1.
Robert Rodriguez
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Robert Anthony Rodriguez is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in Mexico and his home state, Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2 million against a budget of $7,000. The film spawned two sequels known collectively as the Mexico Trilogy, Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico and he directed From Dusk till Dawn in 1996 and developed its television adaptation series. Rodriguez co-directed the 2005 neo-noir crime thriller anthology Sin City and the 2014 sequel, Sin City, Rodriguez also directed the Spy Kids films, The Faculty, as well as The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, Planet Terror, and Machete. He is a friend and frequent collaborator of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who founded the production company A Band Apart, in December 2013, Rodriguez launched his own cable television channel, El Rey. Rodríguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Mexican-American parents Rebecca, a nurse, and Cecilio G. Rodríguez and he began his interest in film at age eleven, when his father bought one of the first VCRs, which came with a camera. While attending St. Anthony High School Seminary in San Antonio, in high school, he met Carlos Gallardo, they both shot films on video throughout high school and college. Rodriguez went to the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, not having grades high enough to be accepted into the schools film program, he created a daily comic strip entitled Los Hooligans. Many of the characters were based on his siblings – in particular, one of his sisters, the comic ran for three years in the student newspaper The Daily Texan, while Rodríguez continued to make short films. Rodríguez shot action and horror films on video and edited on two VCRs. In late 1990, his entry in a film contest earned him a spot in the universitys film program. There he made the award-winning 16 mm short Bedhead, the film chronicles the amusing misadventures of a young girl whose older brother sports an incredibly tangled mess of hair which she detests. Even at this stage, Rodríguezs trademark style began to emerge, quick cuts, intense zooms. Bedhead was recognized for excellence in the Black Maria Film Festival and it was selected by Film/Video Curator Sally Berger, for the Black Maria 20th-anniversary retrospective at MoMA in 2006. The short film Bedhead attracted enough attention to him to seriously attempt a career as a filmmaker. Rodriquez won the Audience Award for this film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993 and its promotion still advertised it as the movie made for $7,000. Rodríguez described his experiences making the film in his book Rebel Without a Crew, Desperado, was a sequel to El Mariachi that starred Antonio Banderas and introduced Salma Hayek to American audiences. Rodriguez has also worked with Kevin Williamson, on the horror film The Faculty, in 2001, Rodríguez enjoyed his first Hollywood hit with Spy Kids, which went on to become a movie franchise
2.
Quentin Tarantino
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Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American director, writer, and actor. His career began in the late 1980s, when he wrote and directed My Best Friends Birthday and its popularity was boosted by his second film, Pulp Fiction, a black comedy crime film that was a major success both among critics and audiences. Judged the greatest film from 1983–2008 by Entertainment Weekly, many critics, for his next effort, Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with Jackie Brown, an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch. Tarantino directed Death Proof as part of a feature with friend Robert Rodriguez. His long-postponed Inglourious Basterds, which tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germanys political leadership, was released in 2009 to positive reviews, after that came 2012s critically acclaimed Django Unchained, a Western film set in the antebellum era of the Deep South. It became the film of his career so far, making over $425 million at the box office. Tarantinos films have garnered critical and commercial success. He has received industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and the Palme dOr, and has been nominated for an Emmy and a Grammy. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time in 2005, Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him the single most influential director of his generation. In December 2015, Tarantino received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry, Tarantino was born on March 27,1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie McHugh and Tony Tarantino. His father is of Italian descent, and his mother has English and Irish ancestry, Quentin was named after Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds character in the CBS series Gunsmoke. Quentins mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles and she married him soon after, to gain independence from her parents, but the marriage did not last. Connie Tarantino left Los Angeles, and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived, in 1966, Tarantinos mother, after finishing her nursing studies, moved back to Los Angeles with her then three-year-old son. They lived in the South Bay, in the part of the city. Tarantinos mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after coming to Los Angeles, and the moved to Torrance. Zastoupil encouraged his love of movies, and accompanied him to film screenings. Tarantinos mother allowed him to see movies with adult content, such as Carnal Knowledge, after his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973, and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkins lymphoma, Tarantino was sent to live with his grandparents in Tennessee. He remained there for six months to a year, before returning to California
3.
Robert Kurtzman
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Robert Kurtzman is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and special make-up effects creator. Kurtzman began his career in 1984 when he moved from his hometown of Crestline, Ohio, to Hollywood, California, to pursue his interest in prosthetic makeup, in 1988, along with Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger, he formed K. N. B. EFX Group, a special effects studio which has gone on to work on over 400 film. K. N. B. has won awards, including an Emmy Award in 2001 for their work on the 2000 Sci Fi Channel miniseries Frank Herberts Dune. They were awarded an Academy Award in 2006 for achievement in makeup for The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch, after establishing himself in the special effects arena, Kurtzman turned to directing and producing. His first project was From Dusk till Dawn, for which he wrote the story, served as co-producer. The Demolitionist marked Kurtzman’s directorial debut and he went on to direct Wishmaster, in which he had an uncredited cameo as piano wire guy. Kurtzman and his wife, Anne, relocated their family to Crestline, Ohio, founded in 2003, Precinct 13 is described as a Film/Television and Radio Commercial/Visual Effects production facility. The Rage was their first in-house, fully financed, independent feature film, Kurtzman and P13 have, also, recently co-produced the supernatural film The Dead Matter, featuring Andrew Divoff, Tom Savini, and Jim ORear. Kurtzman directed also the action-thriller film Deadly Impact, which was written by Alexander Vesha, according to his IMDB listing, Kurtzman has been nominated for and received several awards, Catalonian International Film Festival -2002 Winner for Best Make-Up for Cabin Fever. Shared with Howard Berger and Gregory Nicotero, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films -1999 Saturn Award winner for Best Make-Up for Vampires. Shared with Howard Berger and Gregory Nicotero, Catalonian International Film Festival -1997 nominee for Best Film for Wishmaster. CableACE Awards -1995 nominee for Make-Up for State of Emergency, shared with Howard Berger, Gregory Nicotero, Ashlee Petersen, and Heidi Seeholzer. CableACE Awards -1994 nominee for Make-Up for Body Bags, shared with Rick Baker, Greg LaCava, Gregory Nicotero, and Howard Berger. N. B. N. B. N. B. Giggles - Special makeup effects supervisor Army of Darkness - Special makeup effects supervisor, EFX Group The Nutt House - Special makeup effects Jason Goes to Hell, The Final Friday - Effects supervisor, K. N. B. EFX Group, special effects artist, K. N. B. N. B. N. B. EFX Group Precinct 13 website Robert Kurtzman on MySpace Robert Kurtzman Interview at The Phantasm Archives
4.
George Clooney
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George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, filmmaker, and activist. He has received three Golden Globe Awards for his work as an actor and two Academy Awards, one for acting in Syriana and the other for co-producing Argo, in 1999, he took the lead role in Three Kings, a well-received war satire set during the Gulf War. In 2001, Clooneys fame widened with the release of his biggest commercial success, the heist comedy remake Oceans Eleven, in 2013, he received the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing the political thriller Argo. He is the person who has been nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories. In 2009, Clooney was included in Times annual Time 100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World and he is also noted for his political activism, and has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since January 31,2008. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother, Nina Bruce, was a beauty queen and city councilwoman and his father, Nick Clooney, is a former anchorman and game show host who hosted AMC for five years in the late 1990s. Clooney has Irish, German, and English ancestry and his maternal great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Sparrow, was the half-sister of Nancy Lincoln, mother of President Abraham Lincoln. Clooney has a sister named Adelia. His aunt was the cabaret singer and actress Rosemary Clooney. Through Rosemary, his cousins include actors Miguel Ferrer, Rafael Ferrer, and Gabriel Ferrer, Clooney was raised a strict Roman Catholic, but said in 2006 that he does not know if he believes in Heaven, or even God. He has said, Yes, we were Catholic, big time, whole family and he began his education at the Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. He attended St. Michaels School in Columbus, Ohio, then Western Row Elementary School in Mason, Ohio, from 1968 to 1974, and St. Susanna School in Mason, the Clooneys moved back to Kentucky when George was midway through the seventh grade. In middle school, Clooney developed Bells palsy, a condition that partially paralyzes the face, the malady went away within a year. In an interview with Larry King, he stated that yes and it takes about nine months to go away. It was the first year of school, which was a bad time for having half your face paralyzed. After his parents moved to Augusta, Kentucky, Clooney attended Augusta High School and he has stated that he earned all As and a B in school, and was an enthusiastic baseball and basketball player. He tried out to professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977
5.
Harvey Keitel
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Harvey Keitel is an American actor and producer. Along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn, he is the current co-president of the Actors Studio, Keitel was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland, respectively. His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his also worked as a hat maker. Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, with his sister, Renee and he attended Abraham Lincoln High School. At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, after his return to the United States, he was a court reporter for several years and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career. Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a role as J. R. in Scorseses first feature film. Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects, Keitel had the starring role in Scorseses Mean Streets, which also proved to be Robert De Niros breakthrough film. In 1978, Keitel starred in the directorial debuts of Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, cast as Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now, Keitel was involved with the first week of principal photography in the Philippines. Coppola was not happy with Keitels take on Willard, stating that the found it difficult to play him a passive onlooker. After viewing the first weeks footage, Coppola replaced Keitel with a casting session favorite, Keitel drifted into obscurity through most of the 1980s. He continued to do work on stage and screen, but usually in the stereotypical role of a thug. Keitel played Judas in Martin Scorseses controversial The Last Temptation of Christ and co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes, the following year, Keitel played another mobster in the Whoopi Goldberg-starring comedy Sister Act. Keitel starred in Quentin Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs in 1992, where his performance as Mr. White took his career to a different level, since then, Keitel has chosen his roles with care, seeking to change his image and show a broader acting range. One of those roles was the character in Bad Lieutenant, about a self-loathing. He co-starred in the movie The Piano in 1993, and played an efficient clean-up expert, Keitel starred as a police detective in Spike Lees Clockers. In 1999, Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack on the set of Stanley Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut, due to shooting conflicts, Keitel also re-teamed with Jane Campion for Holy Smoke. He also appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007, unlike many American male actors, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano
6.
Juliette Lewis
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Juliette L. Lewis is an American actress and singer. She gained fame for her role in Martin Scorseses 1991 remake of the thriller Cape Fear for which she was nominated for both an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. This followed with roles in Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Natural Born Killers, Strange Days, The Evening Star, Kalifornia, From Dusk till Dawn. Her work in television has resulted in two Emmy nominations, Lewis launched a career as a singer and musician, leading the American rock band, Juliette and the Licks, until 2009 when she launched a solo career. Lewis was born in Los Angeles, California, to Geoffrey Lewis, an actor, and his wife, Glenis Batley. She has eight siblings – brothers Lightfield, Peter, Miles, and Matthew, and sisters Brandy, Hannah, Dierdre Lewis, Lewis appeared in The Wonder Years as Waynes girlfriend in Episodes 24,34 and 36. She also played Audrey Griswold in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, over the next few years, she appeared in Woody Allens Husbands and Wives, Peter Medaks Romeo Is Bleeding, and opposite Brad Pitt in Kalifornia. In 1993, she acted alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp in the drama film Whats Eating Gilbert Grape and she played Mallory Knox in Oliver Stones Natural Born Killers. She played a singer in the film Strange Days, doing her own singing on covers of two songs written by PJ Harvey. She received an Emmy nomination for her performance in Hysterical Blindness in 2003 and she also appeared in the HIM music video for Buried Alive By Love in 2003. She appeared in the 2004 film Starsky & Hutch, playing the role of Kitty, Lewis appeared in Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto IV, providing the voice of Juliette, the host of fictional radio station Radio Broker. She appeared in a GAP commercial in which she was dancing with Daft Punk to the tune of the song Digital Love and she also appeared in the Jan Kounen film Renegade with Vincent Cassel. In 2012 she starred in the short-lived series The Firm, on NBC as Tammy and she reprised her role as Audrey Griswold in 2012 in a series of Old Navy holiday commercials featuring the Griswold family. In 2015, she had a role in the television series Wayward Pines. Lewis launched a career as a singer and musician, leading American rock band Juliette. Lewis features on the track Bad Brother by the band The Infidels, from The Crow, Salvation Soundtrack album, Lewis has also appeared on three tracks by Electronic Music group The Prodigys 2004 CD Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. In 2006, Blender magazine included her in their hottest women of rock music list, in 2009, Lewis performed at the Przystanek Woodstock in Poland. In 2010, she played at the Rock for People festival in the Czech Republic, in December 2010, Lewis hosted the game television show Never Mind the Buzzcocks and repeated in January 2012
7.
Cheech Marin
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He has also voiced characters in several Disney productions, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King, Its Tough to Be a Bug. Cars, Cars 2 and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, marins trademark is his characters strong Mexican accents. Marin was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Oscar Marin, a policeman in the LAPD, and his wife Elsa, Marin was born with a cleft lip, which was repaired. He speaks some Spanish and uses it in his movies, marins nickname Cheech is short for chicharron, a fried pork skin that is a popular snack and an ingredient in Mexican cuisine. Looks like a little chicharrón, you know, Marin graduated from Bishop Alemany High School, and then studied at San Fernando Valley State College, where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa. Marin auditioned to sing for Frank Zappa in 1967, but he moved to Vancouver, Marin met his future comedic partner, Tommy Chong, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As a part of the successful comedy duo Cheech & Chong, Marin participated in a number of comedy albums. Tommy Chong directed four of their films, while co-writing and starring in all seven with Marin, after Cheech & Chong disbanded in 1985, Marin starred in a number of films as a solo actor, most notably Born in East L. A. The Shrimp on the Barbie, Tin Cup, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico and he made a cameo appearance as a dockworker in Ghostbusters II. In recent years he has active in playing supporting roles in films. After appearing in a role in Judging Amy, playing an independently wealthy landscape designer, Marin starred in the CBS sitcom Rob. He provided his voice for several Disney animated films, most notably Tito the Chihuahua in Oliver & Company, Banzai the hyena in The Lion King and he reprised the Banzai role in the video game Kingdom Hearts II. In July 2007, the book Cheech the School Bus Driver was released, written by Marin, illustrated by Orlando L. Ramirez, in 2005, Marin lent his voice to the animated childrens series Dora the Explorer. He appeared in the episode A Crown for King Bobo, as the Puerto Rican folk hero Juan Bobo, in late 2006, Marin participated in Simon Cowells Celebrity Duets, having sung with Peter Frampton, Randy Travis, Clint Black, Aaron Neville, and Al Jarreau. He was the fourth to be eliminated, in that same year, he voiced as Gaspar Gomez in Scarface, The World Is Yours. Marin had a role in the hit television series Lost, playing David Reyes. He was a co-host for WWE Raw on March 1,2010 with his comedy partner Tommy Chong, Marin also sings on the hidden track Earache My Eye on Korns album Follow the Leader. In 2009, he appeared in the Hallmark Channel movie Expecting a Miracle, on March 18,2010, Marin beat journalist Anderson Cooper and actress Aisha Tyler on Celebrity Jeopardy. s Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational
8.
Fred Williamson
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Frederick Robert Williamson Sr. nicknamed The Hammer, is an American actor and former professional American football defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League during the 1960s. He has black belts in Kenpō, Shotokan karate and taekwondo, since 1997 Williamson has had a home in Palm Springs, California. After playing college football for Northwestern in the late 1950s, he was signed as a free agent by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Thus, The Hammer quickly stuck and became his nickname, Williamson played one year for the Steelers in the National Football League in 1960. Next, he moved to the new American Football League, Williamson played four seasons for the AFLs Oakland Raiders, making the AFL All-Star team in 1961,1962, and 1963. He also played three seasons for the AFLs Kansas City Chiefs, before Super Bowl I, Williamson gathered national headlines by boasting that he would knock the Green Bay Packers starting receivers, Carroll Dale and Boyd Dowler, out of the game. He stated Two hammers to Dowler, one to Dale should be enough and his prediction turned out to be an ironic one because they broke the hammer as Williamson himself was knocked out of the game in the fourth quarter on the way to a 35–10 defeat. Williamsons head met the knee of the Packers running back Donny Anderson, Williamson later suffered a broken arm from his own teammate when Chiefs linebacker Sherrill Headrick fell on him. Williamson finished his pro football career in 1967 with a history of many hard tackles, passes knocked away. Williamson returned his interceptions for 479 yards and two touchdowns, after signing with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League during the 1968 season, but not having played in a league game, Williamson retired. Williamson became a much in the mold of star running back Jim Brown. He acted alongside Brown in films such as 1974s Three the Hard Way, 1975s Take a Hard Ride, 1982s One Down, Two to Go, 1996s Original Gangstas and he also guest starred with Brown in various television roles. In October 1973, Williamson posed nude for Playgirl magazine, preempting Browns appearance in 1974, williamsons early television roles included a role in the 1969 Star Trek episode The Cloud Minders, in which he played Anka. He also played Diahann Carrolls love interest in the sitcom Julia, williamsons early film work included roles in M*A*S*H and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. In 1973 he played the role of an African-American mafioso in the film Black Caesar and its subsequent sequel and he also starred in the 1975 western film Boss Nigger, in which he played the title role. After this he appeared as an actor in films, most of which are considered to be of the blaxploitation genre. In 1974 he starred alongside Peter Boyle and Eli Wallach in the movie Crazy Joe, Williamson was used on a few pre-season broadcasts, but was quickly declared unsuitable by ABC. He was relieved of his duties at the beginning of the regular season and he was replaced by the fellow former player Alex Karras
9.
Tom Savini
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Thomas Vincent Tom Savini is an American actor, stuntman, director, and award-winning special make-up effects creator. He is known for his makeup and special effects work on films directed by George A. As an actor and stuntman, he has appeared in such as Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, From Dusk till Dawn, Planet Terror, Machete, Django Unchained. Savini was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is of Italian descent and he was raised Catholic and graduated from Central Catholic High School. As a boy, his inspiration was actor Lon Chaney, Sr. and Savini attributes his earliest desires to create makeup effects to Chaney and the film Man of a Thousand Faces. Experimenting with whatever medium he could find, the young Savini practiced creating makeup effects on himself and he also discovered another passion, acting. Combining his makeup applications and homemade costumes, he especially enjoyed scaring his friends, Savini attended Point Park University for three years, before enlisiting in the United States Army. After his tour in Vietnam, he attended Carnegie-Mellon University, as the first undergraduate to be awarded a fellowship in the acting and directing program. He appeared in productions throughout college and continued on stage long after his tour of duty in Vietnam. Savini served as a photographer during the Vietnam War. In a 2002 interview, he told the Pittsburgh Post When I was in Vietnam I was a combat photographer and my job was to shoot images of damage to machines and to people. Through my lens, I saw some hideous, to cope with it, I guess I tried to think of it as special effects. Now, as an artist, I just think of creating the effect within the limitations we have to deal with and he continued to practice with makeup in Vietnam, often frightening indigenous peasants by appearing to suddenly transform into a monster. Using the lens of his camera, Savini separated himself from the real life horrors of war, however, Savini said his wartime experiences influenced his eventual style of gory effects, I hated that when I watched a war movie and someone dies. Some people die with one eye open and one eye half-closed, I incorporated the feeling of the stuff I saw in Vietnam into my work. In 1970, while on duty, a flare was triggered in the jungle area Savini was watching. Against military protocol, Savini fired into the bush without informing his superiors, other soldiers likewise began firing until a duck wandered from the bush completely unharmed. Due to his failure to follow orders, Savini was taken off duty from his bunker on the following evening
10.
Salma Hayek
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Salma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault, known professionally as Salma Hayek, is a Mexican-American film actress, producer, and former model. She began her career in Mexico starring in the telenovela Teresa, in 1991 Hayek moved to Hollywood and came to prominence with roles in movies such as Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Dogma, and Wild Wild West. This movie received widespread attention and was a critical and commercial success and she also guest-starred on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock from 2009 to 2013. Hayeks recent films include Grown Ups, Puss in Boots, Grown Ups 2, Hayek was born Salma Hayek Jiménez in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her younger brother, Sami, is a furniture designer and her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is an oil executive and owner of an industrial-equipment firm. Her father is a Mexican of Lebanese descent, with his family being from the city Baabdat, Lebanon and her mother is a Mexican mestiza of Amerindian and Spaniard descent, with her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents being from Spain. Raised in a wealthy, devout Roman Catholic family, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, USA, in school, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. She attended university in Mexico City, where she studied International Relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana, at the age of 23, Hayek landed the title role in Teresa, a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. In 1994, Hayek starred in the film El Callejón de los Milagros, for her performance, Hayek was nominated for an Ariel Award. Hayek moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991 to study acting under Stella Adler and she had limited fluency in English, and dyslexia. Robert Rodriguez, and his producer and then-wife, Elizabeth Avellan and she followed her role in Desperado with a brief role as a vampire queen in From Dusk till Dawn, in which she performed a table-top snake dance. Hayek had a role opposite Matthew Perry in the 1997 romantic comedy Fools Rush In. In 1999 she co-starred in Will Smiths big-budget Wild Wild West, in 2000 Hayek had an uncredited acting part opposite Benicio del Toro in Traffic. In 2003, she reprised her role from Desperado by appearing in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, around 2000, Hayek founded film production company Ventanarosa, through which she produces film and television projects. Her first feature as a producer was 1999s El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba, Frida, co-produced by Hayek, was released in 2002. She earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance, in the Time of the Butterflies is a 2001 feature film based on the Julia Álvarez book of the same name, covering the lives of the Mirabal sisters. In the movie, Salma Hayek plays one of the sisters, Minerva, in December 2005, she directed a music video for Prince, titled Te Amo Corazon that featured Mía Maestro
11.
A Band Apart
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A Band Apart Films was a production company created by Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender, which was active from 1991 to 2006. Its name is a play on the French New Wave classic, Bande à part by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, thanks in part to the popularity of Quentin Tarantinos and Robert Rodriguezs films, the company quickly gained cult-like status within Hollywood. Tarantino formed A Band Apart in 1991, naming it after his favorite Godard film, the companys logo was a stylized image of the robbers from Reservoir Dogs, Tarantinos debut film. Subsequently, several entities within the company were named after the films characters. Mr. Pink LLC was for music video production budgets, the company catapulted to fame with the 1994 release of Tarantinos Pulp Fiction, which was considered by some critics to be the most influential American film of the decade. In the summer of 1995, the added a division for commercial and music video production. A Band Apart closed in June 2006, feature film work now goes through owner Lawrence Benders other production company, Lawrence Bender Productions. Some A Band Apart members have found new roots at Holmes Defender of the Faith, while the company is listed as studio for the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds and credited in the 2007 Grindhouse movies, it is unclear whether the company was reformed for the films
12.
Troublemaker Studios
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Troublemaker Studios is a film production company founded and owned by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and producer Elizabeth Avellan. The company is based in Austin, Texas and is located at the site of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. It also shares space with Austin Studios, which is managed by the Austin Film Society, and houses offices, sound stages. The companys visual effects division, Troublemaker Digital, is located at the site. A second facility, Troublemaker Sound, is located in the country outside Austin. It provides post-production sound and editing facilities, including a mixing and dubbing sound stage powered by a large Pro Tools installation, Rodriguez chose the name so fans of the strip would recognize it when they saw his films. The company was reincorporated as Troublemaker Studios in 2000, aaron Kaufman and Iliana Nikolic are his partners in the venture. In 2012, a division, Quick Draw Animation, was launched. Both companies are based at Troublemaker Studios and its name is an homage to the low-budget production company American International Pictures
13.
Miramax
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Miramax is an American entertainment company known for producing and distributing films and television shows. It is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, shortly thereafter, Pulp Fiction was released. Miramax was sold by Disney to Filmyard Holdings, a joint venture of Colony Capital, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, in 2016, ownership was transferred to beIN Media Group. The company was founded by the brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein in Buffalo, New York in 1979 and it was created to distribute independent films deemed commercially unfeasible by the major studios. The Weinsteins worked with Lewis to distill the two films into one film for the US marketplace, the resulting film The Secret Policemans Other Ball was a successful release for Miramax in the summer of 1982. This release presaged a modus operandi that the company would later in the 1980s of acquiring films from international filmmakers. Among the companys other breakthrough films as distributors in the late 1980s and early 1990s were Scandal, Sex, Lies, the Crying Game, Pulp Fiction and Clerks. The company also made such as Flirting with Disaster, Heavenly Creatures. Miramax acquired and/or produced many films that did extraordinarily well financially. The company became one of the leaders of the independent film boom of the 1990s, Miramax produced or distributed seven films with box office grosses totaling more than $100 million, its most successful title, Chicago, earned more than $300 million worldwide. The company was also successful in securing Academy Award nominations for its releases. In 1992, Miramax began a deal with Paramount Pictures for VHS, Paramount would also distribute theatrically certain releases that might have commercial appeal. On June 30,1993, Miramax was purchased for $60 million by The Walt Disney Company, Harvey and Bob Weinstein continued to operate Miramax until they left the company on September 30,2005. During their tenure, the Weinstein brothers ran Miramax independently of other Disney subsidiaries, Disney, however, had the final say on what Miramax could release. Disneys Buena Vista Home Entertainment division released Miramax output, Miramax operated, until September 30,2005, the label Dimension Films, specializing in genre films and created the Scream and Scary Movie film franchises. The primary source of dispute was over distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore, Disneys film studio consortium, Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group assumed control of Miramax, which was projected to have a smaller annual production budget. The Weinsteins started a new production company called The Weinstein Company. The Miramax name remained with the studio owned by Disney
14.
Black comedy
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Black comedy or dark comedy is a comic style that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humor with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes, Black comedy corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor. The term black humor was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Bretons preference was to some of Swifts writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism. Scholars have associated black humor with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes, Breton coined the term for his book Anthology of Black Humor, in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor, and included excerpts from 45 other writers. This victims suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as found in the social commentary. Black humor is also related to that of the grotesque genre. Breton identified Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor, particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants, A Modest Proposal, A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, the terms black comedy or dark comedy have been later derived as alternatives to Bretons term. Bruce Jay Friedman, in his anthology entitled Black Humor, imported the concept of comedy to the United States. He labeled many different authors and works with the idea, arguing that they shared the literary genre. The Friedman label came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, early American writers who employed black humor were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov. In 1965 a mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, was released and this was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the conception of black humor as a literary genre, the publication also sparked nationwide interest in black humor. Among the writers labeled as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Warren Zevon, John Barth, Joseph Heller, popular themes of the genre include violence, discrimination, disease, sexuality, religion and barbarism. Comedians, like Lenny Bruce, that since the late 1950s have been labeled for using sick comedy by mainstream journalists, have also labeled with black comedy. By contrast, blue comedy focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, in obscene humor, much of the humorous element comes from shock and revulsion, while black comedy might include an element of irony, or even fatalism. For example, the black comedy self-mutilation appears in the English novel Tristram Shandy. Tristram, five years old at the time, starts to urinate out of a window for lack of a chamber pot. The sash falls and circumcises him, his family reacts with both chaotic action and philosophic digression, cringe comedy Comedy horror Macabre Off-color humor
15.
Action film
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Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist or protagonists end up in a series of challenges that typically include violence, extended fighting, physical feats, and frantic chases. Advancements in CGI have made it cheaper and easier to create action sequences, while action has long been a recurring component in films, the action film genre began to develop in the 1970s along with the increase of stunts and special effects. The genre is associated with the thriller and adventure film genres. Some historians consider The Great Train Robbery to be the first action film, during the 1920s and 1930s, action-based films were often swashbuckling adventure films in which actors, such as Douglas Fairbanks, wielded swords in period pieces or Westerns. The 1940s and 1950s saw action in a new form through war, the film, along with a war-adventure called The Guns of Navarone, inspired producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to invest in their own spy-adventure, based on the novels of Ian Fleming. The long-running success of the James Bond films or series introduced a staple of the action film. Such larger-than-life characters were a veritable “one-man army”, able to dispatch villainous masterminds after cutting through their disposable henchmen in increasingly creative ways, such heroes are ready with one-liners, puns, and dry quips. The Bond films also used fast cutting, car chases, fist fights, a variety of weapons and gadgets, Dirty Harry essentially lifted its star, Clint Eastwood, out of his cowboy typecasting, and framed him as the archetypal hero of the urban action film. In many countries, restrictions on language, adult content, and violence had loosened up, in the 1970s, martial-arts films from Hong Kong became popular with Western audiences and inspired big budget films such as Bruce Lees Enter the Dragon. Chuck Norris blended martial arts with cops and robbers in films such as Good Guys Wear Black, from Japan, Sonny Chiba starred in his first martial arts movie in 1973 called the Karate Kiba. His breakthrough international hit was The Street Fighter series, which established him as the reigning Japanese martial arts actor in international cinema and he also played the role of Mas Oyama in Champion of Death, Karate Bearfighter, and Karate for Life. Chibas action films were not only bounded by martial arts, but also action thriller, jidaigeki, in the 1980s Hollywood produced many big budget action blockbusters with actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lorenzo Lamas, Michael Dudikoff, Charles Bronson and Bruce Willis. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas paid their homage to the Bond-inspired style with Raiders of the Lost Ark, in 1982, veteran actor Nick Nolte and rising comedian Eddie Murphy broke box office records with the action-comedy 48 Hrs. credited as the first buddy-cop movie. That same year, Sylvester Stallone starred in First Blood, the first installment in the Rambo film series made the character John Rambo a pop culture icon. 1984 saw the beginning of the Terminator starring Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger and this story provides one of the grittiest roles for a woman in action and Hamilton was required to put in extensive effort to develop a strong physique. The 1988 film, Die Hard, was influential on the development of the action genre. In the film, Bruce Willis plays a New York police detective who becomes embroiled in a terrorist take-over of a Los Angeles office building high-rise. The film set a pattern for a host of imitators, like Under Siege and Sudden Death, by the end of the 1980s, the influence of the successful action film could be felt in almost every genre
16.
Horror film
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Horror film is a film genre that seeks to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on their fears. Inspired by literature from authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, the macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes. Horror may also overlap with the fantasy, supernatural fiction and thriller genres, Horror films often deal with viewers nightmares, fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Plots within the genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event. Another of his projects was 1898s La Caverne maudite. Japan made early forays into the genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei. The era featured a slew of literary adaptations, with the works of Poe and Dante, in 1908, Selig Polyscope Company produced Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 1910, Edison Studios produced the first filmed version of Frankenstein, the macabre nature of the source materials used made the films synonymous with the horror film genre. Before and during the Weimar Republic era, German Expressionist filmmakers would significantly influence later productions, the first vampire-themed movie, Nosferatu, was made during this period, though it was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula. Other European countries also, contributed to the genre during this period, though the word horror to describe the film genre would not be used until the 1930s, earlier American productions often relied on horror themes. Some notable examples include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, The Cat and the Canary, The Unknown, and The Man Who Laughs. Many of these films were considered dark melodramas because of their stock characters and emotion-heavy plots that focused on romance, violence, suspense. The trend of inserting an element of macabre into American pre-horror melodramas continued into the 1920s, directors known for relying on macabre in their films during the 1920s were Maurice Tourneur, Rex Ingram, and Tod Browning. Ingrams The Magician contains one of the first examples of a mad doctor and is said to have had a influence on James Whales version of Frankenstein. The Unholy Three is an example of Brownings use of macabre and unique style of morbidity, he remade the film in 1930 as a talkie, during the early period of talking pictures, Universal Pictures began a successful Gothic horror film series. Tod Brownings Dracula was quickly followed by James Whales Frankenstein and The Old Dark House, some of these films blended science fiction with Gothic horror, such as Whales The Invisible Man and featured a mad scientist, mirroring earlier German films. Frankenstein was the first in a series of remakes which lasted for years, the Mummy introduced Egyptology as a theme, Make-up artist Jack Pierce was responsible for the iconic image of the monster, and others in the series. Universals horror cycle continued into the 1940s with B-movies including The Wolf Man, the once controversial Freaks, based on the short story Spurs, was made by MGM, though the studio disowned the completed film, and it remained banned, in the UK, for thirty years
17.
Cult film
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A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase, a subculture that engage in repeated viewings, quoting dialogue. Inclusive definitions allow for major productions, especially box office bombs, while exclusive definitions focus more on obscure. The difficulty in defining the term and subjectivity of what qualifies as a cult film mirror classificatory disputes about art, Cult films trace their origin back to controversial and suppressed films kept alive by dedicated fans. In some cases, reclaimed or rediscovered films have acquired cult followings decades after their original release, Other cult films have since become well-respected or reassessed as classics, there is debate as to whether these popular and accepted films are still cult films. After failing in the cinema, some films have become regular fixtures on cable television or profitable sellers on home video. Others have inspired their own film festivals, Cult films can both appeal to specific subcultures and form their own subcultures. Other media that reference cult films can easily identify which demographics they desire to attract, Cult films frequently break cultural taboos, and many feature excessive displays of violence, gore, sexuality, profanity, or combinations thereof. This can lead to controversy, censorship, and outright bans, films that fail to attract requisite amounts of controversy may face resistance when labeled as cult films. Fans who like the films for the reasons, such as perceived elements that represent mainstream appeal and marketing. Likewise, fans who stray from accepted subcultural scripts may experience similar rejection, since the late 1970s, cult films have become increasingly popular. Films that once would have limited to obscure cult followings are now capable of breaking into the mainstream. Films are frequently stated to be an instant cult classic now, fickle fans on the Internet have latched on to unreleased films only to abandon them later on release. At the same time, other films have acquired massive, quick cult followings, easy access to cult films via video on demand and peer-to-peer file sharing has led some critics to pronounce the death of cult films. A cult film is any film that has a following, although the term is not easily defined. Cult films are defined by audience reaction as much as they are content and this may take the form of elaborate and ritualized audience participation, film festivals, or cosplay. Over time, the definition has become more vague and inclusive as it drifts away from earlier, stricter views, academic Mark Shiel has criticized the term itself as being a weak concept, reliant on subjectivity, different groups can interpret films in their own terms. Academic Mike Chopra‑Gant says that cult films become decontextualized when studied as a group, in 2008, Cineaste asked a range of academics for their definition of a cult film
18.
Strip club
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Strip clubs are venues that regularly provide adult entertainment, predominantly in the form of striptease or other erotic or exotic dances. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, and can adopt a theatre or cabaret-style. As of 2005, the size of the strip club industry was estimated to be US$75 billion. In 2002, the size of the U. S. strip club industry was estimated to be US$3.1 billion, profitability of strip clubs, as with other service-oriented businesses, is largely driven by location and customer spending habits. The popularity of a club is an indicator of its quality. The strip club as an outlet for salacious entertainment is a recurrent theme in popular culture, in some media, these clubs are portrayed primarily as gathering places of vice and ill repute. Clubs themselves and various aspects of the business are highlighted in these references, popular Internet sites for strip club enthusiasts also have lists calculated from the inputs of site visitors. Strip clubs are frequent targets of litigation around the world, and the sex industry, some clubs have been linked to organized crime. The term striptease was first recorded in 1938, though stripping, in the sense of women removing clothing to sexually excite men, for example, in Thomas Otways comedy The Soldiers Fortune a character says, Be sure they be lewd, drunken, stripping whores. Its combination with music seems to be as old, the erotic dance of the bee, performed by a woman known as Kuchuk Hanem, was witnessed and described by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. In this dance the performer disrobes as she searches for an imaginary bee trapped within her garments and it is likely that the women performing these dances did not do so in an indigenous context, but rather, responded to the commercial climate for this type of entertainment. In France during the late 19th century, Parisian shows such as the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère were featuring attractive, scantily clad, dancing women and tableaux vivants. This routine, Le coucher dYvette, inspired French acts in theaters and brothels in other parts of the world, the first public act of striptease in modern times is credited to Parisian theater in 1894. In 1905, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, later shot as a spy by the French authorities during World War I, was a success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments over her arms and head. Another landmark performance was the appearance at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 of an actress called Germaine Aymos who entered dressed only in three very small shells. In the 1930s, the famous Josephine Baker danced semi-nude in the danse sauvage at the Folies and these shows were notable for their sophisticated choreography and for often dressing the girls in glitzy sequins and feathers. By the 1960s fully nude shows were provided at such places as Le Crazy Horse Saloon, in Britain in the 1930s, Laura Henderson began presenting nude shows at the Windmill Theatre in London
19.
Vampire
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A vampire is a being from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence of the living. In European folklore, vampires were undead beings that often visited loved ones and they wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from todays gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism. In modern times, however, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, porphyria was also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited. However, it is Bram Stokers 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the vampire novel. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, the vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre. Vampires had already discussed in French and German literature. After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the practice of exhuming bodies. These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity, among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь. Another, less widespread theory, is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for witch. Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb vrepiť sa, or its hypothetical anagram vperiť sa as an etymological background, and thus translates upír as someone who thrusts, bites. An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise Word of Saint Grigoriy, dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, the notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires. It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire, vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour, these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood. Indeed, blood was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin and its left eye was often open. It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, hair, although vampires were generally described as undead, some folktales spoke of them as living beings. The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore, in Slavic and Chinese traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead
20.
Vietnam veteran
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A Vietnam veteran is someone who served in the armed forces of participating countries during the Vietnam War. The U. S. government officially refers to all as Vietnam-era veterans, in the English-speaking world, the term Vietnam veteran is not usually used in relation to members of the communist Peoples Army of Vietnam or the National Liberation Front. It is known that during 1969–1971, there were about 22,000 ARVN combat deaths per year, the official number of anti-communist Vietnamese personnel killed in action was 220,357. Following the communist victory on April 30,1975, South Vietnamese veterans were rounded up and sent to reeducation camps and they were detained without trial for up to decades at a time. After being released, they and their children faced significant discrimination from the communist government, a significant proportion of the surviving South Vietnamese veterans left Vietnam for Western countries, either as boat people or through the Humanitarian Operation. According to the U. S. was discharged or released from duty for a service connected disability if any part of such active duty was performed between August 5,1964 and May 7,1975. Served on active duty for more than 180 days and served in the Republic of Vietnam between February 28,1961 and May 7,1975. In 2004, the U. S. Census Bureau reported there were 8.2 million Vietnam veterans still in the country at the time, of these,2.59 million were reported to have served in country. More than 58,000 U. S. military personnel died as a result of the conflict and this comprises deaths from all categories including deaths while missing, captured, non-hostile deaths, homicides, and suicides. The Vietnam War was the last American war with conscription, Republic Of China, Spain and Philippines contributed assistance in non-combat roles. The Royal Australian Navy performed a variety of tasks at sea, ashore. The 1st Australian Task Force consisted of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel, 1st Australian Logistic Support Group was 1 ATFs ground support unit, composed of engineer, transport, ordnance, medical and service corps units. Australian Army training teams followed the withdrawal of forces in 1971. According to official statistics,501 personnel died or went missing in action during the Vietnam War and 2400 were wounded. During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 Canadians served in the US armed forces,110 Canadians died in Vietnam, Fred Graffen, military historian with the Canadian War Museum, estimated in Vietnam Magazine that approximately 12,000 of these personnel served in Vietnam. Most of these were natives of Canada who lived in the United States, the military of Canada did not officially participate in the war effort, as it was appointed to the UN truce commissions and thus had to remain officially neutral in the conflict. Initially, New Zealand provided a 25-man team of RNZE engineers from 1964-1965, in May 1965, New Zealand replaced the engineers with a 4 gun artillery battery which served until 1971. 750 men served with the battery during this time, in 1967 the first of two rifle companies of infantry, designated Victor Company, arrived shortly thereafter followed by Whiskey company
21.
Drill
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The attachment is gripped by a chuck at one end of the drill and rotated while pressed against the target material. The tip, and sometimes edges, of the tool does the work of cutting into the target material. This may be slicing off thin shavings, grinding off small particles, crushing and removing pieces of the workpiece, countersinking, counterboring, drills are commonly used in woodworking, metalworking, construction and do-it-yourself projects. Specially designed drills are used in medicine, space missions. Drills are available with a variety of performance characteristics, such as power. Around 35,000 BC, Homo sapiens discovered the benefits of the application of rotary tools and this would have rudimentarily consisted of a pointed rock being spun between the hands to bore a hole through another material. This led to the drill, a smooth stick, that was sometimes attached to flint point. This was used by ancient civilizations around the world including the Mayans. The earliest perforated artifacts, such as bone, ivory, shells, bow drill are the first machine drills, as they convert a back-and forth motion to a rotary motion, and they can be traced back to around 10,000 years ago. It was discovered that tying a cord around a stick, and then attaching the ends of the string to the ends of a stick, allowed a user to drill quicker, mainly used to create fire, bow-drills were also used in ancient woodwork, stonework and dentistry. There are hieroglyphs depicting Egyptian carpenters and bead makers in a tomb at Thebes using bow-drills, the earliest evidence of these tools being used in Egypt dates back to around 2500 BCE. The usage of bow-drills was widely spread through Europe, Africa, Asia and North America, over the years many slight variations of bow and strap drills have developed for the various uses of either boring through materials or lighting fires. The core drill was developed in ancient Egypt by 3000 BC, the pump drill was invented during Roman times. It consists of a vertical spindle aligned by a piece of horizontal wood, the hollow-borer tip, first used around the 13th century, consisted of a stick with a tubular shaped piece of metal on the end, such as copper. This allowed a hole to be drilled while only actually grinding the outer section of it and this completely separates the inner stone or wood from the rest, allowing the drill to pulverize less material to create a similarly sized hole. The auger allowed for more torque for larger holes and it is uncertain when the Brace and Bit was invented, however, the earliest picture found so far dates from the 15th century. It is a type of hand crank drill that consists of two parts as seen in the picture, the brace, on the upper half, is where the user holds and turns it and on the lower part is the bit. The bit is interchangeable as bits wear down, the auger uses a rotating helical screw similar to the Archimedean screw-shaped bit that is common today
22.
Crossbow
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A crossbow, also known as horizontal bow, is a type of weapon based on the bow and consisting of a horizontal bow-like assembly mounted on a stock. It shoots projectiles called bolts or quarrels, the medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which were derived from the word ballista, a torsion siege engine resembling a crossbow. Historically, crossbows played a significant role in the warfare of East Asia, Europe, the introduction of the crossbow in ancient China caused a major shift in the role of projectile weaponry. The traditional bow and arrow had long been a weapon that required a considerable training, physical strength. A crossbow is a bow mounted on a stick with a mechanism in it that holds the bow string. The earliest designs featured a slot in the stock, down into which the string was placed, to shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out. This rod is attached perpendicular to a rear-facing lever called a trigger or tickler. A later design implemented a rolling cylindrical pawl called a nut to retain the string and this nut has a perpendicular center slot for the bolt, and an intersecting axial slot for the string, along with a lower face or slot against which the internal trigger sits. They often also have some form of strengthening internal sear or trigger face and these roller nuts were either free-floating in their close-fitting hole across the stock, tied in with a binding of sinew or other strong cording, or mounted on a metal axle or pins. Removable or integral plates of wood, ivory, or metal on the sides of the stock kept the nut in place laterally, nuts were made of antler, bone, or metal. Bows could be kept taut and ready to shoot for some time with little effort, the bow of early crossbows was made of a single piece of wood, usually ash or yew. Composite bows are made from layers of different material, often wood, horn and these composite bows made of several layers are much stronger and more efficient in releasing energy than simple wooden bows. As steel became more available in Europe around the 14th century. The crossbow prod is very short compared to ordinary bows, resulting in a draw length. This leads to a draw weight in order to store the same amount of energy. Furthermore, the thick prods are a bit less efficient at releasing energy, traditionally, the prod was often lashed to the stock with rope, whipcord, or other strong cording. This cording is called the bridle, the strings for a crossbow are typically made of strong fibers that would not tend to fray. Whipcord was very common, however linen, hemp, and sinew were used as well, in wet conditions, twisted mulberry root was occasionally used
23.
Shotgun
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Shotguns come in a wide variety of sizes, ranging from 5. A shotgun is generally a smoothbore firearm, which means that the inside of the barrel is not rifled, preceding smoothbore firearms, such as the musket, were widely used by armies in the 18th century. The direct ancestor to the shotgun, the blunderbuss, was used in a similar variety of roles from self-defense to riot control. It was often used by cavalry troops because of its shorter length and ease of use. In the 19th century, however, these weapons were replaced on the battlefield with breechloading rifled firearms. The military value of shotguns was rediscovered in the First World War, since then, it has been used in a variety of roles in civilian, law enforcement, and military applications. The shot pellets from a spread upon leaving the barrel, and the power of the burning charge is divided among the pellets. In a hunting context, this makes shotguns useful primarily for hunting birds, however, in a military or law enforcement context, the large number of projectiles makes the shotgun useful as a close quarters combat weapon or a defensive weapon. Militants or insurgents may use shotguns in asymmetric engagements, as shotguns are commonly owned civilian weapons in many countries, shotguns are also used for target shooting sports such as skeet, trap, and sporting clays. These involve shooting clay disks, known as clay pigeons, thrown in various ways, shotguns come in a wide variety of forms, from very small up to massive punt guns, and in nearly every type of firearm operating mechanism. The common characteristics that make a unique center around the requirements of firing shot. These features are the typical of a shotgun shell, namely a relatively short, wide cartridge, with straight walls. Ammunition for shotguns is referred to in the USA as shotgun shells, shotshells, the term cartridges is standard usage in the United Kingdom. The shot is fired from a smoothbore barrel, another configuration is the rifled slug barrel. The typical use of a shotgun is against small and fast moving targets, the spreading of the shot allows the user to point the shotgun close to the target, rather than having to aim precisely as in the case of a single projectile. The disadvantages of shot are limited range and limited penetration of the shot, which is why shotguns are used at short ranges, and typically against smaller targets. Larger shot sizes, up to the case of the single projectile slug load, result in increased penetration. Aside from the most common use against small, fast moving targets, First, it has enormous stopping power at short range, more than nearly all handguns and many rifles
24.
Holy water
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Holy water is water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy or a religious figure. The use for cleansing prior to a baptism and spiritual cleansing is common in several religions, the use of holy water as a sacramental for protection against evil is common among Anglicans and Roman Catholics. The use of water in the earliest days of Christianity is attested to only in somewhat later documents. The Apostolic constitutions, which go back to about the year 400 and it is plausible that in earliest Christian times water was used for expiatory and purificatory purposes in a way analogous to its employment in Jewish Law. However, Eastern Orthodox do perform the blessing, whether in a baptistry or an outdoor body of water. Sprinkling with holy water is used as a sacramental that recalls baptism, Holy water is kept in the holy water font, which is typically located at the entrance to the church. Smaller vessels, called stoups, are placed at the entrances of the church. In recent years, with the concerns over influenza, new holy water machines that work like a soap dispenser have become popular. In the Middle Ages the power of water was considered so great that in some places fonts had locked covers to prevent the theft of holy water for unauthorized magic practices. The Constitutions of Archbishop Edmund Rich prescribe that Fonts are to be kept under lock and key, similarly the chrism and sacred oil are kept locked up. In Catholicism, holy water, as well as used during the washing of the priests hands at mass, is not allowed to be disposed of in regular plumbing. Roman Catholic churches will usually have a basin that leads directly into the ground for the purpose of proper disposal. A hinged lid is kept over the water basin to distinguish it from a regular sink basin. Items that contained holy water are separated, drained of the holy water, Holy water fonts have been identified as a potential source of bacterial and viral infection. In the late 19th century, bacteriologists found staphylococci, streptococci, coli bacilli, Loefflers bacillus, in a study performed in 1995, thirteen samples were taken when a burn patient acquired a bacterial infection after exposure to holy water. The samples in that study were shown to have a range of bacterial species. During the swine flu epidemic of 2009, Bishop John Steinbock of Fresno, also in response to the swine flu, an automatic, motion-detecting holy water dispenser was invented and installed in an Italian church in 2009. As a reminder of baptism, Catholic Christians dip their fingers in the holy water and this ceremony dates back to the ninth century
25.
Aztec
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The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries. The Nahuatl words aztecatl and aztecah mean people from Aztlan, a place for the Nahuatl-speaking culture of the time. Often the term Aztec refers exclusively to the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan, situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who referred to themselves as Mēxihcah Tenochcah or Cōlhuah Mexihcah. From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of Aztec civilization, here the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Triple Alliance formed a tributary empire expanding its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico, conquering other city states throughout Mesoamerica. At its pinnacle, Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions, as well as achieving remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments. Subsequently, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the ruined Aztec capital, the term extends to further ethnic groups associated with the Aztec empire such as the Acolhua and Tepanec and others that were incorporated into the empire. In older usage the term was used about modern Nahuatl speaking ethnic groups. In recent usage these ethnic groups are referred to as the Nahua peoples. Linguistically the term Aztecan is still used about the branch of the Uto-Aztecan languages that includes the Nahuatl language and its closest relatives Pochutec, to the Aztecs themselves the word aztec was not an endonym for any particular ethnic group. Rather it was a term used to refer to several ethnic groups, not all of them Nahuatl speaking. In the Nahuatl language aztecatl means person from Aztlan and this usage has been the subject of debate in more recent years, but the term Aztec is still more common. For the same reason the notion of Aztec civilization is best understood as a horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization. Particular to the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan was the Mexica patron God Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, the Aztec Empire was a tribute empire based in Tenochtitlan that extended its power throughout Mesoamerica in the late postclassic period. Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan became junior partners in the alliance, which was de facto led by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the empire extended its power by a combination of trade and military conquest. The political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica conquering cities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala, the Nahua peoples began to migrate into Mesoamerica from northern Mexico in the 6th century. They populated central Mexico, dislocating speakers of Oto-Manguean languages as they spread their influence south. As the former nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples mixed with the civilizations of Mesoamerica, adopting religious and cultural practices. During the Postclassic period they rose to power at such sites as Tula, in the 12th century the Nahua power center was in Azcapotzalco, from where the Tepanecs dominated the valley of Mexico
26.
Seth Gecko
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Seth Gecko is the name of two fictional characters in the From Dusk till Dawn film series. An alternate universe version of the character appears in the TV series and he is portrayed by George Clooney in both the films and the video game and is portrayed by D. J. At the films opening, they are being hunted by the police for several murders, bank robberies and he later becomes infuriated when Richie kills the woman instead, saying that Richie had made him break his promise to her. In the original film, Seth and his disturbed younger brother Richie have just robbed a bank. When Seth briefly leaves the room, Richie rapes and kills the woman, while on the run from the law, he and Richie meet Jacob Fuller and his two children, Kate and Scott. Seth immediately sees that Richie is attracted to Kate, and reassures Jacob that she will be safe as long as they do as they are told. After crossing the border into Mexico, they go to a bar called Titty Twister, at the Titty Twister, the strippers transform into vampires and attack the group, along with all the other patrons of the establishment. Richie is turned into a vampire, forcing Seth to kill his own brother, at the end of the film, Carlos arrives and unknowingly rescues them by breaking the door and letting sunlight in, killing the vampires. He is one of the two survivors, the other being Kate, Jacobs daughter. He offers her some of the cash from the robbery and he. The Gecko brothers are mentioned in From Dusk Till Dawn 2, bo Hopkins references Edgar McGraws cold demeanor and distracted nature, Oh, them Gecko brothers killed his daddy. The Gecko brothers briefly appear in a cameo in the black comedy Curdled. In additional, Katie Houge, news reporter from the first film, appears, in the From Dusk till Dawn video game it is revealed that sometime after the events of the film, Seth is arrested and condemned to life in prison for the murders Richie committed. He is now shown as an inmate of the fictional Rising Sun high-security prison, vampires infiltrate the prison by posing as inmates. They murder the transport guards and the warden and begin a rampage, in the chaos, Seth gains a weapon and escapes his cell. Eventually, he manages to kill the vampires and escapes the prison along with the other survivors, in late 2013, it was reported that a parallel universe TV series had begun production. This incarnation of Richie will be played by Zane Holtz, mixing ideals from the original first and third films, the show pits the humans, led by Seth, who will be played by D. J. Cotrona against the vampires, led by the wicked Santanico Pandemonium, played by Eiza Gonzalez and Sheriff McGraw and this series stars Robert Patrick, as Jacob Fuller
27.
Richie Gecko
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Richard Richie Gecko is the name of two fictional characters in the From Dusk till Dawn film series. The original Richie Gecko is one of the protagonists in the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn. A nerdy, obnoxious, even-shorter-fused, sex offender, psychopath and he was portrayed by Quentin Tarantino on film, and an alternate version of the character is portrayed by Zane Holtz on TV. There is not much information regarding Richies back story, although a report about the robbery that is seen during the film states that he holds prior convictions for robbery. From Dusk till Dawn tells the story of the Greek Gecko Brothers right after their latest botched bank-robbery/kidnapping attempt and he rapes and murders their hostage, a bank teller, for which Seth scolds him. After fleeing to Mexico, they cross paths with a sect of vampires using a strip club as a feeding ground. Richie has a chance to bond with his brother, before his insane antics catch up with him, Richie returns to life as an undead zombie-like blood sucker. Seth is then left with the task of putting his brothers evil-possessed carcass out of its misery, the Gecko brothers are mentioned in From Dusk Till Dawn 2, Texas Blood Money. Bo Hopkins references Edgar McGraws cold demeanor and distracted nature, Oh, the Gecko brothers briefly appear in a photo cameo in the black comedy Curdled. In additional, Katie Houge, news reporter from the first film, appears, in late 2013, it was reported that a parallel universe TV series had begun production. This incarnation of Richie will be played by Zane Holtz, mixing ideas from the original first and third films, the show pits the humans, led by Seth, who will be played by D. J. Cotrona against the vampires, led by the wicked Santanico Pandemonium, played by Eiza Gonzalez and Sheriff McGraw and this series stars Robert Patrick, as Jacob Fuller
28.
Santanico Pandemonium
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Santanico Pandemonium, formerly Esmeralda or Kisa, is a fictional character from the From Dusk till Dawn film series. She is the primary Queen Vampire of the Titty Twister, a club in the middle of a desolate part of Mexico. In the film series, she is portrayed by Salma Hayek and she is played by Eiza González in From Dusk till Dawn, The Series. The name of Santanico is based on the Mexican Nunsploitation film Satánico pandemonium, although the original film was not very successful at the box office, the film has achieved a cult status because Hayeks role as Santanico was generally well received by viewers. Santanico Pandemonium is most often seen in her form, which resembles a beautiful Mexican erotic dancer. She has the ability to transform from human to vampire and vice versa, while in vampire form, her face transforms to have reptilian-like features and sharp teeth. She often uses her human form to seduce her victims before biting them and she is a barefooter and is most often seen wearing a red/black bra and underwear combo, occasionally also wearing a crown and a cape with a snake around her neck. Born a Dhampir named Esmeralda in Mexico in 1894, she was the daughter of the Hangman, Esmeralda knew nothing about her mother or what had happened to her. Instead, she was raised by her father, the local Hangman with an eerie past, during her childhood the Hangman attempted to kill Esmeralda on several occasions, but she kept coming back. In 1913, when Esmeralda is nineteen years old, she is kidnapped by Johnny Madrid, after a daring escape with the help of Reece. With the hangman, who fears the worst for his daughter, together, they rob a stagecoach containing American author Ambrose Bierce and newly-wed couple John and Mary Newlie. As night falls they go to a whorehouse that would become the Titty Twister in From Dusk till Dawn. Esmeralda soon discovers the truth of her heritage after being turned by her mother Quixla and grandmother and she later hypnotizes her father, kisses him, then quickly feeds on his neck, turning him. She begs Madrid to stay, but Quixla lunges at Madrid, seeing this, the Hangman, who is now a vampire, opens the locked door, which kills Quixla in the sunlight. Madrid and Bierce flee, ignoring Esmeraldas pleas, Esmeralda – now known as Santanico Pandemonium, vampire heiress – takes her place as vampire queen and the main attraction at the Titty Twister. Throughout the century she puts on big shows at the bar, after her show is over, Chet the bouncer, having recovered from his beating, enters the bar with a group of people looking to fight the Geckos. This leads to a fight, Richie is stabbed in the hand by Razor Charlie, but as their backs are turned, Santanico morphs into a horrible creature, jumps on Richies back, and sinks her fangs into his neck, killing him. This spur-of-the-moment surge of bloodlust, triggered by his bleeding hand and she is killed in the original From Dusk till Dawn when she is impaled by a chandelier shot down by Seth—after threatening to turn him into her vampire slave
29.
Danny Trejo
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Danny Trejo is an American actor who has appeared in numerous Hollywood films, often as villains and anti-heroes. His films include Heat, Con Air, and Desperado, the latter with frequent collaborator Robert Rodriguez and he has appeared in TV shows such as Breaking Bad, The X-Files, and Sons of Anarchy. He also appeared in the spoof movie Delta Farce as the killer Carlos Santana who in the movie keeps getting mistaken for the musician, Trejo was born in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, of Mexican ancestry. Prior to his film career Trejo worked as a foreman in construction. Throughout the 1960s, Trejo was in and out of jail and prison in California, there are conflicting accounts of his prison chronology. By one account, his term in custody ended in 1972, by another account, he did time in a juvenile offenders camp. He recalled that his last prison term was five years, while serving in San Quentin Prison, he became a champion boxer in that prisons lightweight and welterweight divisions. During this time, Trejo became a member of a twelve-step program, in 2011, he recalled that he had been sober for 42 years. While Trejo was working as a drug counselor, a teenage patient asked for his assistance dealing with cocaine problems on the set of Runaway Train. While there, Trejo was offered a job as an extra in the prison scenes. Edward Bunker, himself a former convict and well-respected crime author who was writing the screenplay for the film, recognized Trejo, Bunker, remembering Trejos boxing skills, offered him $320 per day to train Eric Roberts, one of the movies stars, for a boxing scene. Director Andrei Konchalovsky liked Trejos work and decided to offer him a role in the film as a boxer. It has been misreported that Trejo was actually serving time in the prison during filming. Since then, Trejo has become an actor in both films and television, appearing in five or more movies per year, in various genres. Trejo is known for his distinctive appearance, in addition to his heavily lined face, scarred from cystic acne and a brawl, and the long mustache he usually sports, he has displayed the large tattoo on his chest for many roles. He also appeared in a Season 2 episode of Desperate Housewives and he voiced the character Enrique on King of the Hill, and Octavios character on that show is based on his appearance. His role on King of the Hill was referred to in the HBO series Unscripted, where he had a cameo appearance. He also made guest appearances, as Tortuga, in the noted series Breaking Bad in 2009 and 2010, most notably in the episode Negro y Azul, in 2008 Trejo portrayed a Mexican bartender in the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless
30.
Michael Parks
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Michael Parks is an American singer and actor. Parks was born in Corona, California, the son of a baseball player and he drifted from job to job during his teenage years, including picking fruit, digging ditches, driving trucks, and fighting forest fires. He was briefly married at the age of 16 and he is father to actor James Parks to whom he is a single parent. In 1961, Parks portrayed the nephew of the character George MacMichael on the ABC sitcom The Real McCoys. He appeared as Cal Leonard in the 1963 Perry Mason episode The Case of Constant Doyle and he also appeared in The China Lake Murders and Stranger by Night, having portrayed a police officer in both. Parks was the star of the series Then Came Bronson from 1969 to 1970 and he sang the theme song for the show, Long Lonesome Highway, which became a #20 Billboard Hot 100 and #41 Hot Country Songs hit. Albums he recorded under MGM Records include Closing The Gap, Long Lonesome Highway and he also had various records of songs included on these albums. He played Philip Colby during the season of ABCs Dynasty spin-off series The Colbys. Parks played two roles in the Kill Bill film series, reprising the role of Earl McGraw in the first film and he most recently reprised the role of Earl McGraw in both segments of the film Grindhouse. His son, James Parks, played the son of Earl McGraw in Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn 2, Texas Blood Money, Death Proof, Parks played a villain in Kevin Smiths horror films Red State and Tusk. Smith later announced on his podcast that Parks had recorded an album during Red States production, after Smith, the album, titled The Red State Sessions, was released on August 15,2011 as a download from the films website. Michael Parks at the Internet Movie Database Michael Parks Homepage
31.
John Saxon
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John Saxon is an American actor and martial artist who has worked on more than 200 projects during a span of 60 years. Saxon is known for his work in westerns and horror films as well as for his role as Roper in the 1973 film Enter the Dragon, in which he starred alongside Bruce Lee and Jim Kelly. He is well known for playing Lt. Donald Thompson in the 1984 slasher horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, Saxon, an Italian American, was born Carmine Orrico in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Anna and Antonio Orrico, a dock worker. He attended New Utrecht High School, graduating in 1953 and he then studied acting with famous acting coach Stella Adler. He started making films in the mid-1950s, playing teenage roles, with parents permission, the 17-year-old Orrico signed with Willson, and he was renamed John Saxon. He signed with Universal Studios in April 1954 at $150 a week, Saxon spent 18 months at Universal before they first used him in a film. His first significant role was a delinquent in Running Wild. He impressed with a role in The Unguarded Moment, playing a youth who seemingly stalks Esther Williams, in February 1956 Universal exercised their option on Saxon and he was paid $225 a week. He had the lead in a low budget teen film, Rock, Pretty Baby which became an unexpected hit, Saxon reprised his role in a sequel, Summer Love. At his peak he was getting 3,000 fan letters a week, Universal executives were pleased, and put Saxon in an A film, This Happy Feeling, directed by Blake Edwards, where Saxon romanced Debbie Reynolds in support of Curt Jurgens. MGM borrowed him to appear opposite Sandra Dee in The Reluctant Debutante, for director Vincente Minnelli, public response was enthusiastic enough for Universal to reunited Saxon and Dee in The Restless Years, a teen melodrama. Over a United Artists he was the lead in Cry Tough 91959) and he had a support role in a big budget Biblical drama about Simon Peter, The Big Fisherman for director Frank Borzage. Saxon worked with another top director, John Huston, in the Western, The Unforgiven, playing an Indian in support of Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn. Back at Universal, he remained in parts, but it was a good one, Portrait in Black, reunited with Dee, with Lana Turner. He was essentially a juvenile delinquent cowboy in The Plunderers, tormenting Jeff Chandler and he stayed in Westerns in Posse from Hell with Audie Murphy. Saxon worked in television then he had an excellent part playing a soldier who is a killer in War Hunt. He had a role in the comedy hit Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation the travelled to Italy to make Agostino. In 1963 Saxon co-starred with Letícia Román in Mario Bavas Italian giallo film The Girl Who Knew Too Much and he returned to Hollywood to appear in Otto Premingers The Cardinal then was back to Europe for The Cavern
32.
Marc Lawrence
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Marc Lawrence was an American character actor who specialized in underworld types. He has also credited as F. A. Foss, Marc Laurence. Lawrence was born as Max Goldsmith in New York City, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Minerva Norma, and he participated in plays in school, then attended the City College of New York. He married Odessa-born novelist and screenwriter Fanya Foss, with whom he had two children, she died on December 12,1995, Lawrence died of heart failure on November 28,2005 at the age of 95. He was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Westwood, California and his daughter, actress Toni Lawrence, was once married to actor Billy Bob Thornton and starred in his film Daddys Girl. In 1930, Lawrence befriended another young actor, John Garfield, the two appeared in a number of plays before Lawrence was given a film contract with Columbia Pictures. Lawrence appeared in films beginning in 1931, Garfield followed, starting his film career in 1938. Lawrences pock-marked complexion, brooding appearance and New York street-guy accent made him a natural for heavies, later, Lawrence found himself under scrutiny for his political leanings. When called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he admitted he had once been a member of the Communist Party and he was blacklisted and departed for Europe, where he continued to make films. Following the demise of the blacklist, he returned to America and resumed his position as a familiar and he played gangsters in two James Bond movies, 1971s Diamonds Are Forever opposite Sean Connery, and 1974s The Man with the Golden Gun opposite Christopher Lee. He also portrayed a henchman opposite Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, one of his last roles was as Mr. Zeemo in the Star Trek, Deep Space Nine episode Badda-Bing Badda-Bang, which aired in February 1999. Previously he played the elderly Gatherer Volnoth in the 1989 Star Trek, in 1991 Lawrences autobiography was published entitled Long Time No See, Confessions of a Hollywood Gangster. Lawrence was also the subject of a novel, The Beautiful and his final film role was in Looney Tunes Back in Action, appearing as an Acme Corporation vice president. Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget, by Justin Humphreys, Marc Lawrence at the Internet Movie Database Marc Lawrence at AllMovie Marc Lawrence at the Internet Broadway Database Marc Lawrence at Memory Alpha
33.
Kelly Preston
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Kelly Preston is an American actress and former model. She has appeared in more than sixty television and film productions, most notably including Mischief, Twins and she is married to John Travolta, with whom she collaborated on the fantasy film Battlefield Earth. She also starred in the films The Cat in the Hat, Old Dogs, Kelly Kamalelehua Smith was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her mother Linda, was an administrator of a health center and her father. Her mother married Peter Palzis, a director, who subsequently adopted her. She has a younger half-brother, Chris Palzis, as a child, she spent time living in Iraq and also in Australia, where she attended Pembroke School in Adelaide. She went on to Punahou School and studied drama and theater at the University of Southern California, at that time she changed her last name to Preston. In 2005 she appeared as the flying, superheroine mother of the protagonist in the film Sky High, Preston was featured in the chart-topping Maroon 5 music video She Will Be Loved in 2004. The video features a love triangle and romantic scenes between Preston and Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, in 2008, she was cast in a television pilot for a potential show called Suburban Shootout. She had a short recurring role on Medium. In 2008, Preston starred in the Lifetime movie The Tenth Circle, the film was shot in Nova Scotia and featured Ron Eldard, Brittany Robertson, Michael Riley, Jamie Johnston and Geordie Brown. She is a spokeswoman for Neutrogena since 2005 and appears in print, Preston was married to actor Kevin Gage from 1985 until their divorce in 1987. She also had a relationship with George Clooney, who gave her Max and she was briefly engaged to Charlie Sheen in 1990, but ended the relationship shortly after he accidentally shot her in the arm. Preston first met John Travolta in 1987 while filming The Experts and they married in 1991, traveling to Paris on an Air France Concorde for a wedding ceremony at the Hotel de Crillon on September 5,1991. However, a ceremony was required because the first, performed by a French Scientology minister, was considered invalid. This second ceremony took place on September 12 in Daytona Beach and they had three children, son Jett, daughter Ella Bleu, and son Benjamin. Prestons son Jett Travolta was described as suffering from Kawasaki disease as an infant and had a history of seizures, in 2003, Preston appeared on the Montel Williams show to promote L. Ron Hubbards Purification Rundown, which she credited with helping her son. On January 2,2009, Jett Travolta died while the family was on a vacation in The Bahamas
34.
John Hawkes (actor)
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Hawkes was born John Marvin Perkins in Alexandria, Minnesota, the son of Peter John Pete Perkins, a farmer of wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle, and Patricia Jeanne. He was raised in a pastoral, small city, Hawkes graduated from Jefferson High School and moved to Austin, Texas, where he was a member of the band Meat Joy, with Gretchen Phillips. He was also a member of the musical group King Straggler with fellow actors Rodney Eastman and his first film role was in Future-Kill, credited as John Perkins. He changed his name to John Hawkes because there was another actor named John Perkins. Hawkes played the role of Greg Penticoff in season 1 of 24 and he portrayed Dustin Powers, brother of protagonist Kenny Powers, all four seasons of the HBO series Eastbound & Down, and played Lennon on ABCs Lost. His other film roles include Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Perfect Storm, American Gangster, Wristcutters, A Love Story, Martha Marcy May Marlene and he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. Also in 2011, Hawkes was honored with a Rising Star Award by the Texas Film Hall of Fame, in 2016, it was announced that Hawkes would star in the Amazon pilot The Legend of Master Legend, which is based on the popular real life superhero Master Legend. John Hawkes at the Internet Movie Database John Hawkes Producer Profile for The 1 Second Film 2008 John Hawkes interview with Jon Niccum
35.
Tito & Tarantula
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Tito & Tarantula is an American chicano rock/stoner rock band formed in Hollywood California in 1992 by singer/songwriter/guitarist Tito Larriva. After Dark was the track played during Salma Hayeks iconic exotic dance scene in that film, after high school he flirted with attending Yale University before landing in Los Angeles, California in the mid-1970s. He began his career by playing in some of the first Latino punk bands such as The Impalas, The Flesh Eaters. Larriva released several albums with the Plugz before the group disbanded in 1984, following disbandment, Larriva teamed up with former Plugz bandmates Charlie Quintana and Tony Marsico to form the Cruzados. With the Cruzados, Larrivas music began to move in a different direction, the band was critically acclaimed and opened for big acts like INXS and Fleetwood Mac. They released an album in 1985, followed by After Dark in 1987. The Cruzados also performed the song Dont Throw Stones at the beginning of the 1989 movie Roadhouse, from there, Larriva continued writing film music, and also turned to acting. Starting in 1992, he and guitarist Peter Atanasoff celebrated with friends at live weekly jam sessions in the cafes and clubs of Los Angeles, at big. The band at that time were known as Tito & Friends. As Tito explained in an interview, their old friend Charlie Midnight stated that the band needed a name, the band agreed and it stuck. By 1995, officially called Tito & Tarantula, the band had a stable line-up of Larriva, Atanasoff, Jennifer Condos, Lyn Bertles, the three songs appear on the films soundtrack. The next year, the band appeared in Rodriguez From Dusk till Dawn as house band of the Titty Twister (though this band only consisted of Larriva, Atanasoff and they also recorded three songs for the film, After Dark, Angry Cockroaches, and Opening Boxes. Tito had met Rodriguez when filming Desperado, during the mixing of the film, Tito was playing a previously written song, that happened to be about vampires, which caught the ear of Rodriguez. Rodriguez mentioned that his film was about vampires, and asked if he could videotape the song acoustically. Tito himself had scored several films previously, including a couple of films in Germany, with his earlier band, The Plugz, he scored the cult hit film Repo Man. At some point, more and more came to see us, says Larriva, After we did Desperado and From Dusk till Dawn. So in 1997, Tito & Tarantula made its album debut. The album featured four of their six previously released songs, and it also featured guest-appearances by Larrivas former Plugz and Cruzados bandmates Charlie Quintana and Tony Marsico
36.
Kill Bill
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Kill Bill is an American two-part martial arts film series, and the fourth film overall that was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The original four-hour cut, retitled Kill Bill, The Whole Bloody Affair, was screened at cinemas in 2011. Tarantino has discussed the possibility of a third Kill Bill film, Kill Bill, Volume 1 was released in theaters on October 10,2003. In the United States and Canada, Volume 1 was released in 3,102 theaters, Volume 1 was the widest theatrical release of Tarantinos career to date, and it was also his highest-grossing opening weekend to date. Outside the United States and Canada, Kill Bill, Volume 1 was released in 20 countries, by November 2,2003, it had made $31 million in the 20 countries. Kill Bill, Volume 1 grossed a total of $70 million in the United States and Canada, the film follows a character initially identified as The Bride, a former assassin seeking revenge on her ex-colleagues who massacred members of her wedding party and tried to kill her. Kill Bill, Volume 2 was released in theaters on April 16,2004, Volume 2s opening weekend gross was higher than Volume 1s, and the equivalent success confirmed the studios financial decision to split the film into two theatrical releases. Volume 2 attracted more female theatergoers than Volume 1, with 40% of the audience being female, outside of the United States and Canada, Volume 2 was released in 20 countries over the weekend of April 23,2004. It grossed an estimated $17.7 million and ranked first at the box office. Volume 2 grossed a total of $66.2 million in the United States and Canada, the film follows The Bride pursuing Bills brother Budd and confronting Elle Driver, a fellow student of Pai Mei. She eventually catches up with Bill himself, screenings of the complete film began on March 27,2011 at the New Beverly Cinema. This was verified to be the print that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. The print shown at the New Beverly even retained the French subtitles necessary for screening an English-language film at the Cannes festival, Tarantino told Entertainment Weekly in April 2004, that he was planning a sequel, Oh yeah, initially I was thinking this would be my Dollars Trilogy. I was going to do a new one every ten years, but I need at least fifteen years before I do this again. Ive already got the whole mythology, Sofie Fatale will get all of Bills money, shell raise Nikki, wholl take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers, according to Bloody-Disgusting. com, details emerged around 2007 about two possible sequels, Kill Bill, Volumes 3 and 4. The article adds that the installment of the popular kung fu action films concerns a cycle of reprisals. At the 2006 Comic Con, Tarantino said that after the completion of Grindhouse, one will be an origin story about Bill and his mentors, and the other will be an origin starring The Bride
37.
Planet Terror
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Planet Terror is a 2007 American zombie film directed by Robert Rodriguez. It follows a group of attempting to survive an onslaught of zombie-like creatures as they feud with a military unit. The film stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Naveen Andrews, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Stacy Ferguson, and Bruce Willis. In addition to directing the film, Rodriguez wrote the script, directed the cinematography, wrote the score, co-edited. Released on April 6,2007, Grindhouse ticket sales were significantly below box office analysts expectations, outside the U. S and released separately, Planet Terror and Death Proof screened in extended versions. Two soundtracks were released for the features and include music. Planet Terror was released on DVD in the United States and Canada on October 23,2007, in rural Texas, go-go dancer Cherry Darling decides to quit her low-paying job and find another occupation. She runs into her mysterious ex-boyfriend El Wray at the Bone Shack, when Muldoon learns that Abby has an extra supply on hand, he attempts to take Abby hostage, and Abby intentionally releases the gas into the air. The gas reaches the town and turns most of its residents into deformed bloodthirsty psychopaths, the infected townspeople are treated by the sinister Dr. William Block and his unhappy, unfaithful bisexual anesthesiologist wife Dakota at a local hospital. Random zombie attacks begin along the highway, causing El Wray, with Cherry as his passenger, in the aftermath, several zombies tear off Cherrys right leg. Also falling victim, fatally, is Tammy, who was on her way to town to reunite with her former lover Dakota. When Tammys body arrives at the hospital, Dr. Block recognizes her and by comparing text messages on the phones of Tammy and his wife. El Wray is detained by Sheriff Hague based on past encounters between the two men, as the patients transform into zombies, El Wray leaves the police station and arrives at the hospital, attaching a wooden table leg to Cherrys stump. As El Wray and Cherry fight their way out of the hospital, Dakota escapes to her car. She eventually manages to drive away, meanwhile, Block becomes infected along with others, while Cherry and El Wray take refuge at the Bone Shack. Dakota retrieves her son Tony and takes him to her father, Earl McGraw, Tony, who was given a revolver by his mother, accidentally shoots himself in the face after being told not to point it at himself. Cherry and El Wray make love in J. T. s bedroom, Dakota, Earl, Cherrys former boss Skip, and Tonys crazed babysitter twins arrive at the Bone Shack. With Sheriff Hague badly injured, the group decides to flee to the Mexican border, Muldoons men arrive, and kill the zombies before arresting the group
38.
Death Proof
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Death Proof is a 2007 American exploitation film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman who murders young women in staged car accidents using his death-proof stunt car. It co-stars Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the film pays homage to the slasher, exploitation and muscle car films of the 1970s. The films were released separately outside the United States and on DVD, the film was in the main competition for the Palme dOr at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Three friends, Arlene, Shanna and radio DJ Jungle Julia Lucai, drive down Congress Avenue in Austin, aging Hollywood stunt double Stuntman Mike trails the women to a bar and claims the lap dance. Arlene is suspicious, having seen Mikes car earlier that day, the three women prepare to depart with Lanna, another friend. Pam, an old classmate of Julias, accepts Mikes offer of a ride home, Mike takes Pam to his Hollywood stunt car rigged with a roll cage and tells her the car is death-proof, but only for the driver. He speeds recklessly and slams on the brakes, smashing Pams skull on the dashboard and he catches up with the womens car and drives into it at speed, killing them. Mike survives with no serious injury, sheriff McGraw is suspicious, but because Mike was sober while the women were intoxicated, he cannot be charged. Fourteen months later, three women, Abernathy Ross, Kim Mathis and Lee Montgomery, are driving through Lebanon. They stop at a store where Mike watches them from his car. Unaware of Mike, the pick up their friend, stuntwoman Zoë Bell. Zoë tells them she wants to test-drive a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the cars owner lets them test-drive it unsupervised after Abernathy lies to him that Lee is a porn star and will stay behind. Zoë tells Abernathy and Kim that she wants to play a game they call Ships Mast, the three enjoy the stunt unaware that Mike is watching them. He rear-ends them in his car, causing Zoë to drop one of the belts, after several more collisions, he T-bones them, throwing Zoë from the car. Mike flees in his car when Kim shoots him in the shoulder, Abernathy and Kim cry over the loss of their friend, but discover that Zoë is uninjured. The three agree to catch up to Mike and kill him, Mike has stopped in a narrow road to treat his wound with whiskey. The women rear-end him at speed, Zoë gets out and beats him with a pipe, but he resists and drives off again
39.
Desperado (film)
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Desperado is a 1995 American contemporary western action film written, produced, and directed by Robert Rodriguez. A sequel to the 1992 film El Mariachi, it is the installment in Robert Rodriguezs Mexico Trilogy. It stars Antonio Banderas as the mariachi who seeks revenge on the lord who killed his lover. The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, once Upon a Time in Mexico, the final part of the trilogy, was released in 2003. Desperado grossed $25.4 million in the United States, at the Tarasco bar in Mexico, an American man tells the story of how he witnessed a massacre in another bar committed by a Mexican with a guitar case full of guns. The bars patrons are uninterested until the American mentions the name Bucho, meanwhile, El Mariachi has a dream of his encounter with Moco, Buchos underling, who killed his lover dead and shot his left hand. He is awakened by Buscemi, who tells him to continue his search for Bucho at the bar, El Mariachi meets a child, who allegedly plays guitar for a living. He gives the boy some pointers, at the Tarasco bar, El Mariachi engages in a tense standoff with Buchos goons before a massive gunfight erupts. He kills everyone in the bar, but Tavo, who was in a back room earlier, survives, on the street, Tavo wounds El Mariachi before being killed himself. Carolina, the woman who El Mariachi shields from Tavos bullets, Bucho arrives at the bar to survey the carnage. Paranoid, Bucho orders his men to hunt down the man dressed in black, in the bookstore, Carolina tends to El Mariachis wounds. While he rests, she discovers the guns in his guitar case, El Mariachi asks her to help him find Bucho. He goes to the church and talk to Buscemi. Upset by the massacre at the bar, Buscemi convinces El Mariachi to give up his quest for blood, outside the church, a man armed with throwing knives ambushes them, kills Buscemi and severely wounds El Mariachi. Buchos men arrive at the scene, mistake the man for El Mariachi and they take the body back to Bucho, who realizes they have killed the wrong person, a hit-man named Navajas sent by the Colombians to kill El Mariachi. As El Mariachi wanders through the streets, he meets the kid with the guitar and he learns that the kid is being used by his father to mule drugs hidden in his guitar. He angrily confronts the boy, who tells him most people in the works for Bucho. El Mariachi returns to Carolina and learns that Bucho paid to build her bookstore as another front for his drug-dealing, unexpectedly, Bucho pays her a visit, and she hastily hides El Mariachi
40.
Pulp Fiction
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Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American black comedy neo-noir crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, from a story by Tarantino and Roger Avary. Directed in a stylized manner, Pulp Fiction connects the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals. The films title refers to the magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence. The screenplay of Pulp Fiction was written in 1992 and 1993 and its plot, as in many of Tarantinos other works, is presented out of chronological order. The film is also self-referential from its opening moments, beginning with a card that gives two dictionary definitions of pulp. Its script was turned down by Columbia TriStar as too demented. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein was instantly enthralled with it, however, Pulp Fiction won the Palme dOr at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and was a major critical and commercial success upon its U. S. release. It revitalized the careers of John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and it was also nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Tarantino and Avary won for Best Original Screenplay. The nature of its development, marketing, and distribution –, since its release, Pulp Fiction has been widely regarded as Tarantinos masterpiece, with particular praise singled out for its screenwriting. The films self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and it is often considered a cultural watershed, with a strong influence felt not only in later movies that adopted various elements of its style, but in several other media as well. A2008 Entertainment Weekly poll named it the best film since 1983, in 2013, Pulp Fiction was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The stories intersect in various ways, the film begins with a diner hold-up staged by a couple, then picks up the stories of Vincent, Jules, and Butch. It finally returns to where it began, in the diner, sequences 1 and 7 partially overlap and are presented from different points of view, as do sequences 2 and 6. Other analysts describe the structure as a circular narrative, hitmen Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega arrive at the apartment of Brett to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace. After Vincent checks the contents of the briefcase, Jules shoots one of Bretts associates, then declaims a passage from the Bible before he, some time later, champion boxer Butch Coolidge accepts a large sum from Marsellus to take a dive in his upcoming match. Vincent and Jules deliver the briefcase, the next day, Vincent purchases heroin from his drug dealer Lance. He shoots up to pass the day, then drives to meet Marselluss wife Mia and they head to a 1950s-themed restaurant and participate in a twist contest, then return to the Wallace house with the trophy. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin, mistakes it for cocaine, snorts it, Vincent rushes her to Lances house, where they revive her with an adrenaline shot to her heart
41.
Reservoir Dogs
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Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 American crime thriller film that depicts the events before and after a botched diamond heist. The film was the debut of writer and director Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino and criminal-turned-author Edward Bunker have minor roles and it incorporates many themes that have become Tarantinos hallmarks, violent crime, pop culture references, profanity, and nonlinear storytelling. The film has become regarded as a classic of independent film and it was named Greatest Independent Film of all Time by Empire. Reservoir Dogs was generally received, and the cast was praised by many critics. Although it was not given much promotion upon release, the became a modest success in the United States after grossing $2.8 million against its $1.2 million budget. The film was successful in the United Kingdom, grossing nearly £6.5 million. A soundtrack was released featuring songs used in the film, which are mostly from the 1970s, eight men eat breakfast at a Los Angeles diner before carrying out a diamond heist. Six of them use aliases, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, the others are mob boss Joe Cabot and his son and underboss Nice Guy Eddie Cabot, who are responsible for planning the job. After the heist, White flees the scene with Orange. At one of Joes warehouses, White and Orange rendezvous with Pink, who believes that the job was a setup and that the police were waiting for them. White informs him that Brown is dead, Blue and Blonde are missing, Pink has hidden the diamonds nearby, he argues with White over whether or not they should get medical attention for Orange. Blonde arrives with a policeman, Marvin Nash. Some time earlier, Blonde meets with the Cabots, Blonde has completed a four-year jail sentence. To reward him for not having given Joes name to the authorities for a lighter sentence, in the present, White and Pink beat Nash for information. Eddie arrives and orders them to retrieve the diamonds and ditch the getaway vehicles, leaving Blonde in charge of Nash, Nash denies knowledge, but Blonde ignores him and resumes the torture, cutting off his ear with a straight razor. He is about to set Nash on fire, but is dead by Orange. Orange explains to Nash that he is a police officer
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John Carpenter
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John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, musician, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked in film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action. Most films in Carpenters career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the exceptions of Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York. However, many of Carpenters films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be viewed as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. Cult classics that Carpenter directed include, Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, Christine, Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, They Live and In the Mouth of Madness. He released his first studio album Lost Themes in 2015, Carpenter was born January 16,1948 in Carthage, New York, the son of Milton Jean and Howard Ralph Carpenter, a music professor. He and his moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1953. In a beginning film course at USC Cinema in 1969, Carpenter wrote and directed an 8-minute short film, the film was rediscovered in the USC archives in 2011 and proved interesting because it revealed elements that would appear in his later film, Halloween. The short film was blown-up to 35mm, sixty prints were made, and his first major film as director, Dark Star, was a science fiction black comedy that he cowrote with Dan OBannon. Carpenters efforts did not go unnoticed as much of Hollywood marveled at his abilities within the confines of a shoestring budget. Carpenters next film was Assault on Precinct 13, a low-budget thriller influenced by the films of Howard Hawks, as with Dark Star, Carpenter was responsible for many aspects of the films creation. He not only wrote, directed and scored it, but also edited the film under the pseudonym John T. Chance. Carpenter has said that he considers Assault on Precinct 13 to have been his first real film because it was the first movie that he shot on a schedule. The film marked the first time Carpenter worked with Debra Hill, Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The film received a reassessment in the United States, where it is now generally regarded as one of the best exploitation films of the 1970s. Carpenter both wrote and directed the Lauren Hutton thriller Someones Watching Me and this TV movie is the tale of a single, working woman who, shortly after arriving in L. A. discovers that she is being stalked. Halloween was a hit and helped give birth to the slasher film genre. Carpenter said of the concept, Halloween night
43.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film)
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Assault on Precinct 13 is a 1976 American independent action thriller film written, directed, scored and edited by John Carpenter. It stars Austin Stoker as an officer who defends a defunct precinct against an attack by a relentless criminal gang, along with Darwin Joston as a convicted murderer who helps him. Laurie Zimmer and Tony Burton co-star as other defenders of the precinct, writer/director Carpenter was approached by J. Stein Kaplan to make a low-budget exploitation film for under $100,000 but with total creative control. Carpenter wrote The Anderson Alamo, inspired by the Howard Hawks Western film Rio Bravo, despite controversy with the MPAA over the explicitly violent and infamous ice cream gunshot scene, the film received an R rating and opened in the United States on November 3,1976. Assault was initially met with mixed reviews and unimpressive box-office returns in the United States and it gained a considerable cult following, reappraisal from critics, and was later re-evaluated in America as one of the best action films of its era and of Carpenters career. A remake appeared in 2005, directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Ethan Hawke, the story takes place on a Saturday in Anderson, a crime-infested ghetto in South Central Los Angeles. Members of a gang known as Street Thunder have recently stolen a large number of assault rifles. The film begins at 3 a. m. that morning, as a team of heavily-armed LAPD officers ambush, later, the gangs four warlords swear a blood oath of revenge, known as a Cholo, against the police and the citizens of Los Angeles. The station is manned by a staff composed of Sergeant Chaney. Across town, two of the Street Thunder warlords, along two other gang members, drive around the neighborhood looking for people to kill. One of the shoots and kills a little girl and the driver of an ice-cream truck. The girls father, Lawson, pursues and kills the warlord, in shock, Lawson is unable to communicate to Bishop or Chaney what has happened to him. Just before this, a prison bus commanded by Starker stops at the station to find help for one of three prisoners being transported to the state prison. The prisoners are Napoleon Wilson, a killer on his way to Death Row, Wells, and Caudell. In seconds, they kill Chaney, the bus driver, Caudell, Starker, Bishop unchains Wilson from Starkers body and puts Wilson and Wells back into the cells. Meanwhile, the members remove all evidence of the skirmish in order to avoid attracting outside attention. Bishop hopes that someone has heard the un-silenced police weapons firing, Wells is chosen to sneak out of the precinct through the sewer line and hot-wire a car, but is killed by a gang member hiding in the backseat. However, two police officers responding to reports of gunfire find the body of a telephone repairman hanging from a pole near the police station
