Chris Roberts (game developer)
Chris Roberts is an American video game designer, film producer and film director. He created the Wing Commander series while at Origin Systems and is now working on the crowdfunded space simulator Star Citizen. Born in Redwood City, California in the United States, Roberts grew up in England, he attended the same school as computer music composer Martin Galway. As a teenager, he created several video games for the BBC Micro, including Stryker's Run and King Kong. Roberts returned to the United States in 1986, he found a job at Origin Systems, where he created Times of Lore, published in 1988. The game's interface had a strong influence on other Origin products such as the popular Ultima series. A similar game system was used in Roberts's next release for Bad Blood. Wing Commander was published in 1990 and was acclaimed. Wing Commander soon became Origin's most successful product. Roberts wasn't as involved in the sequel Wing Commander II, which he only produced, he instead concentrated on Strike Commander.
First shown to the public at Summer CES 1991, the project suffered from numerous delays and was not released until 1993. He returned to Wing Commander soon after, devising the original concept for the spin-off Wing Commander: Privateer and being more involved in Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV. For these sequels, Roberts directed the live-action cinematic scenes. Roberts's major role in developing the Wing Commander games led Next Generation to name him one of their "75 Most Important People in the Games Industry of 1995". Following the traditions of Origin Systems, Chris Roberts's residence at the outskirts of Austin, Texas was named "Commander's Ranch", a reference to the Wing Commander series. Roberts left Origin in 1996 and founded Digital Anvil along with EA PC national sales manager Marten Gerald Davies, Tony Zurovec, Eric Peterson, John Miles & his brother Erin Roberts; the fledgling studio set up shop in Austin and for several years worked inking a publishing deal with Microsoft in 1997.
Roberts had stated. The 1999 feature film release of Wing Commander directed by Roberts himself, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and featuring visual effects from Digital Anvil failed to attract either critical praise or financial success. Digital Anvil's first finished game was Starlancer, released to a favorable critical reception in 2000. Developed jointly between Warthog and Digital Anvil, the game was produced by the Roberts brothers, Eric Peterson; the company was acquired by Microsoft soon after, who sold two of Digital Anvil's projects Conquest Frontier Wars led by Eric Peterson, Loose Cannon led by Tony Zurovec to Ubisoft. Roberts left the company after the acquisition, abandoning the director position of his ambitious project Freelancer, although he remained with the game in a consulting role for a while; the game was regarded as vaporware due to its promised release date of 2001 however it was released in 2003 with a markedly different feature set than the initial plans. It was received favorably with a Metacritic score of 85%.
After leaving Digital Anvil, Roberts founded Point of No Return Entertainment, planning to produce films and games. However, no projects materialized from Point of No Return. Roberts founded Ascendant Pictures in 2002 and served as a producer for a number of Hollywood productions including Edison, Timber Falls, Who's Your Caddy?, The Big White, Ask the Dust, Lucky Number Slevin and Lord of War. In 2005 actor Kevin Costner sued Ascendant Pictures for breach of contract on an unreleased film; the company was acquired by Bigfoot Entertainment in 2010. In 2011, Chris Roberts founded Cloud Imperium Games, together with his business partner and long-time international media attorney Ortwin Freyermuth, to work on a new game. In October, 2012, Cloud Imperium Games launched a crowdfunding campaign on their web-page to produce a space sim game, Star Citizen, added a Kickstarter campaign in conjunction. By November, 2012, they had earned $6,238,563, surpassing all stretch goals set for the campaigns, breaking video game industry crowdfunding records.
Chris Roberts had stated that if at least $23 million could be raised over the course of the crowdfunding campaign, no outside investors' or developers' funding would be required. This goal was reached October 18, 2013. Video gamesFilms Chris Roberts at MobyGames Chris Roberts on IMDb
Andrew Niccol
Andrew M. Niccol is a New Zealand screenwriter and director, he wrote and directed Gattaca, Lord of War, In Time, The Host, Good Kill. He wrote and co-produced The Truman Show, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1999 and won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay, his films tend to explore social and political issues, as well as artificial realities or simulations. His film Good Kill was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. Niccol was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, grew up in Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School beginning in 1973, he left New Zealand at age 21 and began directing TV ads in London, which he did for more than ten years before his directorial debut, Gattaca. He was married to Susan Grace Jennifer Sullivan from 1991 to 2002, with whom he has one child, Mia Grace Ella born in December 2000. During production of S1m0ne, he met model and actress Rachel Roberts, with whom he has two children, born in 2003 and Ava, born in 2008.
Niccol has directed the films Gattaca, Lord of War, In Time, The Host, Good Kill. He has directed a short film entitled The Minutes, a documentary-esque, narrative tie-in to In Time that describes in more detail the world and characters from the film. For his directorial debut and first film, Gattaca, he won a Best Film award from the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival and both a Special Jury Prize and the Fun Trophy from the Gérardmer Film Festival. For his film Lord of War, he received a Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking from the National Board of Review. Niccol's breakthrough screenplay was his script for the film The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey, he served as a producer on the film. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globes nomination for Best Screenplay in 1999 and won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay, a Saturn Award for Best Writing or Best Writer, an Awards Circuit Community Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Motion Picture, a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, an Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay.
In 1999, Niccol received the ALFS Award for "Screenwriter of the Year" from the London Critics Circle Film Awards for his screenwriting work on the screenplays of The Truman Show and Gattaca. Niccol has written for all the films that he has directed, including Gattaca, Lord of War, In Time, The Host, Good Kill. Out of the films he has written and directed, he has produced S1m0ne, Lord of War, In Time, Good Kill and Anon, he wrote and came up with the story for the film The Terminal, directed by Steven Spielberg. He served as an executive producer on the film. Andrew Niccol on IMDb Andrew Niccol interview - Contactmusic.com
Jared Leto
Jared Joseph Leto is an American actor, singer and director. After starting his career with television appearances in the early 1990s, Leto achieved recognition for his role as Jordan Catalano on the television series My So-Called Life, he made his film debut in How to Make an American Quilt and received critical praise for his performance in Prefontaine. Leto played supporting roles in The Thin Red Line, Fight Club and American Psycho, as well as the lead role in Urban Legend, earned critical acclaim after portraying heroin addict Harry Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream, he began focusing on his music career, returning to acting with Panic Room, Lord of War, Lonely Hearts, Chapter 27, Mr. Nobody. In 2012, he directed the documentary film Artifact, he appeared in Suicide Squad and Blade Runner 2049. Leto's performance as a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club, earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor. Leto is considered to be a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles.
He remains in character for the duration of the shooting schedules of his films to the point of adversely affecting his health. He is known to be selective about his film roles. Leto is the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter for Thirty Seconds to Mars, a band he formed in 1998 in Los Angeles, with his older brother Shannon Leto, their debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars, was released to positive reviews, but only to limited commercial success. The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie, their following releases, This Is War, Love, Lust and Dreams, received further critical and commercial success. As of September 2014, the band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide. Leto has directed music videos, including the MTV Video Music Award–winning "The Kill", "Kings and Queens", "Up in the Air". Jared Joseph Leto was born on December 1971, in Bossier City, Louisiana, to Constance Leto, his mother has Cajun ancestry. "Leto" is the surname of his stepfather.
His parents divorced when he was a child, he and his older brother, Shannon Leto, lived with their mother and their maternal grandparents and William Lee Metrejon. His father remarried, committed suicide when Jared was eight. Leto moved with his family from Louisiana to different cities around the country. "My mom's father was in the Air Force," Leto has explained, "so moving around a lot was a normal way of life." Leto has two younger half-brothers from his father's second marriage. Constance encouraged her sons to get involved in the arts. Leto stated he "was raised around a lot of artists, photographers and people that were in theater," adding that "Just having the art communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line, drawn. We celebrated creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth." Leto started playing music with his brother at an early age and his first musical instrument was a broken-down piano. After dropping out in the 10th grade, Leto decided to return and focus on his education at the private Emerson Preparatory School in Washington, D.
C. He was interested in large-scale visual art and enrolled at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. After developing an interest in filmmaking, he transferred to the School of Visual Arts in New York City. While he was a student there, he starred in his own short film, Crying Joy. In 1992, Leto moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in directing, intending to take acting roles on the side, he found minor roles on television shows but his first break came in 1994, after he was cast opposite Claire Danes as Jordan Catalano, her love interest, in the short-lived but well-reviewed ABC teen drama My So-Called Life. The show was praised for its portrayal of adolescence and gained a strong cult following, despite being canceled after only one season; the same year, he made his television film debut starring alongside Alicia Silverstone in Cool and the Crazy, landed his first film role in the 1995 drama How to Make an American Quilt. He co-starred with Christina Ricci in The Last of the High Kings and got a supporting role in Switchback.
In 1997, Leto starred in the biopic Prefontaine in which he played the role of Olympic hopeful Steve Prefontaine. For the preparation of the role, Leto immersed himself in the runner's life, training for six weeks and meeting with members of his family and friends, he bore a striking resemblance to the real Prefontaine adopting the athlete's voice and upright running style. His portrayal received positive reviews from critics and is considered his breakthrough role. Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle noted; the film was poorly received by most movie critics, however, it was a financial success. The same year, Terrence Malick cast Leto for a supporting role in the war film The Thin Red Line alongside Sean Penn and Adrien Brody, it garnered positive reviews and was a moderate success in the bo
Bridget Moynahan
Kathryn Bridget Moynahan is an American actress and model. Moynahan is known for her role in the police drama Blue Bloods, she graduated from Longmeadow High School in Massachusetts in 1989, began pursuing a career in modeling. She appeared in department-store catalogs and magazines, after doing television commercials, she began taking acting lessons. Moynahan made her television debut in a guest appearance in the comedy series Sex and the City in 1999, where she had a recurring role as Natasha, she made her feature film debut in Coyote Ugly. She was cast in a supporting role in Serendipity. Moynahan was featured in films The Sum of All Fears, The Recruit, I, Lord of War, Grey Matters, Noise and Beezus, John Wick, The Journey Home and John Wick: Chapter 2, she starred in the ABC television series Six Degrees, which premiered in September 2006, but was taken off the schedule after just eight episodes aired. Moynahan has starred as an assistant district attorney in the CBS drama Blue Bloods since September 2010, in its ninth season.
Kathryn Bridget Moynahan was born on April 1971, in Binghamton, New York. She is the daughter of Irish Americans Mary Bridget, a former school teacher, Edward Bradley Moynahan, a scientist and former administrator at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Moynahan has two brothers and Sean, her family moved to Longmeadow, Massachusetts when Moynahan was around seven years old, where she attended Longmeadow High School, was captain of the girls' soccer and lacrosse teams, graduating in 1989. She has said. After graduating from high school, Moynahan pursued a modeling career despite admitting she had never read fashion magazines growing up, she had accompanied a friend to a modeling audition in Springfield and was signed by the modeling agency instead of her friend. She began her career appearing in department-store catalogs in Springfield, during which time she attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Moynahan moved to New York at age 18 and, a year began appearing in magazines such as Vogue and Elle, on covers of other widely-known magazines.
Her cover highlights include Vogue Paris and Glamour. In an interview given in July 2004, discussing her early work, said: "It was a crazy world that paid a lot of money. I liked being a model, but I knew it would never last, so I looked into acting."During that time, she began doing soap and shampoo commercials, in addition to taking acting and art classes. She studied acting at the Caymichael Patten Studio in New York, in 1999, made her television debut as Natasha in HBO's romantic comedy Sex and the City, she had a recurring role in the show, until the divorce of her character from Mr. Big; the following year, she appeared including parts in In the Weeds and Whipped. Moynahan made her feature-film debut in the 2000 comedy-drama Coyote Ugly as Rachel, a bartender/dancer in a wild New York bar, a role, considered Moynahan's breakthrough, she had accepted the role because she "thought it was interesting that the whole movie revolved around five women…and my character was so strong and independent".
The film garnered unfavorable critical reviews, but was a box-office success, earning $133 million worldwide. Her next role was a supporting role in 2001 film Serendipity as Hally, the fiancée of John Cusack's character. Moynahan was cast opposite Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman in the action film The Sum of All Fears, based on Tom Clancy's book of the same name. Moynahan plays a love interest for Affleck's Jack Ryan. Dave Larsen of the Dayton Daily News reported that the subplot involving Moynahan and Affleck was "the film's weakest point"; the Sum of All Fears received ambivalent reviews, but was a commercial success, earning $193 million at the box office. Her next role was as a CIA trainee in The Recruit; the movie was not well received, with Mike Clark of USA Today commenting that The Recruit is "less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend". In 2004, Moynahan starred alongside Will Smith in Alex Proyas' science-fiction movie I, loosely based on Isaac Asimov's short-story collection of the same name.
Moynahan portrays a specialist in robot psychology. Upon release, I, Robot received mixed reviews. Daniel Neman of Richmond Times-Dispatch, who disliked the film, concluded that she "turns in an able performance as Dr. Calvin, the convenient character." With revenue of $347 million worldwide, the film remains Moynahan's most commercially successful picture to date. Her next movie was in 2005's Lord of War, a political crime thriller, as Ava Fontaine Orlov, the wife of Nicolas Cage's character. In 2006, Maxim named her number 96 on its annual "Hot 100" list. In September 2006, away from film, Moynahan starred as Whitney Crane in the ABC television drama series Six Degrees, co-starring alongside Jay Hernandez, Erika Christensen, Hope Davis, Dorian Missick, Campbell Scott; the series centered on six residents of New York City and their respective relationships and connections with one another, based on the idea of six degrees of separation. It debuted on September 20, 2006, was watched by 13.3 million viewers.
Six Degrees debuted to varied reception, with David Hinckley of the New York Daily News writing, "In theory, it's an intriguing concept for a series. But in practice, Six Degrees doesn't work at all in drawing you in at the s
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Kim Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and producer. During his early career, Cage starred in a variety of films such as Valley Girl, Racing with the Moon, Peggy Sue Got Married, Raising Arizona, Vampire's Kiss, Wild at Heart, Fire Birds, Honeymoon in Vegas, Red Rock West. Cage received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as an alcoholic Hollywood writer in Leaving Las Vegas before coming to the attention of wider audiences with mainstream films, such as The Rock, Face/Off, Con Air and City of Angels, he earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. He directed the film Sonny, for which he was nominated for Grand Special Prize at Deauville Film Festival. Cage owns the production company Saturn Films and has produced films such as Shadow of the Vampire and The Life of David Gale, he has appeared in National Treasure, Lord of War, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Kick-Ass.
Films such as Ghost Rider and Knowing were box office successes. In the 2010s, he has starred in The Croods, Joe and Dad, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Love, Antosha. Cage was born in Long Beach, California, to August Coppola, a professor of literature, Joy Vogelsang, a dancer and choreographer, he was raised in a Catholic family. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of German and Polish ancestry, his paternal grandparents were composer Carmine Coppola and actress Italia Pennino, his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata. Through his father, he is a nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and of actress Talia Shire, the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are New York radio personality Marc "The Cope" Coppola and director Christopher Coppola, he attended Beverly Hills High School, known for its many alumni who became entertainers.
He aspired to act from an early age and attended UCLA School of Theater and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy, he said. I saw him in Rebel Without a East of Eden. Nothing affected me—no rock song, no classical music—the way Dean affected me in Eden, it blew my mind. I was like,'That's what I want to do'."At fifteen years old he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him "I'll show you acting." His outburst was met with "silence in the car". By this stage of his career, Coppola had directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro. To avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola's nephew, he changed his name early in his career to Nicolas Cage, inspired in part by the Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage. Since his film debut with a minor role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, opposite Judge Reinhold and Sean Penn, Cage has appeared in a wide range of films, both mainstream and offbeat.
He auditioned for the role of Dallas Winston in his uncle's film The Outsiders, based on S. E. Hinton lost to Matt Dillon, he was in Coppola's films Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married. Other Cage roles included appearances in the acclaimed 1987 romantic-comedy film Moonstruck starring Cher. Cage has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, winning once for his performance as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas, his other nomination was for his portrayal of real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman's fictional twin Donald in Adaptation. Despite these successes, most of his lower-profile films have performed poorly at the box office compared to his mainstream action/adventure roles; the suspense thriller 8mm is considered a cult film. He took the lead role in the 2001 film Captain Corelli's Mandolin and learned to play the mandolin from scratch for the part, he made his directorial debut with 2002's Sonny. In 2005, two films he headlined, Lord of War and The Weather Man, failed to find a significant audience despite nationwide releases and good reviews for his performances.
Poor reviews for The Wicker Man resulted in low box office sales. The much criticized Ghost Rider, based on the Marvel Comics character, fared better, earning more than $45 million during its opening weekend and over $208 million worldwide through the weekend ending on March 25, 2007. In 2007, he starred in Next, which shared the concept of a glimpse into an alternate timeline with Cage's film, The Family Man. Most of Cage's movies that have achieved financial success were in the action/adventure genre. In his second-highest-grossing film to date, National Treasure, he plays an eccentric historian who goes on a dangerous adventure to find treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Other action hits include The Rock, in which Cage plays a young FBI chemical weapons expert who infiltrates Alcatraz Island in the hope of neutralizing a terrorist threat, Face/Off, a John Woo film where he plays both a hero and a villain, World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's film about the Se
Arms trafficking
Arms trafficking known as gunrunning, is the trafficking of contraband weapons and ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies depending on local and national laws; the 1999 Report of the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms provides a more refined and precise definition, which has become internationally accepted. This distinguishes between small arms, which are weapons designed for personal use, light weapons, which are designed for use by several persons serving as a unit. Ammunition and explosives form an integral part of small arms and light weapons used in conflict. Although arms trafficking is widespread in regions of political turmoil, it is not limited to such areas, for example, in South Asia, an estimated 63 million guns have been trafficked into India and Pakistan; the suppression of gunrunning is one of the areas of increasing interest in the context of international law. Examples of past and current gunrunning include: Iran–Contra affair Larne gun-running Provisional Irish Republican Army arms importationIn the United States, the term "Iron Pipeline" is sometimes used to describe Interstate Highway 95 and its connector highways as a corridor for arms trafficking into New York City.
The civil war in Sierra Leone lasted from 1991-2002, left 75,000 people dead. Arms Trafficking played a significant role in this conflict. Both small and large arms were shipped to all sides in both Sierra Leone, Liberia from outside actors. Small arms being any handheld gun and other items such as grenades, knives, etc. Large arms indicates large amounts of explosives, light machine guns, anti tank missiles, planes, etc. During this time a civil war was occurring in nearby Liberia; the Liberian Civil Wars took place from 1989 through 1997. The war was between the National Patriotic Front. Leader of the National Patriotic front of Liberia, Charles Taylor, helped to create the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. Taylor was the recipient of thousands of illegally trafficked arms from easter Europe. Taylor sold some of these weapons to the RUF in exchange for diamonds. President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, “directly facilitated Liberia’s arms-for-diamonds trade” with Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Compaore would give guns to Taylor, who would sell them to the RUF in exchange for diamonds. These blood diamonds would be sold back to Compaore for more guns; the cyclical exchange allowed Compaore the ability to deny directly sending arms to Sierra Leone. The Liberian government received arms through an elaborate from company in Guinea; the arms were intended to be shipped from Uganda to Slovakia. However, the arms were diverted to Guinea as a part of “an elaborate bait and switch.” Additionally the British government “encouraged Sandline International, a private security firm and non state entity, to supply arms and ammunitions to the loyal forces of the exiled government of President Kabbah.” Sandline proceeded 35 tons of arms to Kabbah's forces. Kimberly Thachuk and Karen Saunders argue that arms trafficking is no different from any other illegal business in their work Under the Radar: Airborne Arms Trafficking Operations in Africa. Traffickers first need a headquarters, or somewhere to base their operations.
A headquarters needs several aspects to make it an ideal place to traffic weapons. First, the headquarters should have appropriate infrastructure. For a weapons trafficking this would include a landing strip for both exportation. Additionally, warehouses are needed to “store product awaiting delivery." Once the product has arrived and been stored it needs to be delivered to the customer, the headquarters should be in somewhat of a central location near each customer. This is not the primary reason many traffickers choose Africa has multitudes of unoccupied land that can be used by traffickers, as is asserted by Thachuk and Saunders. Physical space is important but the rules and regulations of said space are relevant. Traffickers look for places with corrupt, supply side, officials that can either be bribed, or blackmailed; this allows the trafficker to “circumvent the regulatory and oversight systems” put in place by the government. Furthermore, a “lax financial system” is key so the large amounts of money moved by the trafficker are not seen as suspicious.
Thachuk and Saunders finish their argument, a stable, centralized government, is important. They point out that 10 different African countries have leaders that have been in power for more than 20 years, which they argue meets the criteria a centralized and stable government; the total value of the global arms market is estimated around $60 billion a year, with around $8 billion attributed to pistols, machine guns, bullets. The total illegal arms trade is harder to estimate, but the illicit small arms market has been estimated at 10–20% of the total global arms trade. Ali Fayad Monzer al-Kassar Pierre Beaumarchais Viktor Bout Samuel Cummings Arcadi Gaydamak Adnan Khashoggi Leonid Minin Sarkis Soghanalian Dale Stoffel Gerhard Mertins John Nardi Basil Zaharoff Efraim Diveroli Lord of War, a fictional crime war film in which Nicolas Cage plays an illegal arms dealer similar to the post-Soviet arms dealer Viktor Bout.
