 Formula One World Drivers' Championship. In 2005 Formula One championship Raikkonen repeated the feat and again finished, this time conceding the title to Fernando Alonso of Renault team.

Ferrari is proud to have signed a three-year deal with Kimi Raikkonen, the most exciting driver who has currently set his sights on the world championship title. He has twice come closer to winning the world championship title and only needs to take one step more to win the title.

Kimi Raikkonen won the Brazilian Grand Prix and took the Drivers World Championship title on October 2007. This is the first of his career and the fifteenth for Ferrari in Formula 1. This was win number fifteen from 122 race starts for Kimi.

Lewis Hamilton - Biography

2007-10-22T15:14:00.001-07:00

Lewis' career started in 1993 when he was 8 years old and by the age of 10 Lewis had won his first British Kart championship. A further four British Kart championships followed in 1996 and 1997. At the age of 13, Lewis was talent spotted and subsequently signed to the McLaren Driver Development Support programme by Ron Dennis, CEO and Chairman of McLaren Formula One. Lewis signed a long-term contract guaranteeing financial and technical support and including a future option for entry into Formula One.

Lewis remains the only teenager ever to be signed by a Formula team at such an early age.

Throughout 1998 to 2000 and with financial backing secured by McLaren, Lewis won European and World Karting titles and was crowned Karting World No. 1 in 2000 at the age of 15. Seven years later, Lewis remains the youngest ever World Karting No.1.

Following a successful Karting career, Lewis graduated to single-seater racing in 2002 in the Formula Renault single seater category and finished 3rd in his first full season of car racing. A second season of Formula Renault followed in 2003 with Lewis dominating the series and setting a championship record with 10 wins, 9 fastest laps and 11 pole positions and winning the championship two rounds before the final race.

In 2004, Lewis raced in the highly competitive Formula 3 Euroseries championship on the same event card as the Germany DTM touring car championship. Racing for Manor Motorsport, a rookie team in Europe and Lewis in his first year of F3, Lewis finished 5th having taken a win at the Norisring plus four further podiums.

In 2005, Lewis won the Formula 3 Euroseries championship racing for the dominant ASM team. In 2006, he joined ART Grand Prix team in the GP2 Series as a replacement for the previous year's champion Nico Rosberg. His performance in the GP2 Series has been impressive. At the European GP2 event he won both races, becoming only the second driver (after Nico Rosberg) to do so in the series history and won at Monaco from pole. At Silverstone Lewis went one better and scored his second double race win becoming the only driver in GP2 history to do so. Lewis is the current 2006 GP2 champion and is testing for F1 with McLaren.

Name: Lewis Carl Hamilton
DOB: 7th January 1985
Age: 21
Nationality: British
Home town: Tewin Wood, Hertfordshire, England
Place of Birth: Stevenage, UK
Marital Status: Single
Height: 1.74m
Weight: 67kg

Favourite Music: Hip-hop, R&B, Reggae and Funky House

Favourite Artists: The Roots, De La Soul, 2Pac, Biggie, Nas, Bob Marley, Sizzla, Sean Paul, Freddie McGregor, UB40, Chaka Demus & Piliers, Beenie Man, Sanchez, Warrior King

Hobbies: Music, playing guitar, books, gym, cycling, squash, tennis, karting, partying with friends, chilling with family and friends, cinema, watching DVDs

Debra Messing's Childhood and Youth

2007-10-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

Debra Messing was born in Brooklyn, New York City. (15 August 1968) Her parents are Jewish American. Her Father is Brian Messing and he was a sales executive for a jewelry manufacturer. And her mother Sandra Simons worked as a professional singer, banker, travel and real estate agent. And she has an older brother named Brett.

Debra Messing moved to east Greenwich (a quiet town outside Rhode Island, Providence) with her family when she was three years old. She acted and sang in high school years. She acted in the musicals “Annie” and “Fiddler On the Roof” fort he starring roles. And she took lessons for dancing, acting and singing in these years. In 1986, she was Rhode Island's Junior Miss and competed in Mobile, Alabama in the America's Junior Miss scholarship program. Her family always encouraged her but they also wanted her to take a liberal arts education. And she attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She also studied thater at London based British European Studio Group program. And this increased her desire to act.

In 1990, after graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis with a bachelor's degree in theater arts, Messing gained admission to the elite Graduate Acting Program (which accepts only about 15 new students annually) at New York University, where she earned a master's degree in fine arts after three years.

Lewis Hamilton - Career

2007-10-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

2007 - F1 with Vodafone McLaren Mercedes - age 22
	Leader - 4 wins, 12 podiums, 6 Pole positions
2006 - GP2 Series - age 21
	Champion (ART Grand Prix) - 5 wins
2005 - Formula 3 Euro Series - age 20
	Champion - 15 wins, 10 fastest laps, 13 Pole positions (champion before final 4 races) Winner - F3 Marlboro Masters, Zandvoort - Pole position and lap record Winner - Monaco F3 Grand Prix - 2 Pole positions, 2 race wins, 1 fastest lap Winner - Pau F3 Grand Prix, France - 2 Pole positions, 2 race wins, 2 fastest laps
2004 - Formula 3 Euro Series - age 19
	5th in Championship - 1 win, two 3rds Winner Bahrain F3 Superprix Winner race 1 Macau Grand Prix
2003 - Formula Renault UK - age 18
	Champion - 10 wins, 9 fastest laps, 11 Pole positions (Champion before final two rounds)
2002 - Formula Renault UK - age 17
	3rd Formula Renault UK Championship - 3 wins, 3 fastest laps, 3 Poles
2001 - Formula Renault - age 16
	3rd Formula Renault UK Championship - 3 wins, 3 fastest laps, 3 Poles
2001 - Formula Renault - age 16
	5th - Formula Renault Winter Series
2000 - Karting - Formula A - age 15
	1st - World No. 1 1st - European Champion - Winner of all four rounds 1st - World Cup Champion - Japan 1st - Winner of Elf Masters, Paris Bercy, France Silverstone British Racing Drivers Club "Rising Star" Member Winner at the Second round of the Italian Open
1999 - Karting - Junior ICA and JICA - age 14
	2nd - Vice European Champion - JICA 1st - Trophy de Pomposa winner - JICA 4th - Italian Open Championship - JICA 1st - Italian "Industrials" Champion - ICA
1998 - Karting - Junior ICA - age 13
	2nd - McLaren Mercedes Champion of the Future 4th - Italian Open Championship
1997 - Karting - Junior Yamaha - age 12
	1st - McLaren-Mercedes Champion of the Future 1st - British Champion
1996 - Karting - Cadet - age 11
	1st - McLaren-Mercedes Champion of the Future 1st - Sky TV Kart Masters Champion 1st - Five Nations Champion
1995 - Karting - Cadet - age 10
	1st - British Champion 1st - STP Champion

Debra Messing - Filmography

2007-10-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

1995 A Walk in the Clouds, Betty Sutton
1997 McHale's Navy, Lt. Penelope Carpenter
2002 The Mothman Prophecies, Mary Klein - Hollywood Ending, Lori Fox
2004 Along Came Polly, Lisa Kramer - Garfield, Arlene (voice only)
2005 The Wedding Date, Kat Ellis
2006 Open Season, Park Ranger Beth (voice only)
2007 Lucky You, Suzanne
2007 The Starter Wife, Molly Kagan
2008 The Women, Edith Potter

Doris Lessing

2007-10-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Doris Lessing was born in 22 October 1919 (1919-10-22) Kermanshah, Persia. When she was 13, she left the school. When she was 15, she left home. She married a farmer when she was 19, but she left home ten years later. She earned a fame with her first novel "The Grass is Singing". She denied the "title of nobility" of UK. Now (2007) she is 88 years old and she is the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature (2007).

Doris Lessing's Books (alphabetically)

African Laughter four visits to Zimbabwe
African Stories
Ben, in the World
The Black Madonna
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
Canopus in Argos: Archives (series)
Children of Violence (series)
The Cleft
Conversations - edited by Earl G. Ingersoll
The Diaries of Jane Somers
The Diary of a Good Neighbour by Jane Somers
The Doris Lessing Reader
The Fifth Child
Five
The Four-Gated City Children of Violence
Fourteen Poems
Going Home
The Golden Notebook
The Good Terrorist
The Grass is Singing
The Grandmothers
The Habit of Loving
If the Old Could by Jane Somers
The Wolf People - INPOPA Anthology 2002
In Pursuit of the English
Landlocked Children of Violence
London Observed Stories & Sketches
Love, Again
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 Canopus in Argos: Archives
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 - (Libretto)
A Man and Two Women
Mara and Dann An Adventure
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five Canopus in Argos: Archives
Martha Quest Children of Violence
The Memoirs of a Survivor
The Old Age of El Magnifico
On Cats
Particularly Cats
Particularly Cats and More Cats
Particularly Cats...and Rufus
The Pit
Each His Own Wilderness
Play with a Tiger
Play with a Tiger and Other Plays
Playing the Game Illustrated by Charlie Adlard
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Problems, Myths and Stories
A Proper Marriage Children of Violence
Putting the Questions Differently - edited by Earl G. Ingersoll
The Real Thing Stories & Sketches
A Ripple from the Storm Children of Violence
The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire Canopus in Argos: Archives
Shadows on the Wall of the Cave
Shikasta Re: Colonised Planet 5 - Canopus In Argos: Archives
The Sirian Experiments Canopus in Argos: Archives
A Small Personal Voice - Essays, Reviews, Interviews
Spies I Have Known and other stories
Stories
The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the snow dog
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man
The Summer Before the Dark
The Sun Between Their Feet Collected African Stories-Volume Two
The Sweetest Dream
The Temptation of Jack Orkney & Other Stories
The Temptation of Jack Orkney Collected Stories Volume Two
This Was the Old Chief's Country
This Was the Old Chief's Country Collected African Stories-Volume One
Through The Tunnel A Creative Short Story
Time Bites
To Room Nineteen Collected Stories Volume One
Under My Skin Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949
Walking in the Shade Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949 to 1962
The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Winter in July

Childhood of David Beckham

2007-10-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

He was born in Leytonstone, London, England.
His parents were fanatical Manchester United supporters.
His father Edward Alan "Ted" Beckham was a kitchen fitter.
His mother Sandra Georgina West was a hairdresser.

David played football in Ridgeway Park, Chingford when he was a child.
He attended Chase Lane Primary School and Chingford Foundation School as a child.
His mother’s family is Jewish.
In his book Both Feet on the Ground, David Becham stated that growing up he always attended church with his parents and sisters.

His parents were attending Menchester United’s home matches by a travel from London to Old Trafford.
So we can say that, the passions of football and Manchester United are heritages for David Beckham from his parents.

Beckham the chance to take part in a training session at FC Barcelona, as part of a talent competition when he attended one of Bobby Charlton’s football schools.
Beckham played for a local youth team called the Ridgeway Rovers - coached by his father, Stuart Underwood and Steve Kirby when he was a child.

He was a Manchester United mascot for a match against West Ham United in 1986.
Young Beckham had trials with his local club Leyton Orient, Norwich City and attended Tottenham Hotspur's, which was the first club he played for, school of excellence.
During a two-year period in which he played for Brimsdown Rovers' youth team, he was named Under-15 Player of the Year in 1990.
He also attended Bradenton Preparatory Academy, but signed schoolboy forms at Manchester United on his fourteenth birthday, and subsequently signed a Youth Training Scheme contract on 8 July 1991.

Johnny Depp - Biography

2007-10-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

John Christopher Depp III was born June 9, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky. The son of John Christopher, a city engineer and Betty Sue Palmer, a waitress and homemaker (Depp has a tattoo of his mother's name on his left arm), young Johnny relocated to Florida, with his three older siblings. The family moved to Florida shortly after the death of Depp's grandfather, with whom the future actor was very close.

Never the studious teenager and even more distraught by the divorce of his parents, Depp delved into the world of experimental drugs, and picked up a whole new passion: the guitar. The high-school dropout spent his days playing guitar in a garage band, after he taught himself how to play with the instrument his mother bought him.

on fire and rocking

Depp joined a rock band called The Flame, with whom he toured the Florida nightclub circuit. The Flame eventually dubbed themselves the Kids, and the band was hired as the opening act on an Iggy Pop tour. Hoping to strike a chord as famous rockers, the Kids moved to Los Angeles. Depp took a job selling ballpoint pens over the phone in order to support himself, but he and his fellow rockers decided to break up and move on.

Bigger and better things awaited Depp, who at the time was married to makeup artist Lori Allison. Their marriage was short-lived, but it did lead to something: Lori introduced Johnny to Nicolas Cage, who saw star potential in the young Depp. Thanks to their encounter, Depp was cast in his feature film debut, in the slasher Nightmare on Elm Street, in 1984.

After a starring role in the campy Private Resort, a bit part in 1986's Platoon, and acting lessons at L.A.'s Loft Studio, Depp was cast as Officer Tom Hanson in the teen crime drama, 21 Jump Street. Depp initially refused the role, but eventually accepted it and remained on the show -- and on the cover of every teen magazine -- for 3 years. To his dismay, Depp became a heartthrob posted on the wall of every teenage girl, a role he wanted no part in.

cutting away at fame

Depp was given the opportunity to prove his worth as the eccentric title role in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, in 1990. He starred in Cry-Baby that same year, and even made an appearance in the final installment of Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, in which he was credited as Oprah Noodlemantra.

The brooding actor made it a point to always take on different characterizations. He certainly never became pigeonholed, despite the oddball, wacky characters he usually portrayed, as seen in 1993's Benny & Joon and 1994's Ed Wood. Depp made Hollywood and critics take notice with his incredible portrayal of a guy tired of his small-town lifestyle in 1993's What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

While his work in 1995's Don Juan DeMarco and Nick of Time didn't garner much attention, Depp was highly praised for his turn as an FBI undercover agent who infiltrates the mob opposite Al Pacino, in 1997's Donnie Brasco. He also took time to write, direct and star in The Brave that year.

In 1998, Depp starred as the alter ego of buddy Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, co-starring Benicio Del Toro, and tried his hand at sci-fi in 1999's The Astronaut's Wife, along with gorgeous Charlize Theron. He re-teamed with Tim Burton to star in the magnificently gothic adaptation of the Halloween legend, 1999's Sleepy Hollow, in a brilliant portrayal of constable Ichabod Crane.

Depp began the year with roles in The Man Who Cried (co-starring good friend Christina Ricci), Before Night Falls, and the small film that could, Chocolat, as a gypsy who falls for Juliette Binoche.

a deep black book

While Depp has had his share of beautiful co-stars, he also had a wide variety of leading ladies in his own life, such as ex-fiancées Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder, with whom he was engaged for three years. The tattoo in honor of his Edward Scissorhands co-star once read Winona Forever; it has since been laser-altered to read Wino Forever. Besides Winona, Depp's most famous ex-fiancée is Kate Moss. Depp and the waifish model were engaged from 1995 to 1997, and had an on again, off again relationship.

Depp presently shares a house in France with Vanessa Paradis, a French actress and singer, and the mother of their daughter, Lily-Rose Melody, born in 1999. The only reason Depp is ever away from home is in order to fulfill his film contracts; he loves his daughter so much that he doesn't even keep a picture of her in his wallet, for fear of it crinkling.

Despite Depp's critical acclaim as an actor, he has surprisingly never won an Oscar, although he has been honored with the 1990 ShoWest Male Star of Tomorrow award, the 1996 London Critics Circle Actor of the Year award for Ed Wood and the 1998 Honorary Cesar.

And even with Depp's acclaim as one of his generation's best actors, his name has had its share of tabloid smears, especially after River Phoenix died of a drug overdose in 1993 outside the Viper Room, the club Depp owns. Depp also became tabloid fodder when he was arrested for trashing the presidential suite of a Manhattan hotel in 1994 -- he finally paid over $2,000 worth of damages.

His bad rep behind him, Depp got rave reviews for his portrayal of George Jung in 2001's Blow. He rounded up 2001 with the Jack the Ripper film, From Hell, alongside Heather Graham, and will next be seen in Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

What else do you need to know?

overall rating

Johnny Depp is an actor who takes his job seriously. He knows the ins and outs of life in Hollywood (maybe that is why he moved to Europe with his girlfriend) and doesn't let himself get caught up in the hype machine.

He does whatever he likes and has so far enjoyed a successful career on the big screen. His films do well with audiences and critics alike. Furthermore, he constantly tries to mix it up and try his hand at different roles to broaden his repertoire.

He's had his share of crazy times and has been in the tabloids more than he cares to remember, but he's emerged from his run-ins virtually unscathed.

Johnny gives each role his full effort and we would not be surprised if he wins an Oscar some time soon.

personality & talent

Johnny Depp is the mysterious type. He isn't a big talker and when he does have something to say, it's usually short and sweet. He isn't an easy fellow to pin down and he's somewhat elusive, which just adds to the mystery that is Depp.

Depp comes across as the brooding type, but he is much more congenial than he looks. He's a movie star yet doesn't look like one. Low-key may be the best way to describe him. However, he has had his wild times. He once trashed a swanky hotel room in New York and has thrown the occasional punch at the paparazzi.

Like many actors in Hollywood, he started his career with light fare, but worked hard to become one of the better actors of his generation. Roles in movies such as Donnie Brasco and Edward Scissorhands have allowed his talent to shine through.

woman magnetism

He's mysterious, brooding and a movie star. He once played guitar in a band (quite well, apparently), and he owns the infamous Viper Room, a club in Los Angeles. Is it a wonder that women flock to him? Heck, he's had more ex-fiancées than most guys have had girlfriends.

The fact that he's attached and has a child does not seem to deter the legions of adoring females that want to get deep with Depp.

accomplishments & fame

Johnny Depp once said of himself: "I'm not Mr. Blockbuster." Nonetheless, his movies usually fare quite well with audiences and critics alike, only not always in tandem.

His starring role on 21 Jump Street made him a sensation among teenage girls and paved the way for more serious roles in film.

He snagged a small part in Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning Vietnam film, "Platoon" (alongside Charlie Sheen), before moving on to leading roles in other big-budget movies.

He drew praise for his performances in Donnie Brasco (alongside Al Pacino), Ed Wood, What's Eating Gilbert Grape and his almost silent tour-de-force, Edward Scissorhands. He's also done well in a few romantic roles, playing Don Juan DeMarco (alongside Marlon Brando) in the film of the same name, and more recently with Juliette Binoche in Chocolat.

Johnny Depp has proven himself to be a very talented and flexible actor who isn't afraid of a challenge. Although he's slowed down a little since the birth of his daughter, expect to see more Johnny in the years to come as he matures professionally.

coolness factor

Johnny Depp simply exudes coolness. Think cool and Depp comes to mind for some reason, much like Lenny Kravitz does. He's not a rebel but does march to his own beat. Perhaps it is his quirks and laid-back style that set him apart from the Hollywood rabble; whatever it is, there is definitely something about Johnny that says cool.

personal style

Johnny prefers to dress casually, some would even say sloppily. He wears jeans and leather pants with open shirts. He is also big on leather jackets and tends to wear his hair long.

He also wears beaded bracelets and necklaces mixed in with his more common leather baubles. He looks good in a suit or tux, but rare is the occasion when Johnny sees the need for such formality.

That Johnny gives us free rein in the VIP room at the Viper Room for a weekend. Ladies, drinks are on the house!

Movies:

Sin City 3 (2008) (in production) (rumored)
The Rum Diary (2009) (announced)
Sin City 2 (2009) (pre-production) (rumored)
Shantaram (2008) (pre-production)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) (completed)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow (2006
Corpse Bride (2005) (voice))
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
The Libertine (2004)
Finding Neverland (2004)
Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants (2004)
Secret Window (2004)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
From Hell (2001)
Blow (2001)
Chocolat (2000)
Before Night Falls (2000)
The Man Who Cried (2000)
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
The Astronaut's Wife (1999)
The Ninth Gate (1999)
L.A. Without a Map (1998)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
The Brave (1997)
Donnie Brasco (1997)
Nick of Time (1995)
Dead Man (1995)
Don Juan DeMarco (1995)
Ed Wood (1994)
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
Benny & Joon (1993)
Arizona Dream (1993)
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Cry-Baby (1990)
Platoon (1986)
Private Resort (1985)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Max McGee

2007-10-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Name: Max McGee
Full Name: William Max McGee
Character: Footballer, Sportsman
Birth: 16 July 1932 - Sexton City, Texas
Death: 20 October 2007 - Deephaven, Minnesota
Team: Green Bay Packers (1954, 1957-1967)

Stats
Receptions: 345
Receiving Yards: 6346
Touchdowns: 50

Honours
Green Bay Packers HOF
1x Pro Bowl selection (1961)

Britney Spears - Biography

2007-10-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

More than any other single artist, Britney Spears was the driving force behind the return of teen pop in the late '90s. The blockbuster success of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys certainly paved the way for her own commercial breakthrough, but Spears didn't just become a star -- she was a bona fide pop phenomenon. Not only did she sell millions of records, she was a media fixture regardless of what she was (or wasn't) doing; among female singers of the era (many of whom followed in her footsteps), her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez. From the outset, Spears' sex appeal was an important part of her image; the video for her debut single, "...Baby One More Time," outfitted her in full Catholic-school regalia, and sent her well on the way to becoming an international sex symbol. Yet Spears' handlers seemed to be trying to have it both ways -- there was a definite tension between the wholesome innocence Spears tried to project for her female audience, and the titillating sexuality that enticed so many male fans. Those marketing tactics made Spears a somewhat controversial figure, the subject of endless debates concerning appropriate role models for teenage girls. Early on, Spears tried to defuse the controversy by preaching abstinence until marriage, and even denied that she was consciously cultivating such a sexualized image. Of course, the more provocative and revealing her on-stage wardrobe became, the less plausible that claim seemed. But apart from her ability to tiptoe the line between virginal coquette and brazen tart, Spears had a secret weapon in Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, who had a hand in the vast majority of her hits as a writer and/or producer. With Martin crafting the sort of contemporary dance-pop and sentimental ballads that made stars of the Backstreet Boys, Spears kept on delivering the goods commercially, as her first three albums all topped the charts.

Britney Jean Spears was born December 2, 1981, in the small town of Kentwood, LA, and began performing as a singer and dancer at a young age. With a nationally televised appearance on Star Search already under her belt, Spears auditioned for the Disney Channel's The New Mickey Mouse Club at age eight. The producers turned her down as too young, but one of them took an interest and introduced her to an agent in New York. Spears spent the next three years studying at the Professional Performing Arts School, and also appeared in several television commercials and off-Broadway plays. At 11, she returned to The New Mickey Mouse Club for a second audition, and this time made the cut. Although her fellow Mouseketeers included an impressive array of future stars -- NSYNC's Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, and Felicity actress Keri Russell -- the show was canceled after Spears' second season. She returned to New York at age 15 and set about auditioning for pop bands and recording demo tapes, one of which eventually landed her a deal with Jive Records.

Spears entered the studio with top writer/producers like Eric Foster White (Boyzone, Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys) and Max Martin (Ace of Base, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC). In late 1998, Jive released her debut single, the Martin-penned "...Baby One More Time." Powered by its video, in which Spears and a troupe of dancers were dressed as Catholic-school jailbait, the single shot to the top of the Billboard charts. When Spears' debut album of the same title was released in early 1999, it entered the charts at number one and stayed there for six weeks. Once the ubiquitous lead single died down, the album kept spinning off hits: the Top Ten "(You Drive Me) Crazy," the near-Top 20 ballad "Sometimes," and the Top 20 "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart." By the end of 1999, ...Baby One More Time had sold ten million copies, and went on to sell a good three million more on top of that. Its success touched off a wave of young pop divas that included Christina Aguilera, Pink, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. Spears was a superstar, drooled over in countless magazines, including a Rolling Stone cover that prompted immediate speculation about the still-17 year old having gotten breast implants.

By the time ...Baby One More Time finally started to lose steam on the singles and album charts, Spears was ready to release her follow-up. Oops!...I Did It Again appeared in the spring of 2000, and the title track was an instant smash, racing into the Top Ten. The album entered the charts at number one and sold over a million copies in its first week of release, setting a new record for single-week sales by a female artist. Follow-up singles included "Lucky," the gold-selling "Stronger," and "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," which was co-written by country diva Shania Twain and her producer Mutt Lange. A year after its release, Oops!...I Did It Again had sold over nine million copies. Rumors that Spears was dating N Sync heartthrob (and fellow ex-Mouseketeer) Justin Timberlake were eventually confirmed, which only added to the media attention lavished on her.

For her next album, Spears looked ahead to a not-so-distant future when both she and much of her audience would be growing up. Released in late 2001, Britney tried to present the singer as a more mature young woman, and was accompanied by mild hints that her personal life wasn't always completely puritanical. It became her third straight album to debut at number one, although this time around the singles weren't as successful; "I'm a Slave 4 U," "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," and "Overprotected" all missed the Top Ten. In early 2002, Spears' feature-film debut, Crossroads, hit theaters, but its commercial performance was somewhat disappointing; moreover, her romance with Timberlake fizzled not long after. Spears next made a cameo appearance in Mike Myers' Austin Powers: Goldmember, and contributed a remix of "Boys" to the soundtrack. Meanwhile, sales of Britney stalled at four million copies, perhaps in part because a new breed of teenage female singer/songwriters, like Michelle Branch and Avril Lavigne, was emerging as an alternative to the highly packaged teen queens. Spears took a break from recording and performing for several months, and began work on a new album in early 2003. The results, In the Zone, reflected a wish to be taken seriously as a mature (though still highly sexualized) adult. Predictably, it topped the charts and launched several singles into orbit, including the musically adventurous "Toxic," "Everytime," and "Me Against the Music."

In the Zone hit number one on the Billboard 200, and "Toxic" snagged a Grammy for Best Dance Recording. But by 2004 there were no longer any illusions of Britney's personal life being all wholesome candy canes and kisses. First there was the star's bizarre two-day marriage to childhood friend Jason Alexander, followed by the controversial, highly sexualized Onyx Hotel tour, which was eventually canceled (allegedly because of a knee injury) despite positive financial numbers. Starbucks and cigarettes were Britney's constant accessories in the endless paparazzi photos, and the revelation of her relationship with former backup dancer Kevin Federline made the tabloids even more ravenous. Spears and Federline married in September and were tabloid regulars in the months after the ceremony. (A photo of a barefoot Britney leaving a dingy gas station bathroom made the Internet rounds.) The couple also starred in Chaotic, a UPN reality show consisting mostly of their own home videos that was met with howls from the critics and blogs.

2005 was no less eventful for Spears. She released Greatest Hits: My Prerogative that January, but it was the announcement of her pregnancy that really garnered the headlines. Sean Preston Federline was born in September, and a bidding war ensued for first rights to the baby photos. As the hubbub surrounding Sean's birth continued, Britney released a remix album just in time for the holiday season. In 2006,Spears discovered she was pregnant again; shortly after the birth of her second son, Jayden James Federline, she divorced Federline. Early in 2007, Spears went to Malibu, CA's Promises Treatment Center; when she left, she began working on her comeback album and performed a few small shows at House of Blues locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Anaheim, and Las Vegas that May. Later that summer, however, plans to release an album were pushed back to 2008. Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Jonny Wilkinson

2007-10-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

Name: Jonny Wilkinson
Full Name: Jonathan Peter Wilkinson
Character: Sportsman, Rugby Player

Jonny Wilkinson was born May 25, 1979 in Frimley, Surrey. He is a wonderful rugby player and he plays for England National Team. Wilkinson became one of the world’s best rugby players durin the Rugby World Cup 2003. He scored the winning drop goal against Australia in the last minute of extra time. Wilkinson toured twice with the British and Irish Lions in 2001 and 2005, scoring 44 Test points in the 5 Lions test matches he has started. Now (2007) he plays for Newcastle Falcons in the Guinness Premiership.

You may reach Jonny Wilkinson articles www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/jonny_wilkinson/

Sawyer (Lost)

2007-10-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

Character: TV Series Character
TV Series: Lost
Full Name: James Ford
Portrayed by: Josh Holloway

My Comment:
I like this guy. He is always flippant and quip. Perhaps he is not as brainy as Jack or as sapient as John Locke but he has simple but practical solutions for various problems.

Lincoln Burrows - General Information

2007-10-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

Character: TV Series Character
TV Series: Prison Break
Portrayed by: Dominic Purcell
Alias: Link the Sink
Back number: 79238
Location: At Large (Panama)
Crime: First degree murder (Exonerated) Aggravated discharge of firearm (Exonerated)
Sentence: Death by electrocution
Time left on sentence: Exonorated
Family: Aldo Burrows (father) (deceased), Christina Rose Scofield (mother) (deceased), LJ Burrows (son), Michael Scofield (brother)
Relationships: Lisa Rix (ex-girlfriend)(deceased), Veronica Donovan (ex-girlfriend) (deceased)

Scarlett O'Hara - General Information

2007-10-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

Name: Scarlett O'Hara
Character: Novel Character, Movie Character, TV Series Character

Nickname(s) : Scarlett
Full Name: Katie Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler
Gender Female
Date of birth: 1844

Spouse(s): Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy, Rhett Butler
Children: Wade Hampton Hamilton, Ella Lorena Kennedy, Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie" Butler, Katie "Cat" O'Hara
Relatives: Gerald O'Hara (father), Ellen Robillard (mother), Suellen O'Hara (sister), Careen O'Hara (sister), Gerald O'Hara Jr. (deceased brother)

Scarlett O'Hara of French-Irish ancestry is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name. She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994.

Fred C. Dobbs - General Information

2007-10-18T19:17:00.000-07:00

Character: Movie Character, Novel Character
Movie/Novel: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Portrayed by: Humphrey Bogart

John Huston's masterpiece about what "gold does to men's souls" captures the moral complexity and mordant irony of B. Traven's classic novel. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" follows the fortunes of three down-and-out American prospectors searching for treasure in Mexico. Humphrey Bogart's scruffy, venal Fred C. Dobbs becomes consumed with greed, lacking the decency of Tim Holt's character or the wisdom of the grizzled old-timer played by Walter Huston (the director's father). The picaresque milieu of flophouses, saloons, desert trails, and makeshift mine shafts is vividly rendered by the director and cinematographer Ted McCord. Both Hustons won Oscars for their work in this timeless reflection of the dark side of human nature.

"You can't catch me sleepin'... Don't you ever believe that. I'm not that dumb. The day you try to put anything over on me will be a costly one for both of you... Any more lip out of ya and I'll pull off and let ya have it. If ya know what's good for ya, ya won't monkey around with Fred C. Dobbs!"

Reference: www.fredsociety.com

2007-10-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time
(according to Premiere in 2004)

1. Vito Corleone of The Godfather
2. Fred C. Dobbs of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
3. Scarlett O'Hara of Gone With the Wind
4. Norman Bates of Psycho
5. James Bond of Dr. No
6. Annie Hall of Annie Hall
7. Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark
8. Ellen Ripley of Alien
9. Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High
10. Gollum of Lord of the Rings
11. Margo Channing of All About Eve
12. Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane
13. Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird
14. Randle McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
15. Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs
16. Robin Hood of The Adventures of Robin Hood
17. Dorothy Gale of The Wizard of Oz
18. Carl Spackler of Caddyshack
19. Rick Blaine of Casablanca
20. Virgil Tibbs of In the Heat of the Night
21. Susan Vance of Bringing up Baby
22. Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver
23. Eathan Edwards of The Searchers
24. The Little Tramp of Mabel's Strange Predicament
25. Gordon Gekko of Wall Street
26. E.T. of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
27. Marge Gunderson of Fargo
28. Captain Quint of Jaws
29. Daphne/Jerry of Some Like it Hot
30. King Kong of King Kong
31. Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard
32. Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany's
33. Ratso Rizzo of Midnight Cowboy
34. Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde
35. Dr. Evil of Austin Powers
36. Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction
37. Jake Gittes of Chinatown
38. Willy Wonka of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
39. Michael Dorsey/Dorthy Michaels of Tootsie
40. The Terminator of The Terminator
41. Jane Craig of Broadcast News
42. "Dirty" Harry Callahan of Dirty Harry
43. Forrest Gump of Forrest Gump
44. Jules Winnfield of Pulp Fiction
45. Mary Poppins of Mary Poppins
46. John McClane of Die Hard
47. Mrs. Robinson of The Graduate
48. John "Bluto" Blutarsky of Animal House
49. Chance the Gardener of Being There
50. Blondie of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
51. Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare on Elm Street
52. Howard Beale of Network
53. Ninotchka of Ninotchka
54. Frank Booth of Blue Velvet
55. The Dude of The Big Lebowski
56. Alan Swann of My Favorite Year
57. Tom Powers of The Public Enemy
58. Phyliss Dietrichson of Double Indemnity
59. Lt. Kilgore of Apocalypse Now
60. George Bailey of It's a Wonderful Life
61. J.J. Hunsecker of Sweet Smell of Success
62. John Shaft of Shaft
63. Carrie White of Carrie
64. Rocky Balboa of Rocky
65. Edward Scissorhands of Edward Scissorhands
66. Navin Johnson of The Jerk
67. Inspector Clouseau of The Pink Panther
68. Alex DeLarge of A Clockwork Orange
69. Terry Malloy of On the Waterfront
70. Judy Benjamin of Private Benjamin
71. Rev. Harry Powell of The Night of the Hunter
72. Lloyd Dobler of Say Anything
73. Norma Rae of Norma Rae
74. Tony Montana of Scarface
75. Dr. Strangelove of Dr. Strangelove
76. Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever
77. Annie Wilkes of Misery
78. "Mad" Max Rockatansky of Mad Max
79. Hans Beckert of M
80. Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon
81. Aurora Greenway of Terms of Endearment
82. Jack Torrance of The Shining
83. William Cutting of Gangs of New York
84. Darth Vader of Star Wars
85. Stanley Kowalski of A Streetcar Named Desire
86. Melanie Daniels of The Birds
87. Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
88. Raymond Babbitt of Rain Man
89. Sandy Olsson of Grease
90. John Malkovich of Being John Malkovich
91. Mrs. Iselin of The Manchurian Candidate
92. Dil of The Crying Game
93. Harry Lime of The Third Man
94. Rose Sayer of The African Queen
95. Oda Mae Brown of Ghost
96. Tommy DeVito of GoodFellas
97. Ace Ventura of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
98. Antoine Doinel of The 400 Blows
99. Kevin McCallister of Home Alone
100. Roger "Verbal" Kint of The Usual Suspects

Vito Carleone - General Information

2007-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

Full Name: Vito Carleone
Character: Movie Character, Novel Character
Movie: The Godfather
Novel: The Godfather
Aliases: The Godfather, The Don

Birth: 7 December 1892
Death: 28 July 1955 (age 64)

Family: Corleone Family
Spouse(s): Carmella Corleone
Children: Sonny Corleone, Fredo Corleone, Michael Corleone, Connie Corleone, Tom Hagen (adopted)

Charlie Chaplin - Take part in the competition !

2007-10-18T17:31:00.000-07:00

All you need is a hat a cane and a moustache…

From Lucille Ball to Brigitte Bardot…from Billy West to Robert Downey Jr and France’s Gad Elmaleh… children who love his films or his walk: people have often dressed up as The Little Tramp.

To mark the new design of our website and the 30th anniversary of Chaplin’s death, we thought it could be fun to launch a competition for the best picture of someone dressed as Chaplin. We don’t mean professional look-alikes, but you, your children, your grandmother!

Almost 90 years ago, Mary Thurman (actress) had the chance to wear the real costume of The Little Tramp…

Subscribe or if you’ve already signed up, login, it entitles you to upload your images and/or to vote since users of the site are the only judges of the competition

Competition deadline: December 25th 2007

You should go to : www.charliechaplin.com for the competition

Charlie Chaplin - Filmography

2007-10-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

1. A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)
.... An old steward
2. A King in New York (1957)
.... King Shahdov
3. Limelight (1952)
.... Calvero
4. Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
.... Henri Verdoux
5. The Great Dictator (1940)
.... Adenoid Hynkel (Dictator of Tomania)/A Jewish Barber
6. Modern Times (1936) (as Charlie Chaplin)
.... A factory worker
7. City Lights (1931) (as Charlie Chaplin) .... A Tramp
8. The Circus (1928) (as Charlie Chaplin) .... A Tramp
9. Camille (1926/II) .... Mike
10. The Gold Rush (1925) .... The Lone Prospector
11. A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) (uncredited) .... Porter
12. The Pilgrim (1923) .... The Pilgrim
13. Pay Day (1922/I) .... Laborer
14. Nice and Friendly (1922) .... Tramp
15. The Idle Class (1921) .... Tramp and Husband
16. The Nut (1921) (uncredited) .... Chaplin impersonator
17. The Kid (1921) .... Tramp
18. A Day's Pleasure (1919) .... Father
19. Sunnyside (1919) .... Farm handyman
20. The Professor (1919) .... Professor Bosco
21. Shoulder Arms (1918) .... Recruit
22. The Bond (1918) .... Charlie
23. Triple Trouble (1918) .... The Janitor
24. A Dog's Life (1918) .... Tramp
25. The Adventurer (1917/I) .... The Convict
26. The Immigrant (1917) .... Immigrant
27. The Cure (1917) .... The Inebriate
28. Easy Street (1917) .... The Derelict
29. The Rink (1916) .... A Waiter. Posing as Sir Cecil Seltzer
30. Behind the Screen (1916) .... David (Goliath's assistant)
31. The Pawnshop (1916) .... Pawnshop assistant
32. The Count (1916) .... Tailor's apprentice
33. One A.M. (1916) .... Drunk
34. The Vagabond (1916) .... Street Musician
35. The Fireman (1916) .... Fireman
36. The Floorwalker (1916) .... Tramp
37. Burlesque on Carmen (1916) .... Darn Hosiery
38. Police (1916) .... Charlie, Convict 999
39. Burlesque on Carmen (1915) .... Darn Hosiery
40. A Night in the Show (1915) .... Mr. Pest and Mr. Rowdy
41. Shanghaied (1915) .... Tramp
42. The Bank (1915) .... Charlie, a Janitor
43. A Woman (1915) .... Gentleman/'Nora Nettlerash'
44. Work (1915) .... Izzy A. Wake's assistant
45. His Regeneration (1915) (uncredited) .... A customer
46. By the Sea (1915) .... Stroller
47. The Tramp (1915) .... Tramp
48. A Jitney Elopement (1915) .... Suitor, the Fake Count
49. In the Park (1915) .... Charlie
50. The Champion (1915) .... Challenger
51. A Night Out (1915/I) .... Reveller
52. His New Job (1915) .... Film Extra
53. His Prehistoric Past (1914) .... Weakchin
54. Getting Acquainted (1914) .... Mr. Sniffels
55. Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) .... Charlie, City Slicker
56. His Trysting Place (1914) .... Clarence, the Husband
57. His Musical Career (1914) .... Charlie, Piano Mover
58. Gentlemen of Nerve (1914) .... Mr. Wow-Woe, Track Fanatic
59. Dough and Dynamite (1914) .... Pierre, a Waiter
60. Those Love Pangs (1914) .... Masher
61. The New Janitor (1914) .... Janitor
62. The Rounders (1914) .... Reveller
63. His New Profession (1914) .... Charlie
64. The Masquerader (1914/I) .... Film Actor/Beautiful Stranger
65. Recreation (1914) .... Tramp
66. The Face on the Bar Room Floor (1914) .... Artist
67. The Property Man (1914) .... The Property Man
68. Laughing Gas (1914) .... Dentist's Assistant
69. Mabel's Married Life (1914) .... Mabel's Husband
70. Mabel's Busy Day (1914) .... Tipsy Nuisance
71. The Knockout (1914) .... Referee
72. Her Friend the Bandit (1914) .... Bandit
73. The Fatal Mallet (1914) .... Suitor
74. A Busy Day (1914) .... Wife
75. Caught in the Rain (1914) .... Tipsy Hotel Guest
76. Caught in a Cabaret (1914) .... Waiter
77. Twenty Minutes of Love (1914) .... Pickpocket
78. Mabel at the Wheel (1914) .... Villain
79. The Star Boarder (1914/II) .... The Star Boarder
80. Cruel, Cruel Love (1914) .... Lord Helpus/Mr. Dovey
81. His Favorite Pastime (1914) .... Drunken masher
82. Tango Tangles (1914) .... Tipsy Dancer
83. A Film Johnnie (1914) .... The Film Johnnie
84. Between Showers (1914) .... Masher
85. Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914) .... Tramp
86. Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) .... Tramp
87. Making a Living (1914) .... Swindler

Charlie Chaplin - General Information

2007-10-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Full Name: Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.
Birth: 16 April 1889 - Walworth, London, England
Death: 25 December 1977 (aged 88) - Vevey, Switzerland

Spouse(s): Mildred Harris (1918-20), Lita Grey (1924-28), Paulette Goddard(1936-42), Oona Chaplin (1943-77)

Yu Hao - General Information

2007-10-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

Yu Hao (fl. 970 AD) was an eminent Chinese architect during the Song Dynasty period (960-1279).

Yu Hao was given the title of Master-Carpenter (Du Liao Jiang), for his architectural skill. He wrote the Mu Jing (Timberwork Manual) when he was active sometime between 965 to 995, considered an important piece of classical Chinese architectural literature, and although it no longer survives, Shen Kuo quoted from it.[2] In 989, his design and architectural engineering work culminated in the construction of the Kai-Bao Pagoda, a wooden Chinese pagoda of medieval Kaifeng (the Northern Song's capital city). The pagoda was lost in a 1040 lightning conflagration, while the now famous Iron Pagoda of Kaifeng was rebuilt on the same spot in 1049, constructed out of brick and stone to resist arson and lightning fires.

Leonardo da Vinci - Quotes

2007-10-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

What does Leonardo say? Can we understand him?

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep”

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art”

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

Lost Break Wallpaper - Loveboys :)

2007-10-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

to Download wallpaper, please left click on the image and save as by right clicking the imag

I hope you will like it :)

Prison Break - Wallpapers Part 1

2007-10-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

to Download wallpapers, please left click on the image and save as by right clicking the image

Lost Wallpapers - Part 4

2007-10-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

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Lost Wallpapers - Part 3

2007-10-18T08:08:00.001-07:00

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Lost wallpaper - Sun

Lost wallpaper - Jin

Lost Wallpapers - Part 2

2007-10-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

to Download wallpapers, please left click on the image and save as by right clicking the image

Lost Wallpapers - Part 1

2007-10-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

to Download wallpapers, please left click on the image and save as by right clicking the image

Lost wallpaper- Jack and Kate

Lost Wallpapaer - Kate, Jack, Charlie

Lost Wallpapaer - Jack, Kate, John Locke

Jack (Lost) - General Information

2007-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Name: Jack
Full Name: Jack Shephard
Character: TV Series Character
TV Series: Lost
Former residence: Los Angeles, California, USA
Profession: Spinal Surgeon
Portrayed by: Matthew Fox

Dr. Jack Shephard is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost played by Matthew Fox. Jack is the de facto main character of the series.

Edgar Allan Poe - General Information

2007-10-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

Character: Poet, Author

Birth: January 19, 1809(1809-01-19) - Boston, Massachusetts U.S.
Death: October 07, 1849 (aged 40) - Baltimore, Maryland U.S.
Occupation: Poet, short story writer, editor, literary critic
Genres: Horror fiction, Crime fiction, Detective fiction
Literary movement: Romanticism, Dark romanticism
Spouse: Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe
Relations: David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe (birth parents), John Allan and Frances Allan (foster parents)
Influences: Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Ann Radcliffe, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Influenced: Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Clark Ashton Smith, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Lemony Snicket, Stefan Grabinski, Fernando Pessoa, Harlan Ellison, Edogawa Rampo, Ville Valo, Stephen King, Brenda Walker, Stephen Dedman, Antoni Lange

Harry Potter - General Information

2007-10-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

Character: Novel Character, Movie Charcter

Harry James Potter is a fictional character and the main protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of fantasy books. He is the title character of these seven books. According to Rowling, the character of Harry Potter came to her while waiting for a delayed train in 1990, and she made him an orphan after her mother died.

Frodo Baggins - General Information

2007-10-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Character: Novel Character, Movie Character
Name: Frodo Baggins
Other names: Frodo of the Nine Fingers - Maura Labingi Iorhael
Titles: Ring-bearer, Elf-friend
Race: Hobbit
Culture: Shire-hobbit, Baggins family
Date of birth: September 22, T.A. 2968
Date of departure to Aman: September 29, T.A. 3021
Date of death: Fourth Age
Books: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Silmarillion
Movies: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King

Jack Bauer - General Information

2007-10-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

Character: TV Series Character, TV Character
Date of birth: February 18, 1966

Jack Bauer is the protagonist of the American television series 24, in which he has trained and worked in various capacities as a government agent, including US Army Delta Force, LAPD SWAT, and finally the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) Los Angeles. He is a key member of the latter and has helped prevent major terrorist attacks on the United States throughout the series, saving both civilians and government leaders. On many occasions Jack has done so at great personal expense, as those he has thwarted have targeted him and his loved ones many times, especially in Season 1. Actor Kiefer Sutherland portrays Jack Bauer in the television show and video game, and in 2006 signed on for at least three further seasons.

John Locke (Lost) - General Information

2007-10-17T07:06:00.001-07:00

Character: TV Series Character
TV Series: Lost

Johnathan Locke, or John, but most often referred to by his surname, "Locke," is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost played by Terry O'Quinn, who has become a fan favorite. Although he typically has a calm demeanor on the island, his flashbacks portray him as angrier and more emotional. He is the antithesis to Jack Shephard and Ben Linus.

Leonardo da Vinci - General Information

2007-10-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

Character: Scientist, Mathematician, Engineer, Inventor, Anatomist, Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Musician and Writer

Name: Leonardo da Vinci
Birth Name: Leonardo di Ser Piero
Full Name: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Birth: April 15, 1452(1452-04-15) - Vinci, Florence, in present-day Italy
Death: May 2, 1519 (aged 67) - Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, in present-day France
Nationality: Italian

Napoleon Bonaparte - General Information

2007-10-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Character: The ruler of France as First Consul (Premier Consul) of the French Republic,
Emperor of the French (Empereur des Français),
King of Italy,
Mediator of the Swiss Confederation,
Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Emperor of Christendom.

Full Name: Napoléon Bonaparte
Birth: 15 August 1769(1769-08-15) - Ajaccio, Corsica
Death: 5 May 1821 (aged 51) - Saint Helena Flag of the United Kingdom
Father: Carlo Buonaparte
Mother: Letizia Ramolino

Joan of Arc - General Information

2007-10-17T06:17:00.001-07:00

Character: National Heroine (of France)
Full Name: Jeanne d'Arc
Birth: 1412
Death: May 30, 1431

Joan of Arc, or Jeanne d'Arc in French, (c. 1412 – May 30, 1431) was a 15th century national heroine of France. She was tried and executed for heresy when she was only 19 years old. The judgment was broken by the Pope and she was declared innocent and a martyr 24 years later. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized as a saint in 1920.

Joan asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

The renewed French confidence outlasted her own brief career. She refused to leave the field when she was wounded during an attempt to recapture Paris that autumn. Hampered by court intrigues, she led only minor companies from then onward and fell prisoner at a skirmish near Compiègne the following spring. A politically motivated trial convicted her of heresy. The English regent John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford had her burnt at the stake in Rouen. She had been the heroine of her country at the age of 17 and died when only 19 years old. Some 24 years later, Pope Callixtus III reopened the case, and a new finding overturned the original conviction. Her piety to the end impressed the retrial court. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on May 16, 1920.

She has remained an important figure in Western culture and many other nations. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who have created works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Schiller, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Twain, Shaw, Brecht, Anderson, Honegger, Cohen and Anouilh. Depictions of her continue in film, television, song, and even video games.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Diego Armando Maradonna - General Information

2007-10-17T06:00:00.001-07:00

Character: Football (Soccer) Player
Full name :Diego Armando Maradona
Date of birth : October 30, 1960 (1960-10-30)
Place of birth : Villa Fiorito, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Height : 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in)
Playing position : Supporting striker, Attacking Midfielder

Nikola Tesla - General Information

2007-10-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

Name: Nikola Tesla
Character: Scientist
Birth: 10 July 1856 - Smiljan, Gospić, Military Frontier, Austrian Empire, today Croatia
Death: 7 January 1943 (aged 86) - New York City, New York, U.S.

"Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way."
Nikola Tesla

Mickey Mouse

2007-10-17T05:20:00.000-07:00

Mickey Mouse is an Academy Award-winning comic animal cartoon character who has become an icon for The Walt Disney Company. Mickey Mouse was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and voiced by Walt Disney. The Walt Disney Company celebrates his birth as November 18, 1928 upon the release of Steamboat Willie. The anthropomorphic mouse has evolved from being simply a character in animated cartoons and comic strips to become one of the most recognizable symbols in the world.

Michael Scofield - General Information

2007-10-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

Michael Scofield is the fictional main protagonist in the American television series, Prison Break. He is portrayed by Wentworth Miller. The character first appeared in the series pilot as a man who stages a bank robbery in order to get sent into the prison where his older brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), is being held until his execution. The premise of Prison Break revolves around the two brothers and Michael's plan to help Lincoln escape his death sentence. As the principal character, Michael has been featured in every episode of the series. Although both Lincoln and Michael are the protagonists of the series, Michael has been featured more extensively than Lincoln, especially in the first season and the third so far.

Various flashbacks from subsequent episodes provide further insight into the relationship between Michael and his brother, and the reasons behind Michael's determination in helping Lincoln to escape his death sentence. In the episode flashbacks, the younger Michael is played by Dylan Minette.

Michael Scofield - General Information

2007-10-17T04:59:00.000-07:00

Character: TV Series Character

TV Series: Prison Break
Portrayed by: Wentworth Miller
Name: Michael
Surname : His mother's surname: "Scofield"
Birth: 8 September 1978 - Toledo / Ohio / ABD
Brother: Lincoln Burrows
Nephew: LJ Burrows
Father: Aldo Burrows
Mother: Christina Rose Scofield