Heat is a 1995 American crime film written and directed by Michael Mann, starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer. De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a seasoned professional at robberies, Pacino plays Lt. Vincent Hanna, an LAPD robbery-homicide detective tracking down Neil's crew after a botched heist leaves three security guards dead; the story is based on the former Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson's pursuit during the 1960s of a criminal named McCauley, after whom De Niro's character is named. Heat is a remake by Mann of an unproduced television series he had worked on, the pilot of, released as the TV movie L. A. Takedown in 1989. Heat was a critical and commercial success, grossing $67 million in the United States and a total $187 million worldwide against a $60 million budget. Professional thief Neil McCauley lives by a personal code: have nothing in your life you cannot leave behind if you need to escape the police, he and his crew – Chris Shiherlis, Michael Cheritto and Trejo – hire Waingro to help rob $1.6 million in bearer bonds from an armored car.
During the heist, Waingro impulsively kills a guard. A second guard is shot. Since they are now all guilty of felony murder, McCauley gives the order to execute the remaining guard so as not to leave an eyewitness, but he is incensed with Waingro for the needless escalation. McCauley's crew prepares to kill Waingro, but are distracted by a passing police cruiser, he escapes. McCauley begins a relationship with Eady, his fence, suggests he sell the stolen bonds back to their original owner, money launderer Roger Van Zant, who could profit by claiming the insurance on the bonds. Van Zant instructs his men to ambush McCauley at the meeting. McCauley survives the ambush, killing both of Van Zant's men, vows revenge against Van Zant, threatening him by telephone. LAPD Major Crimes Unit Lieutenant Vincent Hanna investigates the robbery with Sergeant Drucker and Detectives Casals and Schwartz. An informant connects Cheritto to the robbery, Hanna's team surveils him. Hanna's team stakes out a precious metals depository.
Hanna lets them go so he can continue gathering evidence, rather than arrest them on a minor breaking and entering charge. Despite the increased police surveillance, McCauley's crew agrees to one last bank robbery worth $12.2 million. Hanna invites him to coffee, they talk about their commitment to their limitations of their personal lives. Hanna says that his third marriage, to Justine, is near failure, McCauley confides that he is isolated, they both acknowledge. When Hanna returns to his office, he learns. Waingro, having made a deal with Van Zant to help eliminate McCauley's crew, tortures Trejo for information. Acting on a tip from Van Zant's bodyguard Hugh Benny, the LAPD intercept the crew as they are leaving the bank, resulting in a massive shootout in Downtown Los Angeles. Bosko is killed and many police officers are killed or wounded, while McCauley loses Cheritto and his alternate driver Donald Breedan, with Shiherlis wounded. McCauley arrives at Trejo's house to find Trejo's wife murdered.
A dying Trejo reveals Waingro's involvement. Eady realizes that McCauley is a criminal but agrees to flee the country with him. Shiherlis attempts to reconnect with his wife Charlene, helping the LAPD in a sting operation to capture him, she changes her mind and helps him escape, albeit without a way to keep their son Dominic in his life. Hanna finds his stepdaughter Lauren unresponsive in the bathtub after a suicide attempt and rushes her to the hospital, he and Justine comfort each other after learning. Meanwhile, McCauley drives to the airport with Eady to flee to New Zealand, but learns of Waingro's location and abandons his usual caution to seek revenge; the LAPD learns of McCauley's arrival at Waingro's hotel. McCauley kills Waingro, but before he can return to Eady and escape, he is spotted by Hanna and flees alone on foot. Hanna shoots him, mortally wounding McCauley. Hanna takes his hand as McCauley succumbs to his injuries. De Niro was the first cast member to get the film script, showing it to Pacino who wanted to be a part of the film.
De Niro believed Heat was a "very good story, had a particular feel to it, a reality and authenticity." Xander Berkeley had played Waingro in L. A. Takedown, an earlier rendition of Mann's script for Heat, he was cast in a minor role in Heat. In 2016, Pacino revealed that his character was under the influence of cocaine throughout the whole film. In order to prepare the actors for the roles of McCauley's crew, Mann took Kilmer, Sizemore and De Niro to Folsom State Prison to interview actual career criminals. While researching her role, Ashley Judd met several former prostitutes. Heat is based on the true story of Neil McCauley, a calculating criminal and ex-Alcatraz inmate, tracked down by Detective Chuck Adamson in 1964. In 1961, McCauley was transferred from Alcatraz to McNeil; when he was released, in 1962, he began planning new heists. With Michael Parille and William Pinkerton, they used bolt cutters and drills to burgle a manufacturing company of diamond drill bits, a scene, recreated in the film.
Detective Chuck Adamson, upon whom Al Pacino's character is based, began keeping tabs on McCauley's crew around this time, knowing that he had become active again. The two met for coffee onc
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post–World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Böll was born in Cologne, Germany, to a Catholic, pacifist family that opposed the rise of Nazism, he refused to join the Hitler Youth during the 1930s. He was apprenticed to a bookseller before studying German at the University of Cologne. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, he served in Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union. In 1942, Böll married Annemarie Cech. During his war service, Böll was contracted typhoid, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. After the war he returned to Cologne and began working in his family's cabinet shop and, for one year, worked in a municipal statistical bureau, an experience which he did not enjoy and which he left in order to take the risk of becoming a writer instead. Böll became a full-time writer at the age of 30, his first novel, Der Zug war pünktlich, was published in 1949. He was invited to the 1949 meeting of the Group 47 circle of German authors and his work was deemed to be the best presented in 1951.
Many other novels, short stories, radio plays and essay collections followed. Böll was successful and was lauded on a number of occasions. In 1953 he was awarded the Culture Prize of German Industry, the Southern German Radio Prize and the German Critics' Prize. In 1954 he received the prize of the Tribune de Paris. In 1955 he was given the French prize for the best foreign novel. In 1958 he gained the Eduard von der Heydt prize of the city of Wuppertal and the prize of the Bavarian Academy of Arts. In 1959 he was given the Great Art Prize of the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia, the Literature Prize of the city of Cologne, was elected to the Academy of Science and the Arts in Mainz. In 1960 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and gained the Charles Veillon Prize. In 1967 he was given the Georg Büchner Prize. In 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature".
He was given a number of honorary awards up to his death, such as the membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974, the Ossietzky Medal of 1974. Böll was President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and the oldest human rights organisation, between 1971–1973, his work has been translated into more than 30 languages, he remains one of Germany's most read authors. His best-known works are Billiards at Half-past Nine, And Never Said a Word, The Bread of Those Early Years, The Clown, Group Portrait with Lady, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, The Safety Net. Despite the variety of themes and content in his work, there are certain recurring patterns: many of his novels and stories describe intimate and personal life struggling to sustain itself against the wider background of war, political divisions, profound economic and social transition. In a number of his books there are protagonists who are stubborn and eccentric individualists opposed to the mechanisms of the state or of public institutions.
The 1963 publication of The Clown was met with polemics in the press for its negative portrayal of the Catholic Church and the CDU party. Böll was devoted to Catholicism but deeply critical of aspects of it. In particular, he was unable to forget the Concordat of July 1933 between the Vatican and the Nazis, signed by the future Pope Pius XII, which helped confer international legitimacy on the regime at an early stage in its development. Böll's liberal views on religion and social issues inspired the wrath of conservatives in Germany, his 1972 article Soviel Liebe auf einmal which accused the tabloid Bild of falsified journalism, was in turn retitled, at the time of publishing and against Böll's wishes, by Der Spiegel, the imposed title was used as a pretext to accuse Böll of sympathy with terrorism. This particular criticism was driven in large part by his repeated insistence upon the importance of due process and the correct and fair application of the law in the case of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
The conservative press attacked Böll's 1972 Nobel Prize, arguing that it was awarded only to "liberals and left-wing radicals." Böll was rooted in his hometown of Cologne, with its strong Roman Catholicism and its rather rough and drastic sense of humour. In the immediate post-war period, he was preoccupied with memories of the War and the effect it had—materially and psychologically—on the lives of ordinary people, he made them the heroes in his writing. His Catholicism was important to his work in ways that can be compared to writers such as Graham Greene and Georges Bernanos though, as noted earlier, his perspective was a critical and challenging one towards Catholicism rather than a passive one, he was affected by the Nazis' takeover of Cologne, as they exiled him in his own town. Additionally, the destruction of Cologne as a result of the Allied bombing during World War II scarred him for life. Architecturally, the newly-rebuilt Cologne, prosperous once more, left him indifferent. (Böll seemed to be a pupil of William Morris – he let it be known that he w
George G. Weedon was a British gymnast who competed at two Summer Olympic Games. In 1948 in London he participated in the Men's Individual All-Around, Team All-Around, Floor Exercise, Horse Vault, Parallel Bars, Horizontal Bar and Pommelled Horse, placing 12th out of 16 nations in the team competition, no higher than 38th individually. In 1952 in Helsinki he competed in the same events, finishing 21st out of 23 countries in the team tournament and no higher than 116th in the individual ones. A lifelong friend was fellow competitor Frank Turner. Weedon was born in Richmond and was a member of the Regent Street Polytechnic Gymnastics Club, he married another British Olympic gymnast, Joan Airey, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. One grandchild, Lindsey Weedon, was a British representative modern pentathlete. Before and after retiring from active competition, he taught physical education at various schools including, from 1950 to 1971, the John Lyon School in Harrow on the Hill, MiddlesexIn 2010 he was interviewed by the BBC about his experiences at the 1948 Games, in anticipation of the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London, professed his belief that the city had not been properly prepared to host the earlier edition, due to its insufficient infrastructure.
He was the subject of Walk Tall, by filmmaker Kate Sullivan. On 11 July 2012 he was a torch bearer during the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay. Weedon died in February 2017 after a short illness. Walk Tall, a short film by Kate Sullivan featuring Weedon 1948 Olympic Gymnastics Hero George Weedon - video made by British Gymnastics in 2012. George G. Weedon obituary at British Gymnastics