1.
12 Years a Slave (film)
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Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northups memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account, other characters in the film were also real people, including Edwin and Mary Epps, and Patsey. The film was directed by Steve McQueen, the screenplay was written by John Ridley. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyongo, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, and Alfre Woodard are all featured in supporting roles. Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13,2012, the locations used were four historic antebellum plantations, Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the plantation where Northup was held. 12 Years a Slave received widespread acclaim, and was named the best film of 2013 by several media outlets. It proved to be a box office success, earning over $187 million on a budget of $22 million. The film won three Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Nyongo, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ridley, the Best Picture win made McQueen the first black producer ever to have received the award and the first black director to have directed a Best Picture winner. The film was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognized it with the Best Film and the Best Actor award for Ejiofor. In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free African-American man working as a violinist, living with his wife, two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D. C. However, once they arrive, the duo drug Northup and conspire to deliver him to a slave pen run by a man named Burch, Northup is later shipped to New Orleans along with others who have been detained against their will. A slave trader named Freeman gives Northup the identity of Platt, a slave from Georgia. Due to tension between Northup and another worker, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, at the plantation, Northup meets Patsey, a favored slave, whom Epps regularly rapes and abuses. Some time later, an outbreak of cotton worm befalls Eppss plantation, unable to work his fields, Epps leases his slaves to a neighboring plantation for the season. While there, Northup gains the favor of the owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at a neighbors wedding anniversary celebration. When Northup returns to Epps, he attempts to use the money to pay a white hand and former overseer, Armsby
2.
Steve McQueen (director)
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Steven Rodney Steve McQueen CBE is an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and video artist. McQueen is the first black filmmaker to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, McQueen is known for his collaborations with actor Michael Fassbender, who has starred in all three of McQueens feature films as of 2014. McQueens other feature films are Hunger, a drama about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, and Shame. For his artwork, McQueen has received the Turner Prize, the highest award given to a British visual artist, in 2006 he produced Queen and Country, which commemorates the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq by presenting their portraits as a sheet of stamps. For services to the arts, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011. In April 2014, TIME magazine included McQueen in its annual TIME100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World, in October 2016, McQueen was granted BFIs highest honour, the BFI Fellowship. McQueen was born in London and is of Grenadian and Trinidadian descent and he grew up in Hanwell, West London and went to Drayton Manor High School. Later, the new head of the school would admit that there had been institutional racism at the time. McQueen added that he was dyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch due to a lazy eye and he was a keen football player, turning out for the St. Georges Colts football team. He left Goldsmiths and studied briefly at New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts in the United States and he found the approach there too stifling and insufficiently experimental, complaining that they wouldnt let you throw the camera up in the air. His artistic influences include Andy Warhol, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Vigo, Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Bear was McQueens first major film, presented at the Royal College of Art in London. Although not a political piece, for many it raised questions about race, sexual attraction to men. It shows a wrestling match between two men who alternate ambiguous relations and gestures of aggression and erotic attraction, the films protagonists, one of them McQueen, are both black, but issues of race, he has said, do not take priority in his work. Like all McQueens early films, Bear is black-and-white, and was shot on 16-millimetre film, five Easy Pieces is a short film by McQueen. It follows a woman across a tight-rope, McQueen has stated that he finds a walker to be the perfect image of a combination of vulnerability. Just Above My Head is a film which shares close ties with McQueens preceding film with the key theme of walking. As stated by David Frankel, the fragility and persistence is seemingly meant as a metaphor for black life in England as elsewhere. Media Art noted that his use of black and white emulates 1920s film style without a historicizing strategy or to reinterpret the origins of moving images, the film was exhibited on loop in the Museum of Modern Arts Contemporary Galleries, 1980-Now from 17 November 2011 to 17 February 2014
3.
Breaking Bad
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Breaking Bad is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. The show originally aired on the AMC network for five seasons, from January 20,2008 and it tells the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. The title is from a Southern colloquialism meaning to raise hell, Breaking Bad is set and was filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walters family consists of his wife Skyler and children, Walter, Jr. the show also features Skylers sister Marie Schrader, and her husband Hank, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Walter hires lawyer Saul Goodman, who connects him with private investigator and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut and in turn Mikes employer, the final season introduces the characters Todd Alquist and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time, by the time the series finale aired, the series was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. In 2013, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed show of all time, Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan, who spent several years writing the Fox series The X-Files. Gilligan wanted to create a series in which the protagonist became the antagonist, Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or even decades, he said. When I realized this, the next step was to think. He added that his goal with Walter White was to him from Mr. Chips into Scarface. The show title is based on a Southern colloquialism meaning, among other things, raising hell, according to Time entertainment editor Lily Rothman, the term has a broader meaning and is an old phrase which connotes more violence than raising hell does. As the series progressed, Gilligan and the staff of Breaking Bad made Walter increasingly unsympathetic. Gilligan said during the run of the series, Hes going from being a protagonist to an antagonist and we want to make people question who theyre pulling for, and why. Cranston said by the season, I think Walts figured out its better to be a pursuer than the pursued. Hes well on his way to badass, while still pitching the show to studios, Gilligan was initially discouraged when he learned of the existing series Weeds and its similarities to the premise of Breaking Bad. While his producers convinced him that the show was different enough to still be successful, the network ordered nine episodes for the first season, but the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike limited the production to seven episodes. Once Gilligan recognized that this would mean wed always have to be avoiding the Sandia Mountains in shots directed toward the east and it was shot primarily on 35 mm film, with digital cameras employed as needed for additional angles, point of view shots and time-lapse photography. Breaking Bad reportedly cost $3 million per episode to produce, higher than the average cost for a cable program
4.
Orange Is the New Black
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Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama web television series. Orange Is the New Black is streamed on Netflix, and premiered on July 11,2013, in February 2016, the series was renewed for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season. The fifth season will be released on June 9,2017, Orange Is the New Black has become Netflixs most-watched original series. It has received acclaim and many accolades. A new Emmy rule in 2015 forced the series to change categories from comedy to drama, for its second season, the series received four Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, and Uzo Aduba won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Orange Is the New Black is the first series to score Emmy nominations in both comedy and drama categories, Piper had been convicted of transporting a suitcase full of drug money for her girlfriend Alex Vause, an international drug smuggler. The offense had occurred 10 years prior to the start of the series and in that time Piper had moved on to a quiet and her sudden and unexpected indictment severely disrupts her relationships with her fiancé, family and friends. In prison, Piper is reunited with Alex and they re-examine their relationship, simultaneously, Piper must learn how to survive in prison, and how to overcome its numerous, inherent struggles. Episodes often feature flashbacks of significant events from various inmates and prison guards pasts and these flashbacks typically explain how the inmate came to be in prison, or otherwise further develop the characters backstory. Show creator Jenji Kohan read Piper Kermans memoir after a friend sent it to her and this appealed to Kerman as it let her know that she was a fan and she signed off on the adaptation. Kohan would later go on to describe the character, Piper Chapman as a trojan horse for the series allowing it to focus on characters whose demographics would not normally be represented on TV. In July 2011, it was revealed that Netflix was in negotiations with Lionsgate for a 13-episode TV adaptation of Kermans memoirs with Kohan as creator, in November 2011, negotiations were finalized and the series had been greenlit. Casting announcements began in August 2012 with Taylor Schilling, the first to be cast, in the role as Piper Chapman. Kohan instead gave her the role of Alex, around the same time Laverne Cox, a black transgender woman, was cast as Sophia Burset, a transgender character. The Advocate touted Orange Is the New Black as possibly the first women-in-prison narrative to cast a woman for this type of role. This American Life host Ira Glass was offered a role as a radio host. The role instead went to Robert Stanton, who plays the fictional host Maury Kind, the series is set in a fictional prison in Litchfield, New York, which is a real town in upstate New York, but it does not have a federal penitentiary. The series began filming in the old Rockland Childrens Psychiatric Center in Rockland County, New York, the title sequence features photos of real former female prisoners including Kerman herself
5.
The Century Plaza Hotel
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It was known as the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza from 2006 to 2016, when it closed for reconstruction. The Century Plaza Hotel opened on June 1,1966 in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles on the backlot of 20th Century Fox Studios. Fox still has its lot in the neighborhood, as well as its headquarters, the new owners conceived Century City as a city within a city with the arc-shaped, 19-story, 750-room Minoru Yamasaki-designed Century Plaza as the centerpiece of the new city. When the Century Plaza began operating in 1966, its doormen wore red Beefeater costumes, the hotel was managed by Western International Hotels, which later changed its name to Westin Hotels. In 1967,1,300 club-swinging police clashed with about 10,000 Vietnam War demonstrators as President Johnson spoke at a Democratic fundraiser at the hotel. On August 13,1969, President Richard Nixon hosted a state dinner in the Los Angeles Ballroom to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing astronauts. In 1984, the added a 322-room tower on the south portion of the property. The Tower at Century Plaza was marketed as a wing of the hotel. Ronald Reagan by arrangement signed in as the first guest of the just completed Tower, while then Century Plaza Vice-President, in 1999 the hotel rededicated its penthouse suite, the entire 32nd floor the Ronald Reagan Suite, attendees including Nancy Reagan. While Reagan was in office, he stayed in the Tower so frequently the media dubbed it his Western White House. President Reagan had recently celebrated his re-election to a term as President on the stage of the Los Angeles Ballroom in the original Century Plaza Hotel on November 6,1984. In 2000, soon after Westin was acquired by Starwood, the Tower was converted into a hotel under a more luxurious Starwood brand. That hotel was sold by the owners of the Century Plaza in 2005 to developers who closed it for conversion to residential use. With its 1980s ceilings too low to meet modern demands, the relatively new building was razed to make way for The Century. In 2006, after being managed for its entire forty-year history by Westin Hotels, however, the sign above the main entrance reading The Century Plaza was left unchanged. Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. bought the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in 2005 for $293 million and then spent $22 million upgrading the guest rooms, on June 1,2008, Sunstone sold the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza to Next Century Associates for $366.5 million. The sale price of $505,000 per room was one of the highest-paid for a hotel in California, on December 18,2008, the new owners announced plans to demolish the hotel and build a pair of fifty-story towers in its place. On April 28,2009, The Century Plaza Hotel was added to The National Trust for Historic Preservations list of the 11 most endangered places in America
6.
Century City, Los Angeles
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Century City is a 176-acre neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles Westside. Outside of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of the areas most prominent employment centers. The district was developed on the backlot of film studio 20th Century Fox. There are two schools, but no public schools in the neighborhood. Important to the economy are the Westfield Century City shopping center, business towers, the land of Century City belonged to cowboy actor Tom Mix, who used it as a ranch. It later became a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest. The following year, in 1957, they commissioned a development from Welton Becket Associates. Of America, also known as Alcoa, for US$300 million, herrscher had encouraged his uncle-in-law to borrow money instead, but once Skouras refused, he was out of the picture. The new owners conceived Century City as a city within a city, in 1963, the first building, Gateway West Building, was completed. The next year, in 1964, Minoru Yamasaki designed the Century Plaza Hotel, five years later, in 1969, architects Anthony J. Lumsden and César Pelli designed the Century City Medical Plaza. Century Citys plaza as it appeared in the early 1970s can be viewed in several scenes of still another Fox film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. The 2000 U. S. census counted 5,513 residents in the 0. 70-square-mile Century City neighborhood—or 7,869 people per square mile, the Southern California Association of Governments estimates that the daytime population amounts to 48,343 on a working day. In 2008, the city estimated that the resident population had increased to 5,934, in 2008, the median age for residents was 46, older than average for the city and the county. The percentage of residents aged 65 and older was the highest for any neighborhood in Los Angeles County, the percentages of widowed men and women and of divorced men were among the countys highest. Military veterans accounted for 11. 9% of the population, a rate for the city. The neighborhood was considered not especially diverse ethnically, with a percentage of white residents. The breakdown was whites,82. 5%, Asians,8. 6%, Latinos,4. 4%, blacks,1. 4%, and others,3, 0%. Iran and Canada were the most common places of birth for the 25. 5% of the residents who were born abroad—a low percentage, the median yearly income in 2014 was $95,135, a high figure for Los Angeles
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