Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era and one of the most popular directors and producers in film history. Spielberg started in Hollywood directing television and several minor theatrical releases, he became a household name as the director of Jaws, critically and commercially successful and is considered the first summer blockbuster. His subsequent releases focused on science fiction and adventure films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones series, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park are seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood escapist filmmaking. Spielberg transitioned into addressing serious issues in his work with The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, he has adhered to this practice during the 21st century, with Munich, Bridge of Spies, The Post. He co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Studios, where he has served as a producer for several successful films, including the Gremlins, Back to the Future, Men in Black, the Transformers series.
He transitioned into producing several games within the video-game industry. Spielberg is one of the American film industry's most critically successful filmmakers, with praise for his directing talent and versatility, he has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice; some of his movies are among the highest-grossing movies of all-time, while his total work makes him the highest-grossing film director in history. His net worth is estimated to be more than $3 billion. Spielberg was born on December 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, his mother, was a restaurateur and concert pianist, his father, Arnold Spielberg, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His family was Orthodox Jewish. Spielberg's paternal grandparents were Jewish Ukrainian immigrants who settled in Cincinnati in the 1900s. In 1950, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey, when his father took a job with RCA. Three years the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis.
As a child, Spielberg faced difficulty reconciling being an Orthodox Jew with the perception of him by other children he played with. "It isn't something I enjoy admitting," he once said, "but when I was seven, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times." Spielberg said he suffered from acts of anti-Semitic prejudice and bullying: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses, it was horrible." At age 12, he made his first home movie: a train wreck involving his toy Lionel trains. Throughout his early teens, after entering high school, Spielberg continued to make amateur 8 mm "adventure" films. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. Years Spielberg recalled to a magazine interviewer, "My dad's still-camera was broken, so I asked the scoutmaster if I could tell a story with my father's movie camera.
He said yes, I got an idea to do a Western. I got my merit badge; that was how it all started." At age 13, while living in Phoenix, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute war film he titled Escape to Nowhere... using a cast composed of other high school friends. That motivated him to make 15 more amateur 8 mm films; some of the films he cited as early influences that he grew up watching include the Godzilla kaiju film King of the Monsters, which he called "the most masterful of all the dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was happening", as well as titles such as Captains Courageous and Lawrence of Arabia. In 1963, at age 16, Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent film, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight, which would inspire Close Encounters; the film was made for $500, most of which came from his father, was shown in a local cinema for one evening, which earned back its cost. After attending Arcadia High School in Phoenix for three years, his family next moved to Saratoga, where he graduated from Saratoga High School in 1965.
He attained the rank of Eagle Scout. His parents divorced while he was still in school, soon after he graduated Spielberg moved to Los Angeles, staying with his father, his long-term goal was to become a film director. His three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. In Los Angeles, he applied to the University of Southern California's film school, but was turned down because of his "C" grade average, he applied and was admitted to California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity. While still a student, he was offered a small unpaid intern job at Universal Studios with the editing department, he was given the opportunity to make a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute, 35 mm, Amblin', which he wrote and directed. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed by the film, which had won a number of awards, offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract, it made him the youngest director to be signed for a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio.
He subsequently dropped out of college to begin pro
Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation. Sloan, first as a senior executive and as the head of the organization, helped GM grow from the 1920s through the 1950s, decades when concepts such as the annual model change, brand architecture, industrial engineering, automotive design, planned obsolescence transformed the industry, when the industry changed lifestyles and the built environment in America and throughout the world. Sloan wrote My Years with General Motors, in the 1950s. Like Henry Ford, the other "head man" of an automotive colossus, Sloan is remembered today with a complex mixture of admiration for his accomplishments, appreciation for his philanthropy, unease or reproach regarding his attitudes during the interwar period and World War II. Born in New Haven, Sloan studied electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute transferred to and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1895.
While attending MIT he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Sloan became president and owner of Hyatt Roller Bearing, a company that made roller- and ball-bearings, in 1899 when his father and another investor bought out the company from the previous owner. Oldsmobile was Hyatt's first automotive customer, with many other companies soon following suit. In 1916 Hyatt merged with other companies into United Motors Company, which soon became part of General Motors Corporation. Sloan became Vice-President of GM President, Chairman of the Board. In 1934, he established nonprofit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. GM under Sloan became famous for managing diverse operations with financial statistics such as return on investment. Raskob came to GM as an advisor to the du Pont corporation. Sloan is credited with establishing annual styling changes, from which came the concept of planned obsolescence, he established a pricing structure in which Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Cadillac, referred to as the ladder of success, did not compete with each other, buyers could be kept in the GM "family" as their buying power and preferences changed as they aged.
These concepts, along with Ford's resistance to the change in the 1920s, propelled GM to industry-sales leadership by the early 1930s, a position it retained for over 70 years. Under Sloan's direction, GM became the largest industrial enterprise the world had known. In the 1930s GM, long hostile to unionization, confronted its workforce—newly organized and ready for labor rights—in an extended contest for control. Sloan was averse to violence of the sort associated with Henry Ford, he preferred spying, investing in an internal undercover apparatus to gather information and monitor labor union activity. When workers organized the massive Flint Sit-Down Strike in 1936, Sloan found that espionage had little value in the face of such open tactics; the world's first university-based executive education program, the Sloan Fellows, started in 1931 at MIT under the sponsorship of Sloan. A Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with the charge of educating the "ideal manager", the school was renamed in Sloan's honor as the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, one of the world's premier business schools.
Additional grants established a Sloan Institute of Hospital Administration in 1955 at Cornell University-the first two-year graduate program of its type in the US, a Sloan Fellows Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1957, at London Business School in 1965. They became degree programs in 1976. Sloan's name lives on in the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Cancer Center in New York. In 1951, Sloan received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York"; the Alfred P. Sloan Museum, showcasing the evolution of the automobile industry and traveling galleries, is located in Flint, Michigan. Sloan maintained an office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, now known as the GE Building, he retired as GM chairman on April 2, 1956. His memoir and management treatise, My Years with General Motors, was more or less finished around this time, it was published in 1964. Sloan died in 1966. Sloan was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.
S. Business Hall of Fame in 1975; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic non-profit organization established by Sloan in 1934; the Foundation's programs and interests fall into the areas of science and technology, standard of living, economic performance, education and careers in science and technology. For year ending December 31, 2014 the total assets of the Sloan Foundation had a market value of about US$1.876 billion. The Sloan Foundation bankrolled the 1956 Warner Bros. cartoon Yankee Dood It, which promotes mass production. In the late 1940s, the Sloan Foundation made a grant to Harding College in Searcy, AR; the foundation wanted to fund the production of a series of short films that would extol the virtues of capitalism and the American way of life. According to Edwin Black, Sloan was one of the central, behind-the-scenes 1934 founders of the American Liberty League, a political organiz
New York (state)
New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies. With an estimated 19.54 million residents in 2018, it is the fourth most populous state. To distinguish the state from the city with the same name, it is sometimes called New York State; the state's most populous city, New York City, makes up over 40% of the state's population. Two-thirds of the state's population lives in the New York metropolitan area, nearly 40% lives on Long Island; the state and city were both named for the 17th century Duke of York, the future King James II of England. With an estimated population of 8.62 million in 2017, New York City is the most populous city in the United States and the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. The New York metropolitan area is one of the most populous in the world. New York City is a global city, home to the United Nations Headquarters and has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, as well as the world's most economically powerful city.
The next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. The 27th largest U. S. state in land area, New York has a diverse geography. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut and Vermont to the east; the state has a maritime border with Rhode Island, east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the north and Ontario to the northwest. The southern part of the state is in the Atlantic coastal plain and includes Long Island and several smaller associated islands, as well as New York City and the lower Hudson River Valley; the large Upstate New York region comprises several ranges of the wider Appalachian Mountains, the Adirondack Mountains in the Northeastern lobe of the state. Two major river valleys – the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley – bisect these more mountainous regions. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes region and borders Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Niagara Falls.
The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, a popular vacation and tourist destination. New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. French colonists and Jesuit missionaries arrived southward from Montreal for trade and proselytizing. In 1609, the region was visited by Henry Hudson sailing for the Dutch East India Company; the Dutch built Fort Nassau in 1614 at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, where the present-day capital of Albany developed. The Dutch soon settled New Amsterdam and parts of the Hudson Valley, establishing the multicultural colony of New Netherland, a center of trade and immigration. England seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664. During the American Revolutionary War, a group of colonists of the Province of New York attempted to take control of the British colony and succeeded in establishing independence. In the 19th century, New York's development of access to the interior beginning with the Erie Canal, gave it incomparable advantages over other regions of the U.
S. built its political and cultural ascendancy. Many landmarks in New York are well known, including four of the world's ten most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Niagara Falls, Grand Central Terminal. New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability. New York's higher education network comprises 200 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, the United States Military Academy, the United States Merchant Marine Academy, University of Rochester, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the nation and world; the tribes in what is now New York were predominantly Algonquian. Long Island was divided in half between the Wampanoag and Lenape; the Lenape controlled most of the region surrounding New York Harbor.
North of the Lenape was the Mohicans. Starting north of them, from east to west, were three Iroquoian nations: the Mohawk, the original Iroquois and the Petun. South of them, divided along Appalachia, were the Susquehannock and the Erie. Many of the Wampanoag and Mohican peoples were caught up in King Philip's War, a joint effort of many New England tribes to push Europeans off their land. After the death of their leader, Chief Philip Metacomet, most of those peoples fled inland, splitting into the Abenaki and the Schaghticoke. Many of the Mohicans remained in the region until the 1800s, however, a small group known as the Ouabano migrated southwest into West Virginia at an earlier time, they may have merged with the Shawnee. The Mohawk and Susquehannock were the most militaristic. Trying to corner trade with the Europeans, they targeted other tribes; the Mohawk were known for refusing white settlement on their land and banishing any of their people who converted to Christianity. They posed a major threat to the Abenaki and Mohicans, while the Susquehannock conquered the Lenape in the 1600s.
The most devastating event of the century, was the Beaver Wars. From 1640–1680, Iroquoian peoples waged campaigns which extended from modern-day Michigan to Virginia against Algonquian and Siouan tribes, as well as each other; the ai
Film festival
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues in a single city or region. Film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases; some festivals focus on genre or subject matter. A number of film festivals specialise in short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are annual events; some film historians, including Jerry Beck, do not consider film festivals official releases of film. The most prestigious film festivals in the world are considered to be Cannes and Venice; these festivals are sometimes called the "Big Three." The Toronto International Film Festival is North America's most popular festival in terms of attendance. The Venice Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world; the Venice Film Festival in Italy began in 1932, is the oldest film festival still running. Raindance Film Festival is the UK's largest celebration of independent film-making, takes place in London in October.
Mainland Europe's biggest independent film festival is ÉCU The European Independent Film Festival, that started in 2006 and takes place every spring in Paris, France. Edinburgh International Film Festival is the longest running festival in Great Britain. Australia's first and longest running film festival is the Melbourne International Film Festival, followed by the Sydney Film Festival. North America's first and longest running short film festival is the Yorkton Film Festival, established in 1947; the first film festival in the United States was the Columbus International Film & Video Festival known as The Chris Awards, held in 1953. According to the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco, "The Chris Awards one of the most prestigious documentary, educational and informational competitions in the U. S, it was followed four years by the San Francisco International Film Festival, held in March 1957, which emphasized feature-length dramatic films. The festival played a major role in introducing foreign films to American audiences.
Films in the first year included Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali. Today, thousands of film festivals take place around the world—from high-profile festivals such as Sundance Film Festival and Slamdance Film Festival, to horror festivals such as Terror Film Festival, the Park City Film Music Festival, the first U. S. film festival dedicated to honoring music in film. Film Funding competitions such as Writers and Filmmakers were introduced when the cost of production could be lowered and internet technology allowed for the collaboration of film production. Although there are notable for-profit festivals such as SXSW, most festivals operate on a nonprofit membership-based model, with a combination of ticket sales, membership fees, corporate sponsorship constituting the majority of revenue. Unlike other arts nonprofits, film festivals receive few donations from the general public and are organized as nonprofit business associations instead of public charities.
Film industry members have significant curatorial input, corporate sponsors are given opportunities to promote their brand to festival audiences in exchange for cash contributions. Private parties to raise investments for film projects, constitute significant "fringe" events. Larger festivals maintain year-round staffs engaging in community and charitable projects outside festival season. While entries from established filmmakers are considered pluses by the organizers, most festivals require new or unknown filmmakers to pay an entry fee to have their works considered for screening; this is so in larger film festivals, such as the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, South by Southwest, Montreal World Film Festival, smaller "boutique" festivals such as the Miami International Film Festival, British Urban Film Festival in London and Mumbai Women's International Film Festival in India. On the other hand, some festivals—usually those accepting fewer films, not attracting as many "big names" in their audiences as do Sundance and Telluride—require no entry fee.
Rotterdam Film Festival, Mumbai Film Festival, many smaller film festivals in the United States, are examples. The Portland International Film Festival charges an entry fee, but waives it for filmmakers from the Northwestern United States, some others with regional focuses have similar approaches. Several film festival submission portal websites exist to streamline filmmakers' entries into multiple festivals, they provide databases of festival calls for entry and offer filmmakers a convenient "describe once, submit many" service. The core tradition of film festivals is competition, that is, the consideration of films with the intention of judging which are most deserving of various forms of recognition. In contrast to those films, some festivals may screen some films without treating them as part of the competition; the three most prestigious film festivals are considered to be Cannes, B
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director and screenwriter. His feature films have garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including five Academy Awards. In 2006, he became the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing for Babel. In 2015, he won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay for Birdman or; the following year, he won a second Academy Award for Best Director for The Revenant, making him the third director to win back to back Academy Awards, the first since 1950. Iñárritu was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for his virtual reality project Flesh and Sand in 2017, the first time it had been awarded since 1995. In 2019, Alejandro González Iñárritu was named the President of the jury of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival Iñárritu was born in Mexico City, the youngest of seven children to Luz María Iñárritu and Héctor González Gama.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a cargo ship at the ages of 16 and 18, Iñárritu worked his way across Europe and Africa. He has noted that these early travels as a young man have had a great influence on him as a filmmaker; the settings of his films have been in the places he visited during this period. After his travels, Iñárritu returned to Mexico City and majored in communications at Universidad Iberoamericana, one of the most prestigious private universities in Mexico. Iñárritu began his career in 1984 as a radio host at the Mexican radio station WFM, the country's most popular rock music station, where he "pieced together playlists into a loose narrative arc". During his time in radio he wrote and broadcast small audio stories and storytelling promos, that would become a reference for generations of audio producers, radio Dj's and broadcasters as to how to use radio as a more creative media outlet, he became the youngest producer for Televisa, the largest mass media company in Latin America.
From 1987 to 1989, he composed music for six Mexican feature films. During this time, Iñárritu became acquainted with Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga, beginning their screenwriting collaborations. Iñárritu has stated that he believes music has had a bigger influence on him as an artist than film itself. In the early 1990s, Iñárritu created a production company, with Raul Olvera in Mexico. Under Z Films, he started writing and directing short films and advertisements. Making the final transition into TV and film directing, he studied under well-known theater director Ludwik Margules, as well as Judith Weston in Los Angeles. In 1995, Iñárritu wrote and directed his first TV pilot for Z Films, called Detrás del dinero, or Behind the Money, starring Miguel Bosé. In 2000, Iñárritu directed his first feature film Amores perros, co-written with Guillermo Arriaga. Amores perros explored Mexican society in Mexico City told via three intertwining stories. In 2000, Amores perros won the Critics' Week Grand Prize.
It was the film debut of actor Gael García Bernal, who would appear in Babel and the Iñárritu-produced Mexican film Rudo y Cursi. Amores perros was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. After the success of Amores Perros, Iñárritu and Arriaga revisited the intersected-stories structure of Amores perros in Iñárritu's second feature film, 21 Grams; the film starred Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.. It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, where Penn received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. At the 76th Academy Awards, Del Toro and Watts received nominations for their performances. Iñárritu embarked on Babel, co-written with Arriaga. Babel comprises four interrelated stories set in Morocco, the United States, Japan, in four different languages; the film stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Gael Garcia Bernal, Rinko Kikuchi and Kōji Yakusho. The rest of the cast comprised non-professional actors; the film competed at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where Iñárritu received the Best Director Award, becoming the first Mexican-born director to win the award.
Babel received seven nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Gustavo Santaolalla, the film's composer, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score; the film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama in 2007. Iñárritu became the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Directing and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing. After this third feature film collaboration with writing partner Arriaga, Iñárritu and he professionally parted ways, following Iñárritu's barring of Arriaga from the set during filming. Arriaga told the Los Angeles Times in 2009, "It had to come to an end, but I still respect." In 2010, Iñárritu directed and produced Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem, written by Iñárritu, Armando Bó Jr. and Nicolás Giacobone. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2010. Bardem went on to win Best Actor at Cannes. Biutiful is Iñárritu's first film in his native Spanish since his debut feature Amores perros.
The film was nominated at the 2011 Golden Globes for Best Foreign Language Film, at the BAFTA Awards for Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Actor. For the second time in his career, Iñárritu's film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
Danny Boyle
Daniel Francis Boyle is an English film director, producer and theatre director, known for his work on films including Shallow Grave, Trainspotting with its 2017 sequel, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Steve Jobs. His debut film Shallow Grave won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film; the British Film Institute ranked Trainspotting the 10th greatest British film of the 20th century. Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, the most successful British film of the decade, was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won eight, including the Academy Award for Best Director, he won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. In 2012, Boyle was the artistic director for Isles of Wonder, the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, he declined. In 2014, it was announced. In February 2017, Boyle announced his bid to help launch a £30 million film and media school in Manchester, stating: "This is just what Manchester needs and I am delighted to be part of the International Screen School Manchester."
Danny Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, England, about 6 miles north of Manchester city centre, to Irish parents from County Galway. Although he now describes himself as a "spiritual atheist", he was brought up in a working class Catholic family. Boyle was an altar boy for eight years and his mother had the priesthood in mind for him, but aged 14 he was persuaded by a priest not to transfer from school to a seminary. Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don't know, but quite soon after, I started doing drama. And there's a real connection, I think. All these directors – Martin Scorsese, John Woo, M. Night Shyamalan – they were all meant to be priests. There's something theatrical about it. It's the same job – poncing around, telling people what to think, he studied at Thornleigh Salesian College in Bolton, studied English and Drama at University College of North Wales. Upon leaving school he began his career at the Joint Stock Theatre Company, before moving onto the Royal Court Theatre in 1982 where he directed The Genius by Howard Brenton and Saved by Edward Bond.
He directed five productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1987, Boyle started working in television as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland where he produced, amongst other TV films, Alan Clarke's controversial Elephant before becoming a director on shows such as Arise And Go Now, Not Even God Is Wise Enough, For The Greater Good and two episodes of Inspector Morse; these were Cherubim and Seraphim. Boyle was responsible for the BBC Two series Mr. Wroe's Virgins in 1993. In between the films The Beach and 28 Days Later Boyle directed two TV films for the BBC in 2001 – Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise and Strumpet. On 14 November 2010, he directed a one night play at the Old Vic Theatre titled The Children's Monologues with Sir Ben Kingsley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Gemma Arterton and Eddie Redmayne as the cast. In 2011 he directed Frankenstein for the National Theatre; this production was broadcast to cinemas as a part of National Theatre Live on 17 March 2011. He has appeared on Top Gear and drove the fastest wet lap at that time.
Boyle was artistic director for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. Over the years, Olympic opening ceremonies have become multimillion-pound theatrical shows, which have become known for their extravagance and pageantry to celebrate the start of the largest multi-sport event in the world; the ceremony, entitled Isles of Wonder, charted aspects of British culture, including the Industrial Revolution and British contributions to literature, music and technology. Reception to the ceremony was positive, both nationally in the United Kingdom and internationally. In December 2012 it was reported that Boyle turned down a knighthood in the New Year Honours list, he told BBC Radio 4 "I'm proud to be an equal citizen and I think that's what the opening ceremony was about." Boyle's love for film began with his first viewing of Apocalypse Now: It had eviscerated my brain, completely. I was an impressionable twenty-one-year-old guy from the sticks. My brain watered with great culture, you know, as art is meant to do.
It had been sandblasted by the power of cinema. And that's why cinema, despite everything we try to do, it remains a young man's medium in terms of audience; the first film Boyle directed was Shallow Grave. The film was the most commercially successful British film of 1995, won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film, led to the production of Trainspotting, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. Working with writer John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald, Shallow Grave earned Boyle the Best Newcomer Award from the 1996 London Film Critics Circle. Shallow Grave and Trainspotting caused critics to claim that Boyle had revitalised British cinema in the early'90s; the BFI ranked Trainspotting the 10th greatest British film of the 20th century. Boyle declined an offer to direct the fourth film of the Alien franchise, instead making A Life Less Ordinary using British finance. Boyle's next project was an adaptation of the cult novel The Beach. Filmed in Thailand with Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role, casting of the film led to a feud with Ewan McGregor, star of his first three films.
He collaborated with author Alex Garland on the post-apocalyptic hor
